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Published in Museum International, vols.221-222, May 2004:130-137.

Intangible Cultural Heritage, Diversity and Coherence

Lourdes Arizpe

One of the most valuable aspects of the Proclamation of

Masterpieces of Intangible Cultural Heritage is that it preserves the
integrity of meanings and skills involved in each activity selected. Not
only objects or singular performances are recognized, but the agency
of those who create, perform or represent them. Such recognition
becomes a tribute to human agency in particular cultural environments.
Moreover, the fact that such activities are highlighted in very
different cultural environments is a tribute to cultural diversity, that is, to
individuals’ inherent capacity to create distinct meanings which are
then understood by a collectivity. It is important to note, however, that
masterpieces represent core activities which people of a given culture
or nation have reason to value and to conserve. The core of cultural
areas, as anthropologist Julian Steward argued in the fifties, represent
the apex of distinctiveness of a cultural area which may also contain
great cultural diversity. In fact, most intangible cultural heritage is the
result of a “longue durée” series of historical experiences and
influences from diverse cultures. Many of their best examples may hold
meaning to peoples from neighboring cultural communities which,
nevertheless, have a cultural distinctiveness of their own.
From this perspective, the sense of flow inherent to intangible
cultural heritage is the best representation of the interrelatedness of
cultures representations around the world. All cultural groups create a
sense of identity by establishing mirror relationships towards other
groups: either of cultural descent, opposition, or enmity.
The celebration of cultural distinctiveness, then, is a celebration
as well of the cultural relatedness of all cultural groups around the
world. The steps taken forward by UNESCO in safeguarding intangible
cultural heritage, then, go hand in hand with its work in recognition of
cultural diversity.
The challenge for the world community today is to understand
how different peoples bearing distinct cultures are relocating the
representation of their identities in a new global cultural cartography.
The amazing speed of global communications, trade and travel are

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fostering constant exchanging, mixing and creating of new cultural

expressions. This vast global “multilogue” –since “dialogue” implies
only two partners-- is driving culture bearers of different communities to
become keenly aware, simultaneously, of their cultural singularity and
of the cultural sharing and exchanging that is increasingly taking place
in the world today. They want to keep all that is valuable to them from
the past but are also wanting to participate in the creation of new
cultural signs and representations of global importance.
Governments, leaders of cultural communities, cultural creators
and cultural practitioners are all acting because they are aware
that globalization is changing the advantages or disadvantages
that their cultures previously faced in the world arena. On the one
hand, safeguarding the masterpieces of cultural heritage, both
phsycial and intangible is indeed a task of the first order in our
contemporary world. On the other, ensuring that enabling
conditions are put in place so that creators and practitioners can
use their creative capacities to continue to produce art and culture
is equally important.

intangible cultural heritage, and are consistent with

universally accepted principles of human rights, equity,
sustainability and mutual respect between cultural
communities. This intangible cultural heritage is constantly
recreated by communities in response to their environment
and historical conditions of existence, and provides them
with a sense of continuity and identity, thus promoting
cultural diversity and the creativity of humankind”.

Recognizing Intangible Heritage

Many current trends in globalization, as has been made

explicit during the debates on the International Convention for the
Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, are now threatening this
heritage in all regions of the world. Changes in consumption
patterns, poverty, massive outmigration, the pervasiveness of
television and media, the advertising industry, tourism, among
other trends, all foster new cultural needs even as they create a
longing for the rootedness of historical communities.

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Unesco´s Proclamation of Masterpieces of Oral

Traditions and Intangible Heritage has already produced great
impact in calling government and the attention of civil societies to
the need to safeguard this heritage. As happened with the
international Convention on the Protection of Physical Heritage,
though, new legal, political and social mechanisms must now be
developed to ensure that precise objectives are attained in this
safeguarding.

