Domesticating and harvesting shrimps. Fisher communities and the sea. Blue Ocean Strategies, translation processes and the UNESCO paradigm of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage

During the meeting in Baku in December 2013, the Intergovernmental Committee of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, inscribed shrimp fishing on horseback in Oostduinkerke (Flanders, Belgium) in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. On the one hand, this can be considered as an interesting example of sustainable development with regard to the relation between local groups and communities, policy makers (in the fields of culture and tourism), beaches and the sea, and on the other hand an occasion to stimulate reflection on the relation between traditional know-how, cultural spaces and intangible heritage. The recent history of how the nomination file was assembled, of the follow-up after inscription, and of the special roles played by heritage brokers and a local museum specialized in the history and ethnology of fishing, allow to discuss opportunities and challenges of the new paradigm of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. In order to interpret these findings, two models are used as sensitizing devices. For one thing the famous article in actor-network theory – on the sociology of translation and the “domestication of the scallops”, by Michel Callon – will be mobilized, whereas the Harvard Business Blue Ocean model, developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, can function as an eye-opener.