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6. i
THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO
INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
This collection provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of the concept of intangible
cultural heritage and the issues surrounding its value to society. Critically engaging with
the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the
book also discusses local-level conceptualizations of living cultural traditions, practices and
expressions, and reflects on the efforts that seek to safeguard them. Exploring a global range
of case studies, the book considers the diverse perspectives currently involved with intangible
cultural heritage and presents a rich picture of the geographic, socioeconomic and political
contexts impacting research in this area. With contributions from established and emerging
scholars, public servants, professionals, students and community members, this volume is
also deeply enhanced by an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the theories and practices
of heritage and museum studies, anthropology, folklore studies, ethnomusicology and the
study of cultural policy and related law. The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage
undoubtedly broadens the international heritage discourse and is an invaluable learning tool
for instructors, students and practitioners in the field.
Michelle L. Stefano is a Folklife Specialist (Research and Programs) at the American
Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. From 2011–2016, Stefano
worked for Maryland Traditions, the folklife program of the state of Maryland, of which
she was its Co-Director from 2015–2016. From 2012–2016, she led the partnership between
Maryland Traditions and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she was
Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies. She co-edited Safeguarding Intangible Cultural
Heritage (2012) with Peter Davis and Gerard Corsane.
Peter Davis is Emeritus Professor of Museology in the International Centre for Cultural
and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, UK. He is honorary editor of Archives of Natural
History, the journal of the Society for the History of Natural History, and a series editor
for Heritage Matters. His research interests include the interactions between nature, culture
and concepts of place and space. He has published widely on ecomuseums and intangible
cultural heritage.

7. This page intentionally left bank

8. THE ROUTLEDGE
COMPANION
TO INTANGIBLE
CULTURAL HERITAGE
Edited by Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis

9. First published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter Michelle L. Stefano and Peter
Davis; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-86055-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71640-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by HWA Text and Data Management, London

10. v
CONTENTS
List of figures and tables ix
Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xxii
Common abbreviations xxiii
Introduction 1
Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
PART I
A decade later: critical reflections on the UNESCO-ICH paradigm 9
1 Development of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention: creating a new heritage
protection paradigm? 11
Janet Blake
2 The examination of nomination files under the UNESCO Convention for
the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 22
Rieks Smeets and Harriet Deacon

3 A conversation with Richard Kurin 40
4 Placing intangible cultural heritage, owning a tradition, affirming
sovereignty: the role of spatiality in the practice of the 2003 Convention 46
Chiara Bortolotto
5 Is intangible cultural heritage an anthropological topic? Towards
interdisciplinarity in France 59
Christian Hottin and Sylvie Grenet

11. Contents
vi
6 The impact of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on national policy-making:
developing a new heritage protection paradigm? 69
Janet Blake
PART II
Reality check: the challenges facing intangible cultural heritage and its
safeguarding 79
7 From the bottom up: the identification and safeguarding of intangible
cultural heritage in Guyana 81
Aron Mazel, Gerard Corsane, Raquel Thomas and Samantha James
8 Making the past pay? Intangible (cultural) heritage in South Africa and
Mauritius 97
Rosabelle Boswell
9 A conversation with Yelsy Hernández Zamora: protecting intangible
cultural heritage in Cuba 111
10 The management of intangible cultural heritage in China 121
Tracey L.-D. Lu
11 Aging musically: tangible sites of intangible cultural heritage 135
Bradley Hanson
12 Intangible cultural heritage in the Czech Republic: between national and
local heritage 152
Petr Janeček
13 Damming Ava Mezin:

challenges to safeguarding minority intangible
cultural heritage in Turkey 167
Sarah Elliott
14 Documenting and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage: the
experience in Scotland 185
Alison McCleery and Jared Bowers
PART III
Intangible cultural heritage up close 203
15 Officially ridin’ swangas: slab as tangible and intangible cultural heritage
in Houston, Texas 205
Langston Collin Wilkins
16 Locating intangible cultural heritage in Norway 216
Joel Taylor

12. Contents
vii
17 Intangible cultural heritage in India: reflections on selected forms of dance 230
Parasmoni Dutta
18 Second-hand as living heritage: intangible dimensions of things
with history 240
Staffan Appelgren and Anna Bohlin
19 A conversation with Linina Phuttitarn: safeguarding a spiritual tradition
in Thailand 251
20 Public experiences and the social capacity of intangible cultural heritage
in Japan: Bingata, a textile-dyeing practice from Okinawa 256
Sumiko Sarashima
21 Stretching the dough: economic resiliency and the kinesthetics of
food heritage across the US–Mexico border 268
Maribel L. Alvarez
PART IV
Intangible cultural heritage and place 283
22 Refuting timelessness: emerging relationships to intangible cultural
heritage for younger Indigenous Australians 285
Amanda Kearney and Gabrielle Kowalewski
23 Common ground: insurgence, imagination and intangible heritage 300
Jos Smith
24 Indigenous geography and place-based intangible cultural heritage 314
R.D.K. Herman
25 ‘If there’s no place to dance to it, it’s going to die’: reflecting on the
living tradition of Baltimore Club music and the importance of place 331
Michelle L. Stefano, Christopher Clayton and Baronhawk Poitier Williams
26 Landscape and intangible cultural heritage: interactions, memories and
meanings 342
Maggie Roe
PART V
Intangible cultural heritage, museums and archives 357
27 Making history tangible: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews,
Warsaw 359
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

13. Contents
viii
28 A conversation with Clifford Murphy: archives and intangible cultural
heritage 365
29 Bin Jelmood House: narrating an intangible history in Qatar 371
Scott Cooper and Karen Exell
30 Standing in the gap: Lumbee cultural preservation at the Baltimore
American Indian Center 385
Ashley Minner
31 A conversation with Tara Gujadhur: the Traditional Arts and Ethnology
Centre in Laos 396
32 Museums and intangible cultural heritage in Lusophone countries 402
Ana Mercedes Stoffel and Isabel Victor
PART VI
Alternative approaches to safeguarding and promoting intangible cultural
heritage 417
33 Safeguarding maritime intangible cultural heritage: Ecomuseum Batana,
Croatia 419
Dragana Lucija Ratković Aydemir
34 Reflections of a heritage professional: intangible cultural heritage at the
Ecomuseum of Terraces and Vineyards, Italy 432
Donatella Murtas
35 Conveying Peruvian intangible heritage through digital environments 442
Natalie M. Underberg-Goode
36 Growing ecomuseums on the Canadian prairies: prospects for intangible
cultural heritage 453
Glenn C. Sutter
37 The intangible made tangible in Wales 465
Einir M. Young, Gwenan H. Griffith, Marc Evans and S. Arwel Jones
38 A conversation with Paula Assunção dos Santos and Marcelle Pereira:
intangible cultural heritage and social and ecological justice 479
Index 486

14. ix
LIST OF FIGURES
AND TABLES
Figures
7.1 Attendees at the Bina Hill en-compass workshop 83
7.2 Bina Hill Institute 83
7.3 Ozzie Hussein presenting the list of heritage items identified by one of the
workshop grou 85
10.1 A Su embroidery work in process, illustrating a Chinese painting dating
back to the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) 126
10.2 Traditional timber dwellings built by TACTS in a Dong village, Guizhou,
China 129
10.3 A ‘modernized’ dwelling with its ground floor built by brick and cement
and modern techniques in a Dong village, Guizhou, China 130
12.1 Ride of the Kings in the town of Hluk, 2008 153
13.1 The unique Akkoyunlu tomb of Zeynel Bey at Hasankeyf with an
Artukid madrassah in the foreground 168
13.2 View of Hasankeyf and the River Tigris, setting, along with Jezîrê Botan
(modern Cizre) of Mem ū Zīn 168
13.3 The Ayyubid minaret of the Sultan Süleyman mosque in Hasankeyf 174
13.4 The mausoleum of Imam Abdullah at Hasankeyf 177
14.1 The night-time procession of Up Helly Aa, Lerwick’s pagan fire festival
welcoming the return of the sun held towards the end of January in
mainland Shetland 192
15.1 Teal slabs at Houston Slab Parade and Family Festival in Houston, Texas,
October 20, 2013 206
15.2 Red slab at Slab Holiday in Galveston, Texas on May 19, 2012 207
15.3 Trunk display in slab from the Trinity Gardens neighborhood in
Houston, March 19, 2012 212
15.4 Green slab line at Slab Holiday in Galveston, Texas, May 19, 2012 212
16.1 Borgund stave church 219
16.2 An example of ‘sprett teljing’ in Haltdalen stave church 222

15. List of figures and tables
x
16.3 A nesting house on Hysvær, Vegaøyan 224
21.1 Maria de los Angeles Ayala making Sonoran flour tortillas in Villa de Seris,
Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico in 2010 269
22.1 Map of Yanyuwa homelands in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria,
northern Australia 286
23.1 Uplyme Parish Map 306
23.2 Thirsk Parish Map. Displayed twice in council meetings to challenge
land developments 307
24.1 My take on the Marxian interconnections between mode of production,
social organization, political structure and culture 316
24.2 Indigenous Geography includes the even larger context of the unmanifest
world that is the flipside of the manifest world 317
24.3 Working template for a revised and expanded version of Indigenous
Geography 321
27.1 View of medieval gallery, which is entirely hand-painted and hand-gilded 361
27.2 Painted animation, twenty-four hours in the Volozhin yeshiva 361
27.3 Painted ceiling and reader’s platform of the wooden synagogue based on
the synagogue that once stood in Gwoździec, today in Ukraine 362
29.1 View of the entrance lobby of Bin Jalmood House: The International
Slavery Museum, Doha 379
32.1 The distribution of Lusophone countries 403
32.2 Museu of Fado in Lisbon, detail of the permanent exhibition 408
32.3 Museum of Macau, realistic reproduction of Macanese cuisine 410
33.1 A batana 421
33.2 The permanent exhibition in the House of Batana 422
33.3 Construction of the batana Arupina in the Little Shipyard 424
33.4 A musical performance in a spàcio 428
34.1 Monteoliveto 437
35.1 Learning about Peruvian culture in the ethnographer’s office 446
35.2 Exploring the serrano festival 447
37.1 A ‘necklace’ of #Ecoamgueddfa sites around the Llŷn Peninsula coast 469
37.2 ‘Gwylan’ (‘Seagull’), a traditional Aberdaron boat renovated by local
fishermen and college students at Felin Uchaf 470
Tables
2.1 Total UNESCO budget allocations relating to the two Conventions
including extra-budgetary resources, 2010–15 34
7.1 Heritage items identified by the Bina Hill workshop groups and through
the workshop survey among local communities 85
7.2 Reasons provided by the Bina Hill workshop groups and workshop survey
respondents about why heritage is important and should be safeguarded 88
7.3 Lists of the resources, issues, solutions, and recommendations made at the
Bina Hill workshop for the safeguarding of the Makushi language 89

16. xi
NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS
Maribel L. Alvarez is an Anthropologist, Folklorist and Curator. She holds a dual
appointment as Associate Research Professor in the School of Anthropology and Associate
Research Social Scientist at the Southwest Center, University of Arizona. She is a Trustee of
the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Executive Director of the
Southwest Folklife Alliance, an affiliate nonprofit of the University of Arizona. She teaches
courses on methods of cultural analysis with particular emphasis on food, objects, oral
narratives and visual cultures of the US–Mexico border. In 2009, she was a Fulbright Fellow
conducting research in rural Mexico.
Staffan Appelgren is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Global Studies,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and associated with the Center for Critical Heritage Studies,
University of Gothenburg/University College London. He has undertaken research on cultural
globalization and cultural appropriation, focusing on simulations in themed environments in
Japanese cities, preservation strategies of individuals, social movements and corporations in
Tokyo’s volatile urban built environment, and depopulation issues in the Japanese countryside.
Appelgren’s research revolves around the dynamic relationships between movement and
stability; process and form; and plasticity and solidity, expressed in phenomena such as heritage,
consumption, tourism, architecture, cities and gender. Currently, he investigates the circulation
of material culture through the second-hand markets as an alternative form of perpetuating
things from the past. The research project Re:heritage – Circulation and Marketization of Things With
History (funded by the Swedish Research Council 2014–17) investigates this as an emerging field
of ‘heritage growing’ with distinct norms, discourses, actors and institutions.
Paula Assunção dos Santos is Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at the International Master’s
Degree Program in Museology at the Reinwardt Academy, a Faculty of the Amsterdam
University of the Arts. She was also President of the International Movement for a New
Museology (MINOM). Originally from Brazil, she has lived in the Netherlands for fifteen
years. During this time, she has been involved in several international projects in the field
of mutual cultural heritage, community museology and participation in heritage processes.
She has written and edited several publications on sociomuseology. Most recently she is

17. Notes on contributors
xii
developing research and new educational resources on topics related to heritage and human
rights, such as heritage and Indigenous movements; heritage and the refugee crisis; and ICH
and ecological issues.
Janet Blake is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Shahid Beheshti,
Tehran, where she teaches International, Environmental and Human Rights Law and is a
member of the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace and Democracy and the Centre
for Excellence in Education for Sustainable Development, both based at the university.
She is also a member of the Cultural Heritage Law Committee of the International Law
Association and has acted as an International Consultant to UNESCO since 1999, mostly
in the field of intangible cultural heritage and implementing the 2003 Convention. She has
published books on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, cultural rights/diversity and
wildlife protection law and several articles on safeguarding cultural heritage, environmental
protection law and justice, human and cultural rights, cultural diversity and sustainable
development. Her research monograph on International Cultural Heritage Law was published
by Oxford University Press in June 2015.
Anna Bohlin is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the School of Global Studies,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research concerns the ways that people, communities,
organizations and governments draw on and use the past, and she has examined this in
initiatives ranging from large-scale national programmes to local museums. In South Africa,
she has investigated processes of remembering and forgetting related to forced removals and
land restitution, particularly in connection with place, citizenship and reconciliation in urban
contexts. She has also published on public participation in heritage management in Sweden and
South Africa, with particular interest in contested heritage sites with ‘recent’ histories. Currently
involved in the Center for Critical Heritage Studies (University of Gothenburg/University
College London), her research interests include alternative heritage practices and temporality
in the fields of second-hand, re-use as well as ethical and collaborative consumption. These
are explored within the research project, Re:heritage – Circulation and Marketization of Things With
History, funded by the Swedish Research Council 2014–17.
Chiara Bortolotto is a Research Associate at the Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du
Contemporain. Her research focuses on global heritage governance and is based on multi-scale
and multi-positioned ethnography. She is the Principal Investigator of the project UNESCO
Frictions: Heritage-Making Across Global Governance at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales, Paris, France. From 2013 to 2014, she was a visiting EURIAS fellow at Cambridge
University, UK, at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
(CRASSH). From 2010 to 2013, she was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Free University of Brussels
(Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains). She has edited Le Patrimoine
Culturel Immatériel: Enjeux d’une Nouvelle Catégorie (Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2011) and
published several articles on UNESCO intangible cultural heritage policies.
Rosabelle Boswell is an Anthropologist and Dean of Arts at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University in South Africa. She is author of three books and several articles on identity and
heritage in Mauritius, Zanzibar and Madagascar. Her work has been funded by NWO/Wotro
(Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research); the Mauritius Government; South African
National Research Foundation; Council for the Development of Social Science Research in
Africa; and the Organisation for Social Science Research in East and Southern Africa.

18. Notes on contributors
xiii
Jared Bowers holds a PhD in Sustainable Tourism and Ecomuseology from Newcastle
University, UK. Previously, he earned a MSc in Ecotourism (with distinction) from
Edinburgh Napier University, UK and a BA in Communications from Elon University,
USA. His research interests are in the uses of tourism as a vehicle for safeguarding natural
and cultural heritage resources while also stimulating local economic development.
Christopher Clayton goes by the following monikers: Kohesive, Kris Klayton, DJ Karizma,
Kaytronik. Karizma’s musical career started with him DJing at age 13, doing various fashion
shows and college parties. He landed a radio show on Baltimore’s college radio station
WEAA, playing hip hop and at the same time playing at various clubs around Baltimore,
showing an obvious love for house music. After a healthy career of remixes and productions,
Karizma struck out on his own a formed Kohesive Productions. Karizma’s mastered skills on
the Pioneer CDJ and DJM were acknowledged and sponsored by Puma Japan in 2007 and
Pioneer DJ Japan in 2010. In 2010, Karizma was nominated as the “Best Hometown Hero”
in Baltimore City Paper for his solo career progression traveling around the globe covering all
continents and visiting over 34 countries.
Scott Cooper is the Vice President of Collections, Knowledge and Engagement at the
Royal British Columbia Museum in Canada. He read engineering at the University of
Manchester and architectural conservation at Edinburgh College of Art. He was awarded
a UNESCO scholarship to study stone conservation in Venice and subsequently returned
to Edinburgh to complete his doctoral research on Scottish history. Following a number of
years directing the conservation and regeneration of cultural sites and institutions in England
and Scotland, he was appointed Director of Museums for Msheireb Properties – a subsidiary
of the Qatar Foundation. There he developed four heritage house museums in the heart of
Doha including the creation of the first museum of slavery in the Islamic world. His current
research interests focus on the intangible cultural heritage of First Nation communities
across British Columbia’s interior.
Gerard Corsane is a Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museum & Gallery Studies at Newcastle
University. His research interests are: community participation in heritage management and
sustainable tourism; ‘ecomuseology’; and intangible cultural heritage. Before taking up an
academic post, he worked as a practitioner for ten years in South Africa.
Peter Davis is Emeritus Professor of Museology in the International Centre for Cultural and
Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, UK. He is honorary editor of Archives of Natural
History, the journal of the Society for the History of Natural History, and a series editor
for Heritage Matters. His research interests include the interactions between nature, culture
and concepts of place and space. He has published widely on ecomuseums and intangible
cultural heritage.
Harriet Deacon began to work in the field of intangible heritage in about 2003, after
acting as Research Coordinator at Robben Island Museum in the late 1990s. She has co-
written training materials for UNESCO and facilitated workshops on implementing the
2003 Convention in countries including Bangladesh, Belize, Brunei, Bulgaria, China, Cuba,
Jamaica, Kenya, Namibia, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe. She now works
mainly in the area of ICH policy and intellectual property law.

