Sissejuhatus / Introduction

Introductio

Kestlik kogukonnakorraldus: kultuuripärandiga seostuvate arendustegevuste peegeldusi Kihnu saarelt, Viljandi maakonnast ja Eesti kaitsealadelt

The PhD thesis of Priit-Kalev Parts entitled “Sustainable community management in Estonia: reflections on heritage projects on Kihnu Island, in Viljandi county, and in various protected areas” examines the problems related to the administration and protection of landscape, rural life and other traditional values in an era in which, even for rural populations, agriculture is being rapidly demoted to a subsidiary source of employment and income. The author analyses the conceptual underpinnings of the conservation of nature and heritage in Estonia and reveals implicit ideological currents in the regulatory practice of the field. The thesis suggests a series of alternative concepts (living landscape, rural inhabitants as an endangered breed, heritage-based sustainable livelihoods, endangered settlements) as the basis for the assessment, monitoring and regulation of rural landscapes. The author elaborates a series of guidelines and measures to ensure that, in the management of landscape planning and rural cultural heritage, closer attention is paid to the specifics of local conditions and that local residents are not cornered into addictive subsidy arrangements by excessive prohibitions and controls on their livelihoods. The thesis includes examples of attempts to reconceptualise local nature and heritage protection as a complex set of actions seeking to develop sustainable livelihoods. The approach highlights the role of values in the making of the corresponding decisions and suggests various options for achieving economic and administrative savings in practical landscape planning. The thesis discusses how the approach may be implemented in the protected areas of Estonia and in other culturally sensitive areas. The approach is also shown to hold considerable potential for application in the administration and regional development of cultural landscapes located outside protected areas. The studies conducted as part of the thesis show that there is no agreement in Estonia concerning the values that underpin the assessment of cultural landscapes and cultural heritage. Although a certain body of accepted rhetorical formulations has developed over time, it is often used to justify widely different or even outright contradictory aims and visions, which often results in the euphemisation of problems and development priorities. The accepted rhetoric appears to favour the interests and perspectives of mobile groups (tourists, academic experts) over those of local residents and is geared to generate opposition between economic activities and protective measures. The author recommends a more dynamic and complex approach to rural values and suggests that protective measures should be integrated into the development of sustainable local livelihoods. This entails a series of challenges to official institutions in terms of rewriting the existing regulations and rethinking their practical work such that the protection regimes of each protected area would be determined with regard to the specifics of the area. It also means that, where necessary, the institutions should be prepared to grant local communities priority rights to use natural resources, to relieve the restrictions on human activity in endangered settlements and to arrange for and recognise, in relation to certain trades, the individual learning of those in the immediate or approximate environment of skill bearers.Priit-Kalev Partsi doktoritöö “Kestlik kogukonnakorraldus: kultuuripärandiga seostuvate arendustegevuste peegeldusi Kihnu saarelt, Viljandi maakonnast ja Eesti kaitsealadelt” käsitleb maaliste väärtuste haldust ja kaitset olukorras, kus põllumajandus on maapiirkondade elanike jaoks taandumas kõrvaliseks sissetuleku ja tööhõive allikaks. Autor analüüsib loodus- ja muinsuskaitse kontseptuaalseid aluseid ning varjatult ideoloogilisi seoseid valdkonna korralduspraktikaga, pakkudes välja alternatiivseid mõtestamiskonstruktsioone (elav maastik, maainimene kui ohustatud tõug, pärandipõhine kestlik elatis, ohustatud asustusega külad) maa-maastike hindmiseks, seireks ja korralduseks. Analüüsi ja alternatiivsete kontseptsioonide sünteesi alusel töötas autor välja tegevusjuhiseid ja meetmeid maa-maastike ja maakultuuripärandi senisest kohasidusamaks ja iseorganiseeruvamaks korraldamiseks. Väitekirjas demonstreerib autor kohaliku loodus- ja muinsuskaitse ümbermõtestamise katseid kestlike elatiste arendamisele suunatud tegevuste kompleksina. Lähenemine toob selgelt esile väärtuspõhisuse ning pakub praktilisele maastikukorraldusele majanduslikke ja halduslikke kokkuhoiuvõimalusi. Väitekiri demonstreerib, kuidas antud lähenemist rakendada Eesti kaitsealadel ja teistel kultuuriliselt tundlikel aladel, osutades selle potentsiaalile ka väljaspool kaitsealasid paiknevate kultuurmaastike haldamises ja regionaalses arendustöös. Doktoritöö tulemusena selgus, et Eestis puudub kokkulepe kultuurmaastike ja kultuuripärandi väärtuskriteeriumite osas. Kuigi välja on kujunenud ühtne retoorika, teostatakse selle raames väga erinevaid või lausa vastuolulisi eesmärke ja nägemusi, mis viib sageli probleemide ning arenguprioriteetide eufemistliku käsitlemiseni. Väljakujunenud retoorika kaldub eelistama liikuvate (turistid, akadeemilised eksperdid) rühmade huve ja vaatenurka paiksete ees ning suunab majandus- ja kaitsetegevusi vastandama. Väitekirja autor soovitab läheneda maalistele väärtustele dünaamilisemalt ja komplekssemalt, lõimides kaitsetegevused kohalike kestlike majanduspraktikate arendamisega. Ametlikele institutsioonidele kätkeb see nii õiguslikke kui praktilist töökultuuri puudutavaid väljakutseid määratleda väärtused ja vastavad hoiumeetmed iga ala puhul eraldi. Samuti tähendab see institutsioonidele vajadust arendada valmisolekut anda kohalikule kogukonnale vajadusel loodusressursside kasutamisel eelisõigusi, leevendada inimtegevuse õiguslikke ja praktilisi piiranguid ohustatud asustusega külades ning korraldada ja tunnustada teatud oskuste õpet individuaalselt oskuste kandjate vahetus või lähedases keskkonnas

