Paper short abstract:

Many communities have engaged in the development of their traditions since the UNESCO Convention. The heritagisation of the morra game in Sardinia sways between valorisation of local culture and separatist issues, characterizing by confluences and conflicts this instrumentalisation of traditions.

Paper long abstract:

Since the UNESCO Convention that established the intangible cultural heritage as a new category of heritage was signed in 2003, many territorial collectivities and communities of all kinds have engaged in the development of their traditions. This process of (re)discovery of one's own cultural property navigates between different paradigms, such as local development and identity claims. If the first believes in its heritage's strong potential to strengthen the tourist attractiveness of areas particularly hardly hit by the economic crisis, the second fits in the present European context, where regional cultures find expression more and more.

In Sardinia, the second island of the Mediterranean in size after Sicily, traditional sport games entered slowly the broad international process of heritagisation, reinforced by the 2003 Convention but already promoted by the World Heritage Convention in 1972.

These traditional games constitute today a new resource, both identitary and economic, since local actors assimilate them and turn them into different projects, whose nature varies according to the objectives set.

The mutations that affect morra in Sardinia today illustrate the ambiguities of the heritagisation of the most practised traditional game of the island. Field surveys indeed reveal a strong independentist issue among the organizers of the main tournaments, who however support their request for financial support with touristic considerations.