ПОРУКЕ И МЕТАПОРУКЕ НАЦИОНАЛНОГ РЕГИСТРА НЕМАТЕРИЈАЛНОГ КУЛТУРНОГ НАСЛЕЂА СРБИЈЕ
MESSAGES AND META-MESSAGES OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF THE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF SERBIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the National Register of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Serbia as the only institutional document of its kind in Serbia. It is edited by the Centre for the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Serbia at the Ethnographic Museum, on behalf of the national network of experts and institutions in this field. The analysis of this register includes the formal and substantive aspects of the document in their communicative dimension, on the one hand at the explicit level of messages that emanate from the register, and on the other hand at the implicit level of metamessages, where the broader cultural and social context within which the national register has been formed and developed to this day is analysed. These messages and meta-messages are also considered through the prism of the culture of remembrance, in the sense that each entry in the register can be treated as an institutional decision on which heritage we will remember, and vice versa, a hint that those cultural phenomena that are not in the register can be destined for (institutional) oblivion, at least in the corpus of national intangible cultural heritage. The National Register of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Serbia has existed for almost 14 years and I have tried to point out some clear trends within the cultural system and policy of the intangible cultural heritage. This framework for the interpretation of the register stems from the Rules of Procedure of the National Heritage Network, regardless of the fact that there is still no state strategy in this area. The National Registry, in its current form and content, provides an overview of cultural phenomena processed mainly in the fields of ethnology and ethnomusicology, which is a reflection of the dominant expert infrastructure that runs the national network of intangible cultural heritage, in cooperation with local communities. However, there is a lack of cultural phenomena that are at least equally within the sphere of competence of mostly other humanistic professions (linguistics, primarily), as well as those phenomena related to knowledge and skills related to nature and space, because that part is primarily the responsibility of natural sciences, i.e. experts and institutions in the field. In terms of status, the National Register is mainly made up of various representative traditions that are mostly vital in communities, although there are also those that might rather belong to the endangered heritage. However, there is no status categorization in the National Register modelled on, for example, UNESCO lists and previous projects, and it would include: representative heritage, endangered heritage, a list of good practices and a list of living guardians of heritage. Finally, I view the National Register in the context of the public good, i.e. as an instrument of appropriate public policies that favour the role of heritage in contemporary social development.

• Details
• Contents