Global Concept of Cultural Heritage Management and its Significance Across the Ethnic Groups

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The present publication is the outcome of an International Seminar organized by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata during February 19th to 20th, 2019. A number of scholars belonging to India and abroad came to exchange their notes around a given theme which mainly addressed the issues related to the management of cultural heritage (both tangible and intangible) in the context of spatially placed various ethnic groups in the world. As a corollary to the emphasis given to the theme, emerges out a basic input for academic consideration i.e. 'culture'. Academics of all divides, by and large, consider culture as a prime mobilizing factor in the life of individual ethnic groups or a nation over time and space. Therefore, the post-world war nations had put much emphasis specially at the behest of the United Nations for sharing some common threads of understanding these virtually powerful components in the social formation of differentiated societies, communities and nations. In a sense, this particular seminar which had participation from many scholars belonging to various academic disciplines as well as countries came out successfully in terms of its valuable academic transactions. We are thankful to the Editor, Professor Ranjana Ray, for taking initiatives for this important programme at the Asiatic Society. Hope the publication of the proceedings would be of use to the scholars at large dealing with these kinds of issues or subjects placed in their respective presentations.

Concept of cultural heritage gained importance since the Second World War. The term race was replaced by the words "ethnic group" under the aegis of UNESCO. At present the diversity of human race both biological and cultural is better expressed by the word "Ethnicity". This refers to shared cultural practices, perspectives, and distinctions that set apart one group of people from another. In other words, ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. The most common characteristics distinguishing various ethnic groups are ancestry, a sense of history, language, religion, and form of dress, ornaments etc. Culture in social science refers to customary ways of thinking and behaving of a particular population or society; manifested in traits like language, religious belief, food preferences, music, work habits, gender roles, rearing of the children, construction of their houses; and many other behaviors that are shared by a group. Culture is expressed both in the form of tangible and intangible elements.