Safeguarding Intangible Heritage assesses and reappraises the field of intangible heritage. It examines how policy has been implemented and explores its specific impact on intangible heritage, knowledge bearers and communities, and the implications of this for the continuing development of international and national heritage policies and practices. With a focus on conceptual and theoretical issues the book is an important reference for students and heritage professionals.

Natsuko Akagawa has a PhD and Masters in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, a Masters in Business Administration, a Graduate Diploma of Education, and a Diploma of Portuguese Language and Culture. Currently Lecturer at The University of Queensland, Australia, she was previously Assistant Professor at The University of Western Australia. She is the author of Heritage Conservation in Japan's Cultural Diplomacy (2014), which establishes a pioneering theoretical nexus between the politics of cultural diplomacy, heritage conservation, and national identity and interest, and has become a focus for scholars in a range of disciplines. She is also the co-editor of Intangible Heritage (2009, with Laurajane Smith). Her research focuses on the way heritage assembles histories, memories, identities and emotions as articulated in policies, practices and imaginaries. She is Expert Member and Vice-President of the International Committee on Intangible Heritage of ICOMOS. She has been a visiting research fellow at the East-West Centre and University of Hawaii, Manoa, as well as a Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies with Leiden University, Netherlands.

Laurajane Smith is Professor and Director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies, and Head of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at 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 (2013). 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). She is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies and co-general editor (with William Logan) of the series Key Issues in Cultural Heritage.

1. The practices and politics of safeguarding Natsuko Akagawa and Laurajane Smith

PART I: Legal, administrative and conceptual challenges

2. Further reflections on community involvement in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage Janet Blake

3. Intangible heritage safeguarding and intellectual property protection in the context of implementing the UNESCO ICH Convention Harriet Deacon and Rieks Smeets

4. Intangible heritage economics and the law: listing, commodification and market alienation Lucas Lixinski

5. Inside the UNESCO apparatus: from intangible representations to tangible effects Kristin Kuutma

6. Intangibility re-translated Min-Chin Chiang

7. Language as world heritage? Critical perspectives on language-as-archive Ana Deumert and Anne Storch

8. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage: absentees, objections and assertions Máiréad Nic Craith , Ullrich Kockel and Katherine Lloyd

PART II; The complexities of 'safeguarding'

9. Batik as a creative industry: political, social, economic use of intangible heritage Natsuko Akagawa

10. Replacing faith in spirits with faith in heritage: a story of the management of the Gangneung Danoje Festival Cedarbough T. Saeji

11. World Heritage communities, anchors and values for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in southern Africa: Botswana and Zimbabwe Stella Basinyi and Munyaradzi Elton Sagiya

12. ICH-isation of popular religions and the politics of recognition in China Ming-chun Ku

13. National identity, culinary heritage and UNESCO: Japanese washoku Natsuko Akagawa

14. Beyond safeguarding measures, or a tale of strange bedfellows: improvisation as heritage Mustafa Cökun

15. Playing with intangible heritage: video game technology and procedural re-enactments Jakub Majewski