The Folklife at the International Level series has set out on a winding road, tracing the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) as developed through a series of international initiatives over the course of the late 20th century. As the signs posted throughout have indicated, this road leads to the global framework for ICH promotion and …
In Part VII, we got a feel for the strong momentum that was building during the 1990s with respect to the more concerted efforts of UNESCO in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) – and raising awareness of the need to – globally. In particular, we took a look at the Living Human Treasures model, long …
Our journey in the Folklife at the International Level series last took us to long-established East Asian “Living Human Treasures” programs for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). As discussed, during the 1990s, UNESCO recommended to Member States that they adopt similar systems of subsidizing (or, at the least, officially recognizing) people in their own territories …
In Part VI, we examined UNESCO’s 1972 World Heritage Convention and some of its underlying notions and approaches that have influenced the development of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) framework of today. In particular, I singled out its use of listing – namely, the World Heritage List – as a mechanism for preservation by drawing …
In honor of World Intellectual Property Day, let’s get back into the realm of global cultural heritage, particularly with respect to the idea of heritage as property. In the last post, I unknotted the notion of death (via globalization and homogenization) from the tangle of concepts, values, and disciplinary legacies known as ‘intangible cultural heritage’ …
Now that we have introduced UNESCO’s 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore in the last blog post in this series, and discussed some of its recommended approaches, let’s delve back into tracing the development of the ICH concept. As a starting point, the 1989 Recommendation offers us this: Folklore (or traditional and popular culture) is …
In the last post, we made our way to UNESCO’s 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, tracing some key changes in precursor definitions for what is now called ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH). I will return to the ICH concept’s development, but let’s make a pit stop to look more closely at …