Intangible cultural heritage as multispecies practice

This article explores the institutional framework of Intangible Cultural Heritage and how local ontologies of socio-cultural relations with animals, or co-cultures, destabilize the Eurocentric binaries that underpin it. While UNESCO seeks to overcome its past biases with respect to conceptions of cultural heritage and ontologies that reject nature/culture dualisms, this organization holds fast to human/animal binaries. The case study presented here demonstrates how a co-culture among humans and spotted hyenas infuses the festival of Ashura during which the two species share porridge. The intersubjectivity across species that ontologically underpins the festival directly challenges human/animal binaries in sociocultural terms. What it reveals is that the more globalized the institution of intangible cultural heritage becomes, the more nuanced in terms of ontologies it needs to be.