Intangible Cultural Heritage and Communities

This paper discusses the meanings and socio-cultural implications of “communities” in the context of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH), based on several pieces of relevant documents written by UNESCO and the experts in the field. The notion of “community” has been one of the key concepts in defining, safeguarding, and inscribing the intangible cultural heritages (ICH) in the context of UNESCO Programmes. In addition, the relationship between the communities and the ICH in academic analyses and policy-making is highly complex, multi-faceted, and closely inter-related that the two cannot be discussed separately. Based on the analyses and examination of ethnographic cases, this paper concludes that, although the communities’ opinions should be taken seriously in planning and implementing ICH safeguarding, it is important to consider the fact that the members of the communities are not homogeneous or in the same opinion.