Shifting scenes of intangible cultural heritage in the United Arab Emirates: working towards building a new heritage in the Arabian Gulf region

AlShaikh, AlAnood (2024). Shifting scenes of intangible cultural heritage in the United Arab Emirates: working towards building a new heritage in the Arabian Gulf region. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

AlShaikh2024PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (162MB) | Preview

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage as a concept, a policy, and a practice has increasingly become a matter of value and recognition for individuals, governments, and various international communities. Such growing significance has facilitated new safeguarding approaches to manage the impacts of modernisation on traditional practices of heritage, raising questions about nationalism and the critical role of state power in the process of building national identity. The role of nationalism is further complicated by the need to negotiate a multitude of local traditions and cultural expressions in a cosmopolitan nation-state. Thus, this thesis aims to examine the shifting role of intangible heritage from a community-based practice into a state-sanctioned process of selection in the United Arab Emirates through three perspectives: local, national, and international. Data was collected using qualitative methods (mainly observations and interviews) that aimed to explore the new and traditional forms of safeguarding intangible heritage among the top-down and bottom-up levels. The thesis demonstrates the need to understand intangible heritage as a social activity at these two levels in order to identify the challenges present in a diverse and modernised nation-state that is trying to mediate its traditions. Further, this thesis argues that some traditional practices should be understood and approached beyond UNESCO’s universal definitions. This thesis contributes to knowledge concerning the reconciliation of the role of intangible heritage in a modernised nation-state while recognising both its potential and its limitations. The exclusion of the local heritage practitioners is challenged in this thesis against state-driven approaches aimed at selecting certain heritage elements or narratives as representatives of a broader national identity of nation-states.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):