Title: Legal and financial instruments for safeguarding our intangible heritage
Abstract:Intangible heritage consists of the oral traditions,
memories, languages, traditional performing arts or
rituals, knowledge systems, values and know-how that
we want to safeguard and pass on to fut...Intangible heritage consists of the oral traditions,
memories, languages, traditional performing arts or
rituals, knowledge systems, values and know-how that
we want to safeguard and pass on to future generations.
Intangible heritage can be recorded in various ways, but it
is often not expressed in a permanent physical form.
Every performance or expression of intangible heritage is
different and significant change is frequent. This makes it
very vulnerable to loss, but also very difficult to safeguard
using the same legal and financial mechanisms
established for heritage places and objects. Various
international organizations and national ministries have
been working on policies to help identify and safeguard
intangible heritage. This paper reviews various
instruments to assist INCP-RIPC member states to draft
appropriate policies at a national level and contribute to
the development of international instruments.
The paper suggests that intangible heritage is an
important concept because it allows us to expand the
concept of heritage beyond buildings, places and objects
and to correct an earlier bias towards Western buildings
in heritage lists. National instruments should seek to
integrate the definition and management of intangible
and tangible heritage, however. We should also broaden
the definition of intangible heritage beyond the traditional
and indigenous to include a wide range of cultural
practices. We should include recent, non-traditional, nonethnic
forms of heritage such as the oral histories of
people who lived under Apartheid or other forms of
colonialism. Governments need to devolve greater
responsibility for heritage management onto the
communities who use, practise or own this heritage. To
do this, we need to refine the concepts of ‘community and
‘ownership’ of heritage. Development needs to be more
closely linked to heritage management strategies,
although funding should not be contingent on the
identification of heritage forms.Read More
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
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