From tradition to intangible cultural heritage: localisation and heritagisation in Pontic Greek momoeria

The rising number of inscriptions in the Representative List of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) exemplifies the globalisation of cultural policies. Never before has ‘culture’ been so systematically recorded and assessed on an international scale. However, UNESCO globality does not translate to unified cultural policies. Localisation, the adaptation of cosmopolitan ideas to the particular regimes of places and countries, continues to be the case. This article examines such an instance of localisation in the Pontic Greek momoeria: a carnivalesque custom of the twelve days of Christmas, inscribed in the Representative List in 2016. Premised on fieldwork, the article provides an analysis of the impact of the 2016 inscription on the poetics of momoeria, and on the economy and sociality of the communities. The article demonstrates that the localisation of ICH in Pontic momoeria both nullifies and verifies the UNESCO objectives, revealing weaknesses within both the UNESCO ICH rationales and Pontic identity discourse. Specifically, the 2016 inscription verifies the discourse of ‘Pontic tradition’, creating a tension between sustainability as commercialisation and dissemination on the one hand, and, on the other, safeguarding as local ownership and (unofficial) copyright protection.