Safeguarding Intangible Heritage

Practices and Politics

Natsuko Akagawa, Laurajane Smith, Natsuko Akagawa, Laurajane Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138580749
• eBook ISBN: 9780429016400
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage came into force in 2006, framing the international and national practices and policies associated with intangible cultural heritage. This volume critically and reflexively examines these practices and policies, providing an accessible account of the different ways in which intangible cultural heritage has been defined and managed in both national and international contexts. As Safeguarding Intangible Heritage reveals, the concept and practices of safeguarding are complicated and often contested, and there is a need for international debate about the meaning, nature and value of heritage and what it means to 'safeguard' it.

Safeguarding Intangible Heritage presents a significant cross section of ideas and practices from some of the key academics and practitioners working in the area, whose areas of expertise span anthropology, law, heritage studies, linguistics, archaeology, museum studies, folklore, architecture, Indigenous studies and history. The chapters in this volume give an overarching analysis of international policy and practice and critically frame case studies that analyze practices from a range of countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand, Taiwan, the UK and Zimbabwe.

With a focus on conceptual and theoretical issues, this follow-up to Intangible Heritage, by the same editors, will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals working in the fields of heritage and museum studies, heritage conservation, heritage tourism, global history, international relations, art and architectural history, and linguists.

Chapter 1
The practices and politics of safeguarding

Natsuko Akagawa and Laurajane Smith

Since publication of Intangible Heritage (Smith and Akagawa, 2009a), which documented and discussed the development of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC), debate around the practice and discourse of intangible heritage has expanded considerably. Coming into force in 2006, listing of intangible heritage under ICHC commenced in 2008. As of the time of writing in 2017, there are 365 elements on the Representative List, 47 elements on the Urgent Safeguarding List, and 17 elements on the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices (UNESCO 2017a). Moreover, as of 2017, there are 174 States Parties to the Convention (UNESCO 2017b). The act of signing up to the Convention, of implementing its guidelines within national borders, and in promoting and facilitating community-based processes required for the preparation of nominations, have generated new practices, analyses and discourses that together are shaping the understanding and practices of intangible cultural heritage.

In this volume we examine some of these developments. The contributions to this volume represent a sample of current observations, analyses and practices. The volume claims neither to be an exhaustive survey of current practice, programmes or debates, nor to offer the final word on the development of intangible heritage. Rather, its aim, as with the 2009 volume, is to provide a snapshot of issues currently exercising the field and to generate further debate so that practices around ICH continue to develop. In particular it focuses attention on a number of current and core issues facing practitioners and academics as they work through the implications of enacting the ICHC that centre on the issue of ‘safeguarding’. For example, how should the concept of safeguarding be approached, what is really meant by this concept, what is being safeguarded and by and for whom?

As adoption and implementation of the 2003 ICHC by States Parties progresses, and processes for preparing nominations accelerate at national levels, new issues and questions about safeguarding practices are highlighted. As new and diverse cases of ICH are put forward for inscription new interpretations continue to identify both ambiguities and potential avenues of practice, as well as revealing aspects of administrative, legal and organisational procedures and assumptions that facilitate, obstruct or weaken frameworks for the safeguarding of intangible heritage. It has even been suggested that the concept itself has expanded so exponentially over the last decade as to make its value questionable (see, for example, Khaznadar 2012). If intangible heritage is defined in terms of the ascription of meaning, what, it can be asked, are its boundaries? And if it is boundary-less, what are the limits of legislative, financial and community responsibility?

Formulation of the concept of intangible heritage as it emerged in global heritage discourse in the 1990s (see Hafstein 2007; Akagawa 2015) was in large part driven by, and has succeeded in gaining acceptance of, a demand to broaden what has since come to be defined as the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD), the dominant discourse established by Western, and in particular Western European, intellectual and institutional traditions (Smith 2006). The ICHC developed as it was in response to long-term and extensive lobbying from non-Western nation states and Indigenous peoples (Aikawa-Faure 2009), and had the potential to directly challenge the Eurocentric AHD (Smith and Akagawa 2009b). Certainly, while acknowledgement of the legitimacy of ICH is now well established, and this in and of itself marks a shift in the international AHD, this discourse has yet to be overturned or even seriously challenged. This is because, firstly, the AHD itself framed much of the way ICH was to be understood and safeguarded within the ICHC (Smith 2015). As Lixinski (2011) has argued, the ICHC administrative reliance on nation states, despite the Convention’s avowed aim to support community and other sub-national expressions of heritage, has tended to see the development and reinforcement of the nationalising tendencies endemic within the AHD toward ICH. In some cases this has allowed an alienation of the ICH from its community base. Secondly, the AHD has reworked itself by adding to its lexicon two new key phrases, one tautological and the other absurdly contradictory: ‘intangible value’ and ‘tangible value’. As Smith and Campbell (2018) argue, the former is almost inevitably applied to social/cultural and other non-expert heritage values, while the latter is used to describe expert or ‘scientific’ values ascribed to either material or intangible heritage. The development of these terms simultaneously with the implementation of the ICHC is no accident; it can be seen as an attempt by those whose heritage practices are framed by the AHD to come to terms with the ‘intangible’ and to attempt to incorporate it into their conceptual repertoire. Nonetheless, these terms work to reassert expert heritage values over community and other non-expert values. Simultaneously they reinforce the position of intangible heritage as being of less legitimacy or stature than tangible (and thus evidential and ‘real’) heritage (Smith and Campbell 2018).

