Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism - Sketches on Identity

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) within the cultural tourism framework has opened up space for reconsideration of the ways in which living heritage, the tourist market, and target tourist groups are intertwined, and how their interaction affects the identity constructs of members of local communities. By including specific domains of living cultural practices in tourist offers, a kind of seesaw has emerged, with economic interests leading to the improved existence of practiced heritage on one side and the fact that ICH becomes a commodity primarily driven by the need of every tourist to literally experience heritage in the same way, becoming an exceedingly marketable commodity, on the other. The living tissue of tourism and ICH, in any case, represents one of the significant resources within which it is possible to realize UNESCO's guiding idea of heritage as a global point of encounter for different cultures. Both of these concepts are in constant processes of reconsidering what has been achieved and are attempting, through upcoming activities, to avoid dead ends and poorly implemented solutions.