Drawing on debates about intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding at the local and international levels, Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development: Inside a UNESCO Convention, explores the theoretical and practical implications of the intertwinement between these policy fields.
Considering how sustainable development (SD) priorities are influencing representations of ICH, the volume questions how they are expanding the frontiers of the heritage realm and unsettling accepted understandings of the social uses of heritage. The contributing authors, who hail from a variety of different contexts and disciplinary backgrounds, explore these issues from a unique vantage point as both scholars and actors of the processes they analyze. Playing different roles in the implementation of the Convention, their positioning as insiders allows for a unique analytical perspective that is based on first-hand engagement with the practices of the Convention.
Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development: Inside a UNESCO Convention sheds light on the complexity, potential, and consequences of combining ICH and SD at the policy-making level and in heritage practices on the ground. It will be of interest to academics and students working in heritage studies, development studies, anthropology, archaeology, international law, political science, international relations, and sociology.
The rise of sustainable development in the convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage PART I The international legal and policy framework: sustainability as a political and moral imperative 1 Sustainable development and human rights in safeguarding ICH: positive goals or an internal contradiction? 2 The reorientation of a convention: UNESCO, intangible heritage, and sustainable development 3 How and why the SDGs entered the paradigm of safeguarding intangible heritage: the “Sixth Chapter” PART II Ownership, intellectual property, commons 4 Ownership and rights: sustainable development ideals with inequalities of recognition and resource management 5 Misappropriation, intellectual property, and ethics 6 Governing intangible cultural heritage commons PART III Negotiating inclusiveness 7 No sustainability without materiality: complex paths to good practices in Switzerland 8 Safeguarding the intangible heritage of Indigenous peoples: a conceptual distance in intergovernmental discourses PART IV Intangible cultural heritage economics:decontextualization, precarity, and entrepreneurship 9 Decontextualization from UNESCO to China: the embarrassment and empowerment of economic uses of intangible cultural heritage 10 Intangible cultural heritage, sustainability, and the COVID-19 in Marrakech11 Popular music and heritage embarrassment in Brazil
Chiara Bortolotto holds UNESCO Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development at CY Cergy Paris University. Ahmed Skounti is Professor of anthropology and heritage at the National Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Sciences (INSAP), Morocco.
