OSMOSE: A Comparative Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage Law in Europe 

The project "A Comparative Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage Law in Europe" (2016-2017) is the result of cooperation between the LAC Research Centre and the Institute of Social Sciences of Politics (ISP, Paris, France). It is an extension of the project "Establishing the Research Framework for Intangible Culture Heritage Law" (2014-2015), which has developed a set of methods for comparison of the national state laws on intangible cultural heritage and facilitated international cooperation between researchers by involving experts of corresponding fields from different countries in the implementation of the project. The research partnership projects have been implemented in connection with the state research programme "Habitus: Sustainability of Latvian Cultural Traditions in an Innovative Environment: 2014-2017" (http://habitus.lka.edu.lv/).

The past two years of the project implementation at the Latvian Academy of Culture are marked by the international research seminar “Intangible Cultural Heritage: National Law and Subjective Rights”, which took place in Riga. The seminar reflected on the legal aspects of safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, emphasizing two aspects in particular: firstly, the attention to the development of national legal systems, be it amendments to existing legal texts, adopted novel laws or deliberate abstention from any legislation at all; and, secondly, the establishment, interpretation, and application of subjective rights for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The activities of 2016-2017 are focused on a comparative analysis of national laws in Europe with the aim to grasp the diversity of desires to safeguard intangible cultural heritage in the form of legislation. The planned collaboration is directed to the identification of a European perspective on the issue on the basis of a network of experts who work in the field of intangible cultural heritage research in various European countries. Two European sub-regions in particular have been selected for this purpose - Baltic States and Nordic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark) and Romance-speaking Europe (France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). The framework of the research is essentially interdisciplinary comprising law, semiotics, history and ethnology.

Home page of the project: dpc.hypotheses.org/le-projet-osmose

Head of the Project 

Dr. art. Anita Vaivade and  Dr. iur. Marie Cornu

For more information contact: Dr. art. Anita Vaivade, anita.vaivade@lka.edu.lv