Anthropological Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage

A decade after the approval of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the concept has gained wide acceptance at local, national and international levels. Communities are recognizing and celebrating their intangible heritage; governments are devoting importante efforts to the construction of national inventories; anthropologists and professionals from different disciplines are building a new field of study. The ten chapters of this book include the peer-reviewed papers of the First Planning Meeting of the International Social Sience Council s Commission on Research on ICH, held at the Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias (UNAM) in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 2012. The papers are based on fieldwork and direct inolvment in assessing and reconceptualizing the outcoms f the UNESCO Convention. The report in the Annex highlights the main points raised during the session.