The loss of languages is the most visible part of the

tremendous loss of intangible cultural legacies being lost in the
world today. Throughout human history hundred and, more likely,
thousands of languages have disappeared. They have vanished
forever for many reasons, often related to environmental or or
political change. Those who spoke those languages may have
died out as a result of disease, abrupt climatic changes in their
habitat, famine or other natural devastations. Or, they may have
suffered violent or gradual subjection or annihilation by another
more belligerent and dominant language community. This includes
partial or full desintegration as a result of a diaspora -although
initial reactions of diasporas may lead to increased militancy to
keep their language-.
The disappearance of languages in the ebb and flow of cultural
history along millennia, however, is very different from the situation
in the world today, as Unesco has been reporting for some years
now. Professor Stephen Wurm, in the Unesco 2001 edition of the
Atlas of the World´s Languages in Danger of Disappearing, has
estimated that nearly half of all languages in the world, 3,000 of
them, are endangered to some degree or another1. For example,
in Africa, of approximately 1,400 (or more) languages, 500 to 600
are considered to be endangered2. Other regions with the greatest
number of endangered languages are those of Europe, the
Amazon and the Andes; Papua New Guinea has the highest ratio
of dying languages to the population. Even in Canada, where
cultural policies have been favourable towards its “First Nations”,
of 121 Amerindian languages, only 6 are still fully functioning3.
1
Wurm, Stephen. 2002. Atlas of the World Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris:Unesco:19.
2
Op.cit:43.
3
Op.cit.:46

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What is lost when a language dies? Two different

theories, according to Professor Wurm, are provided by science.
One theory believes that the world is made up of parts and each
language provides different set of labels for the same set of parts.
“This theory maintains that the differences between languages are
only superficial, and that any one language can fully translate any
other, …..this theory implies that the disappearance of any one
language is a minor occurrence - the disappearance of one among
many of the same kind. Anyone working seriously with translation
between languages from two very different cultures immediately
recognizes its fallacy and knows it to be wrong”4.
A second theory about language argues that “most
perceptions of the world and parts of the world are brought into
being and sustained by language itself. Therefore, different
languages emphasize and filter various aspects of a multifaceted
reality in a vast number of different ways”5. This is why, Professor
Stephen Wurm strongly states that “the disappearance of any one
language constitutes and irretrievable and tragic loss to valuable
and irreplaceable human knowledge”6.
Anyone who has worked closely with people from
another culture will know that the latter theory most accurately
represents reality. Analyses on the social construction of reality
also show the extent to which language and interpretations
actually make us see the world in a certain way. Le regard, the
gaze, as Professor Claude Levi-Strauss eloquently showed,
comes from the codes provided by language and culture.

Relocating Cultural Diversity

Freedom to create, the driving principle of the Stockholm Plan

of Action on Cultural Policies for development, goes hand in hand
with respect and appreciation of cultural diversity. As approved by
the General Conference of Unesco in its Declaration on Cultural
Diversity, “Diversity is the source of human capability of
developing: we think by associating different images; we identify
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Wurm, op.cit.:19.

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by contrasting ways of living; we elect by choosing from a array of

options; we grow by rebuilding our confidence again and again
through dialogue”.
The Unesco Declaration on Cultural Diversity will have a
momentous impact, precisely at a time when the world needs a
consensus among world governments and civil society
commissions and organizations on the way forward in building a
socially sustainable future. In this new beginning, to cope with the
momentous challenges of sustainability, governance and
convivencia in a global era, we need cooperation on a world scale
putting into play all the creativity that be summoned from all
cultures and civilizations.
As explained in the Second World Culture Report, “it is no
longer a matter of globalization allowing cultural diversity to
continue to develop, it is cultural diversity as a condition without
which globalization cannot continue…”. Such diversity requires
recognition, inclusion and justice to foster true development.

However,

most people in the world now live have created new and often
contradictory cultural and economic values and meaning in
objects”i. He applies this to material objects but it applies equally
to development debates on culture. Indeed, culture has been
“objectified” in international discourse in order to give form to the
very disparate and time-bound cultural phenomena evolving in
today´s globalization.

As expressed in the second Unesco World Culture Report

respect and reciprocity cannot be decided by law or imposed by
institutions, although disrespect and hierarchy can be and often
are. Minimizing inequality in the social primary goods in
Rawls´sense --not just rights and liberties but also powers and
opportunities, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect--
is not only the most effective instrument in this regard but can also
be institutionalized. Minimizing inequality, not just absolute

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poverty, empowers the possibility of equal and effective

participation and, thereby, of convivencia and genuine cultural
pluralism. By placing diversity and creativity at the center of
government policies, including cultural policies, the possibilities of
negotiating the new cultural landscape will be open to all.

