From cultural forms to policy objects: : Comparison in scholarship and policy

The category of intangible cultural heritage was constituted through recurrent and cumulative acts of comparison referring ultimately back to the representative anecdote of oral tradition, Homeric epic. In turn, once created, the category hailed diverse phenomena into itself, which were rendered thereby into comparable policy objects, the “elements of ICH.” This commentary reviews the analytical contexts invoked in the comparative work of this special issue: liberal modernity, the state, international norms, and folklorists’ old purview, face-to-face interaction.