Michelle L. Stefano, Peter Davis and Gerard Corsane (eds), Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage

Aiming to provide 'international perspectives' from both 'established voices' and 'new voices', Volume 8 in the Heritage Matters series -produced by academics within the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies (ICCHS) at Newcastle University -delivers a comprehensive and through-provoking response to issues affecting intangible heritage across the world.It also offers an analysis of the UNESCO definition as detailed in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (see UNESCO 2012b).The term 'intangible cultural heritage' (ICH) can be open to interpretation.As the editors state, defining it as 'cultural heritage that lack[s] physical manifestation', including 'knowledge, memories and feelings' so suggesting that 'intangible cultural heritage represents everything: the immaterial elements that influence and surround all human activity', is rather vague (p. 1).UNESCO's definition is far more precise (see pp. 1-2), yet this too requires further nuancing and it is a definition that has, and is, evolving over time (see UNESCO 2012a for an overview of how the Convention has developed).This book provides some of that important nuancing.As such, it adds to an important body of literature on the subject, a substantial amount of which has been published since the 2003 convention (see, for example, Blake and Institute of Art and Law (Great Britain) 2006; Blake 2007; Smith and Akagawa 2009; Labadi 2013; Lixinski 2013).Ranging from Africa, Europe and Asia to Australia, Canada and the Middle East, the contributors to this volume reflect on the implementation of the Convention, discuss what is included and, perhaps more importantly, what is not, and offer suggestions for future practice.Following an introduction by the editors, the book is divided into three sections: 'Negotiating and Valuing the Intangible'; 'Applying the Intangible Cultural Heritage Concept'; and 'On the Ground: Safeguarding the Intangible'.One of the pleasures of this book is the inclusion in each of these sections of five international conversation pieces with representatives of specific countries -Sweden, India, Botswana, South Africa and Italy.Written in an interview style, with questions and answers, these chapters focus on the countries' perspectives on ICH, whether and how they are safeguarding it and how they have responded to the Convention.There is sufficient similarity in the questions to enable comparison across the countries and the individuals being interviewed provide an honest and in depth assessment of their knowledge and how their country is responding to the issues of ICH.The first chapter in the section 'Negotiating and Valuing the Intangible', investigates 'the paradoxes of intangible heritage', focusing on ICH through the heritage practice of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the National Museum of the American Indian.Indigenous communities are also the focus of Cummins and Hennessy's chapters.In discussing digital cultural heritage, Hennessy explores the challenges of copyright and the notion of 'virtual repatriation'; an idea that has links to the work of Binney and Chaplin (2003) and Peers and Brown (2009) in their discussions of visual repatriation.Abungu's discussion of Africa and Abu-Khafajah and Rababeh's analysis of Jordan explores countries dealing with the effects of colonialism and the exclusion of intangible heritage.Abungu's geographically wide-ranging chapter focuses on 'cultural practices that were "banned" by colonial powers but continued in secret places' (p.57).Although the importance of ICH is now being recognised, there is still much to do to preserve 'a heritage of all humanity' (p.68).Jordan's archaeological sites embody 'memories and stories', and it is these intangible elements that make the tangible meaningful.

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