Bilingualism

-“Monolinguality and religious orthodoxy have been taken as normal,

and multilinguality and religious syncretism or variation as deviant
cases to be explained. Yet in these and a range of other ways, it does
nor seem obvious that people usually live in one social world at a time,
but rather that it is now, and throughout human history often has been,
common to inhabit multiple worlds simultaneously and even to grow as
a person by the ability to maintain oneself in connection to all of them.
This means that anyone’s horizon of experience, to borrow the
phenomenological term, is unlikely to be fixed by a single collectivity or
categorial framework.7” (CALHOUN, 1995:xv). “Difference, in short, is
not a virtue about which one can feel unambiguously easy at heart. As
plurality, it is basic to human life; as the basis for asserting
unbridgeable divides it makes us unnecessarily pessimistic about
future relations; when invoked as the vehicle for claiming that all those
who differ from other in one way must be essentially the same within
their group, it is pernicious and repressive.” (CALHOUN, 1995:293)

I say -against categorical thinking which divides, for coherence

thinking which shares….

-Indeed, denial of cultural liberty, exclusion from social interactions,

rejection of one´s sense of identity or lack of recognition of one´s
cultural priorities can figure prominently in the deprivations that human
beings have reason to resist and want to remedy….in placing cultural
issues within the broad framework of human freedoms and valuations
we can see the promise of a well-founded, rather than ad hoc,
appreciation of the cultural dimenion of human lives. (Sen, Amartya.
2003. “Culture, Identity and Human Development”. Paper presented at
a UNDP meting, 11 September 2003:3).
7
On the concept of social world, see Strauss, “A Social World Perspective”. Aspects of this issue are
discussed in several places in this book, but see especially chapter 2.

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-Even if identities are ascribed from birth, at a given time every person
makes a choice of keeping that identity or changing to another. There
is, as Amartya Sen has argued always “reason before identity”. Even
more so, when the interconnectedness of the present world surrounds
us with other identities, different or alike, one is constantly making
choices of keeping one´s identity and adopting or not other cultural
forms of living.
-the possibility of choice is important in preventing what Anthony
Appiah has called “new tyrannies” in the form of newly asserted
identities which can tyrannize by eliminating the claims of other
identities which we may also have reason to accept and respect. Says
Appiah “in policing this imperialism of identity….it is crucial to
remember always that we are not simlpy black or white or yellow or
brown, gay or straight or bisecual, JewishChristian, Moslem, Buddhist
or Confucian but we are also brother and sisters-parents and children-
liberals, conservatives and leftists- teachers and lawyers and
automakers and gardeners………let us not let our racial identities
subject us to new tyrannies.
Does the championing of cultural diversity, then, demand support
for cultural conservatism, asking that people should stick to their
own cultural background and not try to move to other life
styles?That would immediately deliver us to an anti-freedom
position…diversity will then be achieved at the cost of cultural
liberty

Cultural diversity if not …a value in itself, at least not in the dhuman

development approach with its focus on human lives and their
equitable advancement. Pg 23 SEn

More menus, richer culture?

Cowen says that with the worldwide trade in cultural products,

individuals are liberated from the tyranny of place, curious how Appiah
now warns against the tyranny of identities that exclude all others. Do
they agree?

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Portes and study also showed that in south Florida and southern
California there was a positive association between bilingualism
and better academic performance. (Portes, Alejandro. 2002.
“English-only Triumphs, but the costs are high” in Contexts, Spring
2002, 10-15.
12)
- Rumbaut and Cornelius found that in San Diego in the 1980´s,
without exception, fluent bilinguals outperformed limited bilinguals,
and English-only students in standardized tests and grade point
averages, even after statistically controlling for parental status and
other variables.(Portes, 2002, 12)

Negotiating representations

In a shrinking planet, wired and webbed by communications

that foster the most continuous and interactive cultural contacts in
history, people are constantly having to negotiate with others
having different cultural heritage, values and behaviour. As
explained in the Second World Culture Report, such necessary
transactions become impossible if a cultural canon is elevated to
the level of a metaphysical condition. Democracy, trade and
policy-making, on the other hand, imply negotiated conciliation, as
do civilized international relations. Simplifications of political
philosophies do not generally last very long in democracies:
freedom of expression and open debate lead to adjustments
through accurate criticism which may lead to agreements between
different communities. Democracy, trade and policy-making, on
the other hand, imply negotiated conciliation, as do civilized
international relations. The only way to achieve this conciliation, as
Umberto Eco has reminded us, is to consider that “…all wars of
religion that have bloodied the world for centuries have been born
out of passionate adherence to simplistic oppositions: We and
They, the Good and the Bad, White and Black. If Western culture
has shown itself to be creative…it is because it has striven to
“dissolve” nefarious simplification with the light of critical spirit and
enquiry”.
Unless all such movements are incorporated into the Dialogue
of Cultures and Civilizations, the world will be facing the challenge
that Mme. Cardoso has also called attention to. That is, “the

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construction of identities so strong as to exclude the principle of

multiculturalism and the fight against discrimination, and the
restructuring of values and patterns of behaviour leading to
intolerant fundamentalisms”.

