The effects of safeguarding on ways to organize, produce and reproduce intangible cultural heritage

Résumé 0

"This article aims to examine the ways in which the efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage interfere in the organizational practices associated with their production and reproduction over time. We assume that efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage imply the privatization of culture and tradition and its consequent association with factors of income generation. Having it in mind we investigate a process of safeguarding of an intangible asset which recently has been designated intangible heritage of the Brazilian culture: the traditional confectionery of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul state. Through documentary research on the efforts to preserve heritage and empirical data collected in ethnographic research, both related to the context of the preservation of intangible heritage in Brazil, we came to findings that expose problems involving the transformation of the organizational practices related to the intangible cultural heritage as an alternative to the preservation of local cultural traditions."