Representativity, politicization and commercial exploitation tendency: Reflections on mechanism of Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage under UNESCO

Since its first execution in 2008, the mechanism of Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) under UNESCO appears to have several problems. Concentrated on issues such as depoliticization of nomination and commercial exploitation tendency, these problems reflect that the nomination process and its consequences have in fact violated the original idea of UNESCO for establishing the mechanism of lists. The origin of these problems lies in the fact that the paraphrase of “representativity” in this mechanism is always uncertain. The relevant parties of State Parties of Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage could thus utilize this mechanism to realize their political, diplomatic and commercial claims. From the perspective of “depoliticization” and “interest-excluding”, relevant persons responsible of UNESCO and scholars have already conceived certain reorganization of the mechanism by introducing the “Wikipedia” type. For the purpose of feasibility, this dissertation argues that the State Parties submit their ICH inventories to the public network platform of ICH maintained by UNESCO after translating them into French or English if necessary, and update them regularly.