Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an ethnographic case study, this paper analyses the “participative paradigm”. Our paper examines the “heritage community” as a set of overlapping maps with mismatched boundaries. The concept of “diffused participation” is proposed to understand flexible participative forms.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on an ethnographic case study about the "Fiesta de los Patios de Córdoba" (Andalusia, Spain), this paper analyses the "participative paradigm" promoted by the UNESCO 2003 Convention and its effect on locals "heritage regimes". The "Fiesta de los Patios" was included on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in 2012 and nowadays it has become a massive tourist attraction. Our paper examines how the "heritage community" can be described and defined in the "Fiesta de los Patios" as a set of overlapping maps with mismatched boundaries. However, these maps would be very different if we consider the positions and perceptions of involved actors. Our aim is to map out these other positions and perceptions in order to show how legitimacies and hierarchies are articulated and how decision-making occur.

Instead of an exclusive political point of view on heritagization and the idea of community shaped by power, we sustain that the production and reproduction of practices depends on emotions, affects and acts of caring. Understanding these other maps allows us to render visible the networks of affect and care that are established among differents actants (human and no-humans actants). To highlight this, we observe how some local groups develop alternatives ways of heritage management, action and narrative and how they are going further the limits fixed by institutional language. In this sense, the concept of "diffused participation" is proposed to understand flexible participative forms and as an analytic tool for care and dwelling paradigms.