Pottery is one of humanity’s most enduring crafts. Like children who get absorbed in playing with a lump of clay, it was a delightful process working with Eleanor White in reshaping her MSc thesis into an academic article. It was exciting for us to mess with and mould this piece of work while seeing it get transformed into the finished article with folds, creases and smooth edges. In the hands of a historian or achaeologist, an old broken piece of pottery provides insights into the lives, times and material heritage of communities of a distant past. We hope that present and future readers of this article will get insights into the conceptual contributions we make to the literature on authenticity and intangible cultural heritage.

Working on this article was enough to create a crave in my heart – that of taking a pottery class. I do really need to and want to get my hands dirty and sticky with a lump of clay. I’m happy to hear of any recommendations of a pottery class in Wageningen and surrounding areas.

The paper is published as open access – free to read, free to download, free to cite and free to use in your teaching 🙂 You can download a copy below.

In the potter’s hand: tourism and the everyday practices of authentic intangible cultural heritage in a pottery village

Abstract

Whilst widely recognised as important, the concept of authenticity remains highly contested, particularly in relation to sustainable intangible cultural heritage (ICH) tourism. Using the empirical case of the pottery village of Margarites, Crete, the conceptual goal of this paper is to explore from the host community perspective the question of what authentic ICH is, as well as what this means in everyday practices of ceramic crafting in the context of increasing tourism demand for authentic pottery products and experiences. Empirically, we explore how tourism impacts the perceptions and practices of Margarites community members regarding the authenticity of their ceramic crafting ICH. On the basis of interviews and observations, our findings provide three main contributions to the literature. Firstly, based on our findings, we conceptualise authenticity in relation to ICH as constituted by the 3Ps: people-related, place-related and product-related approaches that are the outcome of social relations. Secondly, we provide a host community perspective on the perceptions of authenticity as influenced by tourism in relation to ICH of ceramic crafting. Finally, our empirical case of a Cretan pottery village affirms existing insights about understanding the sustainability challenges of authentic ICH tourism.