2025

The Intangible Cultural Heritage in Tension(s)

Special Issue Sociétés & Représentations 

Co-editor with Julia Csergo, 

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​In the postcolonial context of the 1970s, the anthropologization of culture led to an expansion of the notion of heritage into a new domain: intangible cultural heritage. Institutionalized by UNESCO in the early 2000s, it aims to safeguard practices threatened by homogenization, while also making visible marginalized groups and minorities.

 

Bringing together cultural history and anthropology, the contributions in this issue examine the social uses, appropriations, but also the distortions and power dynamics associated with the heritagization of living practices: how do minority cultural practices resist processes of homogenization? How does the recognition of intangible cultural heritage help to catalyze inter- and intra-community tensions?

 

Covering a wide range of contexts (Colombia, Georgia, Japan, France, Singapore, Iraq, Mexico, Brazil), and drawing on theoretical and legal approaches to cultural traditions, this issue explores how intangible cultural heritage becomes a site of debate, engagement, and contestation—intensifying identity-based, political, and economic tensions in an era of globalization and the resurgence of nationalisms.