Abstrakt
The study provides a historical background to contemporary challenges which face intangible cultural heritage engagement affecting not only Czech communities, but also academics, NGOs and government administrators attempting to incorporate this relatively new concept into the Czech heritage discourse. This national discourse shares some common ground with international ICH discourse, especially in understanding local heritage primarily through museological practice.
The reason for this lies in the fact that both folklore studies (now usually called European ethnology) and museum studies in the Czech context have always been very closely connected. This can be hardly interpreted as particular to the Czech Republic; several other European academic folklore traditions were historically intertwined with museum practice.
In the Czech case, however, it is only the contemporary concept of ICH that has successfully and meaningfully merged the two fields together and has strong potential to overcome nationalistic and paternalistic notions of the past.