Rethinking intangible cultural heritage: toward a transcultural model of heritage governance

Although the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) promotes community-centred and dynamic approaches to heritage, its governance remains structurally shaped by nation-state logics. Recognition continues to rely on territorialised frameworks that struggle to accommodate mobile, hybrid, and historically entangled cultural practices. This article advances a transcultural framework for rethinking ICH governance by examining how relational cultural processes are translated into territorially legible forms of policy recognition. Drawing on Wolfgang Welsch’s theory of transculturality, it reconceptualises ICH not as a bounded cultural possession but as a relational formation constituted through uneven histories of movement, exchange, and mediation. This article identifies four analytical contexts – diaspora and displacement, trade and exchange, colonial entanglement, and digital circulation – through which transcultural heritage practices are generated, negotiated, and contested. In doing so, it highlights moments at which existing governance frameworks translate relational cultural processes into territorially legible forms of authority, and identifies where these translations may be reoriented. The article thus contributes a historically grounded and policy-relevant framework for recognising intangible heritage beyond exclusive nation-state ownership.