19. Notes on contributors
xiv
Parasmoni Dutta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies, Tezpur
University, India. He has published articles in Asian Theatre Journal, Journal of Creative
Communications and Journal of Indian Museums, among others. His research interests have
focused on the areas of politics of heritage, alternative museums, in addition to the fields of
cinema and popular culture.
Sarah Elliott is an Independent Scholar with research interests in ecomuseology and the
theories of new museology, recently positioning both within Turkish area studies. The emergence
and significance of postmodern approaches in contemporary Turkish museology has been the
focus of British Academy-funded work, and previous Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC)-funded PhD research at Newcastle University, UK, examining the impact of large
dams on the cultural heritage of southeast Turkey, addressed through an ecomuseum-centered
methodology. Hasankeyf, a sui generis medieval town threatened by the Ilisu Dam, was the case
study for the latter. Building on these projects, her current research concerns the historical and
contemporary representation of minority communities in Turkey’s museums.
Marc Evans is an Associate of Bangor University’s Sustainability Lab having formerly
worked for the Lab as Communications, Business and Project Development Officer. Prior
work includes, inter alia, communications, imagineering, public affairs and localization
(Welsh culture, language, government, communities). Notable examples of his strategic
involvement include British Waterways and partners gaining Pontcysyllte Aqueduct World
Heritage Site status and the National St. David’s Day Parade redevelopment, which has
significantly increased participation and inclusiveness. Marc is a previous non-executive
director and trustee for the leading European contemporary arts center, Chapter Arts, and he
contributes to many other arts, heritage and sustainability related projects.
Karen Exell is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Qatar, and a consultant at
Qatar Museums. She directed the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar from
2011 to 2015, after teaching museums studies and holding curatorial positions in university
museums in the UK for several years. She is currently involved in two QNRF-funded
research projects, as a program integrator on a project researching museum pedagogy in
Qatar and the region, and as lead program integrator on a project exploring the concept
of national identity in relation to the planned new National Museum of Qatar. Her recent
publications include the co-edited volumes, Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula: Debates,
Discourses and Practices (Ashgate, 2014) and Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and
Regional Processes (Routledge, 2016), and the monograph, Modernity and the Museum in the
Arabian Peninsula (Routledge, 2016).
Sylvie Grenet is Project Manager for Intangible Cultural Heritage at the French Ministry
of Culture. Having graduated from the École du Louvre, France, she has a PhD in English
Studies from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. At the French Ministry of Culture,
Grenet is in charge of the ICH national inventories as well as national and international
UNESCO files.
Gwenan Griffith is the Digital Community Project Officer at Bangor University’s
Sustainability Lab. A Cardiff School of Art and Design graduate, she has expertise in project
development, brand development, digital marketing training, content creation, and online
engagement. She works with business and organizations to develop their digital capacity and

20. Notes on contributors
xv
online interaction. She is the Llŷn #Ecoamgueddfa champion and is leading part of a Welsh
Government Regional Tourism Heritage Fund project to introduce the digital co-marketing
concept to other communities in North West Wales.
Tara Gujadhur founded the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre (www.taeclaos.org)
with Thongkhoun Soutthivilay (now co-directors) and has been based in Luang Prabang for
over ten years. Tara has a BA in Anthropology and an MSc in Tourism, Environment and
Development, and fifteen years’ experience in sustainable tourism development, community
development and cultural heritage management in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa.
Bradley Hanson joined the Tennessee Arts Commission as its Director of Folklife in
January 2015. An ethnomusicologist and folklorist, he previously worked as a cultural
interpreter for the Tennessee State Parks and the Friends of the Cumberland Trail. As part
of the Cumberland Trail Music and Heritage project, his efforts included field research,
archival management, interpretive writing and record and radio production centered on
regional culture and folklife. In 2011, he was given the Blanton Owen Fund Award from the
American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to support his fieldwork with bluegrass,
country and gospel musicians in east Tennessee. He graduated from Brown University with
a PhD in Ethnomusicology in May 2014.
R.D.K. Herman is Senior Geographer for the Smithsonian National, USA. He earned his
doctorate in Geography from the University of Hawai‘i in 1995. Herman is the creator of Pacific
Worlds, a web-based Indigenous-geography education project for Hawai‘i and the American
Pacific that focuses on place-based Indigenous cultural knowledge and understandings.
His scholarship addresses the representation of Indigenous cultures and the importance of
Indigenous knowledge in posing more sustainable approaches to human–environment
relationships. In 2013, he built his own outrigger canoe, and publishes and lectures on
traditional Oceanic navigation and what it teaches humanity about how to live on Planet Earth.
Yelsy Hernández Zamora received her BA in Art History from La Facultad de Artes y
Letras de la Universidad de La Habana, Cuba, where she currently works as a professor in
this field. Hernández Zamora has worked as an editor at Ediciónes ICAIC and at the magazine,
Cine Cubano. In 2011, she received an Endesa Grant for Ibero-American Cultural Patrimony,
which allowed her to work in the Museo Nacional del Romanticismo de Madrid. From
2013 to 2015, Hernández Zamora served as Director of Public and International Relations
at the Cuban National Council of Cultural Heritage and was part of the Commission
for the Preservation of Immaterial Cultural Heritage of Cuba. She has published work in
magazines, including La Gaceta de Cuba, Upsalón and Cine Cubano, on the websites Cubacine
and Cubanow, and has organized various events related to the cultural heritage of the country.
Christian Hottin is the Heritage Curator in Chief, and has been in charge of ethnological
and ICH policy at the French Ministry of Culture since 2016. His private work focuses on
the history and architecture of public institutions.
Samantha James is a librarian by profession with an undergraduate degree in English and
Fine Arts. She is passionate about experiential learning and community owned research and
management. As Canadian Guyanese, she has managed Iwokrama’s dynamic community
programme in Guyana, and pioneered the conservation leadership ladder with Indigenous
youth in wildlife clubs.

21. Notes on contributors
xvi
Petr Janeček is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts,
Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, and the current Vice President of the
Czech Ethnological Society. Until 2013, he worked as the Director of the Ethnographical
Department of the National Museum in Prague. His research focuses on contemporary
verbal folklore and the history of European ethnology.
S. Arwel Jones is the Llŷn Landscape Partnership Project Manager. His interests and
expertise are in developing and implementing sustainable business models that complement
the strengths of rural and peripheral areas, building capacity through knowledge transfer and
developing new learning networks for the benefit of future generations. He was the main
driver in bringing the ecomuseum concept to life and the #Ecoamgueddfa is a recognised
legacy project for the Llŷn Landscape Partnership, which was highly commended in the
Europa Nostra EU prize for cultural heritage 2016. He is collaborating with Einir and
Gwenan on similar projects in North West Wales and South West Ireland.
Amanda Kearney is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of New South Wales,
Australia. Her book, Cultural Wounding, Healing and Emerging Ethnicities (Palgrave Macmillan,
2014), reflects on fifteen years of ethnography in Australia and Brazil, working with
Indigenous families and African descendant groups.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN
Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita
of Performance Studies at New York University, USA. Her books include Destination Culture:
Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (University of California Press, 1998); Image before My Eyes: A
Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki, Schocken
Books, 1998); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before
the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt, University of California Press, 2007); The Art of Being
Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and Anne
Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler, Indiana University Press,
2012), among others. She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish
Culture, received an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and
was recently decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
by the President of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She currently serves on
Advisory Boards for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Council of American Jewish
Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin, Jewish Museum and Tolerance
Center in Moscow and museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania, Ukraine and Israel.
Gabrielle Kowalewski has completed an honors degree in Anthropology at the University
of New South Wales, Australia. She is now embarking on her doctoral research, which
examines the scope of intangible cultural heritage and contemporary treatments of Indigenous
knowledge in Australia.
Richard Kurin is the Acting Provost and Under Secretary for Museums and Research at
the Smithsonian Institution, USA, and the former Director of the Smithsonian Center for
Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Tracey L.-D. Lu
ć@ was a Professor at the Department of Anthropology, the Chinese
University of Hong Kong prior to her retirement in 2015. Originally trained as an

22. Notes on contributors
xvii
archaeologist, she obtained her PhD degree from the Australian National University in 1998,
and her research interests were prehistoric archaeology, the origin of agriculture, heritage
management and museology in China.
Alison McCleery combines the role of Professor of Geography in the Business School at
Edinburgh Napier University with Deputy Directorship of the Scottish Graduate School
of Social Science hosted by the University of Edinburgh. With a PhD in the economic and
cultural geography of the North Atlantic rural periphery, she has a particular interest in the
potential role of intangible cultural heritage as a driver of regional development through
the vehicle of tourism. Studies undertaken by her ENrich (Edinburgh Napier Research
in Cultural Heritage) Team have been funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research
Council, Creative Scotland, UNESCO and Museums Galleries Scotland.
Aron Mazel is a Reader in Heritage Studies at Newcastle University. His research career
in South Africa and the UK has included archaeological investigations, museum and
archaeology histories, digital heritage, and the safeguarding and interpretation of tangible
and intangible cultural heritage.
Ashley Minner is a Community-Based Visual Artist from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She
holds a BFA in General Fine Art, an MA and an MFA in Community Art, which she earned
at Maryland Institute College of Art. A member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she
has been active in the Baltimore Lumbee community for many years. Her involvement in her
own community informs and inspires her studio practice. Minner is currently studying for her
PhD in American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park, where she is studying
vernacular art as resistance in related communities of the US South and Global South.
Clifford Murphy is an Ethnomusicologist, Folklorist and Director of Folk and Traditional
Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts, USA. He is the author of Yankee Twang: Country
and Western Music in New England (University of Illinois Press, 2014), and the co-author
and field recordist (with Henry Glassie and Douglas Dowling Peach) of Ola Belle Reed and
Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line (Dust-to-Digital, 2015). Cliff is the former
director of Maryland Traditions, the folklife program of the Maryland State Arts Council. He
received his PhD in Ethnomusicology from Brown University in 2008.
Donatella Murtas trained as an architect and environmental engineer, and has worked
in the UK for the Countryside Commission dealing with issues relating to landscape
and its cultural and historical meanings. Based in Italy, her professional career has been
devoted to ecomuseums and local development projects, with a special focus on landscape
and community involvement. From 1999 until recently she was the co-ordinator of the
Ecomuseo dei Terrazzamente e della Vite in the south of Piemonte.
Marcelle Pereira is a Historian, a Master in Museology and a PhD Candidate in
Sociomuseology at the Lusophone Universty in Lisbon, Portugal. She is a Lecturer in
Museology at the Department of Archaeology of the Federal University of Rondonia, in
the Brazilian Amazon. She is also director of the Cultural and Outreach Program of the
university. Working in cooperation with popular movements of the inhabitants of the
Brazilian rainforest, she researches on themes related to the memory of marginalized groups.
Currently, she coordinates a federal outreach program entitled In Defense of the Cultural

23. Notes on contributors
xviii
Heritage of River Communities: Education, Memory and Citizenship in the Lower Madeira River,
Amazon, Brazil.
Linina Phuttitarn received her BA in Business Administration from Thammasat University,
Thailand in 2001 and Master of Arts in Cultural Management from Chulalongkorn
University, Thailand, in 2012. She worked at Culture Unit, UNESCO Bangkok Office, for
three years on projects related to the intangible cultural heritage in education for sustainable
development, integrating intangible cultural heritage into post-graduate studies, built
heritage conservation awards and arts education. Currently, she is a field researcher on topics
related to the intangible cultural heritage in Thailand.
Dragana Lucija Ratković Aydemir graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia, with degrees in art history and comparative
literature. From 1995 to 2004, she worked at the Croatian Ministry of Culture, focused
on the conservation of cultural heritage. In 1998, she received UNESCO’s scholarship for
professional development in Poland. In 2005, she received a European diploma in cultural
management (Marcel Hichter Foundation, Brussels). In 2005, she founded Muze, a
consultancy firm for the management of cultural and tourism projects. From 2003 to 2013,
she served as the Manager of the Batana Ecomuseum in Rovinj, Croatia, and between 2009–
2013, she served as the President of the Association of Mediterranean Maritime Museums.
Her work is focused on the development of ecomuseums, cultural tourism and heritage-
related sustainable development of local communities in Croatia and Turkey.
Maggie Roe is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape,
Newcastle University, UK. She is a Director of the UK-based international charity,
Landscape Research Group Ltd (LRG), and an Editor of Landscape Research. Her research
and publications focus on landscape planning and sustainability, with a special focus on
participatory landscape planning, cultural landscapes and landscape change. She has worked
in Europe, North and South America, Bangladesh, China, South Korea, Japan and India.
Her research has been funded by national and international government agencies, research
councils and environmental bodies.
Sumiko Sarashima gained practical experience of Japanese cultural policy through her
career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan, and at the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for
UNESCO. She completed her PhD in the Department of Anthropology, University College
London, UK, in March 2013. Her doctoral thesis was entitled, Intangible Cultural Heritage in
Japan: Bingata, a Traditional Dyed Textile from Okinawa.
Rieks Smeets was initially a specialist in Caucasian languages at Leiden University, and
then also in language and minority policies, but in 2001 he started following the preparation
of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. From
2003 to 2008, he was Head of UNESCO’s section for ICH, and from 2006, he served as
Secretary of the 2003 Convention. After retiring from UNESCO, he has assisted institutions
in various countries in implementing the 2003 Convention, while also being involved in
writing training materials concerning its implementation, and in training trainers to use those
materials. Smeets has been a facilitator in capacity-building workshops for ICH safeguarding
in 15 countries, mainly in Central Asia and Europe; he teaches on a post-MA course on ICH
at the University of Liège, Belgium.

24. Notes on contributors
xix
Jos Smith is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow based in the College of
Humanities at the University of Exeter, UK. He is currently working on a cultural history
of the literary and visual arts communities connected with the arts and environmental
charity Common Ground. He is also the author of The New Nature Writing: A Critical Study
(Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2017), which explores changing attitudes to place in
contemporary British and Irish literature.
Michelle L. Stefano is a Folklife Specialist (Research and Programs) at the American
Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. From 2011–2016, Stefano
worked for Maryland Traditions, the folklife program of the state of Maryland, of which
she was its Co-Director from 2015–2016. From 2012–2016, she led the partnership between
Maryland Traditions and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she was
Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies. She co-edited Safeguarding Intangible Cultural
Heritage (2012) with Peter Davis and Gerard Corsane.
Ana Mercedes Stoffel gained a degree in philosophy from Complutense University,
Madrid in 1973, a degree in Spanish Art History from Coimbra University, Portugal in
1996, and an MA in Museology from the Lusófona University, Lisbon in 2005. She is a
lecturer in museology at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and an independent consultant
in museum management and local development. She was the coordinator of the project to
develop the Concelhia Community Museum of Batalha in Portugal, which was awarded the
status of ‘Best Museum in Portugal’ in 2012 and the Kenneth Hudson prize of European
Museum of the Year Award in 2013.
Glenn C. Sutter is Curator of Human Ecology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum,
Canada. He holds adjunct appointments at the University of Regina (Geography), Canada,
and the University of Saskatchewan (Educational Foundations), Canada, and is a Fellow
of the international Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) program.
Through his research and teaching, he seeks to foster a ‘culture of sustainability’ to help us
meet the challenge of living well on a limited planet. His interest in sustainability dates back
to the 1980s, when he was Coordinator of the Global Change Program for the Royal Society
of Canada. Since 2000, he has been teaching, writing and consulting about sustainability
education issues, with a focus on the role that museums can play in this area. For the last four
years, he has been promoting and exploring the potential for ecomuseum development in his
home province as Chair of the Saskatchewan Ecomuseums Initiative.
Joel Taylor is a Researcher in the Department of Policy, Management and Society (Samfunn
og Forvaltning) at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Norway.
He moved to Norway in 2011, initially working at the University of Oslo before joining the
Conservation department at NIKU, focusing on heritage studies and conservation. An area
of strong interest has been the perceived tensions between these two fields. At NIKU, he
has also been involved in examining concepts of heritage values and the implications for
heritage policy and practice. He has a BA and PhD from Cardiff University, UK, in Heritage
Conservation, and has worked for the Museum of National History in Wales, part of the
National Museums and Galleries of Wales, English Heritage and University College London
(UCL). At UCL, he was involved in various research projects before becoming director of
the interdisciplinary master’s course, Sustainable Heritage. He recently accepted a position
at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, USA.