Ruth Cardoso, a distinguished Latin American anthropologist,

who was also a member of the Group of Eminent Persons for the
Dialogue among Civilizations, in her speech at the U.N. General
Assembly, highlighted the fact that women and peoples of varied
ethnic and social origins, in many countries, have contributed
greatly to the political evolution of the end of the 20th century. Such
diversity must be placed before the challenge arising in the last
decades of “the construction of identities so strong as to exclude
the principle of multiculturalism and the fight against
discrimination, and the restructuring of values and patterns of
behaviour leading to intolerant fundamentalisms”.
Democracy, trade and policy-making, on the other hand, imply
negotiated conciliation, as do civilized international relations.
Simplifications of political philosophies do not generally last very
long in democracies: freedom of expression and open debate lead
to adjustments through accurate criticism which may lead to
agreements between different communities.
And that the only way is that every individual respect the life of
others, and treat them in the same way he or she desires to be
treated, with dignity, empathy and tolerance. This Kantian
principle marks the only rational path to ensure peace and
sustainability. Hans Kung expressed this beautifully at the United
Nations: “in this dialogue the world´s religions have rediscovered
that their own fundamental ethical teachings support and deepen
those secular ethical values which are enshrined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights”.
In Crossing the Divide, we agreed, precisely, that the framework of
international relations must now change so the Other is seen no
longer as an Enemy but as a competitor in creating the best for
improving the lives of all. To do this, the global cultural commons
must be filled with cultural narratives that may be criticized,
dissected, remodeled and transformed until new consensual
narratives are put into place. Every cultural community, be it a

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small hamlet, or a nation can then rebuild their cultural

representation, their cultural location, as discussed in the most
recent theoretical debates, in the new global context.

Importantly, all cultural communities the world over all the

civilizations, are transversally linked through languages and
cultures of overlapping cultures which are cultures on their own
right. For example, African-American, Egyptian Copts Christians,
Bengali Muslims, Amerindian Catholics, Indian Zoroastrians as
well as Americans of African descent, Brazilians of Japanese
descent or Indians of Syrian descent are cultural communities
having multicultural heritage. Such cultures can only be called
“borderline” if such borders are artificially on cultural flows that
permeable, undefinable by anthropological standards, and which
shift in almost every generation. One major example of the
difficulty of such definitions is the recent discussion of whether
Islamic culture should be considered a part of the West. Indeed,
the political enunciation of the commonalities among “the children
of Abraham” looks towards this horizon. Instead, politically
marking a boundary between good and evil is futile given that
each side thinks of the other side as evil.
We are headed toward a League of Nations with ten thousand fractious
and anxious expansion teams.
This is not a good way to organize human life. (Breckenridge,
Carol, Sheldon Pollock, Homi Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds.
2002. Cosmopolitanism. Durham:Duke University Press.
P3)

A Cultural commons

A cultural commons is also being created at present as a result

of the expansion of a single capitalist market whose dynamic is
shifting previous balances of cultural power. Interestingly, as has
been remarked by many authors, the more economic forms of
production become homogeneized, the more heterogeneity is
being sought in consumption, that is the more distinct preferences
are being emphasized which are closely related to cultural aspects
of trade and lifestyle. In this cultural transition from rigidly
hierarchical cultural relations to constant flows of cultural
exchange through the media and audiovisuals, migration, tourism

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and the Internet, cultural boundaries are shifting, as are the

relational definitions of identities. For example, Mexicans in the
United States have now bounded by several different boundaries:
being Mexican-American, or Chicano, or Hispanic or Latino. Each
boundary is established on the basis of different criteria. And, in
fact, may be performed alternatively in different settings. Yet, to
keep the cultural distinctiveness which they choose to retain they
have reinvigorated their intangible cultural heritage, mainly in
music, art, and historical cultural symbols. This I term a process of
cultural relocation which allows them, by keeping a core set of
values, symbols and life-style elements from their national and
indigenous culture of origin, allows them to preserve a cultural
coherence in the midst of free flow of cultural goods and lifestyles.
I would posit that this cultural coherence is psychologically
necessary for mental well-ness but does not limit the choice than
individual may have to fully participate in other cultures in different
realms of her or his life.
At present the term very much in vogue to describe what is
happening culturally in the world is that of “transnational cultures”.
But this concept blurs the fact that all of them have a point of origin
that continues to provide them with a “distinction”. In a partial
sense to the way Bourdieu used the term: not to set apart an elite,
but simply to place a difference between “us and them” for
whatever reason individuals and groups have to establish it. The
term “transnational cultures” implies an equivalence of cultures
that leaves out of the picture questions of power, size, creativity,
strength of adherence, and so on.

