Intangible Heritage Protection and the Cultivation of a Universal Chain of Equivalency

The safeguarding of heritage is touted as an important step in protecting cultural diversity. The emphasis heritage projects put on preservation, however, obscures the part they play in transformation. This article argues that heritagization can be viewed as a kind of Bildung that draws diverse practices tied to diverse worldviews and value systems into a space of equivalency and civil society, amenable to capitalist social relations. Drawing on research on a Hungarian folk revival movement, the article calls for comparative research on how heritagization depoliticizes the very effects of neoliberal capitalism that it addresses and offers solutions that may be tied to dispossession.