Europe’s Peat Fire: Intangible Heritage and the Crusades for Identity

Abstract

Rob van der Laarse explores conflicts around the supposed ownness of intangible cultural heritage through examples from the recent (political) rediscovery of folklore in contemporary Europe. Recently, the promotion of, and identification with, national and regional folklore have been hijacked by European populist parties and movements. In their discourses, real and imaged folklore phenomena have been transformed into political means to foster territorial cultural identities and their “authenticity”. Through examples from the Netherlands and other European countries, the chapter critically discusses the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and its role in stimulating contestation of the ownership of heritage by enabling (political) actors to utilize the concept of intangible cultural heritage for cultural identity-building projects.