https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7623-5859
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ABSTRACT
This study presents challenges and potentials of local and traditional nature-related knowledge as a tourism resource and reveals how it fits into the process of constructing and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Furthermore it proposes an analytical framework for in-depth research on concrete cases. The study contributes to the emerging discussion on the tension between safeguarding and commodifying ICH by an interdisciplinary literature review and interviews with key stakeholders in Austria. The study analyses experts’ opinions and presents some domains of ‘local’ or ‘traditional’ nature-related knowledge from Austria, considered as ICH and valorised through tourism and leisure offers. The commercial use of this knowledge and the simultaneous effort to safeguard it as ICH bring numerous actors from tourism and heritage organisations and their interests into conflict. UNESCO’s influence in heritage-making and valorisation and the prioritising of certain domains and thus increasing their chance for tourism utilisation are also discussed. Furthermore, findings from the expert interviews reveal that the concepts ‘traditional’ or ‘local’ are problematic in the European context because the boundaries between localities, as well as between experience-based and scientific knowledge are unclear. Issues like ‘uniqueness’ and ‘ownership’ of the knowledge or ICH are also discussed in the interviews.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Maria Katelieva works as a researcher at the IMC University of Applied Sciences in Krems and is a PhD candidate at BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. Her research focuses on sustainable tourism development, socio-cultural issues in tourism and qualitative research methods. Currently, she is working on her PhD dissertation, which is dealing with the valorisation and safeguarding of the local/traditional nature-related knowledge.
Andreas Muhar is Professor in Sustainable Landscape Development, Transdisciplinarity and Knowledge Integration at BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Current research addresses sustainable development of landscape based recreation and tourism, concepts of the human-nature relationship, understandings of societal transformation and knowledge co-production for sustainable development.
Marianne Penker is Professor in Rural Sociology and Rural Development at BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Her research addresses socio-institutional questions of rural development, collective action and socio-ecological systems.