UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage. Michael Dylan Foster and Lisa Gilman, eds. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 2015, 180 pp. $30.00, paper.

ISBN 978-0-253-01953-0

Joy, Charlotte

Goldsmiths Research Online

practice of collecting memorabilia such as pin badges serves to memorialize heritageexperience and emotion. Everyday cultural items are not equal in the commemorationof heritage: Jones discusses the ﬁnding that consumer items associated with the popu-lar memory of the state socialism era are, for example, underrepresented and not suf-ﬁciently memorialized in current-day Romania, Hungary, and Germany. In Sather-Wagstaff ’s chapter it becomes clear that not only man-made objects but also treescan be utilized and appropriated to memorialize. Recent tragedies are, for example, re-membered through trees.The themes discussed in this review show that this volume is dynamic and sociallyrelevant. This makes it an ideal resource for those interested in heritage tourism in aworld in which heritage at different levels has never been more open.SARAH WURZ, University of the WitwatersrandUNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Her-itage. Michael Dylan Foster and Lisa Gilman, eds. Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2015, 180 pp. $30.00, paper.ISBN 978-0-253-01953-0.In this edited volume, six case studies explore the consequences of UNESCO’s rec-ognition of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) on local populations. The premise ofthe volume is that folklore studies can offer unique insight into the ways in whichintangible cultural heritage is becoming globalized through UNESCO. The ambitionis to provide a “tree-eyed view” of things by seeing how ICH, once transformed intoa “metacultural artefact” by UNESCO, becomes reinserted into people’s everydaylives.Having explained how UNESCO came to adopt the category of intangible cul-tural heritage and launched its “masterpieces” program, the authors are tasked withexploring how such a designation plays out in a variety of settings: India, South Ko-rea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia, and China. Each case study is structured in a broadlysimilar way in order to allow for comparison and inform the three discussion piecesthat make up the second part of the volume. As a consequence, the volume’s “chooseyour own adventure” format allows the reader to combine case studies with discus-sions according to interest.The case studies are deliberately diverse: the Kutiyattam Sanskrit Theatre of Kerala;The Yōngdūng rite at the Ch’ilmōri shrine (South Korean shamanic ritual); Vimbuza,aMalawian healing ritual; Toshidon, a visiting deity ritual that takes place on the islandof Shimo-Koshikijiman in Japan; Teškoto, a “heavy” men’s dance in Macedonia; andthe worshipping of ancient sage-kings Yao and Shun in Hongtong County, China.304 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2017The breadth of case studies illustrates that UNESCO’s categorization of ICH is a col-lective act of imagination mediated through nation states. For practitioners on theground, interaction with UNESCO is experienced in a multiplicity of ways, includingalienation, pride, and confusion.The need for collapsible themes for comparison emerges throughout the case stud-ies and discussions. As Noyes explains, “The category of ICH does not only generatecomparability but itself emerged from recurrent and cumulative acts of comparison”(p. 162). The valorization of ICH therefore has to organize itself around “representa-tive anecdotes” needed for these acts of comparison (for example, Homeric texts) andallow for a feeling of measurable “authenticity” of cultural practices. For local audi-ences, authenticity is less of a concern than audience and efﬁcacy, as in the case ofToshidon in Japan, a cultural practice that takes place in people’s homes onNew Year’sEve and sees masked ﬁgures visiting young children to scare them or praise them fortheir behavior during the previous year. The ceremony’s central purpose is the disci-plining of young children and is being challenged by the rapid depopulation in the re-mote areas in which it is performed. The author asks whether it could carry on withoutchildren and whether opening it up to tourism or ﬁlm and photography could in factalter the ceremony or cause it to stagnate. There is a sense throughout all the case stud-ies that the recognized ICH is at once remote and immediate, it both matters and yetdoesn’t fundamentally offer solutions to the challenges faced by many of the culturalpractitioners involved.Hafstein’s critical discussion stands out as an entertaining prism through whichthe emerging themes identiﬁed in the ﬁrst half of the volume can be seen. He sug-gests that the recognition of intangible cultural heritage is “ﬁrst of all, a diagnosis. Itgives a name to a condition that is increasingly common in industrial and post-industrial societies under circumstances of economic, political, technological and de-mographic change—for which the shorthand is globalization” (p. 146). If “havingICH” is a diagnosis (a symptom of globalization), then “safeguarding” ICH is thecure whose side effects often destroy the very thing they are trying to save. Safeguard-ing ICH is often a form of dispossession of cultural practitioners from the very thingthat anchors them to locality and tradition, and therein lies the paradox of UNESCO’sproject.As Noyes reminds us at the end of the volume, UNESCO, although central to thelegitimacy of the ICH labeling exercise, is itself rarely present: “In a Kafkaesque mo-ment one would be tempted to conclude that neither UNESCO nor local commu-nities exist at all except as enabling ﬁctions of state bureaucracy” (p. 168). Perhapsthis is at the heart of why folklorists experience some discomfort with a subject thathas animated anthropologists for some time now. It is nevertheless refreshing to havetheir insights, and UNESCO on the Ground is a welcome addition to the discussionon the bureaucratization of cultural heritage.CHARLOTTE JOY, Goldsmiths, University of LondonBOOK REVIEWS | 305

Book Review of UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Michael Dylan Foster and Lisa Gilman, eds. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 2015,

https://research.gold.ac.uk/20000/6/JoyBookReview.pdf

Book Review of UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage. Michael Dylan Foster and Lisa Gilman, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015,

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