New Humanism and Fragile Heritages: New Noble Savage in Global Village and the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

Although globalization is a frequently used cliche concept dominates many areas of our life day by day instead of losing its validity. It is therefore difficult to maintain a new discussion around this concept by avoiding cliches. The discourse of globalization, which has been debated from so many different perspectives so far, is less discussed than it deserves in cultural heritage issues. However, many challenges such as the cultural industry, cultural tourism, and migration under the influence of globalization are related to cultural heritage. For this reason, it is necessary to face again with this concept within the frame of the Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2003). The Convention, which aims to safeguard the local on a global scale, has to consider the balance between implementation, evaluation, audit and governance mechanisms, and global perspectives. The Convention frequently emphasizes that heritage belonging to the community, group and in some cases individuals, and cannot be safeguarded without their active participation and contribution. Therefore, it is a human-centered balance that needs to be set up. However, it is difficult to sustain this balance in a highly globalized and fastened world. For this reason, in this article, the globalization approach of the 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the meaning of globalization concerning the Convention is based on the texts created since 2003. Besides, the discourses of the intangible cultural heritage, known as a fragile heritage, as local, national or universal, and the extent to which the European-based perspectives influence these discourses interpreted with the consideration of concepts such as noble savage, cosmopolitanism, the spirit of the community and humanism.