Paper short abstract:

This paper follows the making of a Danish UNESCO ICH nomination file. It shows how heritagisation in the form of applying to a UNESCO list is a matter of translating cultural practices into a convincing nomination file able to travel and gather allies on its way to UNESCO inscription.

Paper long abstract:

Since the adoption of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003, a total of 629 elements consisting of cultural and social practices, oral traditions, skills, etc. from 139 different countries have been inscribed on the two lists and one register associated with the convention. However, my experiences from fieldwork (2018-), where I ethnographically follow the work that goes into producing a UNESCO nomination file, are in stark contrast to the exuberant and lively display of “human creativity” and “cultural diversity” at the UNESCO website. Rather than dealing with boys’ choir soundscapes, folk high schools or clinker boat traditions, the nomination processes concern themselves, first and foremost, with pile upon pile of paper.

In this presentation, I will follow the nomination file of the European Boys’ Choir Tradition as it slowly takes shape over the course of several meetings in the spring of 2020. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s work on the making of French administrative law and his science and technology studies, I argue that heritagisation, in this particular UNESCO-ICH version, is a question of translation. While negotiating which boxes to tick and filling out forms, communities, groups and individuals turn their cultural practices into immutable mobile files hopefully capable of securing the sought-after UNESCO recognition. In the end, it is these files or inscriptions of cultural practices that are the ones being inscribed on the UNESCO lists of intangible cultural heritage.