No. 116/2024

29 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 116/2024 W hen Sophia Labadi is sitting at her desk, jazz can usually be heard from her study. “I like the fact that this music is so creative and diverse. It has always fascinated me that one and the same piece can sound quite different when it is being improvised.” In the mid-1990s, when she was a politics and social science undergraduate, she volunteered at the famous Grenoble Jazz Festival. “I helped to organise an exhibition called ‘Jazz’ which featured paper cut-outs by Henri Matisse – an experience that inspired me so much that I looked for a Master’s course that was closely linked to art, museums and culture. So, I applied to the Heritage Studies Master at University College London,” Sophia Labadi recalls. Fast forward two decades and she is now a professor of heritage at the University of Kent, UK, with a reputation as an outstanding interdisciplinary researcher in her field. She was recently granted the Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange, which the Humboldt Foundation confers jointly with the FritzThyssen Foundation. One core question informs her academic work: How can heritage contribute to sustainable development in fields such as poverty reduction and climate change? DYNAMIC HERITAGE According to Labadi, if you want to understand the conditions under which heritage can help drive sustainable development you should take a critical look at the current definition of the term. “Cultural heritage is still seen as an unchangeable part of the past – an attitude that can The past, for Sophia Labadi, is very much alive. The ethnologist and expert on heritage studies explores how heritage sites and European museums can promote social justice in African countries, combat poverty and actively counter climate change – along the way, she uncovers how colonial thinking sometimes prevents sustainable development. Text ESTHER SAMBALE lead to potentially innovative solutions that the past could offer us being missed or ignored.” This was the case at the Senegalese UNESCO World Heritage site, Sine Saloum, that Labadi visited during field studies for her 2022 book, “Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development”. The extensive swamps at the mouth of the Saloum and Sine rivers where they join the Atlantic Ocean are dotted with tiny islands and mangrove forests. Here, shell middens dating back to 5000 B.C. served the population as efficient barriers against rising sea levels – originally only caused by the tides, later by climate change, as well – until they were recently removed for building material. “Traditional solutions are often dismissed as irrelevant and the local population looked upon as though they were living in the past. Interestingly, countries like the United States and the Netherlands are currently using oyster reefs once again for coastal defence,” says Labadi. She calls for a holistic, dynamic concept of heritage. Dividing heritage up into “tangible” and “intangible” is Eurocentric, she claims, and can actually prevent development. “We also have to recognise that culture and nature are inextricably linked. You can’t understand a city like Paris without the Seine. The same goes for many world heritage sites.” One example of a World Heritage site that transcends the categories of natural and cultural heritage, conveying a more complex narrative, is Robben Island in South Africa, says Labadi. The former prison there, in which Nelson Mandela, amongst others, was held for many years, is now a museum where former political prisoners give guided tours. A solar plant helps to produce clean energy, and Photo: Humboldt Foundation/Marina Weigl ›