Le patrimoine culturel immatériel représente aujourd’hui un enjeu majeur dans les manières de penser et de pratiquer le patrimoine en Amérique du Nord francophone et ailleurs dans le monde. Il tend à renouveler le mouvement du patrimoine ethnologique et à s’imposer comme référence incontournable aux praticiens et penseurs de tous les patrimoines. Il trouble les classifications établies et les cadres de pensée de la culture administrée. Il provoque des réaménagements dans les structures gouvernementales de gestion et de direction, et dans les programmes de formation universitaire qui doivent désormais en tenir compte. Il bouscule les règles canoniques de la conservation et participe largement à la définition des nouvelles politiques patrimoniales. Il renouvelle les débats sur le droit d’auteur, les droits humains, les pratiques muséologiques et le patrimoine matériel. Il invite à une réflexion de fond sur le sens du patrimoine lui-même.

Ramsay, Juliet and Marilyn Truscott. 2005. Intangible values of Mountain landscapes: Methods and models. Historic Environment 18(2): pp. 2.

Robben Island Museum officially commemorates ‘the triumph of the human spirit over adversity’, relating especially to the period of political imprisonment between 1961 and 1991 when Robben Island was most notorious as a political prison for the leaders of the anti‐apartheid struggle. Robben Island became a World Heritage Site in December 1999 because of its universal symbolic significance—its intangible heritage. This paper explores the implications for conservation management planning of interpreting and managing the intangible heritage associated with such sites. Examples will be drawn from the conservation planning exercise undertaken by the Robben Island Museum between 2000 and 2002. The paper will look specifically at how Robben Island’s symbolic significance has been defined and how competing interpretations should be included in the management plan. It then discusses the challenges around managing historic fabric whose significance is defined as primarily symbolic, and ways of safeguarding the intangible heritage associated with it.

The recent geopolitical transformation in South Africa from a society in conflict to one embodying consensus invites inquiry into the use of heritage in the production of community identity, and the manner of commemoration and presentation of intangible heritage. This article presents case studies to indicate that there is an emerging shift away from hegemonic representation by the post‐apartheid state in the form of very tentative individual or community‐based expressions of struggle history.

This article aims to show that intangible cultural heritage is an important tool for rebuilding the town of Jacmel, and the whole of Haiti. The authors suggest reinstating the Jacmel Carnival as soon as possible, because it was one of the town’s economic and social drivers before the earthquake. Income from the Carnival and other events could gradually be reinvested in rebuilding tangible heritage. The authors also highlight the creation of an inventory of intangible heritage. This is seen not simply as an archive collection but as a dynamic tool for managing, promoting, transmitting and revitalizing the region’s heritage and society.

The 1992 adoption of ‘cultural landscape’ as an additional type of recognition on the World Heritage List was supposed to be a ground-breaking moment for heritage management in Australia and New Zealand, as both countries had pushed for the recognition of continuing and associative landscapes to change the perceptions and practices of heritage. Yet fast-forward to 2015, and one might be left wondering what happened? While there is no longer a need to convince people of the value of cultural landscapes for heritage management, the incorporation of cultural landscape ideas and practices into our property-based ‘heritage frame’ with its preoccupation with land use and development controls appears to have stalled. At the same time, a growing community of heritage studies scholars are critical of heritage practice, and position cultural landscapes as an initiative that the World Heritage system was ‘forced’ to adopt in order ‘to incorporate a broader range of values around heritage’ (Harrison 2013: 115). This critique of the under-theorised heritage field has had some stimulating effects, but falls short of providing guidance for practitioners. To consider the aspirations and directions for the future for cultural landscapes within heritage practices, this paper suggests that we need to look at heritage theory and practice together, focussing on innovation wherever we find it, and develop further theorisation through our experiences. We suggest that innovation can come from local settings away from more formalised heritage processes, where communities, practitioners, managers and researchers are trying new things as a result of their encounters with cultural landscapes, and where they are learning and ‘knowing-by-doing’.

Emerging archaeological evidence from archaeological sites in northern Cape York has the potential to shed light on indigenous cultural practices relating to turtle hunting. This paper explores the nexus between cultural practice and indigenous ecological knowledge and ‘lost’ knowledge which has implications for how Traditional Owners may chose to manage resources today. Often when we hear of Indigenous environmental management techniques the focus is on management ‘practices’ e.g mosaic burning, rather than ‘systems’. While not denying that some practices may be useful or cost effective alternatives to other ‘western science’ based land management practices the question needs to be asked: how effective can these be in ecosystem management if adopted in isolation of the other components of Indigenous management systems? Lines (2006) has challenged the efficacy of Indigenous management systems and questioned their sustainability but provides little evidence that he understands the complexity of such systems and the interrelationship of nature and culture, or indeed that he believes such systems exist. A more valid question is, what happens to these complex systems when key elements are discontinued, lost or destroyed? Perhaps if we, in partnership with Aboriginal communities, explore the changes to such systems over time we can begin to understand the consequences of these changes and the implications for long term species and ecosystem management. This paper provides preliminary outcomes of a current archaeological project which may further this discussion. At the time when European’s were first re cor ding observations along the Cape York Peninsula coastline, Aboriginal people and their Torres Strait Islander neighbours were hunting and consuming turtle and dugong in numbers great enough to be remarked on. Sites comprising heaped turtle and dugong bones were noted and in some cases sketched. Populations of both animals were however extremely healthy, the size of herds of dugong (Thorne 1876; Jack son et al 2001) and the proliferation of turtle were also remarked on. Was this just some kind of coincidence or was there an Indigenous system in place that actively contributed to the sustainability of this resource?

The new developments in historic urban areas in a country frequently make the cities look similar instead of keeping the unique image of the place. Historical image of the city is usually re-created and used to attract tourists from different cultural backgrounds. In some historic urban areas, reproduction works are introduced to re-establish the historical images which have been wiped out due to the previous developments. This paper aims to construct the basic guideline for interpretation and presentation of historic urban areas based on the notion of historic urban landscape and the ICOMOS Ename Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Three major issues are identified, which are; 1) the deficiency interpretation and presentation of the intangible value, 2) excessive focus on tourism business purpose, and 3) reproduction work and authenticity in historic urban landscape. This paper proposes two key points, based on the concept of historic urban landscape, which are; 1) interpretation and presentation of historic urban areas should focus on the image of the city in both tangible and intangible aspects  and 2) the tangible and intangible elements of image of the city for interpretation and presentation.

The United States has always been diverse. Now it is more so than ever. Yet historic preservation has done little to address this reality. How should historic preservation present racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse historical experiences? How should it serve diverse constituencies?