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In the institutional language of my workplace, the Reinwardt Academy, we train young people to become “heritage professionals”. When explaining what cultural heritage is during presentations, my team and I often describe it as a label that we give to objects and practices from the past, which we value in the present, with a view towards the future.
This conceptualization of heritage as a label makes explicit that what is considered to be heritage is not inherent to an object or practice itself. Rather, the notion is dynamic (perhaps even arbitrary). Cultural heritage is shaped and named through human interaction. It is a social agreement. Heritage is created and made by us. Naturally, this implies critical questions about power. Who decides what can be labeled heritage and why?
In dialogue with the research I am doing for changeMakers and other projects - I have been reflecting on how this metaphor of heritage as a label resonates. It carries my mind back to my first days working at the Reinwardt Academy. It was my first time working in Dutch, the Dutch educational system and the field of cultural heritage under that explicit heading. By that point in my life, I had been working in the cultural sector in The Netherlands and Northern California for two decades. Nevertheless, I felt insecure and generally disoriented. What was this “grand” project of cultural heritage? There was a whole institutional world built around it, in which I had been laboring and creating, without, seemingly, using the right terms or theory. I had been doing cultural work, but was I a “heritage professional”?
Something I held onto, almost as a life raft during that period, was the English-language understanding of cultural heritage. In Dutch, the term cultureel erfgoed is more constrained. For most, it calls to mind monumental buildings, depots of cultural artefacts, UNESCO and the like. Alternatively, in the understanding of folks you would meet on the street in the United States - cultural heritage is simply who you are and who your people are. I would remind myself of this constantly as I was feeling imposter syndrome in my new workplace.
Which brings me back to the notion of heritage as a label we bestow, and the dissonance this generates for me. In that this conceptualization fundamentally externalizes heritage from our very bodies - the most potent sites of cultural lineage. The metaphor of the label itself is a clear artifact of museological practices rooted in the colonial project.
Yes, heritage is dynamic, but it is also inherent in all of us. Moreover, many of us experience that we cannot separate our cultural heritage from ourselves even if we should want to. The felt and perceived presence of our ancestry in our bodies communicates regardless - through our skin, features, movements, emotional inheritances, taste, our sense of timing, humor, ritual...
The notion of heritage as a label encourages a false neutrality, as though we could differentiate it completely from ourselves. As though we must look outwards instead of inwards to legitimize a space of negotiation within heritage work. Consequently, and in order to facilitate more people to claim access, space and resources in this field, I am curious to explore a conceptualization of heritage that roots more explicitly in the body.
In line with this, I am grateful to my colleague Mark Schep (Bachelor’s instructor who also works as a researcher for the Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage, Kenniscentrum Immaterieel Erfgoed Nederland), for recently introducing me to the scholarship and work of Dr. Jaswina Elahi.
In 2025 Dr. Elahi published the report Erfgoed Herzien. Perspectieven op ‘erfgoed’ vanuit kennis en ervaringen van postkoloniale groepen (“Rethinking Heritage: Perspectives on ‘Heritage’ Based on the Knowledge and Experiences of Postcolonial Groups”). Using a methodology she calls “experienced heritage research,” Dr. Elahi focused on lived heritage of three specific Dutch communities: Hindustani-Surinamese, Javanese-Surinamese, and Chinese-Indonesian.
Engaging the practices and perspectives of these communities, Dr. Elahi’s report synthesizes what I recognize to be a current central urgency in heritage work. That is, the simultaneous identified presence of both clear frustrations with the “system-world” of cultural heritage, alongside the identified presence of alternative practices that have the potential to break that system-world open. The (productive) tension between the legacy institutional structures and lived culture within community. She writes in her conclusion [my translation from the Dutch original]:
“The dominant understanding of heritage, based on stability, material preservation, authenticity, and institutional control, does not adequately reflect the reality of postcolonial heritage practices. For these communities, heritage is not a possession, but an act that lives on in rituals, music, dance, cooking, stories, and gestures. It is performative: every expression is simultaneously remembrance, transmission, and renewal. Heritage happens in the moment, in encounter and experience, and is therefore social and changeable. Preservation here does not mean clinging to an unchanging origin, but the ability to adapt and renew. Whereas the classical heritage model links authenticity to continuity, these communities demonstrate that it is precisely blending, translation, and hybridity that constitute forms of preservation. Traditions remain meaningful because they evolve with people, generations, and contexts. Heritage thrives not in spite of change, but because of change.
Moreover, this heritage has a distinct moral and political dimension. It was shaped within colonial power structures of exclusion and racialization and today serves as an act of healing and cultural justice.”
Dr. Elahi’s points are relevant to heritage work broadly. She argues for a reconceptualization of the notion of heritage within the Dutch structural (policy) context that would better embrace lived heritage.
What if embodied heritage was the starting point for heritage work? Would an embodied conceptualization only be applicable to intangible and living heritage, or could it extend to object-based heritage as well? Or are these simply two separate tracks heading in different directions?
Rather than offering here an alternative to the concept of heritage as a label, in my current process it feels useful to closely examine the externalization and differentiation that conceptualization produces. A separation between what heritage is and who we are. This also within a particular political climate in which diversity and identity politics are being conflated with polarization so as to be ostracized from our (educational) institutions and vocabularies.
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“That way of thinking—but also of seeing, listening, feeling, and speaking with my whole body—intrigues me. I want to be able to do that too. And how do I do this with my Asian body, here in the Netherlands, where I grew up primarily in an urban culture?” – Nita Liem (my translation from Dutch)
“At the same time, I work within an artistic context. The movements that emerge are not a literal reproduction of rituals or traditions, but a source of inspiration within an artistic exploration. It is about what these movement qualities open in the body" – Cheroney Pelupessy (my translation from Dutch)
“What can we, as dancers, move and bring back to the surface?” - Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit
“Odor Donor” & “What is your first recollection of a smell?” – Lisette Ros
“The audience not only looks, it must move to be able to understand.” – Kareth Schaffer