Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage: key factors in implementing the 2003 convention.

This article examines the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) around the world. ICH refers to the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills - as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith - that communities, groups and in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. ICH is safeguarded only if it is viable to do so i.e., the ICH is continually practiced within and by the relevant cultural community. Responsibility for ensuring the safeguarding rests with the States Parties to the Convention i.e., the nation states ratifying the treaty. The government, university departments or the museum or museum-like cultural organization will implement the Convention i.e., safeguard the ICH. On the other hand, most likely, a combination of organizational types will implement the Convention successfully. The Convention places a great deal of attention and responsibility though on the communities whose cultural traditions are being safeguarded. The use of both national recognition and international prestige to help safeguard ICH has become a fairly widespread practice. In addition, the Convention encourages the promotion of ICH in society and the integration of safeguarding efforts with other types of planning presumably for social and economic development. It is argued that the ICH Convention cannot actually safeguard ICH around the world since the connections of ICH to the larger matrix of ecological, social, technological, economic and political relationships are too complex to be reduced to the simple formula proposed by the 2003 treaty. But with the Convention, a standard provides a reasonable and universal expectation of what can be called normative action. It is argued that the treaty will evolve, as will the various safeguarding practices it encourages, so that in the decades hence, there will be a better, clearer and more empirically-based idea of how to safeguard the ICH of the world s peoples.