Cultural coherence or at a pace of one´s own

-& why, if Eurasia has been constantly in cultural flux for over
10,ooo years, why are there still such distinct culture within it?
Because as cultures grow their core areas, they adopt items of
other cultures at a pace that allows them to keep an integrity that
gives coherence. So it is no longer a question of taking in or
keeping out cultures, of globalization yes or globalization no. It is a
question that cultural globalization providing channels through
which languages, cultural goods and lifestyles circulate at
lightening speed around the world. But the assumption is usually
made that everything a culture has may be circulated through

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media and cyberspace. In fact, as has been shown in studies of

the circulation of knowledge, tacit knowledge cannot be sent over
the information channels. In the same way, core aspects of
cultures cannot be transmitted over the telephone, or through
television programs. Not to mention deliberate limiting of the kinds
of information and knowledge that are circulated through these
channels.
So now it is a question of how the selectivity of the items that
are circulated are received, adopted or discarded by particular
groups of people.
What they do will depend on their core values, as Todorov
has listed them for European culture. You see, another cultural
boundary that is changing place.
So we need both, free trade and cultural coherence, the latter to
be decided on by individuals belonging to different cultural groups.
Protecting core values is legitimate when individuals of that
community agree to it. But when ofther cultures and religions
compete, the best ideas and best futures must win, otherwise we
fall linto a Dark Age again.
So the main issue is the rate and form in which cultural items
are taken in by communities. When they have no control over it, as
among some Indian groups in the Americas, or in Polynesian or
other parts, the cultural core crumbles and the people with it falling
into alcoholism, depression and petty crime. But when cultural
freedom is impeded even in developed countries, there is also
drug addiction, depression, homelessness and crime.

Cosmopolitanism and Trade

The opposition of roots vs westernization is mediated by cultural

coherence. Against cultural feudalism and the Dark Ages of
fractious petty kingdoms.
For globalization to benefit all, the gains-from-trade model only
applies is -Cowen uses a “gains from trade” model saying that
“just as trade typically makes countries richer in material terms, it
tends to make them culturally richer as well”. Arizpe says that only
if a basic cultural coherence can be preserved that gives people a
consonant understanding of their way of life. Cognitive
dissonance, as any psychologist will know, is detrimental to mental
health. Using the technological metaphor –originally restaurant

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originated- of menu, Cowen reduces culture to a list of items.

Anthropologists back in the seventies attempted to enumerate the
“culturemes” that made up a culture in the same what that
“phonemes” make up a language and found it was impossible
because culturemes overlap, recombine and are integrated into a
system of knowledge, without which individual culturemes become
meaningless.
This meaninglessness is the next step of the superficial
hybridity Umberto Eco described in California hotels. There is thus
a step-wise procedure from loss of cultural coherence to reducing
it to a menu to trivialization to meaningless. It is this
meaninglessness which is increasingly mentioned as one factor
contributing to the pandemic of depression around the world.
Humans seem to enjoy entertainment through cultural displays but
cognitively are unable to function without cultural coherence.
-Cultural overload is beginning to be the effect of what Cowen
terms the “(cultural) gains from trade”. In the same way as
information overload, it paralyzes the will to choose because one
can no longer choose. Worse still, cultural overload leads to
permanent cognitive dissonance as any psychologist would say.
An important distinction to be made is between cognitive
(constitutive culture) and behavioural (functioning culture).
-intangible heritage keep the integrity of culture intact. This gives
individuals a sense of coherence which is basic to psychological
wellness. T. Cowen .2003. Creative Destruction: How Globalization is
Changing the World´s Cultures. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
thinks of culture as a menu and present the argument that the greater
the diversity of menus offered to the individual, the better off he is.

i
Myers, Fred. 2001. The Empire of Things Regimes of Value and Material Culture. Stanta Fe: School of
American Research Press:3.

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