Sissejuhatus / Introduction

Introductio

Sissejuhatus / Introduction

Introductio

Akadeemilised puusepad tervitasid algavat ehitushooaega Loodi puutöömõisas ja Eesti Vabaõhumuuseumis Põhjala palgipäevaga / Academic carpenters ring in the start of the construction season at Loodi Woodworking Manor and Nordic Log Day

The Viljandi Culture Academy of the University of Tartu organized the international Nordic log construction days on 9 & 10 April 2014, the goal of which was to take a look at the multi-layered nature of log culture in Northern Europe and to discuss the current state and future outlook of log construction skills, a common part of the region’s heritage. Practical workshops, advice sessions and discussion seminars with Estonian, Latvian, Finnish and Swedish experts were included in the programme. The results of cooperation in the international PROLOG project were summarized. The project was seeking to remove development constraints of hand-crafted log construction industry by creating a comprehensive survey and integral vision for future development of log building education in the Nordic-Baltic region. As the project summary, it is planned to take steps to have Nordic log construction heritage added to the UNESCO list of intangible heritage. Keywords: hand-crafted log building education, intangible heritag

Parandettevõtlus: praktiline radikalism / Regenerative entrepreneurship: practical radicalism

‘Progress’ means extravagant energy use, enabled by the burning of fossil fuels and colonial expansion. The peak in the extraction of oil and countless other key natural resources, the ‘peak everything’, is at hand or imminent. Renewable and nuclear energy depend on fossil fuel-based production and have a poor EROI (energy return on investment). At the same time, the industrial civilisation has triggered a series of irreversible chain reactions. For the last 10,000 years, a period known as the Holocene, the Earth has enjoyed an exceptionally stable climate, which is a prerequisite for agriculture and the functioning of civilisations. We are entering a hothouse Earth with an unstable climate. The author starts from a post-sustainable framework of deep adaptation, according to which the collapse of industrial societies due to climate chaos and limits to growth is likely, inevitable or already underway in our lifetime. The essential question of the post-sustainable world is how to live on a planet, on which humankind has never set foot in its entire evolution. In order to conceptualise this situation and to create an action plan, it is necessary to abandon the dogma of progressivism, the narrative that everything is going to get better, that all stories have a happy ending, and that there is no ‘going back to childhood’ (to a ‘Golden Age’, ‘traditional society’, etc.). The author takes a brief look at empirical and theoretical analyses that are in sharp contrast to the basic narratives of progress. The author also points out that no scientific-technical, Enlightenment-based culture or cultural situation in history can be shown to have been sustainable for even a single moment. At the same time, history is littered with examples of former state subjects, who have fled civilisation and gone native. Consequently, the achievement of an ecologically sustainable culture that breaks away from the doctrines of the Enlightenment and progress is an opportunity that is within reach at any moment. Since the mid-19th century (at the latest), Estonian culture has consisted of attempts to create European-style culture in Estonian. In order to reach anecologically sustainable way of life that can be lived from generation to generation, it is necessary to search for and invent the “modes of creation” of Estonians as a countryside people (before the 19th century, Estonians called themselves “people of the land”), i.e., a local epistemology and ecological sensitivity of the local culture, rebuilding a photosynthesis-based food system. The author calls for the abandonment of modernist business as usual and for the actual care of the land, generation after generation, a regenerative economy. The task of the regenerative economy is to bind water, carbon, nutrients into the Estonian soil. Agriculture – to the extent that it is possible on a hothouse Earth – must move towards forest gardening and grazing, because carbon is better safeguarded in the soil than in vegetation in the event of wildfires and superstorms. Also, it will be harder for colonisers to seize crops. Regenerative economy can be summed up in three words: food, wood, fibre. Finally, the author proposes an extensive list of ideas for regenerative entrepreneurship. A regenerative entrepreneur is a practical environmental radical, whose everyday challenge is to find business models that are based on human or animal labour and photosynthesis as a source of energy and to create soil. Keywords: limits to growth, climate chaos, deep adaptation, going native, regenerative economic

Kihulasele – abimootoriga jalgrattale ja rohtunud radade sissetallajale / To Meelis Kihulane – a motorized bicycle and a breaker of overgrown paths

Vakad, karbid, sõelad – painutatud kerega esemete valmistamine, the new book by Meelis Kihulane on making bentwood boxes and sieves, keeps alive the proud tradition of classical Estonian ethnography, at the same time as imparting to its readers the insight and hands-on approach of a true practitioner. The book is presented in the form of a practical handbook with video appendices – or a ’videobook’. From the perspective of teaching the practice, the book is skilfully composed and the photos carefully selected and unbelievably well photographed. The author’s substantial experience as an instructor, and also the resoluteness of the editors (museum curators by profession), has indisputably played its part here. Vakad, karbid, sõelad poses some questions about the future of storage media used for presenting information on handicraft in general. The production of the videos accompanying the book is at a high professional level and they are an excellent addition to the book, but the combination of a traditional book and a non-descript thumb-drive creates a somewhat uncomfortable consumer experience. Kihulane’s two-part work is thus somewhat reminiscent of an old motorised bicycle – a tad too clumsy for riding down overgrown ethnographic paths on a summer night, yet too bulky with its atavistic pedals for cycling any faster. But such is the fate of a pioneer