During the meeting in Baku in December 2013, theIntergovernmental Committee of the 2003 UNESCOConvention for the Safeguarding of Intangible CulturalHeritage, inscribed shrimp fishing on horsebackin Oostduinkerke (Flanders, Belgium) in the RepresentativeList of the Intangible Cultural Heritageof Humanity. On the one hand, this can be consideredas an interesting example of sustainable developmentwith regard to the relation between localgroups and communities, policy makers (in the fieldsof culture and tourism), beaches and the sea, andon the other hand an occasion to stimulate reflectionon the relation between traditional know-how,cultural spaces and intangible heritage. The recenthistory of how the nomination file was assembled,of the follow-up after inscription, and of the specialroles played by heritage brokers and a local museumspecialized in the history and ethnology of fishing,allow to discuss opportunities and challenges of thenew paradigm of safeguarding intangible culturalheritage. In order to interpret these findings, twomodels are used as sensitizing devices. For one thingthe famous article in actor-network theory – on thesociology of translation and the “domestication ofthe scallops”, by Michel Callon – will be mobilized,whereas the Harvard Business Blue Ocean model,developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne,can function as an eye-opener. |