Paper short abstract:

The work contemplates the recent policies and projects developed by cape-verdian institutions concerning the category of Intangible Cultural Heritage and observes, through qualitative data collection, the frictions between the international and national processes in a post-colonial african context.

Paper long abstract:

This case study is focused in the implementation, since 2016, of the international biding text "Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage" (UNESCO, 2003) by the cape-verdian government and policies developed in this sector.

Since the publication of UNESCO's text, countries have been developing inventories in large scale, aiming at the inscription of elements in international and national listings. This text has had great impact on the methodologies concerning the safeguarding of intangible heritage but also on the concept of Heritage itself. The criticism surrounding the Convention's content varies from its universalizing notion of culture and high level of bureaucratization to the alteration between social and economical value of cultural expressions.

Whilst in the african continent the majority of heritage representations have been natural/landscape sites, it is worth observing how these new methodologies and concepts of approaching cultural expressions as intangible heritage are affecting the cultural policies developed and the major difficulties and innovations presented by these countries in implementing the international measures. Besides, how are these policies affecting the practitioners of these cultural expressions? Inevitably, the work will also address the relationship between ICH and Tourism, in which the local economy is highly dependent.

The conclusions to be presented are based on the qualitative data collection developed by the proponent, in the archipelago, for the on-going PhD ethnographic fieldwork and also on a six-month internship in Instituto do Património Cultural, the cape-verdian institution responsible for heritage safeguarding projects and policies.