Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Comprehensive Guide (The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage)

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Comprehensive Guide (The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage)

Edited by Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis
Translation: Fani Gaidatzi
Athens 2021, xxxiv + 606 p., 42 illustrations, 4 tables
ISBN 978-960-244-219-7
€ 41,00

The book Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Comprehensive Guide is the Greek translation of the collective work The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage edited by Michelle L. Stefano and Peter Davis.

This work examines the concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) recording 38 interdisciplinary studies from every part of the world. Researchers, academics, entities or communities from the fields of museology, social anthropology, ethnology, folklore, history, architecture etc. present, in studies and interviews, the familiar as well as the unknown aspects of ICH. Thus, the work attempts to familiarize both the specialized reader as well as the uninitiated one with the global map and the manifestations of ICH.

The themes that compose the book focus on the critical evaluation and examination of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. They also present typical cases of ICH management, studies about the relations between social groups or individuals and their contribution to the preservation of intangible knowledge and practices, aspects of ICH in particular places or cultural landscapes. Finally, the book also presents the complementary relationship of museums and archives with ICH as well as applied proposals regarding its functions and highlights.

This publication adds to PIOP’s contribution to literature in the field of ICH. The Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation, as an advisory body on intangible cultural heritage, accredited by UNESCO, had a key role in the successful outcome of inscribing marble carving and the cultivation of mastic on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2015 and 2014 respectively. The intangible and tangible manifestations of those two activities as well as the respective production are highlighted in two of the museums that belong to PIOP’s Museum Network: the Chios Mastic Museum and the Museum of Marble Crafts in Pyrgos, Tinos. In parallel, PIOP contributes to the effort to highlight aspects of the intangible cultural repository in relation to silversmithing and the culture of the olive, fields that are also covered by museums of the Museum Network.