Diego RINALLO

Craft, traditional medicine, performances and other practices that are considered intangible cultural heritage (ICH) today have often been closely linked historically to markets for products and services. Gifts, sales and patronage have supported artists and performers for generations. Lack of sufficient remuneration for practitioners can lead to the disappearance of skills and knowledge associated with the ICH, or a narrowing of practitioners’ repertoire. At the same time, market pressures can have negative impacts on ICH practice, described as ‘over-commercialization’, ‘decontextualization’, ‘misappropriation’ or ‘misrepresentation’ under the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. How can practitioners and their communities benefit equitably from their ICH in the market while mitigating against these harms, and ensuring heritage safeguarding? In academic and policy debates, ICH safeguarding and sustainable economic development tend to be positioned as either fundamentally at odds, or perfectly compatible, while the dynamics of this relationship are poorly conceptualised. To untangle this ‘conceptual logjam’, this chapter suggests reconsidering concepts of authenticity, innovation and heritage repertoire, and plots a path to further conceptual debate.

This chapter explores the complex entanglement between neopaganism and the market through an analysis of the Circolo dei Trivi, one of the most established Wiccan organizations in the Italian landscape. Drawing on a corpus of ethnographic and netnographic data collected over a span of twenty years, the chapter investigates the dilemmas faced by the organization, including the demarcation between profit and non-profit activities, the management of public visibility and practitioner privacy, the selection of seekers, and the adoption of marketing strategies to support its initiatives. Particular attention is given to the role of digital platforms—from social media to videoconferencing tools—used as promotional and seeker recruitment instruments, and to the transformations in public engagement accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis challenges the dominant narrative that links the commercialization of spirituality to a loss of authenticity, showing instead how it can serve as a strategic tool for safeguarding and transmitting religious practices. This study contributes to the sociological debate on secularization by highlighting how, despite its inherent ambivalences, the market can also become a crucial instrument for the survival, adaptation, and expansion of emerging religions in an increasingly digitalized context.

This chapter discusses insights from a project in India that speak to the challenges and benefits of co-creation and collaboration in situations where communities work with academics and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in heritage safeguarding projects, communicating across language, cultural and disciplinary differences and managing diverse interests.
Purulia Chau (or Chhau) dance is a dynamic acrobatic dance with elaborate masks performed in India for ritual purposes as well as to paying audiences for entertainment. The dance practice was inscribed, alongside two other Chau styles, on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. In the heritage-sensitive intellectual property and marketing strategies (HIPAMS) India project, funded by a three-year British Academy grant (2018-2021), a group of Chau dancers and mask makers collaborated with a team of researchers from Europe specialising in heritage, marketing and intellectual property law, and a local NGO in West Bengal. The project co-created and implemented heritage-sensitive intellectual property and marketing strategies, or HIPAMS, to maximise sustainable development and heritage-safeguarding benefits for artists.
The HIPAMS specifically sought to address problems identified by the artists, such as lack of proper attribution in films, and the need to expand their markets. Strategies implemented as part of the project included developing artists' digital storytelling skills and creating a common online promotional platform for dancers and mask makers, drafting a code of ethics based on intellectual property rights and designing new packaging and labels. The project helped artists to develop their online markets in a time of COVID-19, assert their rights and interests more effectively with customers and communicate better to customers about the heritage attributes that the community valued.

Religions and spiritual movements have specific doctrines related to sexuality that prescribe (mandate or encourage) or proscribe (forbid or discourage) numerous forms of sex-related consumer behavior. These norms create conditions of privilege or discrimination, stigma, oppression, and marginalization for specific sexual identities. Following recent calls for intersectional consumer research, in this chapter we look at the specific manners in which religious/spiritual doctrines can affect consumer sexuality. We analyze the theologies of sexuality of a religion characterized by strong central institutions, Roman Catholicism, and a more loosely organized religious movement, Wicca, to discuss their broader role in shaping consumer sexual behavior and identities. We then provide a mapping of the various manners religion/spirituality and sexuality intersect in consumer research and suggest future avenues of inquiry at this intersection. While most consumer research on sexuality on one hand, and on spirituality and religion on the other hand, have so far evolved without intersecting, the times are ripe for work taking into consideration the mutual influences religion and sexuality have on marketplace structures and consumers’ lives.

"How can marketing and intellectual property (IP) help marginalised communities harness their intangible cultural heritage (ICH) to contribute to sustainable livelihoods while avoiding the perils of over-commercialisation? This is the central question that is addressed in this chapter which starts by highlighting the legal frameworks for IP and how these are quite different from those for safeguarding of ICH. While both seek to regulate information, they do so with very different underpinning theories, goals and tools. By reference to the HIPAMS project, the chapter explains how IP can be used to underpin marketing strategies when heritage bearer communities commercialise their ICH showing how, in practice, IP can be a useful tool in pursuit of sustainable development"

Le streghe godono di una popolarità senza precedenti. Nelle fiction, le streghe cattive e monodimensionali di una volta hanno ceduto il passo a personaggi complessi, accattivanti, con cui è facile immedesimarsi. Sono numerose le persone di ambo i sessi che oggi si definiscono witch, strega, bruja, sorcière. Sui social media si trovano, discutono, si scambiano incantesimi, organizzano rituali collettivi online, e a volte si organizzano per incontrarsi dal vivo. Simbolo di potere femminile ai margini della società, quella della strega è una figura che risuona nella cultura di oggi, in grado di influenzare la politica femminista, le religioni e spiritualità neopagane, le pratiche esoteriche, il mondo dell’entertainment, e più di recente la società dei consumi. In questo intervento, basato su una ricerca in corso sulle streghe online di diversi paesi europei, ricostruiamo l’evoluzione della figura della strega identificando i diversi elementi che permettono oggi a numerose persone di identificarsi come tali. Mettiamo inoltre in luce l’esistenza di tipi diversi di streghe e gli usi che fanno dei social media: apprendimento e scambio di conoscenze magiche; protesta politica in chiave femminista, lesbica, gay, transessuale, queer e spesso anticapitalista; ricerca di forme di comunità (online ma anche dal vivo); e la promozione di sé e dei propri prodotti/servizi.

Current academic theories and sustainable development planning provide little practical guidance to ICH communities on how to ensure that commercialisation of heritage-based market offerings supports heritage safeguarding and results in sustainable development. Work in this area has so far mostly focused on the dangers of over-commercialisation and the risks of de-contextualization, distracting from a more comprehensive investigation of ways to maintain and transmit heritage skills and knowledge while supporting sustainable economic development. The HIPAMS India project, funded by a three-year British Academy grant (2018-2021), aimed to help such communities by co-creating heritage-sensitive intellectual property and marketing strategies, or HIPAMS. This chapter sets out some theoretical and practical insights from our work on HIPAMS by explaining the HIPAMS process, highlighting the importance of community involvement in the co-creation of heritage-sensitive intellectual property and marketing strategies, and discussing key elements in its conceptual model. We suggest that planning heritage-sensitive commercialisation, i.e. commercialisation that supports heritage safeguarding, requires paying attention to questions of community engagement and empowerment, maintaining the heritage skills repertoire and keeping the tradition alive through heritage-sensitive innovation, and supporting or enhancing the reputation of the products or services in the marketplace. Experiences of co-creating and implementing HIPAMS suggest that such strategies can help to empower artist communities and promote sustainable incomes while reaffirming the value of their heritage both within and outside their communities.