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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The French “takes” of intangible cultural heritage : tracking the actualizations of a complex and ambiguous political device

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Intangible cultural heritage (hereafter ICH), introduced by UNESCO with the 2003 convention, is a complex and ambiguous entity that takes different forms depending on whether it is in the hands of state heritage institutions, territorial communities, associations, militant movements or researchers in the humanities and social sciences. It can be considered as a means of affirming a “national community” in the name of a “cultural exception”, as an instrument of governmentality, as a resource and a decisive lever for territorial development, as a means of recognition, as a critical weapon or as a space for questioning the sharing of knowledge and expertise.This research aims to explore these different actualizations of the ICH in the French territorial space. The latter offers a range of situations that allow us to consider the ambivalence of ICH policies and the UNESCO convention between an economy of territorial marketing and creativity or “popular” expression, a control device and a tool for emancipation.To do so, I rely on the notion of “prise”, which could be translated as “grasp” or “take” in English, introduced by pragmatic sociology (Bessy & Chateauraynaud 2014 [1995]) and transposed into heritage studies with the hypothesis of the “French take on ICH” (Tornatore 2011, 2012). The notion of take entails a co-determination in the act of taking. The one who takes as well as the object that is taken are shaped in the taking, the material that is taken acts and causes an action in the process of the take. In this case, the material is the 2003 convention and its actualizations, i.e. a political device that generates a particular way of understanding heritage policies and practices, as well as its objects. To speak of a French take of the ICH is therefore to consider the potential elements of disturbance of the UNESCO convention within heritage policies in France (Bortolotto 2011a, 2013b, 2014), but also to consider the influence on it of the French administrative and scientific tradition of objectification, celebration and politicization of cultural traits or elements.However, I propose to pay close attention to the plurality of the takes or rather to the fact that there can be different takes of the ICH. It is therefore a question of putting to the test the hypothesis of a French take on the ICH, and it is then necessary to take into account and differentiate the actors (human and non-human) involved and how, by engaging in ICH mechanisms, they co-construct various takes on the 2003 convention. Furthermore, in this research I examine the extent to which the UNESCO convention is part of the French heritage tradition in terms of objectification, celebration and politicization of cultural traits or elements, by grasping the continuities, the ruptures, as well as the new developments in this field, and this both within state heritage institutions and initiatives from different segments of “civil society” (collectives, associations, etc.).Nevertheless, one should not give in to the convenient observation highlighting the existence of multiple forms of ICH actualization. It is not a question of describing a simple sum of heterogeneous and singular cases, but rather a collection of cases that makes it possible to produce an open and contrasted assessment of the implementation of ICH policies in France.