Abstract

Based on a multisensory ethnography (Elias 2019), multi-situated both spatially and temporally in the Caxinas community (Vila do Conde) and the Maritime Museum of Ílhavo (MMI), the investigation is based on the assumption that the inhabitants of the fishing community promote a mental construction of a maritime museum – which is demanded by part of the population since the closure of the old Caxinas’ Museum of the Sea, in the late 1990’s –, a construction influenced mainly by the MMI and the former museum, which documents and assets, that will also be analyzed, allows its understanding as a museum-archive. Therefore, our aim is to reflect on the contemporary anxieties about the safeguarding of cultures, as well as to identify the agents that operate, in Caxinas, in the discursive production of a local maritime culture (Ortner 2006; Yúdice 2006), in the demand for its preservation and in the symbolic meanings given to material objects representative of this culture, following Macdonald’s (2006) representational critique. Based on the multiple practices of exhibiting the Caxinas’ “maritime culture” identified during the fieldwork, we aim to expand the discussion of the official definition of “museum” (ICOM 2022), of the heritage practice and of the possibility of a shared curation when it comes to the relationship between museums and the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Team