25. Notes on contributors
xx
Raquel Thomas is Director of Resource Management and Training at the Iwokrama
International Centre in Guyana. She has over 20 years management and research experience
in natural resources, nature based tourism, capacity building and community related work.
Natalie M. Underberg-Goode is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Folklore,
School of Visual Arts and Design, and Core Faculty in the Texts and Technology PhD
program at the University of Central Florida, USA. Her research examines the use of digital
media to preserve and disseminate folklore and cultural heritage with a focus on digital
storytelling and participatory new media design and practice. She is author (with Elayne
Zorn) of Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media (University of Texas
Press, 2013), as well as more than twenty articles and book chapters. Underberg-Goode has
been program integrator or program co-integrator on research and teaching grants totaling
nearly US$200,000. Her research has been presented at more than twenty national and
international conferences, including the Bilan du Film Ethnographique seminar in Paris,
France and the American Folklore Society, USA.
Isabel Victor is a sociologist and museologist. She was Director of the Museum of Michel
Giacometti in Setúbal from 1995–2009 and Director of the Portuguese Network of Museums
from 2010 to 2012. She is a member of the Sociomuseology Studies Center of the University
of Lusophone Humaidades and Technologies, Lisbon. She has published on a variety of
topics relating to museums and interculturalism, museums and memory, and the social role
of museums. She is a consultant in museum management.
Baronhawk Poitier Williams has served as an Artistic Director, DJ, and producer for
Urban Artistry Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the safeguarding of urban art
forms since 2005. In partnership with U Street Music Hall, Washington DC, he has opened
for artists such as: Disclosure, Oscar G, Grandmaster Flash and local DC legend Sam “The
Man” Burns. He has held residencies with U Street Music Hall, Blisspop DC, Tropicalia,
The Satellite Room, Velvet Lounge, the Forward Festival, and the International Soul
Society Festival. Due to his background in competitive dance culture, Baronhawk earned
opportunities to play at respectable events such as: “The Book of Styles” (DC), “Think Big
Battle” (Denmark), “Who Can Roast The Most” (DC), and the USA qualifier for the “Flow
Mo Anniversary”.
Langston Collin Wilkins is an Ethnomusicologist, Folklorist and Writer living in Nashville,
Tennessee. A native of Houston, Texas, he received a BA in English from the University of
Texas at Austin, USA and MAs in Folklore and Ethnomusicology and African American
Studies at Indiana University, USA. He received a PhD in Folklore and Ethnomusicology
from Indiana University, USA, in 2015. As a writer and researcher, his interests include
urban folklife, popular music, car culture and hip hop culture. In the public sector, he has
developed programs on dress, musical and religious traditions in the African diaspora as
well as urban car culture. He is currently a Program Officer with Humanities Tennessee in
Nashville, Tennessee.
Einir M. Young is Director of Sustainable Development at Bangor University. After
working for many years on projects that addressed the needs of resource-poor communities
in sub-Saharan Africa she turned her focus to Wales, where the climate is less harsh but
the challenges much the same – a global need for people everywhere to live well within

26. Notes on contributors
xxi
the carrying capacity of the Planet. As the University’s Director of Sustainability, she has a
remit to drive sustainability through all facets of the organisation. Since 2016 the University
has embraced the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales 2015) Act as a framework for
action. Promoting an appreciation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage forms part of
her vision for ensuring the viability of communities and the health and well-being of future
generations.

27. xxii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bringing together the diverse points of view and studies represented within The Routledge
Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage would not have been possible without the hard work
and patience of all contributors, up until the very last minute. We are particularly grateful for
the guidance provided by Matthew Gibbons and Lola Harre at Routledge, Kate Hennessy,
as well as the much-needed help of Felix Burgos, Hannah Rogers, Marina Fishbein and
Jennie Williams during the final stages. We also thank Dan Hanrahan and Pía Spry-Marqués
for their top-notch translations. Lastly, without the opportunities to learn from community
members with whom we are so fortunate to work, it is safe to say that this project would have
contributed far less than it should.
Michelle L. Stefano
Baltimore
Peter Davis
Newcastle

28. xxiii
COMMON
ABBREVIATIONS
1972 Convention/World Heritage
Convention
The Convention Concerning the Protection of the
World Cultural and Natural Heritage
2003 Convention The Convention for the Safeguarding of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage
ICH Intangible Cultural Heritage
ICOM International Council of Museums
ICOMOS International Council on Monuments and Sites
Intergovernmental Committee Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding
of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
OD Operational Directives for the implementation of
the Convention of the Safeguarding of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage
Representative List The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage of Humanity
Urgent List The List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of
Urgent Safeguarding
WHL World Heritage List

29. This page intentionally left bank

30. 1
INTRODUCTION
Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
The year 2016 marked the tenth anniversary of when the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding
of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) officially entered into force, and much has happened since. Most
notably, of course, is the widespread acceptance of this international instrument at national
levels; currently, 170 States Parties have adopted and/or ratified it from 2004 onwards.
1

Additionally, 336 ICH ‘elements’ have been inscribed in the corresponding Representative List
of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, with an average of 28 ICH forms successfully
nominated each year since 2010.
2
It is also true that the past decade has seen an incredible
growth of conferences, symposia, workshops and field schools that have brought together
diverse groups of people who research and seek to understand and safeguard intangible
cultural heritage (ICH) at different levels – from the international to the local.
3
The debates
and discussions that have resulted are vital, evolving and full of passion, much like ICH itself.
On the same note, earlier scholarship on the historiography of ICH, implementation
approaches and related concerns
4
has expanded to include in-depth case studies of the impacts
of the 2003 Convention at local levels, as well as data-driven analyses of the challenges faced
in the agencies and organizations tasked with its recommended duties.
5
Comparative studies
on professional practices in varying contexts are increasingly conducted and an exchange of
ideas, techniques and methodological limitations is being promoted.
6
Indeed, the maturation
of the ICH-related literature has picked up great speed, and a global dialogue on the future
of immeasurably diverse cultural expressions is gaining strength.
Most significant, however, is the emergence of a turn inward, an introspection of the
roles we play as heritage scholars and researchers in ICH-making processes. Such reflexivity
is not necessarily new within the heritage and museum discourse, as it was certainly a main
force through which movements such as ‘new museology’ and ecomuseology,
7
for example,
emerged in the 1970s. However, it can be argued that since ICH is embodied by people, the
need to be more accountable to them – the community members and publics with whom
we work – has become significantly more important. This includes the need to be more
conscientious of the academic and professional privileges (and resources) we may utilize
when researching and speaking about others, especially in terms of cultural practices and
expressions that are not ours. It can be said that the power imbalances that affect heritage

31. Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
2
designation, interpretation and dissemination are gaining greater inspection as a result of the
growing ICH discourse. At the aforementioned workshops and symposia, we need to look
around and ask: who is not at the table with us, and who, therefore, should be?
This volume attempts to address such imbalances. One of our main aims was to bring together
as many diverse perspectives as possible. This diversity is based in case studies and experiences
within wide-ranging geographic, socioeconomic and political contexts, as well as reflecting an
array of voices – from both established and emerging scholars, public servants, professionals,
students and ICH community members, speaking for themselves. In addition, the volume is
deeply enhanced by contributions from multiple fields and disciplines, an interdisciplinarity
that draws on the theories and practices of heritage and museum studies, anthropology, folklore
studies, public folklore, ethnomusicology and the study of cultural policy and related law.
Another aim is to carve out yet another space in the literature for critically engaging with
and also moving beyond what can be called the ‘UNESCO-ICH paradigm’. Along with
the widespread popularity of the 2003 Convention comes the building of a framework,
or paradigm, that is globalizing and potentially standardizing. We can surely give thanks
to UNESCO, and the international embrace of the 2003 Convention, for the sharp rise
in meetings and scholarship that has grown up around the ICH concept. Nonetheless, it
is also important to interrogate this growth and the conceptualizations, definitions and
recommended steps that it espouses and promotes. Questions concerning community
involvement, local-level impacts and potential (and possibly inherent) ‘authorized heritage
discourses’,
8
among many others, still remain extremely pertinent.
Considering this range of issues, the volume is structured by a certain flow. It begins
with an analysis of the UNESCO-ICH paradigm, now over a decade in the making, and
moves through examinations of related challenges at national and regional levels to closer,
more reflexive accounts of researching and working with ICH. From there, two stops are
made: one section is dedicated to highlighting the importance of place with respect to ICH
expressions and another to exploring the interfaces of ICH with museums and archival
collections. The final section moves beyond the paradigm to bring to light alternative ways in
which ICH is being identified, safeguarded and promoted, most often in direct partnership
with local-level community members, the true arbiters of ICH and its change.
Sometimes, discussing ICH calls for a more informal outlet than that of the scholarly
chapter, which may constrain with its academic language and format requirements. Here, we
offer ‘conversation pieces’, short respites for the reader that touch upon ICH-related issues
in a variety of contexts – from Laos to Cuba – with leading scholars, such as Richard Kurin,
Clifford Murphy and Paula Assunção dos Santos. In addition, conversations are offered with
professionals who are engaged with on-the-ground ICH work that is responsive to local
needs and nuanced contextual forces. These conversations are interspersed throughout the
volume, aligned with section themes that are most applicable.
While it would be too lengthy to outline all of the chapters that give great range, depth and
specificity to The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage, we present examples from
each of the sections instead, which are as follows:
s A decade later: critical reflections on the UNESCO-ICH paradigm
s Reality check: the challenges facing intangible cultural heritage and its safeguarding
s Intangible cultural heritage up close
s Intangible cultural heritage and place
s Intangible cultural heritage, museums and archives
s Alternative approaches to safeguarding and promoting intangible cultural heritage

32. Introduction
3
The first section, ‘A decade later: critical reflections on the UNESCO-ICH paradigm’,
focuses on the 2003 Convention, its evolution and unfolding operation. Janet Blake,
bookending the section with two contributions, first sets the stage with a deep analysis
of the motivations behind the development of this international instrument, reminding
us of its historical roots in late twentieth century geopolitical cultural policy and its
shaping of a paradigm that redefines how cultural heritage in general is viewed and used
in society. Closely related, her second chapter examines the impacts of this global ICH
policy on the frameworks created within States Parties to ensure cultural sustainability, as
well as community participation in its implementation. Complementing Blake’s scene-
setting and policy analyses are the chapters that fall in between. Here, Christian Hottin
and Sylvie Grenet illustrate the distinctive intellectual and practical obstacles that have
formed the national ICH framework – the implementation of the 2003 Convention – in
France. Chiara Bortolotto investigates the concept of ‘spatiality’ as not only a cornerstone of
cultural expression, but as an idea that can cause political tensions with respect to ICH that
straddles national borders and finds its form in a range of territories. Through ethnographic
observations of the meetings of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of
the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Bortolotto guides the reader into the heated discussions
between States Parties representatives while reviewing, as well as contesting, nomination
files for the international ICH lists.
‘Reality check: the challenges facing ICH and its safeguarding’ serves to narrow the
volume’s focus onto examinations of the challenges that are faced in terms of safeguarding
schemes, especially with respect to the inclusion of local-level voices (and needs) in associated
identification, documentation, dissemination and/or tourism-related processes. Alison
McCleery and Jared Bowers uncover issues encountered with using online technologies
in identifying and documenting ICH and recent tourism initiatives as part of the ‘ICH in
Scotland’ project, which remains an important initiative that has developed without the
adoption and/or ratification of the 2003 Convention. Turning to South Africa and Mauritius,
Rosabelle Boswell offers a strong ‘reality check’ through her questioning of ICH policy
(and general heritage policy) that does not take into account the real barriers presented by
enduring socioeconomic inequality, and the living legacies of racism, trauma, displacement
and violence in postcolonial contexts. Furthermore, at the very local level of northern
Rupununi in Guyana, Aron Mazel, Gerard Corsane, Raquel Thomas and Samantha James
present Indigenous Guyanese perspectives on the types of heritage that they feel require
safeguarding, and the obstacles faced with regard to keeping the Makushi language alive.
Bradley Hanson, in his chapter on a country and bluegrass musicians’ reunion, raises
significant questions concerning the core ‘site’ of ICH – the physical human body – and
the issues that arise when such bodies are called upon to ‘perform’ heritage and, yet, are also
beholden to the realities of aging.
The third section, ‘Intangible cultural heritage up close’, not only explores challenges, as
they are certainly ever-present when it comes to ICH, but also provides intimate accounts of
learning from and working with those who embody a whole range of cultural knowledges,
practices and expressions. This is not to say that other chapters lack the intimate reflections
of this type of work; however, here, contributors are predominantly offering insights into
the nuanced and specific contexts in which local communities strive to safeguard their ICH.
Linking to earlier sections, Parasmoni Dutta investigates the localized impacts of official ICH
recognition on particular traditional dances in India. Similarly, Sumiko Sarashima considers
the ways in which Japanese bingata (textile-dyeing), also recognized via the Representative
List, is being sustained through local-level initiatives.

33. Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
4
On another note, it is doubtful that some of the ICH expressions presented here would ever
gain official ICH designation and, as such, the case studies represent poignant counterpoints
to the concepts and qualifications endorsed within the UNESCO-ICH paradigm. For
instance, Langston Collin Wilkins brings the reader into the world of working-class African
American neighborhoods in Houston, Texas, to learn about the thriving practices of and
deep devotion to ‘slab’ culture, the ingenious and highly-skilled refurbishment of outmoded
luxury cars, complete with spoked tires and elaborate sound systems, that are often seen
parading through the city. Additionally, Staffan Appelgren and Anna Bohlin reposition ICH
to also include vintage, or ‘retro’, objects due to the histories and memories they carry, and
that are a part of their own system of transference and exchange that lies outside of the
mainstream heritage enterprise. Other contributions take closer looks at finding ICH in the
Norwegian context (Joel Taylor), researching religious ICH in Thailand (Linina Phuttitarn)
and tortilla making in Mexico and the USA. Indeed, Maribel L. Alvarez’s chapter on tortilla
making has an interesting cross-border twist: in Mexico, the tradition is considered as part
of a ‘set’ of culinary ICH recognized by UNESCO, and in the USA, where the official ICH
discourse is lacking, it is promoted and sustained with the assistance of public folklorists.
One problem that may arise within the UNESCO-ICH paradigm is the tendency to
neglect (via itemization) – conceptually and in practice – the relationships living cultural
traditions have to broader contextual forces and interactions, such as the environments
within which they develop and operate. Accordingly, another aim of this volume is to
emphasize more holistic and ecological understandings of ICH through a section dedicated
to its inextricable bonds to place. Amanda Kearney and Gabrielle Kowalewski bring to light
the deep connections to ‘country’ within Aboriginal lifeways and cultural beliefs, as well
as the difficulties of passing this knowledge and respect on to younger generations. R.D.K.
Herman’s chapter proposes an online, community-driven framework for representing
Indigenous worldviews and cultural expressions more holistically, one that has been tested
in earlier iterations through his long-term work with Indigenous communities in the US
and across the Pacific Islands.
‘Intangible cultural heritage, museums and archives’ brings together contributions that
present and analyze museums, and their techniques, that serve to disseminate and sustain
forms of ICH in a variety of contexts. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett presents how the
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw utilizes the intangible aspects of
a history that has lost much of its tangible evidence. Ana Mercedes Stoffel and Isabel Victor
assess museological engagement with ICH in a range of Portuguese-speaking countries
(Lusofonia) – from Portugal to Mozambique and Macau – and argue that the philosophy and
practices of sociomuseology offer a more dynamic and integrated approach for its safeguarding
and promotion. Ashley Minner presents the history and initiatives of the Baltimore
American Indian Center, which was established in the late 1960s as a community-run space
that includes a museum and educational center for promoting the tangible and intangible
heritage of the Lumbee Indians, as well as other Indigenous community members living
in the region. Reminding us of the great wealth of knowledge and information represented
within archival collections, Clifford Murphy underscores their uses for breathing new life
into contemporary ICH expressions, such as Appalachian Mountain music in the US state
of Maryland, by not only linking the present to the past, but also by helping to keep alive and
promote the historical roots and living legacies of which so much of today’s ICH is a part.
The final section, ‘Alternative approaches to safeguarding and promoting intangible
cultural heritage’, provides a view towards the future that moves beyond the UNESCO-
ICH framework. Chapters present case studies of projects that are already underway as ways

34. Introduction
5
forward for mitigating the challenges discussed in earlier sections, as well as for fostering
full participation of communities, groups and individuals in safeguarding and promotional
processes. Echoing Herman’s chapter on digital ‘architectures’ that can be used to represent
more accurately Indigenous ICH and its connections to place, Natalie M. Underberg-
Goode discusses a similar, yet different, interactive web-based project for exploring cultural
practices and their meanings in the context of northern Peru.
Since the 1970s, ecomuseology has come to represent a set of principles and corresponding
approaches within the broader heritage enterprise that has more recently been argued – as
well as shown – to offer a holistic and integrated approach for local-level, community-
driven ICH safeguarding.
9
As there are roughly 1,000 ecomuseums around the world,
including, admittedly, some that use the ‘ecomuseum’ name in vain, it is important to draw
attention to their differing aims, methods and modes of operation that are – in most ideal
form – based in the needs and decisions of local community members. As such, Dragana
Lucija Ratković Aydemir discusses the community-based efforts of the Ecomuseum Batana
in Rovinj, Croatia, which serves to protect and promote the longstanding fishing culture
of the town in partnership with community members who use, restore and still make
the unique batana boats. Similarly, Glenn C. Sutter and Donatella Murtas each present
ecomuseological projects that focus on ICH in their home countries of Canada and Italy,
respectively.
Taken together, the 38 chapters may be considered as a critical exploration of ICH in its
two main manifestations. In one view, it is examined as a ‘term of policy’,
10
tied directly to
the 2003 Convention and the associated definitions and domains through which it can take
shape. In another view, while it is discussed as ‘ICH’ (since the term provides a unifying
device for scholarly dialogue), it can just as well be ‘living cultural traditions’, ‘folklife’ and
‘traditional culture’, or however it is conceived of within source communities and contexts.
In other words, there is the ‘ICH’ that derives its meaning at the international and national
levels, and then there are the living cultural traditions, practices and expressions that are
valued at the local level under an immeasurable array of names. A conceptual bridging of the
two – somehow – will need to happen for the 2003 Convention to truly work. Nonetheless,
while the following chapters draw on both ‘ICH’ manifestations, oftentimes within the same
text, they also serve to underscore their differences and keep them separate.
Whether operating within the UNESCO-ICH paradigm or others that have similar
intentions, such as public folklore in the US, the conscious awareness of our roles and
privileges in naming, sustaining and publicizing the cultural lifeways of others is paramount.
Here, a re-balancing – not just equalizing – of power within heritage interventions could be
more readily achieved, with the scales tipping in favor of the source communities, groups
and individuals with whom we work. It is possible that one step along the way towards this
re-balancing may need to involve an expansion of the scholarly and professional sharing
of reflexive accounts and ‘confessions’
11
concerning our part in shaping heritage. While, in
2016, this may not be a groundbreaking proposition, it is a call for more: more exchange,
greater inclusivity and an increase in support for critical examinations of the ways in which
‘ICH’ is made.
Notes
1 See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/states-parties-00024
2 This is just an average; for instance, forty-four elements were inscribed in 2010, while twenty-
three were in 2015. See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/lists

35. Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
6
3 A selection includes the Cross Cultural Task Force concurrent session on Museums and
Intangible Cultural Heritage at the General Conference of the International Council of
Museums (ICOM), Vienna, Austria, 2007; Intangible Heritage Embodied, a conference organized
by the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices (CHAMP) at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, 2007; Exploring Intangible Heritage, a postgraduate student
conference at the University of Ulster, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 2008; Between Objects
and Ideas: Re-thinking the Role of Intangible Heritage, the 4th Annual International Colloquium of
the Ename Centre for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, Ghent, Belgium, 2008;
the biennial Sharing Cultures conferences of the Green Lines Institute (Portugal) since 2009;
the Museums and Intangible Cultural Heritage Field School of the Sirindhorn Anthropology
Centre (Thailand) from 2009–2014; as well as the more recent Association of Critical Heritage
Studies international conferences, among numerous others.
4 See for instance Nas, 2002; Brown, 2003, 2005; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004, 2006; Kurin,
2007.
5 See for instance Adell et al., 2015; Foster and Gilman, 2015.
6 See for instance Smith and Akagawa, 2009; Ruggles and Silverman, 2009; Stefano, Davis and
Corsane, 2012; Adell et al., 2015; Foster and Gilman, 2015.
7 See de Varine, 1973.
8 Smith, 2006.
9 See Davis, 1999, 2011; Stefano, 2012.
10 Hafstein, 2009.
11 Adell, 2015, p. 238.
References
Adell, N. (2015) ‘Polyphony vs. Monograph: The Problem of Participation in a French ICH Dossier’,
in Adell, N., Bendix, R., Bortolotto C. and Tauschek, M. eds. Between Imagined Communities and
Communities of Practice: Participation, Territory and the Making of Heritage. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag
Göttingen, pp. 237–248.
Adell, N., Bendix, R., Bortolotto, C. and Tauschek, M. eds. (2015) Between Imagined Communities and
Communities of Practice: Participation, Territory and the Making of Heritage. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag
Göttingen.
Brown, M. (2003) Safeguarding the Intangible. Available at: http://web.williams.edu/AnthSoc/native/
Brown_SafeguardingIntangible2003.htm (accessed 4 September 2016).
Brown, M. (2005) ‘Heritage Trouble: Recent Work on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Property’,
International Journal of Cultural Property, 12(1), 40–61.
Davis, P. (1999) Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place. Leicester: University of Leicester Press.
Davis, P. (2011) Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place. 2nd Edition. London and New York: Continuum.
de Varine, H. (1973) ‘A “Fragmented” Museum: The Museum of Man and Industry’, Museum, 25(4),
242–249.
Foster, M. D. and Gilman, L. eds. (2015) UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural
Heritage. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hafstein, V. (2009) ‘Intangible Heritage as a List: From Masterpieces to Representation’, in Smith, L.
and Akagawa, N. eds. Intangible Heritage. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 93–111.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (2004) ‘Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production’, Museum International,
56(1–2), 52–65.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (2006) ‘World Heritage and Cultural Economics’, in Karp I. et al. eds. Museum
Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 161–202.
Kurin, R. (2007) ‘Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: Key Factors in Implementing the 2003
Convention’, International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 1, 10–20.
Nas, P. J. M. (2002) ‘Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the UNESCO World
Heritage List’, Current Anthropology, 43(1), 139–148.
Ruggles, D. F. and Silverman, H. eds. (2009) Intangible Heritage Embodied. London and New York:
Springer.
Smith, L. (2006) The Uses of Heritage. London and New York: Routledge.
Smith, L. and Akagawa, N. eds. (2009) Intangible Heritage. London and New York: Routledge.

36. Introduction
7
Stefano, M. L. (2012) ‘Reconfiguring the Framework: Adopting an Ecomuseological Approach for
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage’, in Stefano, M. L., Davis, P. and Corsane, G. eds.
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, Ltd., pp. 223–238.
Stefano, M. L., Davis, P. and Corsane, G. eds. (2012) Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. Woodbridge:
Boydell & Brewer, Ltd.
UNESCO (2003) The States Parties to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
(2003) [Online]. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/states-parties-00024 (accessed
7 May 2016).

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38. 9
PART I
A decade later
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE UNESCO-
ICH PARADIGM

39. 10
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40. 11
1
DEVELOPMENT
OF UNESCO’S 2003
CONVENTION
Creating a new heritage
protection paradigm?
Janet Blake
Introduction
It is possible to assert that the 2003 Convention has created a ‘new paradigm’ in heritage
protection. In many ways this is true in terms of policy- and law-making at the international
level and, through a trickle-down effect, on national approaches towards heritage and heritage
communities. At the same time, it should be recognized that safeguarding ICH
1
has, in reality,
been an important issue for the large majority of countries and people around the globe long
before the 2003 Convention was adopted.
2
The ‘problem’ of ICH that the international
community sought to address through UNESCO in the late 1990s, leading to the adoption
of the 2003 Convention, was, in large part, a lack of formal international recognition having
hitherto been shown to this reality. Up until that moment, the cultural heritage protection
paradigm was one that prioritized monumental ‘European’ cultural forms over local and
Indigenous ones and that, when it addressed ‘traditional culture’, did so from a position that
favored the interests of the research community over those of culture bearers (Blake, 2001).
Indeed, the success of this Convention since 2003 in securing ratifications
3
is testament to
the fact that it was answering a present need of many Member States of UNESCO and one
that responded well to some of the international policy priorities that were strongly felt at
that time and continue to be today. In particular, the experience of countries that are Parties
to the 2003 Convention demonstrates clearly that, for many of them, ICH in its diverse
forms is a rich social, economic and even political resource that provides a variety of possible
routes towards sustainable models of development. The variety of manifestations of ICH –
both intangible and associated material elements – is itself determined by a number of social,
cultural, economic, political and environmental factors. In this way, ICH is also seen to make
a particularly significant contribution to the value of cultural diversity that had been recently
recognized in the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, including its
important human rights dimensions (UNESCO, 2001a).

41. Janet Blake
12
This wider context within which the 2003 Convention was developed is therefore
essential not only to understanding why it took the form that it did, but also to interpreting
the way in which it caught the international mood of the time, and contributed towards a
paradigm shift that was occurring not only in the field of cultural heritage, but also in related
fields of development, human rights, environmental protection and intellectual property
protection. In the following section, therefore, I wish to draw out some of the main lines
of these evolutions of international cultural policy and law, demonstrating the growing
recognition of the power and value of this aspect of heritage. Following that, I will attempt to
show how the 2003 Convention has reflected and continues to reflect these trends, as well as
what our experience of its implementation, since its enforcement in April 2006, has shown
us about these and other key questions.
The international policy context
First, I consider developments in international policy-making from the 1970s to the 1990s
that can be regarded as milestones leading up to the preparation and adoption of the 2003
Convention. These can also be tracked through the experience of the early years of its
implementation as is described in more detail in a following section. In terms of development,
up until the 1970s, this had generally been conceived of in terms of a purely economic
phenomenon in which GDP growth was the primary, if not the sole, indicator of success
(Arizpe, 2004, 2007). In this dominant model of development, culture was often viewed as a
brake on development, with the ‘traditional cultures’ of the less-developed countries being
especially poorly regarded (Douglas, 2004) by the Bretton Woods Institutions
4
and other
lending bodies. The earliest challenges to this economic model – that was being imposed
by mostly external lending institutions on less developed countries – came from countries
of Africa and Latin America that experienced an intellectual shift towards the notion of
‘endogenous development’ in which local and ethnic cultures (and languages) were given
greater value (Arizpe, 2007). Significantly, in this approach, culture was substituted for the
economy in the development model and traditional ways of life were emphasized.
The World Conference on Cultural Policies (MONDIACULT), held in Mexico in 1982,
articulated for the first time on the international stage a view of culture as a broad notion
that went beyond the material culture of archaeological remains or high, artistic cultural
productions to one that

embraced ways of life, social organization and value/belief systems,
as well. In defining ‘culture’ it also, importantly, linked this with the idea of cultural identity:
[‘Culture’ is] the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only
the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human
being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.
(UNESCO, 1982, Preamble)
It is really quite striking to see how closely the definition of ICH in the 2003 Convention
drew on the overall approach taken by the MONDIACULT meeting over 30 years previously.
In Article 2, ICH is defined for the purposes of the 2003 Convention as meaning:
[T]he practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the
instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that
communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their

42. Development of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention
13
cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to
generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their
environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them
with a sense of identity and continuity.
(UNESCO, 2003)
Moving forward in time, the early to mid-1990s also provided a moment at which important
new thinking occurred in international development theory. At this time, we observe first
the evolution of the fundamentally important notion of human development, which was
formulated initially by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen (Sen, 1999; UNDP,
1994; UNESCO, 2000). This approach was adopted by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) for its Human Development Reports series from 1990 and, crucially,
brings much closer together the idea of development with human rights (UNESCO, 2000).
At around the same time, the concept of sustainable development was also being developed,
first articulated by the World Commission on Environment and Development in its Report
(WCED, 1987, Chapter 2) as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. This concept was,
of course, further refined, elaborated and given formal international endorsement in 1992 in
the Rio Declaration (UNCED, 1992; Boyle and Freestone, 1999), mentioned later.
In 1995, the World Commission on Culture and Development, which had been
established by UNESCO, reported and stressed both the role of culture as a constituent
element in the development process rather than the contingent one it was often thought
to be, as well as the key part played by ICH in this (WCCD, 1995). Another key document
in this area was the Action Plan on Cultural Policies for Development (UNESCO, 1998),
which recognized in its first Principle that, ‘[s]ustainable development and the flourishing of
culture are interdependent’, and then led to the formulation of its first objective as seeking
to ‘make cultural policy one of the key components of development strategy’, including the
requirement to ‘[d]esign and establish cultural policies or review existing ones in such a way
that they become one of the key components of endogenous and sustainable development’.
With regard to cultural heritage, Objective 3 calls on Member States to ‘[r]einforce policy
and practice to safeguard and enhance the cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, moveable
and immovable, and to promote cultural industries’, and this would include renewing the
traditional conception of heritage as including ‘all natural and cultural elements, tangible
or intangible, which are inherited or newly created. Through these elements social groups
recognize their identity and commit themselves to pass it on to future generations in a
better and enriched form’ (UNESCO, 1998). Hence, the connection is made explicitly here
between heritage as a holistic concept, the interaction between cultural and natural elements
of heritage, the imperative to safeguard it and pass it on to future generations (possibly in an
enhanced condition) and the role of heritage in the formation of group identity.
More recently, UNESCO has been working to place this role of culture in development
back onto the international agenda, especially in recognition of the fact that the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) (UN, 2000) failed to include any explicit cultural goal (despite
the fact that those relating to education, in particular, and health, more tangentially, clearly
contain important cultural components) (Alston, 2005; Alston and Robinson, 2005).
UNESCO’s involvement in the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund
(MDG-F) initiative has been one of the ways in which it has attempted to make the role
of culture more prominent in international development policy-making. Established in
December 2006 by the UN (with a contribution of 710 million USD from the Spanish

43. Janet Blake
14
Government), the MDG-F was designed as a mechanism for international cooperation to
facilitate achievement of the MDGs worldwide through supporting national governments,
local authorities and civil society organizations in eight ‘Thematic Windows’, one of which
was in the area of culture and development, with UNESCO playing the leading role. The
main purpose of the Culture and Development Thematic Window was to demonstrate,
although not explicitly mentioned in the MDGs, that culture and cultural resources are
essential for national development, particularly in relation to alleviating poverty and ensuring
social inclusion (UN, 2006).
Among the aforementioned shifts in the international development paradigm, the
adoption of the 1992 Rio Declaration was without doubt the most far-reaching at the time
and one that has had the most lasting effect up until now. Among other points, it reflected
the fact that the value of local and Indigenous cultures and their heritage were becoming
increasingly recognized within wider society as a resource for its overall development.
5

With the adoption of the Rio Declaration, not only was sustainable development first
given universal international endorsement, but one of the three ‘pillars’ of sustainable
development was also understood to be a sociocultural one, operating alongside the two
central economic and environmental ones. In its Preamble, the 2003 Convention refers to
‘the importance of the intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and
a guarantee of sustainable development’, but fails to elaborate on what this means either
in terms of principle or practice. As we shall see later, several Parties have now started to
elaborate cultural and development policies in which this role of ICH is becoming more
clearly defined; although, this remains a ‘work-in-progress’ and it is too early to establish in
very explicit terms what policy and other instruments are needed for governments to ensure
and maximize this important potential of ICH.
Indeed, following the adoption of the 2003 Convention and the Convention on the Protection
and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005 (UNESCO, 2005a), UNESCO
began to consider more deeply the relationship between cultural heritage, creativity and
sustainability of development. It should be remembered that both of these treaties make
explicit reference to the role played by cultural heritage and cultural goods and services in
sustainable development; with regard to ICH, the 2003 Convention notes its importance:
[A]s a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development,
as underscored in … the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity
of 2001, and in the Istanbul Declaration of 2002 adopted by the Third Round Table
of Ministers of Culture.
(UNESCO, 2003, Preamble)
An internal UNESCO evaluation of the 2003 Convention undertaken in 2013 offered two
recommendations (Recommendations 3 and 5) specifically referring to how sustainable
development as an objective can be better incorporated into the Convention’s operation to:
‘[e]nhace cooperation with sustainable development experts for integrating ICH into non
cultural legislation and policy, and for other work related to ICH and sustainable development’;
and ‘[c]ooperate with sustainable development experts when supporting State Parties with
the integration of ICH into non-cultural legislation and policy, and with other work related
to ICH and sustainable development’ (Torggler and Sediakina-Rivière, 2013, pp. 30–31). In
response, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee (hereafter ICH Committee) that was
established under Article 5 of the 2003 Convention adopted a decision at its ninth meeting in
Paris in November 2014 to achieve this purpose (UNESCO, 2014). This movement not only

44. Development of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention
15
reflects the desire of UNESCO to make the cultural aspects of sustainable development more
prominent in the international agenda, but also the need for a more profound and developed
appreciation of what this means in reality for safeguarding ICH. This latter point is well made
in the aforementioned UNESCO evaluation which noted that:
[W]hile people involved in the Convention generally agreed that the link [with
sustainable development] was important, clarifying the nature of this link,
identifying the potential that these linkages hold both for sustainable development
on one hand and for the viability of ICH on the other, identifying the potential
risks that development, if not sustainable, holds for ICH, etc. were still very much
a work in progress.
(Torggler and Sediakina-Rivière, 2013, p. 22)
The 2005 Convention goes even further by including in its purposes the objective to ‘reaffirm
the importance of the link between culture and development for all countries, particularly
for developing countries, and to support actions undertaken nationally and internationally to
secure recognition of the true value of this link’, as well as including sustainable development
as one of its foundational principles (UNESCO, 2005a, Articles 1–2). Moreover, it includes
two substantive articles that set out the need to integrate culture in sustainable development at
all levels (local, national, regional and international) for the ‘creation of conditions conducive
to sustainable development and, within this framework’, and the requirement for States
Parties to ‘support cooperation for sustainable development and poverty reduction, especially
in relation to the specific needs of developing countries, in order to foster the emergence of a
dynamic cultural sector’ (UNESCO, 2005a, Articles 13–14). Article 14 then sets out in detail
the means that can be taken to achieve this, including strengthening of the cultural industries
in developing countries (through six specific measures), capacity-building and the training of
human resources in developing countries in both public and private sectors, the transfer of
technology and know-how, especially in the areas of cultural industries and enterprises, and
financial support mechanisms (including development assistance, other forms of financial
assistance and establishing the International Fund for Cultural Diversity).
Recently, the outcome document of the 2012 United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development (Rio+20) made direct reference to culture, emphasizing that
the three dimensions of sustainable development, namely the economic, sociocultural
and environmental dimensions, should all be given importance in UN programming for
sustainability (UN, 2012). However, it contains only a few, rather modest, references to the
role of culture for sustainable development, and there is no in depth discussion of the linkages
between culture and development, or of the potential contribution of culture to sustainable
development (Torggler and Sediakina-Rivière, 2013, p. 13). In May 2013, UNESCO
organized an International Congress in Hangzhou, China on the subject of ‘Culture: Key
to Sustainable Development’ with the aim of examining these linkages more profoundly
and for providing a sound basis for future policy-making and programming. This meeting
was the first global forum to discuss the role of culture in sustainable development within
the context of a post-2015 development framework. The Hangzhou Declaration from this
meeting reaffirmed the role of culture as an enabler and a driver of sustainable development
and it called for a specific international development goal focused on culture to be included
in the post-2015 UN development agenda. This goal should be ‘based on heritage, diversity,
creativity and the transmission of knowledge and [should include] clear targets and indicators
that relate culture to all dimensions of sustainable development’ (UNESCO, 2013, p. 6).

45. Janet Blake
16
Importantly, each of the aforementioned development approaches, in addition to stressing
the central role of culture (and heritage) in the development process in order to ensure its
sustainability, also have strong human rights aspects that reflect the need to develop human
capacities (as supported by human rights) and social justice. It is therefore no accident that,
at the same time as these new development paradigms were gaining ground internationally,
cultural rights, which had for a long time (since the adoption of the UN Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966) been the ‘Cinderella’ of the human rights family
(Symonides, 1998), began to receive belated international recognition. In UNESCO, for
example, a program was initiated with the intention of codifying cultural rights and this led
to the publication of an essay collection aimed at clarifying the scope, content and nature
of these rights (Niec, 1998). This work also led to the later adoption of the 2001 Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity that, as we have seen, was a very significant background
document for the later adoption of both the 2003 and 2005 Conventions by UNESCO.
Having worked with UNESCO in the early to mid-1990s, the Institute of Human Rights
at Fribourg University, along with leading experts in the field of cultural rights, later developed
and adopted the Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights (2007). Although it has no legal status, as
such, this text is the most reliable exposition thus far of the nature and content of cultural rights.
In its Preamble, it reiterates that there is an explicit connection between cultural heritage (as a
critical factor in ensuring cultural diversity) and sustainability of development that guarantees
all internationally recognized human rights by stating: ‘respect for diversity and cultural rights
is a crucial factor in the legitimacy and consistency of sustainable development based upon
the indivisibility of human rights’ (Fribourg, 2007, Preamble). In a related development, the
Economic and Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC) had been working towards a draft
Declaration on Indigenous Rights since the early 1990s with strong Indigenous involvement
and, as part of this work, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights had prepared a
report on Indigenous heritage (Daes, 1997). However, it took until 2007 for the UN General
Assembly to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, reflecting a serious
resistance among many States towards recognizing Indigenous rights that go beyond simply
protecting their heritage and way of life, for example, to including access to and control over
ancestral lands and their natural resources (UNGA, 2007).
The international legal context
During this period, a related paradigm shift was also occurring within UNESCO’s
cultural heritage treaty-making. Up until the 1990s, normative activity in this field had
been concerned almost exclusively with material elements of what often represented
monumental and prestigious culture. Hence, the Convention for the Protection of Cultural
Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Hague Convention) was designed to protect cultural
and historic monuments and movable property during armed conflict (UNESCO,
1954); the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export
and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property addressed prevention of the illicit trade and
movement of cultural property and provided a framework for securing the restitution of
such objects (UNESCO, 1970); and the 1972 World Heritage Convention was primarily
aimed at cultural and natural monuments and sites of universal significance (UNESCO,
1972). Adopted at the beginning of the new millennium, the Convention on the Protection of
the Underwater Cultural Heritage was based on a draft initially prepared in the early 1990s, and
also focuses very clearly on material cultural and historic remains on the seabed, particularly
shipwrecks and their cargo (UNESCO, 2001b).

46. Development of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention
17
The adoption of the Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore by
UNESCO Member States in 1989 signalled a growing appreciation of the need to give greater
attention to non-material and often mundane cultural forms and expressions. Although it
has subsequently been criticized as too heavily a researcher-driven text (Blake, 2001), this
recommendation was significant in that its very existence opened the way for later developing
the 2003 Convention. In addition, it made it possible for the 2003 Convention to be created
as a broadly cultural convention, and not as a treaty solely addressing the intellectual property
aspects of protecting traditional cultural expressions (a narrower category than ICH). The
1989 Recommendation was divided into seven sections that cover, inter alia, measures for
the identification, conservation, preservation, dissemination and protection (understood as
intellectual property-style protection) of the ‘traditional culture and folklore’ that is its focus.
It is notable that some of these measures accord fairly closely to the main ‘safeguarding’ actions
as set out in Article 2(3) of the 2003 Convention, namely the identification, documentation,
research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement and transmission of ICH.
In tandem with this work related to traditional culture and folklore, which later became
known as ICH in UNESCO’s normative activities, the Operational Guidelines to the 1972
World Heritage Convention underwent several revisions between 1992 and 2005 (UNESCO,
2005b), which have increasingly allowed for non-material associated elements as inscription
criteria, as well as greater input from local communities in the design and implementation of
management plans (Deacon and Beazley, 2007). Thus, in the 1992 version of the Operational
Guidelines, the notion of cultural landscapes was first introduced as a potential category of
World Heritage property and, of the three categories of cultural landscapes defined in the
1992 version, were ‘(iii) associative cultural landscapes whose inclusion is justifiable by
virtue of the powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element rather than
material cultural evidence, which may be insignificant or even absent’ (UNESCO, 1992,
Paragraph 10; emphasis added). Thus, we can clearly see the way in which not only are the
cultural associations of natural sites being acknowledged, but also, and importantly for this
chapter, that they are of an intangible cultural character as a result of their contrast with any
‘material cultural evidence’ present at heritage sites.
In later versions of the Operational Guidelines, the associated intangible values of World
Heritage sites have increasingly found prominence with the introduction of the category
of mixed cultural–natural heritage in 1998, for example, where the linkage between the
cultural and natural heritage aspects of sites is often an intangible one. This mutuality of
the relationship between the tangible and intangible aspects of heritage is well expressed
by Deacon and Beazley (2007, p. 93), who note that ‘[i]ntangible heritage is probably best
described as a kind of significance or value, indicating non-material aspects of heritage that
are significant, rather than a separate kind of “non-material” heritage’. It is through intangible
practice, use and interpretation that tangible heritage elements acquire their meaning.
However, at the same time, they note that ‘[i]ntangible values can, however, exist without a
material locus of that value’, and can exist independently of any tangible form (Deacon and
Beazley, 2007, p. 93). As a result of this interrelatedness of tangible and intangible heritage, a
degree of overlap has developed in the operations of the 1972 and 2003 Conventions where
these different aspects of the same cultural heritage may qualify for international inscription.
A frequently cited example of this overlap concerns the rice terraces of the Ifugao
community that extend over the highlands of the northern island of the Philippine
archipelago (in the Cordilleras), which were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1995;
and in 2008, the Hudhud narrative chants traditionally performed by women when planting
the rice were inscribed on the 2003 Convention’s Representative List (Deacon and Beazley,

47. Janet Blake
18
2007; Boer and Gruber, 2009). Further examples of this interplay between the tangible
and intangible aspects of World Heritage properties can be found, especially in the case of
properties inscribed as cultural landscapes or mixed cultural/natural properties. For instance,
we can cite the Bandiagara site in Mali that was inscribed in 1989 on the basis of two criteria,
one of which is cultural and the other natural. This is an outstanding landscape consisting of
cliffs and sandy plateaux, which also contains some beautiful architectural elements (houses,
granaries, altars, sanctuaries and Togu Na, or communal meeting places). Notably, it is also the
location for several age-old social traditions that would now be understood as ICH (wearing
masks and holding feasts, rituals and ceremonies involving ancestor worship).
Similarly, the ‘Vat Phou and Associated Ancient Settlements within the Champasak
Cultural Landscape’ property in Laos, which was inscribed in 2001, is a planned landscape
dating back more than 1,000 years (see UNESCO, 2016). This site, which is mainly associated
with the Khmer Empire, expresses a Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and
humanity in its geometric relationship between the buildings and system of reservoirs or
barays (using an axis from mountain top to river bank). In this sense, its intangible aspect
in terms of the aforementioned religious and philosophical conceptual framework is an
essential and integral part of the site’s design and of our ability to ‘read’ its meanings.
These evolutions in UNESCO’s normative activity in relation to cultural heritage have
constituted a response to demands from non-Western developing countries for their heritage
to be better reflected in international protection. One way in which this has manifested
itself has been in the call for greater geographic representation in inscriptions to the World
Heritage List and to move away from a ‘Eurocentric’ bias towards a monumental (and heavily
tangible) conception of heritage.
6
Hence, the ‘Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced
and Credible World Heritage List’ was adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1994.
This policy initiative proposed a ‘move away from a purely architectural view of the cultural
heritage of humanity towards one which was much more anthropological, multi-functional
and universal’ with regard to cultural properties inscribed on the List (UNESCO, 1992).
Conclusion
An important aspect of the 2003 Convention, as this chapter has sought to demonstrate, is
the degree to which it responds to a number of objectives and concerns of the international
community at the turn of the millennium (many of which remain high in priority). As a
result, it has provided States Parties with a framework within which to develop policies and
programs related to a wide number of aspects of government – from tourism to environmental
protection, social inclusion and rural development – to which ICH and its safeguarding
is contingent. This broadening out of the conception of the role of cultural heritage in
society and, in particular, in the realization of truly sustainable forms of development, must
be seen as one of the most significant evolutions in our understanding of cultural heritage
protection as a policy goal and, even, a policy tool. The 2003 Convention is one of the leading
international heritage treaties – along with the 2005 Convention and on the regional level,
the 2005 Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe, 2005)
– that reflects this new thinking about the role of cultural heritage. As this chapter attempts
to demonstrate, its implementation over time promises to offer new insights into how this
aspect of heritage can be harnessed for the purpose of social and economic development.
Familiarity with this wider context within which the 2003 Convention was developed is
therefore essential to understanding why it took the form that it did. It is also necessary for us
to be able to recognize how it caught the international zeitgeist of the time and contributed

48. Development of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention
19
towards a paradigm shift that was occurring not only in the field of cultural heritage, but also
in related fields of development, human rights, environmental protection and intellectual
property protection. In my later chapter in this volume, I draw out some of the main lines
of these evolutions of international cultural policy and law, demonstrating the growing
recognition of the power and value of this aspect of heritage (see Chapter 6). I also attempt to
demonstrate how the 2003 Convention has reflected and continues to reflect these trends, as
well as tracing what experience we can now draw from the implementation of its provisions
by States Parties since the earliest ratifications in 2003.
Notes
1 Several terms have been used, some more appropriately than others, to cover this aspect of
heritage, such as ‘traditional culture’, ‘folklore’, ‘traditional folk culture’, ‘popular culture’ and
‘living culture’.
2 For example, Bolivia had proposed, during its negotiation, that the 1972 Convention should
cover tangible and intangible cultural heritage as well as natural heritage.
3 Nearing the tenth anniversary of its adoption, the Convention had secured 155 ratifications
with the ratification by Malaysia on 23 July 2013. It now has 170 Parties. This is very high
and compares favorably with UNESCO’s most successful ever treaty – the World Heritage
Convention – that had 190 Parties by 2012 (40 years after its adoption). Information on
ratifications to the 2003 Convention available online at: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/
states-parties-00024 (accessed 4 September 2016).
4 These are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established in 1944.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) created in 1994 can be included.
5 The Biological Diversity Convention adopted at UNCED in Rio in 1992 at the same time
as the Rio Declaration also gave a prominent position to ‘local and indigenous knowledge,
practices and innovations’ in ensuring environmental sustainability (at Art. 8(j)). UNESCO
(1990) in The Third Medium-Term Plan (1990–5) (25C/4) recognized in para. 215 that cultural
heritage was ‘a living culture of the people’, the safeguarding of which ‘should be regarded as
one of the major assets of a multidimensional type of development’.
6 This has been seen also in calls for greater geographic representation on the World Heritage
List. In some countries, especially in Africa, ICH can constitute as much as 70–80 percent of its
important cultural heritage.
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51. 22
2
THE EXAMINATION OF
NOMINATION FILES
UNDER THE UNESCO
CONVENTION FOR
THE SAFEGUARDING
OF THE INTANGIBLE
CULTURAL HERITAGE
Rieks Smeets and Harriet Deacon
1
Introduction
The 2003 Convention, which currently has 170 States Parties, was drafted in the early 2000s,
just over 30 years after the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which currently has 192 States
Parties (see UNESCO, 1972; 2003).
2
The 2003 Convention borrowed some of the text and
features of the 1972 Convention, including an international listing system (UNESCO, 2003,
Articles 16–17; 2014a, OD 1–2). The similarities and differences between the approach and
implementation of these Conventions have been the object of some analysis (see Smith and
Akagawa, 2009; Skounti, 2011; Deacon and Smeets, 2013a, 2013b). To date, however, more
attention has been paid to the origins, rationale and possible consequences of listing ICH at
the international level (e.g. Hafstein, 2009) than to the processes by which the nominations
are examined. This chapter builds on earlier papers on this topic (Deacon and Smeets,
2013b; Smeets 2013a, 2013b) to assess the current challenges faced by the 2003 Convention
in developing an efficient and credible system of examination for nominations to its two
international lists, the Representative List and the Urgent Safeguarding List, reflecting on
the experiences of the World Heritage (WH) listing system.
Evaluations of the implementation of both Conventions within UNESCO (UNESCO,
2011a; 2013b) suggest that the credibility of the inscription process is linked to its transparency,
consistency and adherence to agreed criteria for inscription, because these factors affect their
capacity to promote the conservation or safeguarding, as well as the visibility of the heritage
inscribed on the lists of the two Conventions. As Rao (2010) has remarked, it is important to

52. The examination of nomination files
23
ensure that the desire of States Parties to inscribe WH properties (or ICH elements) on the
lists of these Conventions does not override serious and independent consideration of their
compliance with the criteria for inscription.
Since States Parties themselves put forward the nominations to the lists, the use of
advisory bodies to assess compliance with the criteria for inscription is an important
aspect of a credible examination process. This is because under both Conventions, this
process ends in a decision by the small group of States Parties who have been elected as
Intergovernmental Committee members. In 2012, responding to growing criticism of the
way in which inscription on the WH List had become increasingly politicized and divorced
from consideration of the criteria, UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, appealed to
WH Committee members, ‘as accountants of the World Heritage label’, to ensure that the
credibility of the inscription process was ‘absolute at all stages of the proceedings – from the
work of the advisory bodies to the final decision by the States Parties, who hold the primary
responsibility in this regard’ (Bokova, 2012, pp. 2–3).
Unfortunately, the pattern has not changed; the WH Committee has continued to press
for more inscriptions on the WH List regardless of the quality of the nominations. Tension
between the Committee and its advisory bodies, especially the International Council on
Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), continues to rise as the Committee members frequently
override the recommendations of the advisory bodies (Meskell, 2013a). To address these
problems, Rao (2010, p. 161) has proposed an accelerated system of redressing regional
imbalances in the WH List, and enhanced international cooperation ‘to marshal and provide
the best technical knowledge’ for the process of inscribing properties on it.
The challenges faced in retaining credibility of inscriptions under the 1972 Convention
raises a number of questions about the examination process for nominations under the
2003 Convention. Given the conceptual and operational differences between the two
Conventions, to what extent does the examination process for the 2003 Convention lists face
similar challenges, and what might be the solutions? How can implementation of the 2003
Convention find an appropriate balance between the roles and interests of communities
concerned, States Parties and NGOs or heritage professionals in promoting ICH safeguarding
through the international listing system? How can the credibility and effectiveness of the
listing system be enhanced under the 2003 Convention? Can the processes of decision-
making about inscriptions in the ICH Committee be designed in such a way as to counter
the tendency towards politicization that has been seen in the WH Committee?
In addressing these questions, this chapter outlines some of the similarities and differences
between the two Conventions and their examination of nominations, before exploring in
some detail the past and present examination procedures for nomination files to the two
lists of the 2003 Convention, and the resources deployed for its implementation. Particular
attention will be paid to the involvement of communities, groups and individuals concerned,
and to the use of the expertise of heritage professionals and NGOs in evaluating files. Finally,
some solutions will be proposed.
The two conventions
It is clear that, despite certain similarities, the 2003 Convention represents a significantly
different approach to the definition and management of heritage than the one enshrined in
the 1972 Convention. Whereas the 1972 Convention seeks to ‘conserve’ iconic natural and
cultural properties that thanks to their ‘outstanding universal value’ are inscribed on the WH
List, the 2003 Convention seeks to promote the ‘safeguarding’, or continued practice and

53. Rieks Smeets and Harriet Deacon
24
transmission, of any ICH ‘element’ (broadly defined in Article 2.1, UNESCO, 2003) that is
considered valuable by any community. The 2003 Convention requires States Parties to set
up inventories of the ICH in their territory and to take the ‘necessary measures’ to ensure
the safeguarding of – in principle – all of this ICH by and with the communities concerned
(UNESCO, 2003, Articles 11 and 15). States Parties may nominate ICH elements included
on their inventories to one of the international lists. This will usually – depending on the
scope of the inventories – relate to a small proportion of the inventoried ICH. By contrast,
under the 1972 Convention, States Parties only have responsibilities for the conservation of
properties of ‘outstanding universal value’, whether on a national Tentative List or the WH
List (UNESCO, 1972, Article 6).
The WH Committee has a mandate to conduct most of the business of the 1972
Convention, reporting directly to the General Conference of UNESCO (UNESCO, 1972,
Article 29), whereas the Intergovernmental Committee of the 2003 Convention (the ICH
Committee) reports to, and acts largely under the direction of, the General Assembly of all
the States Parties (UNESCO, 2003, Articles 4–5). The twenty-one members of the WH
Committee are elected by the States Parties to the 1972 Convention meeting in general
assembly at the time of the biennial ordinary sessions of the General Conference of
UNESCO (UNESCO, 1972, Article 8); whereas, the twenty-four members of the ICH
Committee are elected by that Convention’s General Assembly of States Parties that comes
together for substantial sessions every second year (UNESCO, 2003, Article 5). In spite of
their different spheres of authority, the Intergovernmental Committees of both Conventions
are responsible for making decisions for inscription of WH properties or ICH elements onto
their respective international lists.
Under the 1972 Convention there is only one list, the WH List (1,007 properties as of June
2014; UNESCO, 2015a), with a subsidiary List of World Heritage in Danger on which the
Committee places those properties facing severe threats to their outstanding universal value
(forty-six properties as of June 2014; UNESCO 2015b). The 2003 Convention (UNESCO,
2003, Articles 16–17) makes provision for two independent lists to which nominations can
be made: the Representative List (336 elements as of late 2015; UNESCO, 2015c) and the
Urgent Safeguarding List (forty-three elements as of late 2015; UNESCO, 2015c). The ICH
Committee, interpreting and implementing Article 18 of the Convention, also created a Register
of Best Safeguarding Practices (UNESCO, 2014a, OD 42–46), which has no equivalent
under the 1972 Convention. The Register, which is sometimes presented as the third and – in
principle – most important list, has had difficulties in gaining momentum. The States Parties
have not yet proposed many safeguarding practices to the Register, and the Committee has
decided not to select a number of these proposed practices. Between 2009 and 2015, only
twelve best safeguarding practices were included on the Register (UNESCO, 2015c).
Due to concerns about creating hierarchies between elements, and ‘freezing’ ICH forms,
the establishment of a listing system was one of the most controversial issues in the drafting of
the ICH Convention. However, there was significant pressure from UNESCO Member States
wishing to create an international ICH listing system to parallel that of the 1972 Convention
(Hafstein, 2009). This was partly because Member States wished to find a home for the ICH
elements recognized as ‘Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ under
a previous UNESCO programme (hereafter Masterpieces Programme), which was actually
the first exercise in listing ICH internationally (UNESCO, 2003, Article 31).
The Operational Directives of the 2003 Convention (UNESCO, 2014a), and Operational
Guidelines of the 1972 Convention (UNESCO, 2013a), encourage, to varying degrees, the
involvement of communities, heritage professionals, research institutions and NGOs in

54. The examination of nomination files
25
heritage identification, documentation and management at the national and international
levels. Due to the fact that safeguarding is dependent on the continued practice of ICH by
communities and practitioners, and because in the UN system greater attention has been
paid to Indigenous and local communities over the last twenty years, the 2003 Convention
offers a much stronger encouragement for community involvement and consent in all
activities concerning their ICH than found with the 1972 Convention (Blake, 2009; Deacon
and Smeets, 2013a).
Provision is made for the Committees of both Conventions to be advised by heritage
experts and NGOs (Rao, 2010; Skounti, 2011). For the evaluation of nominations to the WH
List, three organizations – the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and
Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) and ICOMOS – provide advisory services to the WH Committee. The
latter two bodies assist in the assessment of all nominations to the WH List (UNESCO,
1972, Article 8; 2015d), and are paid for their services. The process by which ICOMOS
evaluates WH nomination dossiers for cultural properties is described in the Operational
Guidelines (UNESCO, 2013a, Annex 6).
After several experiments with the advisory procedure in the examination of nomination
files under the 2003 Convention, an Evaluation Body consisting of six individual experts
and six NGO representatives was created in December 2014 to guide the ICH Committee
in making inscriptions on both lists and the Register, as well as on requests for financial
assistance (UNESCO, 2014a; 2014b). The evolution of the evaluation system can be
followed by comparing the relevant Operational Directives of the Convention from 2008 to
2016 (UNESCO, 2008, ODs 5–8 and 23–26; 2010a, ODs 25–32; 2012a, ODs 25–31; 2014a,
ODs 26–31, 54; 2016b, ODs 26–31, 54–56).
Once nomination files for the lists of the 2003 Convention are submitted to UNESCO
by States Parties, they undergo a technical examination by the Secretariat. Only those files
the Secretariat considers as complete will be sent to the Evaluation Body, which evaluates
the files and formulates a recommendation for each of them. The Secretariat transmits the
report of the Body’s findings and deliberations to the Committee, which makes decisions at
its annual meeting on inscription or rejection of the nominated elements to the lists, or for the
referral of nomination files back to States Parties for further information. The Secretariat thus
processes files, the Body evaluates them and the Committee examines them. Major steps of
this procedure can be followed on the website of the 2003 Convention, where the nomination
files under process are posted by the Secretariat (UNESCO, 2016a, 2016b, OD 54).
The two Conventions thus have a similar legal basis, and both have international lists,
but they begin from different premises about the nature of heritage (places and monuments
versus practices) and the justifications for its protection – or safeguarding (outstanding
universal value to humanity versus value to the communities, groups and individuals
concerned). The two Conventions also have different mandates for their governing Organs
(such as the Intergovernmental Committees and General Assemblies) and the process for
the examination of nominations to their lists is rather different.
Increasing community participation
With the two Conventions, it is States Parties that submit nominations to the lists and
are represented on the Intergovernmental Committees thereof. Although community
involvement is encouraged in the identification, nomination and management of their
heritage, community representatives have no permanent, formal role in the work of the

55. Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content

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7.—Apostolical Constitutions. Various English translations.
Best in Ante-Nic. Christ. Lib., vol. 17. Cf. Harnack,
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Oxf., 1885. Letters and Sermons. Lib. of Nic. and Post-
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10.—Gregory I., Book of Pastoral Rule and Selected
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Bibliographical note:—Unfortunately the best collections of
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Hardouin, Acta Conciliorum. Paris, 1815. 12 vols. 3.—
Mansi, Collectio Sacrorum Conciliorum. Flor. & Ven.,
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19.—Kenrick, F. P., The Primacy of the Apostolic See.
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20.—Lea, H. C., Studies in Church History. Phil., 1883.
21.—Legge, A. O., Growth of the Temporal Power of
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58. 22.—Littledale, R. F., The Petrine Claims. Lond., 1889.
23.—Mann, H. K., Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle
Ages. Lond., 1906.
24.—Manning, H. E., The Temporal Power of the Vicar
of Jesus Christ. N. Y., 1880.
25.—Meyrick, T., Lives of the Early Popes. Lond., 1878-
80. 2 vols.
26.—Milman, H. H., Latin Christianity. Lond., 1840.
Several revisions.
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28.—Pennington, A. R., Epochs of the Papacy. Lond.,
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29.—Platina, B., Lives of the Popes. Lond., 1893.
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31.—Riddle, J. E., History of the Papacy. Lond., 1854.
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33.—Snow, T. B., St. Gregory the Great. Lond., 1892.
34.—Soechi, B., Lives of the Popes to Gregory VII.
Lond., 1888.
35.—Tardini, C., The Popes of Rome and the Popes of
the Oriental Churches. Lond., 1871. Ch. 4.
36.—Wilkes, G. A. T., History of the Popes from Linus to
Pius IX. Lond., 1851.
II.—GENERAL:
Adams, Civ., ch. 4. Adeney, ch. 11. Allies, Peter's Rock,
vol. iv., ch. 32-34, 38, 42, 47. Alzog, i., § 87, 130.
Butler, ch. 44, 50. Cheetham, ch. 9, § 4. Coxe, Lect.

59. 3, § 23. Crooks, ch. 28. Darras, i.-ii. Döllinger, ii.,
ch. 5. Duff, 63, 108, 249, 341, 557, 605. Fisher,
105-108, 157-160. Fitzgerald, i., 235-264; ii., 1-28.
Foulkes, 105, 328, 348, 368, 382. Gieseler, i., § 68,
69, 91-94. Gilmartin, i., ch. 21. Gregorovius, i.
Hase, § 128-130. Hurst, i., 325 ff. Kurtz, i., 264-274.
Mahan, bk. 3, ch. 4. Milman, bk. 1, 2. Milner, ii.,
cent. 4, ch. 17; cent. 6, ch. 5-8. Moeller, i., 340-
355. Neander i., § 2; ii., § 2. Robertson, bk. 2, ch.
6, p. 303. Schaff, pd. 2, ch. 4, § 50-53; pd. 3, ch. 3,
§ 26; ch. 5, § 60-64; pd. 4, ch. 4.

60. FOOTNOTES:
[165:1] Lea, Stud. in Ch. Hist., 118.
[165:2] Greenwood, Cathedra Petri, i., 232.
[166:1] It must be said, however, that the Eastern Patriarchs
refused to recognise the decision. Gieseler, i., 382; Milman, i.,
130. Cf. Socrates, ii., 15 ff.
[166:2] Hard., Concil., i., p. 610 ff.
[166:3] Greenwood, Cathedra Petri, i., 205.
[166:4] Can. 4, 5, 7.
[167:1] The Council of Sardica was not recognised, however,
either by the churches of the East or of Africa.
[167:2] Mansi, iii., 624.
[167:3] Cod. Theod. Novell., tit. xxix., Suppl., p. 12; Robinson,
Readings, i., 72. The same power was conferred by the Council of
Chalcedon (451) on the Bishop of Constantinople. Canon 9.
[167:4] Ep. 13; Robinson, Readings, i., 72.
[167:5] Ep. 9.
[167:6] Greenwood, i., 270-279.
[168:1] Hard., Concil., i., 947.
[168:2] Ep. 209.
[168:3] Ep. 4, c. 5.
[168:4] Lea, Stud. in Ch. Hist., 139.
[169:1] Berington and Kirk, Faith of Catholics, ii., 1-112.
[170:1] Migne, xi.; Optatus, lib. ii., c. 2, 3; lib. vii., c. 3. Mileve is
in Numidia.
[170:2] De Excidio Satyri, i., 47; Mansi, Concil., iii., cal. 622.
[170:3] Jerome, Ep. 15, 146; Greenwood, i., 232.
[170:4] Ps. contra Don.; Ep. 178; Greenwood, i., 296.
[170:5] Ignatius, Martyrs, n. 4; Hom. ii. in Principium Actorum, n.
6, iii., p. 70; Theodoret, Ep. 83, 113, 116; Cyril, Ep. ad Coelest.

61. [171:1] Canon 6; Gieseler, i., 378. Later an interpolation made
canon 6 read: "Rome has always held the primacy." First used at
Chalcedon in 451.
[171:2] Canons 3, 4, and 5; Mansi, iii., 23; Sardica was not a
universal council.
[171:3] Milman, i., 101. Cf. Hefele, i., 539; Greenwood, i., 239,
240.
[171:4] Mansi, Concil., iii., cal. 622.
[172:1] Gieseler, i., 385, 395, 396; Schaff, iii., 313.
[172:2] Matt. xvi., 19; xviii., 18; 1 Cor. v., 3-5; 2 Cor. vi., 14, 17;
Rom. xvi., 17; Gal. i., 8, 9; Tit. iii., 10; 1 Thess. iii., 6, 14, 15.
[173:1] Hard., Concil., i., 1025.
[173:2] Gieseler, i., 382; Milman, i., 129.
[173:3] Robinson, Readings, i., 68.
[174:1] Bower, i., 383.
[174:2] Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers, 2d ser., xii., 70, Letter 43.
[174:3] Robinson, Readings, i., 72.
[174:4] Ibid., 73.
[175:1] Lateran, Vatican, St. Paul, St. Agnes, St. Lawrence, and
St. Marcellinus.
[177:1] Euseb., Eccl. Hist., v., 24.
[177:2] On Modesty, in Lib. of Ante-Nic. Fathers, xviii.
[177:3] Hippolytus, Refutation of Heresies, ix., 7.
[177:4] Greenwood, i., 109.
[177:5] Ibid., 121 ff.
[178:1] Boyd, W. K., Eccles. Edicts of the Theodos. Code, N. Y.,
1906.
[179:1] Can. 9. Later the same procedure was adopted at
Constantinople.
[179:2] Cod. Theod., c. 16.
[179:3] Robinson, Readings, i., 72.
[179:4] Greenwood, i., 324.
[179:5] Cod. Justin., i., tit. 2.

62. [180:1] Greenwood, Cathedra Petri, ii., 137.
[180:2] Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxvii., c. 3.
[180:3] Gieseler, i., 219; Schaff, iii., 68, 69.
[180:4] Hutton, W. H., The Church and the Barbarians, N. Y.,
1906.
[181:1] Apolog. contra Arian, 21-26; Euseb., Soc., and Soz.
[181:2] Smith and Wace, iii., 532.
[181:3] Ibid., i., 783.
[181:4] Robinson, Readings, i., 68.
[182:1] Hard., Concil., i., 995.
[182:2] Milman, i., 143, 4.
[182:3] 1st Epist., ii., ch. 3; Lea, Studies in Ch. Hist., 133; Hard.,
Concil., i., 1025.
[182:4] Smith and Wace, iii., 652; Post-Nicene Fathers, xii.;
Greenwood, i., bk. 2, ch. 4-6; Milman, i., bk. 2, ch. 4; Schaff, iii.,
314.
[183:1] Thatcher and McNeal, Source-Book of Med. Hist., No. 35.
Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers, 2d ser., xii., contains his life and letters.
See sermon by Leo I. on Peter's leadership in Robinson, Readings,
i., 69; Orr, Source Book, § 10.
[184:1] Hilary, Archbishop of Arles, was excommunicated and
Emperor Valentinian III. was induced to uphold the action.
Greenwood, i., 351 ff.
[185:1] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, iv., 421; Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, 2d ser., xii., contains Gregory's letters and sermons;
Gregory of Tours; Bede; Snow, St. Gregory the Great; Barmby,
Gregory the Great; Hutton, Church of the Sixth Century; Neander,
iii., 112; Hallam, 328.
[185:2] Gregory of Tours, x., 1.
[186:1] Soon many poetical tales were imputed to him. It was
said a new stomach was given him so he could fast. An angel
visited him disguised as a sailor. Milman, ii., 45. Read Bede for the
story which led to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. For his
treatment of the monk Justus see Milman, i., 432. Cf.
Montalembert, ii., 84-87; Dict. Christ. Biog., ii., 779.

63. [187:1] Epistle v. in Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers, xii., 74.
[188:1] Milman, ii., 44.
[189:1] Ep., ix., 12; xiii., 45.
[189:2] Ep., viii., 30; ix., 12.
[189:3] Milman, ii., 72; Ep., vii., 31.
[189:4] Milman, ii., 81.
[189:5] He created the Gregorian chant, instituted singing
schools, minutely described the ceremonies, prescribed the
variety and change of garments, and laid down the order of
processions. The duties of priests and deacons were outlined and
their parishes defined.
[190:1] Ep., iii., 34, 50.
[190:2] Ep., xi., 54.
[190:3] It was also reported that he fed 3000 virgins.
[191:1] Epistle xxx. in Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers, xii., 154.
[191:2] Ibid., 82, 130, 243.
[192:1] This was an exposition of the Book of Job, Ep. 49.
[192:2] Bryce, 150.
[192:3] Adams, Civ. of M. A., 230.
[192:4] Hallam, 329.
[193:1] Gieseler, i., 382; Milman, i., 128.
[193:2] Hefele, iii., 20. In the early Church "pope," or "papa" or
"abba," was applied to all clergy. Schaff, iii., 300. "Pope" is still
used for all priests in the Greek Church and "father" in the Latin
Church. See Cyprian, Ep., viii., 1.
[193:3] Stewards, secretaries, nurses, and undertakers were
regarded as being in a sense members of the lower clergy. Schaff,
iii., 262.
[193:4] For biblical authority see Luke xv., 10; Rev. viii., 3, 4.
[193:5] Began in the second century.
[194:1] Hard., Concil., ii., 612.

