Water, land and peace: Customary courts and the heritage of the Anthropocene

Abstract

Heritage has become a crucial political instrument, which ratifies or rejects cultural objects as iceberg-symbols of social realities that are much more complex than what the patrimonial metaphor or metonymy allows us to see. Assuming this dialectically critical perspective of the decolonized heritage, this article proposes a comparative analysis of two very diverse types of customary jurisdiction considered of patrimonial value: on the one hand, the Tribunal de las Aguas of Valencia (or Tribunal of Water of Valencia) and the Wise Men of Murcia), and, on the other hand, the Khutas of the Zambezi in Namibia. Based on a detailed analysis that will show the similarities between ways of settling conflicts, the final objective is to address the question of why the Spanish cases have been patrimonialized by UNESCO and not the Namibian one, considering that the figure or concept of heritage, as it is conceived nowadays, allows a profound interpellation about who we are as cultural entities.

Keywords

• patrimonio inmaterial
• epistemología decolonial
• antropoceno
• jurisdicción tradicional
• tribunal de las aguas de valencia y consejo de hombres de buenos de la huerta de murcia
• khutas namibios