An intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a practice, representation,
expression, knowledge, or skill considered by
UNESCO to be part of a place's
cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soci ...
. Buildings,
historic places,
monuments, and
artifacts are
cultural property. Intangible heritage consists of nonphysical intellectual wealth, such as
folklore,
customs
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs ...
,
beliefs,
traditions, knowledge, and
language.
Intangible cultural heritage is considered by
member states of UNESCO in relation to the tangible
World Heritage focusing on intangible aspects of culture. In 2001, UNESCO made a survey among States and
NGOs to try to agree on a definition, and the
Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was drafted in 2003 for its protection and promotion.
Definition

The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines the intangible cultural heritage as the practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills (including instruments, objects, artifacts,
cultural spaces), that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage. It is sometimes called living cultural heritage, and is manifested in the following domains, among others:
* Oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;
* Performing arts;
* Social practices, rituals and festive events;
* Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;
* Traditional craftsmanship
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soci ...
in general consists of the products and processes of a
culture that are preserved and passed on through the generations. Some of that heritage takes the form of
cultural property, formed by tangible artefacts such as buildings or works of art. Many parts of culture, however are intangible, including
song,
music,
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
drama,
skills, cuisine, crafts and festivals. They are forms of culture that can be recorded but cannot be touched or stored in physical form, like in a museum, but only experienced through a vehicle giving expression to it. These cultural vehicles are called "Human Treasures" by the
UN. The protection of languages, as the largest and most important intangible cultural heritage, should also be mentioned in this context or, according to
Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, important in the age of identity wars, because language in particular can become a target for attack as a symbolic cultural asset.

According to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) – or living heritage – is the mainspring of humanity's
cultural diversity and its maintenance a guarantee for continuing creativity. It is defined as follows:
Intangible Cultural Heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their 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, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.
Oral history
Intangible cultural heritage is slightly different from the discipline of
oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...
, the recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information (specifically,
oral tradition), based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker. ICH attempts to preserve cultural heritage 'with' the people or community by protecting the processes that allow traditions and shared knowledge to be passed on while oral history seeks to collect and preserve historical information obtained from individuals and groups.
Food heritage

With
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
gaining momentum as a priority of UNESCO heritage policies, an increasing number of food-related nominations are being submitted for inscription on the lists of the Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. The
Mediterranean diet, the traditional
Mexican cuisine
Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and M ...
and the Japanese dietary culture of
washoku are just some examples of this booming phenomenon.
Dance heritage
The UNESCO lists of intangible cultural heritage also include a variety of dance genres, often associated with singing, music and celebrations, from all over the world. The lists include: celebratory and
ritual dances such as Ma'di bowl lyre music and
Sebiba dance from Algeria and dance from Uganda and
Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan from India, and
social dances such as
Cuban rumba. Also, some dances are localised and practised mainly in their country of origin, such as
Sankirtana, a performing art that includes drumming and singing, from India.
Other dance forms, however, even if they are officially recognised as heritage from their country of origin, are practised and enjoyed all over the world. For example,
flamenco from Spain and
tango, from Argentina and Uruguay, have an international dimension. Dance is a complex phenomenon, which involves culture, traditions, the use of human bodies, artefacts (such as costumes and props), as well as a specific use of music, space and sometimes light. As a result, a lot of tangible and intangible elements are combined within dance, making it a challenging but interesting type of heritage to safeguard.
Digital heritage
Digital heritage is a representation of heritage in the digital realm and is a sub-category of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
It refers primarily to the use of
digital media
Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...
in the service of preserving
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
or
natural heritage
Natural heritage refers to the sum total of the elements of biodiversity, including flora and fauna, ecosystems and geological structures. It forms part of our natural resources.
Definition
Heritage is that which is ''inherited'' from past gener ...
.
Oral continuity
Intangible cultural heritage is passed orally within a community, and while there may be individuals who are known tradition bearers, ICH is often broader than one individual's own skills or knowledge. A 2006 report by the government of
Newfoundland and Labrador said, regarding oral culture in their area, "The processes involved in the continuation of this traditional knowledge constitute one of the most interesting aspects of our living heritage. Each member of the community possesses a piece of the shared knowledge. Crucial knowledge is passed on during community activities, frequently without any conscious attention to the process."
Preservation
Prior to the UNESCO Convention, efforts had already been made by a number of states to safeguard their intangible heritage. Japan, with its
1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, was the first to introduce legislation to preserve and promote intangible as well as tangible culture:
Important Intangible Cultural Properties are
designated
Designation (from Latin ''designatio'') is the process of determining an incumbent's successor. A candidate that won an election for example, is the ''designated'' holder of the office the candidate has been elected to, up until the candidate's i ...
and "holders" recognized of these craft and performance traditions, known informally as
Living National Treasures.
Other countries, including South Korea (
Important Intangible Cultural Properties of Korea), the Philippines,
Ukraine, the United States, Thailand, France, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland, have since created similar programs.
[
In 2003 UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This went into effect on 20 April 2006. The Convention recommends that countries and scholars develop inventories of ICH in their territory, as well as work with the groups who maintain these ICH to ensure their continued existences; it also provides for funds to be voluntarily collected among UNESCO members and then disbursed to support the maintenance of recognized ICH.][ UNESCO has also created other intangible culture programs, such as a list called Proclamation of ]Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
The Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity was made by the Director-General of UNESCO starting in 2001 to raise awareness of intangible cultural heritage and encourage local communities to protect them and t ...
. This list began in 2001 with 19 items and a further 28 were listed in 2003 and another 43 in 2005. In part, the original list was seen as a way to correct the imbalance in the World Heritage List, since it excluded many Southern Hemisphere cultures which did not produce monuments or other physical cultural manifestations.[ It was superseded in 2008 by the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
Recently there has been much debate over protecting intangible cultural heritage through intellectual property rights, as well as the desirability to do so through this legal framework and the risks of ]commodification
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...
derived from this possibility.Farah, Paolo Davide and Tremolada, Riccardo ''Conflict between Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights: A Case Study on Intangible Cultural Heritage'' (December 19, 2015). Oregon Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 1, 2015
The issue still remains open in legal scholarship.
UNESCO lists by country
''Note'': Each country may maintain its own cultural heritage lists, items of which are not necessarily inscribed into UNESCO lists.
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See also
* Living human treasure
* Non-material culture
* UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists
* Petrillo Pier Luigi, Biocultural diversity and the Mediterranean Diet, in FAO, Sustainable diets and biodiversity, Rome 2012
* Petrillo Pier Luigi, The Legal Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage. A comparative Perspective, Springer 2020
References
External links
*
Definitions of Intangible Cultural Heritage
as of States, IGOs and NGOs in 2001
Full text of the Convention
What Is ICH?
document from Newfoundland, Canada
Exploring a Model of Living Cultural Heritage
New model of Intangible heritage
Culture Quintessence
Internationally oriented enterprise dedicated to the protection, appreciation and transmission of Intangible Cultural Heritage
Dédalo. Open source software for management of Cultural Heritage (tangible and intangible) and Oral History
Intangible Spanish heritage
{{Authority control
Cultural heritage
Traditions
Cultural anthropology
Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
Traditional knowledge