Ladakh: The emergence of a cultural heritage. Identity politics and pedagogical interventions in the context of an increasing tourism

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Alfred Schäfer
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256284281

Tourism is not only considered to endanger the visited culture, but also to enable its recognition and thus the identity constitution of the local people of Ladakh. In a completed DFG project on tourist and indigenous experiences the Ladakhi identity became manifest as a problem between tradition and present. Besides the challenging task on how to determine one s own identity on an individual level, tourism has brought about a struggle among different cultural political agents as well as organizations on how to determine a cultural heritage of Ladakh. They attempt to convey their view of a binding, yet endangered heritage by utilizing different forms of identity politics and of pedagogical efforts. These forms entail: the reassurance of moral-buddhist identity, a reassurance that is combined with political demands; the attempts to preserve a traditional rural life-style with its corresponding social structures; particular pedagogical projects that attempt to implement what is considered to be one s own into school curriculum or in traditional practices or cultural techniques. There exist quite disparate or even contradictory approaches what the Ladakhi identity precisely is to mean. It is the aim of this project to analyze the logic of these approaches that follow a modern pedagogical pattern: What is valuable has to be presented as something that cannot be taken for granted - as something that is threatened and contingent. Simultaneously the pedagogical addressees are called to decide on what is important for their cultural identity. It is precisely this sovereignty that stands in contradiction to the programs of identity politics employed by the organizations and cultural-political agents. The analysis of this competing patterns of pedagogical enlightenment and identity politics, with its agonal conflicts and hegemonic strategies is the central theme of the project. This includes as well the question on how identity politics seeks to legitimize itself within this field of conflicts, facing a form of tourism that precisely sells identity by referring to cultural heritage.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants