ABSTRACT
The word ‘community’ has something of a contentious presence in heritage. Discussions around intangible cultural heritage (ICH) have centred on identifying the ‘communities, groups and individuals’ that UNESCO states practise it. In the context of participation in, and ownership of, national minorities’ ICH, the notion of community membership becomes particularly salient. In this chapter, the authors proceed from the observation that different understandings of the word ‘community’ can have different – and potentially even diametrically opposite – implications for who is in, and who is out, of that community. In negotiating these varyingly permeable community edges, individuals can be said to engage in what has been called the ‘dirty work’ of ‘boundary maintenance’ and the boundary narratives that are the result of this. Using interview data from across the three case study regions, the authors explore how communities are both the result of and create the experience of boundaries between the community and what lies beyond it, and the function of ICH in these experiences. They furthermore map the types of communities we encounter in the context of ICH.