It is evident that one of the important aspects of recent developments in the field of intangible heritage safeguarding has been the nomination and listing of elements by non-Western States Parties, many of which constitute what, in International Relations terms, are often characterised as the Global South. Numerous traditional practices are increasingly subject to disappearance in the face of modern economic development, while also taking on new significance as sources of national income through international tourism. Both developments create new demands and pressures that are addressed both academically and in terms of administrative and legislative practice.

At the same time it has also become evident that, despite some initial hesitations, European States Parties have rapidly come to recognise the significance, as well as the opportunities afforded by, the 2003 Convention. While a number of influential Western nations have to date not signed up to the Convention, notably the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the recent development in listing of culinary heritage or transnational boarder heritage, for example, demonstrates the attraction of the non-tangible element of heritage. Indeed, here too, concerns for the safeguarding of traditions, practices and performances, at home or as brought abroad by migrant communities, is evident. Often this reflects national or community nostalgia in the face of changing social experiences and values, frequently at the local level as neighbourhoods are redeveloped by domestic class-based or foreign immigrants.

Equally, now that the concept has been assimilated into official and everyday discourse, intangible heritage has been incorporated into many aspects of everyday modern life. Notably, ICH has become a vehicle both for the enactment of civil rights at a community level, and as an extension to the ability of national governments to project their image abroad. Intangible cultural heritage has become part of the arsenal available to national governments in the exercise of what Nye (1990, 2004) has defined as ‘soft power’ within the broader domain of cultural diplomacy (Akagawa 2015). Linking governmental and national with community interests has been the recognition of the economic potential of ICH. Broader in its tourist attraction than specific objects of tangible heritage, ICH appeals to a broader spectrum of humanistic, aesthetic and intellectual engagement, encouraging consumers to relate at the level of ‘meaning’ that can apply to the full range of the intellectual and sensory receptors. At the same time, this very attractiveness can represent a threat to the ‘authenticity’ of the ICH element and the experience of it. Safeguarding of ICH, then, has become an increasingly complex and vexed issue.

Many of these issues have been alluded to or addressed in the numerous articles that have appeared in leading heritage journals, such as the International Journal of Intangible Heritage that has seen a marked increase in articles directly or exclusively addressed to ICH issues since 2009. Between 2004 and 2008 a lacklustre four articles were published on this topic; since 2009, and as of June 2017, 42 articles on ICH had been published, of which 52% were published since 2015. Numerous scholars have explored and broadened our understanding of what is, or can be incorporated under, this heading, compiled in a range of edited volumes such as Intangible Heritage Embodied (Ruggles and Silverman 2009), Ritual, Heritage and Identity (2011), Intangible Heritage and the Museum (Alivizatou 2012) and Intangible Natural Heritage (Dorfman 2012), and Music as Intangible Cultural Heritage (Howard 2012).

This is a companion volume to Intangible Heritage (Smith and Akagawa 2009a). While the latter focused on the development and initial response to the 2003 Convention, the current volume moves the debate forward by focusing on ongoing concerns with the concept and practices of ‘safeguarding’. It builds on the widening understanding of the concept of Intangible Heritage and its impact on heritage practice in the context of the operations of the 2003 Convention. Intangible Heritage, published in 2009 as the first nominations were being processed, documented and commented on how the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage had begun to impact upon theory and practice. In Part I it examined the debates and intentions that had underpinned its development, and its subsequent guidelines, and in Part II the complexities of the concept and its implementation across a widely diverse cultural arena. That book then asked whether the Convention, then not yet widely implemented, was capable of adequately addressing the cultural complexities of ICH. In the final section of the book we began to examine the emerging academic debates around the concept of ICH and the implementation of the Convention and how it had begun to challenge and change the academic and practitioner understanding of the nature and significance of heritage.

