02210nas a2200229   4500008004100000022002000041245019100061210006900252300001200321490000700333520127400340653002801614653003301642653003301675653001101708653002701719100002301746700002301769700002301792700001701815856014801832       2020                        eng d  a09640282 (ISSN)00aProving participation: vocational bureaucrats and bureaucratic creativity in the implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural HeritageMots cles0 aProving participation vocational bureaucrats and bureaucratic cr  a66–820 v283 aThis paper investigates the bureaucratisation of the (utopian) ideal of community participation in Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) safeguarding and management. The analysis considers the whole ‘policy life’ of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH. Our ethnographic examples from UNESCO, Brazil, China and Greece illustrate how bureaucratic operations often disenchant the participatory ideal, alienating it from its original intention. At the same time, driven by their commitment to ‘good’ governance and informed by sentiments of frustration and disappointment with actual policy results, vocational bureaucrats at different administrative levels experiment with and conceive of new tools in order to produce evidence of participation. We demonstrate how this bureaucratic creativity has concrete consequences, which may differ from the intended utopia, but nevertheless bring to life particular interpretations of the participatory principle among the recipients for whom heritage policies were originally designed. Thus, we present a more nuanced picture of bureaucratisation in which officials’ emotions and engagement sustain their agency against structural constraints as well as the futility and fragility of administrative procedures.10abureaucratic creativity10aIntangible cultural heritage10aparticipation of communities10aUNESCO10avocational bureaucrats1 aBortolotto, Chiara1 aDemgenski, Philipp1 aKarampampas, Panas1 aToji, Simone  uhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85079707567&doi=10.1111%2f1469-8676.12741&partnerID=40&md5=0877f43cf204be621ba942027133d254