Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Tiago de Oliveira Pinto

• What is cultural heritage, and why has it received so much public interest in recent years? Almost three decades after the World Organization UNESCO defined and established international recognition of Cultural and Natural Heritage sites and devised ways of protecting them, a completely new approach to cultural heritage emerged with the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the IntangibleWhat is cultural heritage, and why has it received so much public interest in recent years? Almost three decades after the World Organization UNESCO defined and established international recognition of Cultural and Natural Heritage sites and devised ways of protecting them, a completely new approach to cultural heritage emerged with the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. This global agreement for the maintenance, protection and dissemination of cultural manifestations and achievements that are not tangible objects or immobile monuments, like previous items classified as World Heritage, was a remarkable milestone of international cultural politics. This new understanding of cultural heritage owes much to representatives from Asian, African, and Latin American countries. In fact, just a few years after the promulgation of the 2003 Convention, the world cultural heritage map had already lost much of its European predominance. Asian countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and India very soon showed up with lists of manifestations of their centenary (in some cases even millenary) national cultural heritages.…