Multi-Ontological Dissonances and ICH Safeguarding Practices: The Case of the Patios in Cordova

Abstract

The contradictions embedded in the safeguarding practices of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding practices have been the focus of analysis for the last couple of decades. In addition, the positioning, roles of scholars and their dilemmas are commonly analysed as a dual polarization: those scholars who analyse and criticise ICH regimes from the outside; as opposed to those who participate with a critical academic perspective in ICH safeguarding practices. This article adopts a different approach and proposes the concept “multi-ontological dissonances”. By this term, we refer to the simultaneous ontologies of ICH that take place both in the different actors involved in ICH heritage regimes and in the safeguarding instruments themselves. We analyse three levels of dissonances: various models and concepts of ICH coexist in the practices and discourses among different ICH researchers/specialists; among the safeguarding instruments and the researchers and even inside a single researcher/specialist. The case of the Fiesta of the Patios in Cordova will be used as an example of the multi-ontological dissonances in safeguarding practices.