Negotiating Intangible Cultural Heritage

摘要

The safeguarding of intangiblecultural heritage (ICH) has been oneof the most urgent issues in studiesof culture, an issue to which scholarsof anthropology, ethnomusicologyand related disciplines have paidincreasing attention in recent years.However, what is known today asICH, or heritage in general, is not atall self-evident to local communities,and can only be identified as suchthrough complex processes. Theinternational symposium NegotiatingIntangible Cultural Heritage was heldat Minpaku, to address such questionsas how some aspects of culture areselected over others to be defined andre-contextualized as heritage, andhow the UNESCO definition of ICHhas been negotiated in communitybased efforts to preserve andinvigorate culture. Organized jointlyby Minpaku and the InternationalResearch Centre for IntangibleCultural Heritage in the Asia-PacificRegion (IRCI), the symposiumfeatured thirteen presenters from ninecountries (Australia, China, India,Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea,Philippines, Slovenia and USA).