From Folklore to Climate Adaptation: Rethinking Intangible Cultural Heritage through Avalanche Risk Management
What happens when a technical risk prevention system is recognized as a “living tradition”? This talk explores the unconventional recognition of Avalanche Risk Management (ARM) on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2018. Unlike the identity-based or folkloric practices usually associated with “living traditions,” ARM demonstrates how heritage can be used as a forward-looking resource for climate adaptation, environmental governance, and sustainable development. Drawing on ethnographic research, I illustrate how Swiss heritage officials—trained as ethnologists—creatively navigated institutional procedures to frame ARM as heritage, thereby reinterpreting the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in innovative ways. Their practices reveal how bureaucratic routines can become spaces of creativity, driven by ethical values and political aspirations. This process occurred at various levels: locally, with commissions in Wallis challenging folkloric stereotypes; nationally, where the Swiss Office for Culture linked heritage to sustainability agendas; and internationally, where Swiss delegates promoted this vision in UNESCO debates. The case prompts important questions about the tensions between expert-led and community-led approaches, the role of bureaucracy as a site of creativity rather than mere routine, and the broader implications of redefining heritage as a political and moral endeavor.
About the speaker
Florence Graezer Bideau is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, EPFL, where she leads the Heritage, Anthropology, and Technologies Research Group (HAT). She directed the Minor in Area and Cultural Studies (2012–2016) and was Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino (2015–2021). She currently serves on the committee of the Doctoral Program in Architecture and Sciences of the City (EDAR) at EPFL and co-chairs the Research Committee “Héritage et Patrimoine” (CR 44) of the Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française (AISLF). Her research focuses on the intersection of cultural policies and critical heritage studies in urban environments, including the implementation of UNESCO conventions. She has led projects in China on historic urban landscapes, informal resistance to urban violence, public space use in Chinese new towns, and, recently, cultural heritage during the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. In Switzerland, she has been involved in various heritage-related projects, including the making of the first Swiss Inventory of Living Traditions, the inscription of the Watchmaking Town Planning in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and Avalanche Risk Management in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from the University of Lausanne and a Ph.D. in History and Civilization from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. In 2022, she received the Best Teacher Award in the Social and Human Sciences program at EPFL and the Boos Kosma Prize in Planning History Innovation from the International Planning History Society for her co-edited book Porter le Temps: Mémoires urbaines d’un site horloger.