Los verbos de la participación social y sus conjugaciones: Contradicciones de un patrimonio “democratizador”

The goal of this article is to analyze some of the proposals and paradoxes of the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention in relation to social participation. To do so, we introduce the debates that have taken place over the last decades in anthropology, museology and nearby disciplines. The article has a twofold focus: the paradoxes embedded in the expression “communities, groups and, if applicable, individuals” of the 2003 Convention;and the outcomes of the participatory turn in heritage management and its alleged democratizing effect. Special attention is dedicated to the different infinitives linked to participation (the “verbs” of participation) and the different ways in which participation is enacted (the “conjugations”)