Since the publication of Intangible Heritage in 2009, the ICH Convention has increasingly influenced how international and national practices and public policies have addressed heritage conservation and protection. This, in our view, warrants a return to this topic in an attempt to document at least some of the issues, procedures, examples and conceptual developments that have recently emerged in implementing the Convention. Like its companion, this volume, in assembling a range of debates on, and experiences of, the implementation – and contestation – of processes related to the Convention, aims to foster both policy and academic debate about the nature of intangible heritage and its cultural and political significance, as well as reviewing the impact of the ICHC on community, national and international heritage policy, practice and understanding.

The contributions to this volume are organised to reflect on two sets of primary issues, centred firstly on policy and conceptual issues and secondly on the implementation of these within safeguarding practices. While not intended to provide definitive conclusions, chapters in each section indicate something of the range of organisational, conceptual and practical dimensions that have emerged. While ‘problems’ may appear to be at the forefront of heritage discourse today, across the range of contributions there are also many indications of positive outcomes and the potential for exciting future developments.

In the Part I, Legal, administrative and conceptual challenges, chapters reprise and review the status and achievements of the ICHC. They specifically assess the Convention’s policy impacts at national and international levels, and begin to consider whether and how the original aims and visions for the Convention are being met and the ways the ICHC frames the interplay of States Parties, sub-national communities of interest, NGOs and other communities of expertise.

In opening the discussion in this first section, Janet Blake (Chapter 2) focuses attention on what has engendered much discussion if not agitation: the question of community involvement in safeguarding ICH. Blake identifies this as the feature that the Convention specifically brought to the fore in heritage practice. In particular, she draws attention here to the link between ICH and human rights and issues of community development, particularly in terms of economic development, but also more broadly in socio-cultural terms. The concept and place of community in heritage safeguarding, she demonstrates, needs careful delineation since the ‘specific character of a heritage that owes its existence primarily to its practice and enactment by the cultural group and/or community [depends for] its very survival […] on the willingness and ability of the cultural community to continue to do this’. In this regard, she argues, the Convention provides a powerful stimulus for States Parties to engage with communities and, in so doing, authorise communities within the domain of civil society as well as, potentially, in the market place. These implications in the Convention, Blake notes, have been further highlighted in the Operational Guidelines.

This then, as Harriet Deacon and Rieke Smeets (Chapter 3) argue, raises new questions about ICH concerning the protection of intellectual property. They indicate that a useful parallel to consider here are developments within WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, where frameworks for protecting ‘traditional knowledge’ (TK) of ‘Indigenous peoples and local communities’ have been defined. Given the ‘considerable overlap’ that exists between TK and ICH, this may provide a useful starting point, but the chapter recognises that significant differences also do exist. Looking at conventional (Western) notions of IP reveals an even greater gap. The chapter enables the reader to appreciate the significance of these technical complexities, and offers insight into what the authors recommend as the way forward, ‘despite the risks’.

Aside from the legal issues related to the protection of intellectual ICH property, Lucas Lixinski (Chapter 4) also draws our attention to the need to protect ICH from economic exploitation. This question is already clearly apparent within the stakeholder communities and as a result of specific national government policies, but it is also a lively focus of attention within international bodies, including the aforesaid WIPO and the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). Lixinski argues that there has been a tendency to see ICH as being rather ‘too precious’, that applying market derived laws to ICH is seen as having the tendency to ‘commodify and vulgarise heritage’. The chapter also refers to the (almost) parallel issue facing TK and ‘Traditional Cultural Expressions’ (TCEs). Lixinski further examines the link between ‘commodification and listing’ under the terms of the ICHC, in particular as this appears to be facilitated by the 2014 Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention. The association of ICH with tourism is the obvious flashpoint here, and this chapter then usefully links the question of ICH ‘economics’ to parallel concerns developed by UNWTO’s Global Code of Ethics of Tourism. This, Lixinski sees as coming close to where ICH needs to be on this issue. The conclusion, however, represents a rather delicate, and ultimately perhaps, an ethically determined balance between commodification and economic exploitation that may not be easily embraced by legal measures. Nevertheless, it is a practical issue that needs to be faced.

Turning to a nuanced analysis of the actual operations of the various committees that deal with questions of nominations and listing, Kristin Kuutma (Chapter 5) looks back at her experiences of attending a number of meetings of the ICHC Subsidiary Body in Paris as nominations for listing began to arrive. While the previous chapters in this section point to the problems of implementation, Kuutma takes us to the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Series editors’ foreword
• 1 The practices and politics of safeguarding
• Part I Legal, administrative and conceptual challenges
• Part II The complexities of ‘safeguarding’
• Index