Sharing heritage? Politics and territoriality in UNESCO s heritage lists

UNESCO heritage policies encourage the idea that heritage should be ‘shared’ at the international scale, and invite states and the involved actors to adopt this vision. Yet, ‘sharedness’ can be understood in many different ways. This paper explores several territorial and political issues related to this notion of sharedness. A focus on the uses of a particular UNESCO tool–‘multinational nominations’–sheds a light on transnational cultural practices and examines forms of cooperation within communities and between states in the framework of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). Specifically, it analyses the work of a French commission for the ICH as well as the nomination processes of three different cultural practices to the ICH lists: flamenco, falconry and alpinism. It is argued that ‘shared heritage’ is interpreted in a variety of ways, leading to contrastive appropriations and competing territorial scenarios among the various protagonists.