Inventoring the intangible cultural heritage, an opportunity for anthropological research

This article uses fieldwork conducted since 2011 as part of the French inventory of the intangible cultural heritage, focusing in particular on the case of traditional and regional games and sports. Based on this case study, the aim of the article is to show how the experience of the inventory work can be used as an opportunity for better understanding, in anthropological terms, of the different positions of the actors and local communities regarding the new notion of intangible cultural heritage. The experience of the inventory is connected, in this article, with four different levels of analysis: the inventory is considered first as a possibility for collecting new ethnographic data in the field, second as a tool to understand the ways the actors and communities see their own practices, third as a means to study the ways cultural heritage is being built up in the field, and fourth as the key to a self-reflexive experience for the anthropologists. The examination of these four different levels enables us to list some advantages and weaknesses of the present inventories and their usefulness for anthropology in the future.