The appropriation of the carioca intangible cultural heritage by an entrepreneurial logic

Abstract

This paper focuses on the means by which the City Hall of Rio Janeiro implemented a policy for the preservation of local cultural heritage and used legal instruments available to the protection of intangible heritage, notably from 2013, as of the creation of a new category: The Traditional and Notable Economic Activities`s Book of Registry. The research is based on the debate about the conception of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) as an analytical category, in order to recognize that the ICH carries a challenging potential capable of supporting the struggles of historically subalternized groups and subjects, thus revealing the essentially political nature of this category. The development of the research intends to demonstrate that Rio`s intangible heritage was captured by the entrepreneurial logic, which led to the neutralization of the challenging power of this category and permitted the beginning of the memory deletion process of those historically subalternized subjects and groups.