The Tautology of “Intangible Values” and the Misrecognition of Intangible Cultural Heritage

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the contradictions of the advent, dissemination and use of the terms “intangible value” and “tangible value.” We examine their logical and grammatical incoherence, and the “work” that these strange terms, so often used in tandem, do to domesticate what are for some people the uncomfortable implications of the concept of intangible cultural heritage. In developing our argument, the paper draws on a range of policy and academic documents to illustrate the extent of the professional and academic unease with the concept of intangible heritage, and the degree to which this unease unintentionally fosters the maintenance of the authorized heritage discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• “Intangible value”
• “tangible value”
• heritage values
• intangible cultural heritage
• heritage discourse
• authorized heritage discourse
• heritage policy
• politics of heritage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laurajane Smith is professor and Director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Australian National University. She has authored Uses of Heritage (2006) and Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (2004), and co-authored Heritage, Communities and Archaeology. Her edited books include Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes (2011, with Paul A. Shackel and Gary Campbell), Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums (2011, with G. Cubitt, R. Wilson and K. Fouseki) and Intangible Heritage (2009, with Natsuko Akagawa) all with Routledge. She is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies and co-general editor (with William Logan) of the Routledge Series Key Issues in Cultural Heritage.

Gary Campbell is an independent researcher based in Canberra, Australia, and is affiliated with the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. He has previously edited (with Laurajane Smith and Paul A. Shackel) Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes (2011, Routledge) and has published papers in the heritage field on emotion and affect, de-industrialization, and working-class identity. He was active in the establishment of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, having written its Manifesto and co-organized the 2014 Conference in Canberra.

ORCID

Laurajane Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8852-6976

Gary Campbell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5584-8573

Notes

1. This information represents field number (initials of the museum/heritage site and a sequential number of the interview), sex, age, and occupation and ethnic background or affiliation as described by the interviewee. For further details of this study see Smith (2017).

Additional information

Funding

The interview research discussed in the section of this paper entitled “Ideas of Heritage” was funded by the Australian Research Council grant [FT0992071].