ABSTRACT
The concept of intangible heritage has become the focus of international discussion, which has been augmented by UNESCO and reflects growing concerns about the cultural impact of economic, technological and political forces associated with globalisation. However, its impact on heritage practice in the UK remains limited, due in part to a lack of understanding of the concept and its subsequent lack of formal recognition. It is also due to a prevailing vision of cultural inheritance as residing solely in the materiality of the past – tangible heritage; a vision largely fashioned by the scientific/ technical and political-institutional sectors of the West. This chapter explores the idea of intangible heritage – as developed by
UNESCO – and considers how this relates to tangible heritage in the UK. It is argued that these recent developments concerning the ‘intangible’ in many ways replicate issues that first emerged in the UK in the nineteenth century around the restoration of architecture that led to the founding of the modern Heritage Preservation Movement. This chapter considers how this debate stemmed from contrasting views of the past – one rooted in religion and the other founded on an emerging modern science – in order to reveal the UK’s historical trajectory with respect to these two competing paradigmatic domains. It is intended that this will provide greater understanding of this recent recovery of the idea of intangible heritage, and all that this implies in the context of world culture today. This chapter recommends, finally, that the UK ratify the UNESCO
Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), which in many ways embraces the ideas first expressed in the nineteenth century, but which (despite this) have not been formally recognised in the UK.
