Explaining the Concepts of Intangible Cultural Heritage via Binary Oppositions

In 2003, the formation of the "Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage" created a new international standard for identifying and protecting human cultural heritage. Some have considered this convention as an anthropological turn in heritage safeguarding policies. Explaining the concept of intangible cultural heritage is essential for two reasons; First, compared to other concepts related to humanity's heritage, it is newer, and secondly, due to its immaterial and fluid essence, compared to the material and tangible manifestations of culture, it needs more discussion and explanation. Since this concept is built on a binary opposition (between tangible and intangible), using binary opposition is one approach to understanding and critiquing it. In this study, eleven binary opposition or dichotomy related to intangible cultural heritage were extracted from the texts related to the convention and its compilers or commentators; Binaries like oral-written, process-product, safeguarding-protection, universality-relativism, material-immaterial, dynamic-static, external diagnosis-internal diagnosis, northern world-southern world, community-individual, cultural borders-political borders, and past-oriented-continuity during the time. Examining these oppositions brings us to a deeper understanding of intangible cultural heritage. It makes it clear that these contrasts cannot exclude each other and are complementary and that there is a correlation, not a conflict, between the tangible and intangible manifestations of humanity's cultural heritage.