Intangible cultural heritage as a resource for ‘self-stakeholderisation’: fieldwork among politically active civil society stakeholders in the province of Vojvodina, Serbia

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of stakeholder inclusion in preserving cultural values and identity, as embodied in intangible cultural heritage (ICH), without reigniting interethnic rivalries that contributed to war and social dismay in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Despite widespread fears, particularly among anthropology and critical heritage scholars, that ICH is counter-indicative and has the potential to exacerbate social conflicts rather than contribute to peace and reconciliation efforts in post-conflict regions, anthropological fieldwork in the province of Vojvodina, Serbia – a region with 32 recognised nationalities, ethnic and religious communities – yielded promising results for ICH enthusiasts. The context of our research is a reflection on possible solutions to a critical sociopolitical issue – improving the somewhat unsuccessful implementation of the international policy framework aimed at the instrumentalisation of ICH safeguarding for peace building and reconciliation in post-conflict regions, such as our own (Western Balkans). During the fieldwork we observed a possibly unintended consequence of the implementation of the safeguarding protocols. Cultural entrepreneurship has been identified through the idiom of ‘self-stakeholderisation’ – a phenomenon of bottom-up agency by various actors who pursue developmental opportunities despite standard heritagisation practices dominated by cultural policies designed for the inclusion of stakeholders coming from dominant ethnic and religious populations. This research could serve as a starting point for the development of a comparatively applicable model of ICH stakeholder involvement in post-conflict societies, based on their self-stakeholderisation.