Communities of Practice, Identity and Tourism: Evidence on Cultural Heritage Preservation in World Heritage Sites

Abstract

A “community of practice” (CoP) is a mechanism of holding, transferring and creating knowledge, where practices and identities are developed in the frame of the socio-cultural dynamics of a community. Thus, CoP brings together concepts of history, identity, values, practice, and community. Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) communities are networks of people whose sense of identity and interconnectedness emerge from a shared historical and geographical relationship. This background is rooted in the practice and transmission of the ICH. The goal of this paper is to explore the interfaces amongst these two concepts: CoP and ICH, by identifying the correlations between identity and place attachment in ICH sites and the practices of their communities, such as the case of tourism. With two selected intangible cultural heritage communities in Spain and Vietnam, the paper particularly highlights the similarities of community processes albeit distinctive characteristics of different places and people.