65. CHAPTER XI
MONASTICISM
Outline: I.—Importance of the institution of monasticism.
II.—Antecedents and analogies. III.—Causes of the origin
of Christian monasticism. IV.—Evolution of Christian
monasticism. V.—Spread of group monasticism from the
East to the West. VI.—Development of monasticism in
Western Europe. VII.—Opposition to monasticism. VIII.—
Result and influences of monasticism. IX.—Sources.
Monasticism, the story of which is one of the strangest problems in
Church history and is enshrouded in legend, originated outside the
Church, but soon became the dominant factor in the Church. It was
not the product of Christianity so much as an inheritance—an
adopted child. It supported the orthodox faith,
[198:1]
upheld the
papal theory, monopolised ecclesiastical offices, helped to mould the
Church constitution, and supplied the great standing army of the
Popes. It was a determining factor in European civilisation. The
monk was the ideal man of the Middle Ages. He stood for the
highest morality and best culture of that period. As a missionary he
planted the Church over Western Europe. He stood between the laity
and the hierarchy, as the friend of the former and the champion of
the latter. He created the system of public charity and had a marked
influence on industry and agriculture. Before long a monk sat in the
chair of St. Peter and sought to rule the Church. The first series of
great ecclesiastical reforms was produced by the hermits in the
fourth century, the Benedictines in the sixth, the Clugniacs in the
eleventh, and the Begging Orders in the thirteenth. Monasticism,
therefore, was a very important institution in the rise of the Church.
Monasticism originated in antiquity and was based on a general
principle broader than any creed. It grew out of that mystical longing

66. for an uninterrupted inner enjoyment of the soul—out of a passion
for self-brooding, and out of an abnormal view of the seclusion
necessary for the cultivation of the true religious life, which would
save the soul from sin. It was simply an effort to explain the riddle of
existence and to comprehend the true relations of God, man, and
the world. Every great religion has expressed itself in some form of
monasticism. Centuries before Jesus there were monks and crowded
convents among the Hindoos. The sacred writings of the ancient
Hindoos (2400 B.C.) reveal many legends about holy hermits, and
give ascetic rules.
[199:1]
Buddha, who founded his faith possibly six
centuries B.C., enjoined celibacy on his priests.
[199:2]
Alexander the
Great found monasticism flourishing in the East. In Greece the
"Pagan Jesuits," the Pythagoreans, were a kind of ascetic order.
[199:3]
Plato, with his powerful appeal for the ideal life, had a
marked influence upon the ascetic views of the early Christians, and
Neo-Platonism became a positive force in Christendom during the
third and fourth centuries. The priestesses of Delphic Apollo, Achaian
Juno, and Scythian Diana were virgins.
[200:1]
In Judea the ancient
Nazarites
[200:2]
afford an example. The Essenes seem to be the
direct forerunners of Christian monasticism.
[200:3]
In addition there
were conspicuous individual examples in Jewish history like that of
Elisha, Elijah, Samuel, and John the Baptist.
[200:4]
In Rome the
name of vestal virgin was a proverb. In Egypt, the priests of Serapis
were ascetics,
[200:5]
the priestesses of Ceres were separated from
their husbands,
[200:6]
and the Therapeutæ were rigid monks who
lived about the time of Jesus.
[200:7]
These influences and examples, coupled with Platonic philosophy,
and the interpretation put upon the teachings and lives of Jesus and
His Apostles, produced Christian monasticism. Jesus Himself was
unmarried, poor, and had not "where to lay his head." He
commanded the rich young man to sell his property for the poor,
[200:8]
and said: "Take no thought for the morrow what ye shall eat
and what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed." St.

67. John and probably other Apostles were celibates.
[200:9]
The Apostles
likewise taught that following Jesus meant "forsaking father, mother,
brethren, wife, children, houses and lands."
[201:1]
They urged
Christians to crucify the flesh, and disparaged marriage,
[201:2]
and
they too were poor and homeless like their Master.
[201:3]
The supreme question asked by earnest Christians in all ages has
been this: "What is the true, the ideal Christian life?"
[201:4]
At every
step of her progress the Church has given a different answer to the
important query. Yet in all this divergent opinion there is plainly seen
one common conviction. To live in the service of God, in the religious
denunciation of the world, and in the abnegation of the joys of life—
that is the universal reply. In the early Church this position was very
strongly emphasised and led, in consequence, to the rise of
monasticism. Hence it may be said that the monastic ideals simply
expressed the highest ideals of the Church, and the history of
monasticism becomes a vital part of the history of the mediæval
Church.
It must be remembered, too, that the old belief that the Church was
poor, pure, and wholly spiritual until the time of Constantine is a
false tradition. The secularisation and materialisation of the Church
was so noticeable as to cause complaint as early as the third
century. The Church Fathers unanimously deplore the precocious
decay of the Christian world.
[201:5]
To the minds of many, therefore,
the only way to escape the damning effects of contamination with
the Roman world, the only way to elude the evils in the Church itself,
and the only sure way of leading the ideal Christian life was to flee
from villages and cities to the mountains and deserts. "They fled not
only from the world, but from the world within the Church." When
Christianity was drawn from the catacombs to the court of the
Cæsars, it lost its power to regenerate souls. That memorable
alliance hindered neither the ruin of the Empire, nor "the servitude
and mutilation of the Church."
[202:1]
Associated with the power that
so long sought to destroy her, the Church was brought face to face

68. with the tremendous task of transforming and replacing the Empire.
At the same time the Church made a desperate attempt, though in
vain, to keep alive the spiritual torches of apostolic Christianity. The
solution of that great problem, however, was left to the monks.
The philosophy which prevailed among many of the early Christians
held that the material world is all evil, and that the spiritual world is
the only good. Gnosticism, which permeated Christendom in the
second century, declared that the body is the seat of evil and hence
that it must be abused in order to purify the soul within.
[202:2]
Montanism advocated an excessive puritanism, and prescribed
numerous fasts and severities, which paved the way for asceticism.
Other groups of Christian philosophers exercised similar influences.
[202:3]
The Church itself commended fasting and other practices for
the cultivation of spiritual benefit. Celibacy of the clergy gradually
became the rule. As a result the belief soon developed that the
surest way to gain eternal joys in heaven was to turn away from the
transitory pleasures of earth. Christianity in the first and second
centuries was the gospel of renunciation and resurrection. The next
logical step was to make the body as miserable as possible here—
sort of a pious sacrifice—in order to make the soul happier hereafter.
To die that one might really live, to find one's life in losing it—that
became the supreme purpose of earthly existence. The most
eminent of the early Fathers commended asceticism, particularly
fasting and celibacy, and many likewise practised it. It is easy to feel
that the air was charged with ascetic ideals. The literature, the
philosophy, and the religion of the day all pointed out narrow paths
that led to holiness. As a result there were many ascetics of both
sexes, although they were bound by no irrevocable vow.
[203:1]
The persecutions of Christians by the Roman government forced
many to flee for safety to the deserts and mountains.
[203:2]
Thus
Paul of Thebes and St. Anthony fled in the Decian persecutions
about the year 250. When persecution ceased, martyrdom had
become such a holy act, and such a short, easy road to a sainted,
eternal life, that the most devout resolved that since they could not

69. die as martyrs, they would at least live as martyrs. The mildness of
the climate in Egypt and Palestine, where the small amount of food
and clothing needed for subsistence was easily procured, made
those regions the birthplace of monasticism. The growth of
worldliness in the Church, with the increase of numbers and wealth,
gave rise to many cries for reform. The legalisation and, along with
it, the paganisation of the Church gave birth to much that was
bitterly denounced. The union of the Church and state was the
climax—the Church was no longer the "bride of Christ," it was held,
but the mistress of a worldly ruler. Hence monasticism turned its
back not only on the world but also on the Church. To understand it,
therefore, it must be viewed as the first great reformation in the
Church—a desire to return to simple, pure, spiritual, apostolic
Christianity.
[204:1]
Christian monasticism did not begin at any fixed time or place. It
was slowly evolved as a curious mixture of heathen, Jewish, and
Christian influences. The whole Church had an ascetic aspect during
the apostolic age, hence endurance, hardihood, and constant self-
denial were required of its members. But for one hundred and fifty
years no proofs of a distinct class of ascetics can be found within the
Church, except, perhaps, the order of widows, devoted to charity,
supported by gifts from the faithful, and sanctioned by the Apostles.
[204:2]
In the second century, however, a class of orthodox
Christians, who desired to attain Christian perfection, were called
"abstinents" or "ascetics." They withdrew from society but not from
the Church, renounced marriage and property, fasted and prayed,
and eagerly sought a martyr's death.
[204:3]
The belief that the end
of the world was near no doubt did much to emphasise the necessity
of preparing for the day of judgment. By the third century the
Christian literature, philosophy, and theology were tinged with
asceticism. Cyprian, Origen, Hieracus, Methodius, Tertullian, and
others taught the efficacy of asceticism in one form or another and,
to some extent, practised it themselves,
[205:1]
but always within the
Church. The heretical sects became still more prominent in their

70. reverence for austerities and even outdid the orthodox in practice.
[205:2]
This first stage of asceticism was neither organised, nor
absolutely cut off from the Church.
The product of this wide-spread ascetic agitation was the creation of
a new type, namely, anchoretism, or hermit life, about the middle of
the third century. This was the second phase of monastic evolution.
It appeared first in Egypt about the fourth century, where the
physical conditions were most suitable, in the home of the
Therapeutæ and Serapis monks, the stronghold of heresy and
paganism, the birthplace of Neo-Platonism amid a people famous for
fanaticism. The Decian persecution in 250 was, apparently, the
immediate occasion for its birth. Anthony of Alexandria, and Ammon
were the earliest representatives of this new form of asceticism. Paul
of Thebes, however, is now generally believed to be a pious romance
from the pen of Jerome, but he may still be viewed as typical.
Anthony (251-356), the "patriarch of the monks," was the real
founder of anchoretism. He early sold his estate for the poor, gave
his sister to a body of virgins, and cut himself off from the world by
retiring to a desert in order to devote his life to spiritual things. He
lived as a strict hermit till a great age, gained a world-wide fame,
had many visitors seeking spiritual guidance, and won many
converts to monasticism. Soon the wildest tales were told about his
divine powers. Before he died Egypt was full of hermits, and some
were found in Palestine. Athanasius wrote his biography, which was
read over all Christendom and scattered seeds of anchoretism
everywhere—a book which influenced the thought of the age.
Ammon had a settlement of possibly 5000 hermits at Mount Nitria in
Lower Egypt and was almost as renowned as Anthony, his great
contemporary.
[206:1]
The example of these illustrious characters drew thousands of both
the curious and the sincere to Egypt.
[206:2]
Whole congregations, led
by their bishops, withdrew to the desert for salvation.
[206:3]
Priests
fled from the obligations of their office.
[206:4]
By the fourth century

71. that land was full of hermits. Their life was of a negative character,
founded on abstinence and bodily abuse—a holy rivalry of self-
torture and suicidal austerities. These practices may be divided into
four classes: dietetic, sexual, social, and spiritual.
(1) From a dietetic standpoint the hermits either fasted, or ate the
simplest foods, or consumed the smallest quantities. Thus the
renowned Isidore of Alexandria never ate meat, and often at the
table would burst into tears for shame at the thought that he who
was destined to eat angel's food in Paradise should have to eat the
material food of animals. Macarius ate but once a week. His son
lived three years on five ounces of bread a day and seven years on
raw vegetables. Alos boasted that up to his eighteenth year he never
ate bread. Symeon ate but once daily and in fast time not at all.
Heliodorus often fasted seven days at a time. In Mesopotamia a
group of hermits lived on grass.
[207:1]
(2) Sexually the hermits believed either in absolute virginity or in
abstinence.
(3) The social and domestic vagaries of anchoretism assumed many
forms. The hermits fled from the society of the world; deserted
friends and family; courted the company of wild beasts
[207:2]
; lived
in caves, dried-up wells, swamps, rude huts, tombs, and on the
summits of solitary columns, or wandered about without fixed
homes.
[207:3]
A monk named Akepsismas lived sixty years in the
same cell without seeing or speaking to any person and was finally
shot for a wolf. Some hermits wore no clothing,
[207:4]
and thus
exposed the body to the broiling sun and to biting insects. Macarius,
to atone for killing a gnat, lay naked six months in a swamp and was
so badly stung that he was mistaken for a leper.
[207:5]
Others wore
hair shirts, carried heavy weights suspended from the body, slept in
thorn bushes, against a pillar, in cramped quarters, or deprived
themselves altogether of sleep. Many never washed their faces nor
cared for their hair, beards, teeth, and nails. With them filthiness
seemed to be next to godliness. Anthony and Hilarion scorned either

72. to cut or to comb their hair except at Easter, or to wash their hands
and faces. St. Abraham never washed his face for fifty years—yet his
biographer proudly says, "His face reflected the purity of his soul."
Theodosius like a second Moses, had a stream of water burst from a
rock that his thirsty monks might drink. One wicked fellow,
overcome by a pitiable weakness for cleanliness, took a bath, when,
lo! the stream dried up. Thereupon the frightened and repentant
monks promised never to insult heaven by using water for that
purpose again, and after a year of waiting a second miracle gave
them a fresh supply.
(4) A sincere desire for spiritual improvement expressed itself in
various practices. Prayer was perhaps the most common means to
that end, and it was believed that number and duration counted the
most. Paul the Simple repeated three hundred prayers a day and
counted them with pebbles. A certain famous virgin added four
hundred to that number daily. Some spent all day and others all
night in prayer. Meditation and contemplation were generally
employed. Preaching and singing were common forms of religious
activity. Studying and writing engaged those of a more scholarly
bent of mind.
Out of this unorganised anchoretism there grew, by the latter part of
the third century, a crude form of group monasticism. This was the
third stage in the progress of monastic life. Such renowned hermits
as St. Anthony in Upper Egypt, Ammon at Mount Nitria, Joannes in
Thebaid, Macarius in the Scetische Desert, and Hilarion in the Gaza
Desert each had a coterie of imitators imbued with a common
purpose and with a profound respect for their leader; but no uniform
rules governed them at first. As time passed, however, the necessity
of regulating the various relations of so many became apparent.
[209:1]
The organisations of the Essenes and Therapeutæ may have
served as models. At Mount Nitria the monks by common
arrangement lived in separate cells, but had a dining room and a
chapel for all.
[209:2]
Pachomius (282-346), a converted heathen
soldier, of little education, a pupil of Palæmon for twelve years,

73. created the first monastic rule and organised at Tabenna on the Nile
the first monastic congregation (322), while his sister formed the
first convent at Tabenisi. This first walled monastery had many cells
built to accommodate three monks in each. Membership was
guarded by three years' probation on severe discipline. The monks
met in silence for one daily meal and wore white hoods so as not to
see each other. They prayed thirty-six times daily, worked with their
hands indoors and out, and wore over their linen underclothes white
goat skins day and night. They were ruled by "priors" chosen on
merit from the twenty-four classes of monks.
[209:3]
At the head of
the whole system stood an abbot.
[209:4]
When Pachomius died (346)
he had established nine cloisters with 3000 monks. He called them
all together twice a year, and paid them annual visits. By 400 the
monks numbered 50,000.
[209:5]
The great Athanasius visited
Tabenna to inspect the system and to study the operation of this
epoch-making rule.
From Tabenna organised monasticism spread over Egypt and then to
nearly every province in the Roman Empire by the end of the fourth
century.
[210:1]
In the Holy Land laboured Hilarion,
[210:2]
Epiphanius,
[210:3]
Hesycas,
[210:4]
the Bethlehem brothers,
[210:5]
Ammonius,
[210:6]
Silvanus, and Zacharias. Jerome, the celebrated Church
Father, with Paula, a rich Roman widow, left Rome for the East. After
studying monasticism in Egypt they located at Bethlehem (386).
There Jerome studied the Scriptures and ruled a large crowd of
monks, while Paula became the head of a convent for girls. Melania
built a convent on the Mount of Olives and ruled fifty virgins (375).
Goddana and Elias laboured on the lower Jordan.
In Asia Minor laboured, conspicuous among many, Eustathius who
first prescribed a monastic dress, Basil the Great (c. 379) who
originated the monastic vow,
[210:7]
the famous Nilus (c. 430), and
the hated hermit Marcus (c. 431). Syria was renowned for at least a
dozen hermits, the most celebrated being Simeon Stylites (c. 459),
[210:8]
the pillar saint. From Egypt and Asia the institution spread to

74. Greece and became quite general by the fourth century. The most
famous cloister was that of Studium (460) at Constantinople. The
islands of the Adriatic and Tuscan Sea were soon covered with
monasteries swarming with monks.
[210:9]
The fourth and most important step is found in the development of
the institution in western Europe.
Athanasius, a hero and oracle to the Western Church, on a tour to
Rome in 340, carried with him from Egypt two specimens of hermits.
[211:1]
His Life of Anthony was soon translated into Latin. The West
had already heard about the institution, and many individuals had
visited the most celebrated hermits in Egypt. After 340 many men
and women began to give enthusiastic support to the new
institution. Eusebius (c. 370) lived by rule with his clergy under one
roof at Vercelli in northern Italy.
[211:2]
Ambrose fostered it in and
around Milan.
[211:3]
Paul of Nola (c. 431) lived in Campagna.
Conspicuous examples were found among the Roman virgins and
widows.
[211:4]
Marcella in Rome turned her palace into a convent.
[211:5]
Paula and her whole family lived as ascetics. The widow Lea
was an active worker.
[211:6]
Melania devoted her fortune to the
cause. Many of the nobles of Rome likewise became converts to the
new idea.
[211:7]
Jerome and Rufinus were conspicuous examples of
those devotees who by precept and practice soon popularised
monasticism throughout Italy. Convents for both sexes were soon
founded.
[211:8]
From Rome Augustine carried the institution back to
north-western Africa. When Cassian (c. 448) left Egypt and planted
two monasteries at Marseilles, he found monks already in France.
Martin, the Bishop of Tours, turned his episcopal palace into a
monastery, and at his death (400) 2000 monks followed him to the
grave.
[212:1]
Poitiers, Lyons, and Treves, together with the bordering
mountains, were soon scenes of monastic activity. Donatus, an
African monk, early carried the new faith to Spain where it soon
became so popular that by 380 a synod forbade priests dressing as
monks. Athanasius, who lived at Treves as an exile, probably

75. introduced it into Germany. The British Isles had a flourishing system
long before the mission of Augustine. By the fifth century, therefore,
monasticism had been firmly planted over all western Europe.
[212:2]
Although western monasticism was an offspring of the eastern type,
yet the child differed much from the parent. Anchoretism gained but
little foothold in the West because of climatic and ethnic differences.
The group type was dominant in the West, and extremes and
excesses were absent. No pillar saints and other conspicuous
fanatics were found there.
[212:3]
Western monasticism was a more
practical system, an economic factor, a powerful missionary machine,
an educational agency, and the pioneer of civilisation. It was not a
negative force, but very aggressive and made history. It led all the
great reform movements. It was uniform in spirit, though widely
divergent in form. In some cases monks were under abbots each
with his own rule; others had no fixed abode—and many of them
were tramps of the worst description, living on their holy calling.
[213:1]
Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and many other Fathers have
left sufficient complaints about the growing monastic disorders. The
need of a common rule, therefore, was generally felt in order to
unify the highly varied, and in part highly doubtful forms of
monasticism.
Early efforts were made to meet that need. Jerome translated the
rule of Pachomius into Latin and it was used in parts of Italy. Rufinus
brought the rule of Basil the Great to Rome and it was adopted in
southern Italy and in Gaul. The rule of Macarius was at least known
in the West. Cassian (c. 448) was the first, however, to write out for
the cruder western institution a detailed constitution (c. 429). He
had studied monasticism in Egypt and drew up a very complete rule
which covered all the essential phases of cloister life. It was used in
many cloisters till the ninth century. During this early unorganised
period Popes, councils, and even secular powers often tried to
control and regulate monasticism.
The great organiser and unifier of western monasticism, however,
was St. Benedict (d. 543), "the patriarch of the monks of the west."

