Ethnographic lands: between narrative communities, archives and heritage policies

Following the evolution of cultural policies in a territory of the French Alps, the Massif des Bauges, the article reflects on the links between ethnographic research, use of audiovisual documentation and archives. How can documents produced by ethnography be archived, becoming shared heritage of a wider community and a source of inspiration for many different cultural projects? Following the brief history of a single ethnographic project, the paper articulates a reflection on the evolution of the legal framework in close connection with the opportunities for a collaborative ethnography, attentive to the challenges of restitution and public use of the sources. The new projects linked to the institution, by the ratifying States of the international Conventions, of Inventories of Intangible Cultural Heritage, open the ethnographic research to different scenarios, unimaginable only a decade ago. Digital humanities, open archives and intangible cultural heritage are different faces of the same evolution that see cultural rights as human rights and reflects on the new responsibilities of the scientific disciplines in the process of knowledge production.