ABSTRACT Settler laws over Indigenous land are often an unquestioned norm, and depending on the political climate of the settler nation, some states do accommodate Indigenous access to natural resources for their cultural practices. However, what happens when Indigenous communities refuse to ask settler authorities for permission to practice their heritage? This paper examines the actions of an Ainu Ekashi (elder) who fished for salmon on the Monbetsu River for the Kamuy cep nomi, a ceremony to welcome salmon migrating upstream. While the Ainu are allowed to fish for ritual purposes, the Ekashi refused to ask the Hokkaido prefectural government for permission. Consequently, he faced criminal charges from the prefecture. His actions galvanised Ainu community members and scholar-allies across the island, raising the question of sustainability in commercial salmon fishing within Indigenous lands. I argue that the Ekashi’s refusal to obtain settler permission is an act of social justice towards the decolonisation of Indigenous lands. His action also highlights the unfinished nature of settler colonialism and its failure to represent Indigenous heritage. Consequently, political acts of refusal through the discourse of an authorised intangible heritage can be a strategy for regaining a degree of Indigenous sovereignty.

ABSTRACT This article advances the concept of ‘(in)significance’ in heritage studies from a transcultural perspective. It examines the discursive heritagisation of Hualin Temple in Guangzhou up to the present day, focusing on the acquisition, maintenance, and loss of its historical values through Chinese-foreign (primarily Chinese-English) transculturation. Three coexisting, yet distinct, discourses on the temple’s historical significance are identified in both Chinese and foreign texts: first, a long-standing, pervasive discourse framing the locale as possessing inherited historical value; second, a concurrent, yet occasional, discourse on the breakage and deterioration of that inheritance; and third, a discourse generating ahistorical values within a contemporary synchronic sociocultural network. By analysing the Chinese-foreign intertextual formation of these discourses, this study adds a transcultural dimension to the discussion of ‘(in)significance’: the more convenient and intense the transculturation becomes, the more the established historical narratives and claims about the locale are increasingly seized upon, thereby veiling more dynamic, contingent, quotidian, and local meanings.

ABSTRACT The 2003 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention is often celebrated as the Organisation’s most democratic treaty, given its formal recognition of communities as key actors. This article critically examines the meaning and practice of ‘democracy’ within the Convention. In the context of global democratic backsliding, we ask: where is democracy embedded in the Convention’s governance structure, and how is it used and interpreted by different actors? In this article, we distinguish between (1) democracy as a form of political regime; (2) democratic governance, as a set of UN supported values; (3) democratisation of culture, emphasising egalitarian access to cultural goods and institutions; (4) cultural democracy, foregrounding the right of communities and individuals to define, value, and shape culture on their own terms. By using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, we further distinguish operational, collective-choice, and constitutional levels of analysis to trace how diverse forms of democracy manifest across the Convention’s governance. Our findings reveal distinct configurations: democracy emerges as a feature of community practice at the operational level, as a procedural principle in intergovernmental decision-making at the collective-choice level, and as a normative value at the constitutional level.

ABSTRACT Amid growing concerns over planetary ecological disruption, cultural homogenization, and the narrowing scope of educational values, this paper proposes a rhythm-based model of embodied heritage learning that reimagines intangible cultural heritage (ICH) not as static content to be preserved, but as a dynamic, relational, and cosmologically grounded pedagogical practice. Drawing on Daoist ecological thought, this study examines how the 24 Solar Terms of seasonal time is embodied through a dialogue between Tibetan movement traditions and a body aesthetics system shaped by Han classical and operatic principles, fostering ecological attunement, intercultural co-creation, and emotional fluency among university students in China. Conducted over a 16-week action research project, the curriculum involved foundational training, seasonal improvisation, and collaborative choreography. Analysis of student journals, focus groups, and classroom observation revealed three key shifts: seasonal rhythms became embodied as ecological awareness; intercultural movement tasks gave rise to co-created “third-space” choreographies; and students moved from technical execution to expressive, emotionally attuned improvisation. It contributes a framework for cultivating what we term cosmic citizenship – a mode of embodied belonging that synchronises human learning with the rhythmic intelligence of the more-than-human world.

ABSTRACT Few works have offered insight on the formation of Macau’s conservation movement, which precedes its listing as China’s thirty-first World Heritage Site in 2005 by decades. This article examines twentieth-century processes and actions that helped form the bulk of Macau’s normative corpus for heritage management and preservation, ultimately leading to international recognition of its Historic Centre. Drawing chiefly on archival research, this work unveils the applied and discursive dimensions of heritage that convey political agendas, urban mandates and imaginations of identity, culture and the nation. The theoretical approach situates the impact of national, transnational and individual agencies on decisions on the ground, shedding light on the power dynamics shaping history and transforming the built environment into ‘certified’ heritage. Ultimately, a historically grounded and expanded analysis of Macau’s conservation movement allows us to consider novel angles in the modern development of heritage regimes, the role of colonies as receptacles of Western-centric heritage ideas and values, and the translation of global heritage practices in local contexts.

ABSTRACT Grounded in long-term ethnographic research with the Chinese ethnic Qiang people, this article advances heritage safeguarding as a method to interrogate the evolving role of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in post-disaster cultural reconstruction. Safeguarding is not reducible to the transmission of ICH items, nor is it a neutral instrument of preservation. Instead, it unfolds as a multi-layered, multi-subject practice: at once a state policy framework, an economic development scheme, a social renovation experiment, a community’s recovery pillar, and after all, a lived cultural horizon. Case studies of Qiang New Year and Embroidery after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, and the Wa’er’ezu Festival during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrate how safeguarding sustains ritual continuity and cultural resilience while entangling communities in projects of nation-building, tourism, and political legitimation. Methodologically, safeguarding as a method foregrounds grounded inquiry into the cultural contexts, social-ecological relations, and historical sensitivities that shape ICH’s present and future. It highlights how pluralised participation – by governments, practitioners, scholars, communities, and private actors – renders heritage a contested site where authenticity, standardisation, and economic imperatives collide. Safeguarding is shown not merely as survival, but as a collaborative force of transformation, reframing heritage as both a terrain of negotiation and a method of critical inquiry.

ABSTRACT The Demoscene is a transnational digital culture that, since the 1980s, has fused programming, artistic experimentation, and community collaboration in the production of ‘demos’, short audiovisual programs designed to push hardware and software to their limits. Emerging from the intertwined worlds of home computing and software piracy, it developed into a semi-autonomous field of cultural production governed by its own hierarchies, evaluative logics, and forms of capital. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural fields, this article traces the Demoscene’s evolution from exclusionary elite – lamer distinctions towards more inclusive practices that continue to prize technical, aesthetic, and social capital. It then considers the 2019 Art of Coding initiative, an effort to secure UNESCO intangible cultural heritage recognition, as a key episode that illustrates how community outreach actors bridged the Demoscene’s peer-driven values with institutional frameworks. While UNESCO recognition introduces symbolic capital that enhances the scene’s visibility and legitimacy within cultural and heritage sectors, it also provokes ambivalence among participants who fear that external validation may erode grassroots autonomy. The article argues that the Demoscene exemplifies how digital subcultures negotiate institutional recognition, showing that heritage frameworks can expand visibility and protection without displacing the peer-driven logics of distinction that sustain them.