76. [213:2]
Born of rich parents at Nursia in 480, he was sent to Rome to
complete his education. There he became disgusted with the vice
about him, fled from college, family, and fortune, and at the age of
sixteen, retired to a cave at Subiaco thirty miles from Rome. He
became a severe ascetic, wore a hair shirt and a monk's dress of
skins, rolled in beds of thistles to subdue the flesh, and chose to be
ignorant and holy rather than educated and wicked. His fame soon
attracted disciples and he established twelve monasteries, with a
dozen monks and a superior in each, but all under his own
supervision. Later he left Subiaco and went to Monte Cassino where
he spent the closing years of his remarkable career. Monte Cassino
became the capital of western monasticism.
To control his monks Benedict drew up in 529 the "Holy Rule,"
[214:1]
which became the basis for all western monastic orders and was a
rival of St. Basil's rule in the East. The "Holy Rule" was the product
of Benedict's own sad experience as hermit, cenobite, and superior,
and also of his observations concerning the monastic laxness which
he saw on all hands. It consists of a prologue and chapters on
seventy-three governmental, social, moral, liturgical, and penal
subjects. The whole spirit and aim of the Rule were constructive and
reformatory. It provided for an organisation monarchial at the top
and democratic at the bottom. Each monastery had an abbot elected
for life by all the monks to rule the monastery in the place of Christ.
The abbot chose the prior and deans, on the basis of merit, with the
approval of the monks, but minor officials were named directly by
the abbot. The important business affairs of the monastery were
conducted by the abbot in consultation with all the monks, but minor
matters required only the advice of the superior officers. Admission
was open to all ranks and classes of men above eighteen on an
equal footing after one year's probation. The two fundamental
principles in this constitution were labour and obedience. Indolence
was branded as the enemy of the soul. Each candidate had to take
the vow of obedience and constancy to the order; chastity and
poverty of course being implied. A monk's day was minutely
regulated, according to the seasons, and consisted of an alternation

77. of manual work, study, and worship, with short intervals for food and
rest. Labour was thus regulated in the monastery somewhat as in an
industrial penitentiary. The frugal meal was eaten in silence while
some edifying selection was read. The monks had to renounce the
world and give all the fruits of their labours to the monastery.
Obedience was regarded as the most meritorious and essential
condition of all. Monasticism meant a generous sacrifice of self and
implied a surrender of the will to a superior. The monk must obey
not only the abbot but also the requests of his brethren. Monks were
treated as children grown up. They could not own property—not
even the smallest trifles; they were not allowed to walk abroad at
will; if sent away, they could not eat without the abbot's permission;
they could not receive letters from home; and they were sent to bed
early. Once in the order the vow of stability prevented withdrawal. A
violation of any of the regulations entailed punishment: private
admonition, exclusion from common prayer, whipping, and
expulsion.
This Rule, all things considered, was mild, flexible, and general; with
order, proportion, and regularity, yet brief, concise, and well
tempered to the needs of western Europe
[215:1]
; hence like Aaron's
rod it soon swallowed up the other rules in use. Before 600 it was
supreme in Italy. In 788 the Council of Aachen ordered it and no
other to be used throughout the kingdom of Charles the Great. In
the ninth century it superseded the Isidore rule in Spain. It
embraced likewise the Columban rule in western Europe and by the
tenth century prevailed everywhere. Under it the Benedictines had a
remarkable history. At one time they had 37,000 monasteries and
altogether produced 24 Popes, 200 cardinals, 4000 bishops, and
55,505 saints.
[216:1]
The Benedictine monasteries differed from later
monastic bodies in the fact that they were quite independent of each
other and had no common head. After the thirteenth century they
were surpassed by the Begging Orders and devoted themselves
mostly to literary pursuits, soon becoming "more noted for learning
than piety." Their edition of the Church Fathers is a monument of

78. scholarly industry.
[216:2]
The order still exists, chiefly in Austria and
Italy, and is noted mostly for its classical learning. They boast of
16,000 distinguished writers.
These early monasteries were like swarming bees in planting
monastic societies in every part of western Europe. The passion
grew until it became a veritable madness which seized the pious and
lawless alike. Popes like Gregory I. praised the institution and
promoted its interest in every possible way. Even kings like Carloman
of the Franks, Rochis of the Lombards, great statesmen like
Cassiodorus, and others voluntarily became monks. Louis the Pious,
the Roman Emperor, was prevented from that course only by his
nobles.
[216:3]
The monk was the leader and pattern of the Middle
Ages. Every father was ambitious to have his son enter that holy
calling. To the quiet and peaceful abode of the monastery, therefore,
went not only the pious, but the student, those who disliked the
soldier's life, the disconsolate, the disgraced, the disappointed, the
indolent, and the weary. And this powerful organisation was utterly
under the control of the great Roman Bishop and his subordinates.
The remarkable growth of monasticism brought great wealth and
political power, which were used in large measure to strengthen the
Church. Kings and nobles made large grants of lands—especially
Charles the Great and Louis the Pious. Besides many monks brought
their possessions as gifts to the monastery and not infrequently
powerful abbots took lands by force. Monasticism thus gradually
became secularised and also feudalised. Monasteries were often
used as prisons for deposed kings, criminals, and clergy convicted of
crime. The abbots were virtually secular lords who ruled as local
sovereigns, claimed immunity from tolls and taxes, went hunting and
hawking, and even fought at the head of their troops. As a result the
office of abbot became a coveted prize, for the younger and the
illegitimate sons of nobles.
[217:1]
What effect this secularisation had
upon the high ideals may be easily seen. Soon only certain
ceremonies distinguished the monks from the secular clergy.

79. The monks as such belong to the laity. Monasticism was viewed as a
lay institution as late as the Council of Chalcedon (451)
[217:2]
when
the legal authority of the bishop over the monks of his diocese was
recognised. The monks were called religiosi in contrast to the
seculares, the priests. The monks were the "regulars" who formed
the spiritual nobility and not the ruling class in the hierarchy. They
formed another grade in the hierarchy between the clergy and the
laity. But after the fifth century the difference became less marked.
Since monasticism was considered the perfection of Christian life, it
was natural to choose the clergy from the monks. Gregory the Great
was the first monk to be elected Pope. Monasteries were the
theological seminaries to supply priests for the Church, hence the
ignorant clergy looked up to the educated monks. Still monks at first,
because not ordained, could not say mass nor hear confession. Each
monastery kept a priest or an ordained monk to fulfil these duties.
Abbots were usually in priestly orders.
[218:1]
In time, however,
monks assumed the dress of priests and became ambitious for
priestly powers,
[218:2]
especially after the Council of Chalcedon,
backed by the state, gave bishops jurisdiction over cloisters. Often
monasteries applied to the Pope for independence from episcopal
jurisdiction and were taken under the immediate protection of the
Bishop of Rome. By the sixth century monks were classed in the
popular mind with the clergy. In 827 a council at Rome ordered that
abbots should be in priests' orders. Monks now began to sit in and to
control Church synods, and to exercise all the rights of the secular
clergy, even to having parishes,
[218:3]
and thus became powerful
rivals of the established priesthood.
The crystallisation of ascetic ideals into monastic institutions was
attacked by heathenism and did not meet the unanimous approval of
Christendom. Before Constantine the pagans denounced the hermits
because they were guilty of the treasonable act, from a Roman view,
of fleeing from social and civic duties. After Constantine, when
monasticism became the "fad," it was assailed by the aristocratic
pagan families, who lost sons, and especially wives and daughters,

80. in the maelstrom of enthusiasm, because it broke family ties and
caused the neglect of obvious responsibilities. Julian, the imperial
pagan reactionist, called it fanaticism and idolatry. Pagan poets like
Libanus and Rutilius denounced it as an institution "hostile to light."
Within Christendom hostility came from Christian rulers like Valens,
because monasticism withdrew civil and military strength from the
state, when all was needed against the barbarians, and because it
encouraged idleness and unproductiveness instead of useful activity
and heroic virtue
[219:1]
; from Christians of wealth and indulgence
who felt rebuked by the earnestness, poverty, and holy zeal of an
ascetic life; from the clergy who did not comprehend the significance
of monasticism
[219:2]
; and from the liberal party in the Church who
took a saner view of salvation and ethics. Jovinian (d. 406), like
Luther, first a monk and then a reformer, held these five points
according to Jerome: (1) that virgins, widows, and wives are all on
an equality if good Christians; (2) that thankfully partaking of food is
as efficacious as fasting; (3) that spiritual baptism is as effectual in
overcoming the devil as baptism; (4) that all sins are equal; (5) that
all rewards and punishments will be equal. Jerome answered him
and Pope Siricius excommunicated him and his followers as heretics
(390).
[220:1]
Helvidius of Rome denounced the reverence for
celibacy and declared that the marriage state was as holy as that of
virginity. Again Jerome wielded his intellectual cudgel.
[220:2]
Bonasus, Bishop of Sardica, was excommunicated for holding the
same view (389). Vigilantius, an educated Gallic slave, a disciple of
Jovinian, attacked the necessity of celibacy, denied the efficacy of
virginity, opposed fasting and torture, ridiculed relics, objected to
candles, incense, and prayers for the dead, and doubted miracles.
He was a Protestant living in the fifth century.
[220:3]
He too was
assailed by Jerome and put under the papal ban.
[220:4]
Ærius of
Sebasta, a presbyter, called into question the need or value of fasts,
prayers for the dead, the inequality of rank among the clergy, and
the celebration of Easter and of course was outlawed by the Church.
[220:5]
Lactantius declared that the hermit life was that of a beast

81. rather than a man and treasonable to society. But all these loud
outcries against the monks were branded as heresy and drowned in
counter-shouts of praise.
When the results and influences of monasticism are carefully
weighed, it is seen that the good and evil "are blended together
almost inextricably." These diametrically opposite effects are
perplexing and astonishing. Conspicuous among the positive results
are the following:
1. Religious. The effort to save pure Christianity from the secularised
state-Church by carrying it to the desert or shutting it up in a
monastery, produced the first great reform movement within the
Christian Church. "It was always the monks who saved the Church
when sinking, emancipated her when becoming enslaved to the
world, defended her when assailed."
[221:1]
Monasticism was,
therefore, a realisation of the ideal in Christianity. In no small sense
it likewise paved the way for the Reformation of the sixteenth
century. The monastic conquest of Christianity left in its train higher
ideals of a holy Christian life and a keener religious enthusiasm, and
emphasised the necessity of humility and purity. Likewise
monasticism, through its aggressive missionary efforts, completed
the overthrow of heathenism in the Empire and in its stead planted
the true faith over western Europe. The monks were the fiercest
champions of orthodoxy, and the intellectual giants of that age, like
Jerome and St. Augustine, were in their ranks. The monk rather than
the priest was the apostle of the Middle Ages who taught men and
nations the simple Christian life of the Gospel. In monasticism were
developed the germs of many humanitarian institutions through
which Christianity expressed itself in a most practical manner. The
monastery offered a home to the poor and unfortunate, and gave
hope and refuge to both the religious invalid, who was sick of the
world, and to the religious fanatic. The Papacy, too, was supported
and strengthened in a thousand different ways by monasticism, and
the whole religious history of the Middle Ages was coloured by it.

82. 2. Social. Monasticism tended to purify and regenerate society with
lofty ideas. It became an unexcelled machine for the administration
of charity. It fed the hungry, cared for the sick and dying,
entertained the traveller, and was an asylum for all the unfortunates.
It helped to mitigate the terrors of slavery. It inculcated ideas of
obedience and usefulness. It advocated and practised equality and
communism, and it tutored the half-civilised nations of western
Europe in the arts of peace.
3. Political. In its organisation and practical life it kept alive ideas of
democracy. From the ranks of the monks came many of the best
statesmen in the various European governments. Monastic zeal had
much to do in saving the Roman Empire from utter destruction at
the hands of the barbarians and in helping to preserve imperial ideas
until the rough Teutons were Latinised in their legal and political
institutions. In addition the monks helped to form the various law
codes of the German tribes, put them into written form, and took an
active part in many forms of local government. In many an instance
they saved the unprotected vassal from the tyrannical noble.
4. Educational. In the monasteries the torches of civilisation and
learning were kept burning during the so-called Dark Ages. The first
musicians, painters, sculptors, architects, and educators of Christian
Europe were monks. They not only established the schools, and
were the schoolmasters in them, but also laid the foundations for
the universities. They were the thinkers and philosophers of the day
and shaped the political and religious thought. To them, both
collectively and individually, was due the continuity of thought and
civilisation of the ancient world with the later Middle Ages and with
the modern period.
5. Industrial. Not only did the monks develop the various arts such
as copying and illuminating books, building religious edifices,
painting, and carving, but they also became the model farmers and
horticulturists of Europe. Every Benedictine monastery was an
agricultural college for the whole region in which it was located. By
making manual labour an essential part of monastic life, labour was

83. greatly ennobled above the disreputable position it held among the
Romans.
The negative effects of monasticism were by no means lacking and
may be stated here under the same institutional headings:
1. Religious. In making "war on nature" the ascetics made war also
on God. They aimed not too high religiously but in the wrong
direction. They exaggerated sin and advocated the wrong means to
get rid of it. They took religion away from the crowded centres of
population, where it was most needed, to the desert or monastery.
Thus an abnormal, unwholesome type of piety was created. In
replacing faith by works the monks thus gave birth to a long list of
abuses in the Church, and in nourishing an insane religious
fanaticism they entailed many grave evils. From one point of view
monasticism became a "morbid excrescence" of Christianity and
tended to degrade man into a mere religious machine. At the same
time the doctrine of future rewards and punishments reached an
abhorrent evolution. The awful pangs of hell, the terrific judgments
of God, and the ubiquitous and wily devil of the monks' vivid
imagination sound strange to a modern mind. But the gravest error
in the monastic system was the false and harmful distinction so
clearly drawn both in theory and practice between the secular and
the religious. The modern world easily harmonises the two.
2. Social. Monasticism disrupted family ties and caused the desertion
of social duties on the ground of a more sacred duty. It lowered
respect for the marriage state by magnifying the virtue of celibacy.
In making the monk the ideal man of the Middle Ages, it advocated
social suicide. All natural pleasures and enjoyments of life were
labelled sinful. Practices, which were little more than superstitions,
were advocated. Society in general was demoralised because
monasticism failed to practise its own teachings.
3. Political. By inducing thousands, and many of them men of
character, ability, and experience, to desert their posts of civic duty,
the state was weakened and patriotism forgotten. The monk "died to
the world" and abjured his country. Monasticism aided powerfully in

84. developing the secular side of the papal hierarchy and soon came to
exercise a large amount of political power itself. The monks
frequently became embroiled in social disputes and military quarrels,
and thus incited rather than allayed the fiercer brute passions of
men.
4. Cultural. By holding the education of the people in their hands the
monks had a powerful weapon for evil as well as good. In making
the monk the ideally cultured man a false standard was set up and
certain fundamentals in education ignored. Secular learning was not
generally encouraged. The supreme end of all their education was
not to produce a man, but a priest.
5. Industrial. Thousands withdrew from the various lines of industrial
activity, some to obtain the higher good, but many to enter as they
supposed a life of ease and idleness. Much of the good that was
done in the earlier days was negatived by the begging friars later.
Of these two sets of influences which predominated? That both were
powerful no one can doubt. All things considered, however, it must
be said that monasticism, as it developed in the West, fulfilled a
genuine need and performed an important service for Christian
civilisation. St. Benedict not only presented a satisfactory solution of
the grave dangers threatening this institution as a force in the
evolution of the mediæval Church, but with his organised army of
devoted, obedient followers, he met the barbarian hosts invading the
Roman Empire and gradually won them to adopt and in due course
of time to practise the Christian code. Indeed it is difficult to imagine
how the Church could have forged its course so triumphantly
through all the breakers, trials, and vicissitudes of this crucial epoch
—how its jurisdiction could have been extended so rapidly and so
effectively to all parts of western Europe and to some points in the
East and in northern Africa—how its great humanising, spiritualising,
and edifying influences could have been so persistent and at the
same time so efficient—how the simple, fundamental truths of the
Gospel as set forth in the Apostolic Church could have been handed
on to the later ages—had not the growth of monasticism been

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