Contenu du sommaire : Le patrimoine culturel immatériel en pratiques. écritures, médiations et appropriations

By considering the editorial, economic and commercial dimensions of the book chain, Robert Escarpit laid the foundations for a socio-economic approach of publishing which has come to grow within research on the cultural industries. This article aims to show how heuristic the tools developed by Escarpit were at the time, and how relevant they still are today for information and communication sciences. Indeed, his non-essentialist approach, centered on actors and rooted in empirical research constitutes a valid frame of analysis for current research on publishing and on the book retail. Two contemporary fields of research will be presented to show how Escarpit's methodology can be applied: first self-publishing, through a research conducted on specific publishing platforms; then intermediation in bookshops, based on a survey of recently created independent bookshops in France.

Information and communication science researchers have long studied the social process by which objects change status to acquire that of heritage. Viewed from the present, in a form of reverse parentage, heritage is studied because it tells us about the relationships we have with our past. However, the inclusion of the intangible in the heritage domain requires an upheaval of this model: the transmission of know-how, rituals and customs indeed implies an intergenerational continuity which precedes the production of institutionalized knowledge. By following the media actors and writings who participate in this transformation of the intangible into heritage, the texts gathered here take a singular look at this new category of objects and underline how information-communication practices are at the heart of this recognition.

Based on a reminder of the definition of patrimonialisation, the article develops the sociosemiotic specificities of the translation of a social process into intangible heritage: maintenance of the initial social process; writing of a scholarly representation from the events (implementation and memory); integration by inscription on one of the lists by Unesco or States; placing the members of the collective in the position of the observer; all these operations which result in the text of the activation of the process in the present as a trace of the past to be reactivated in the future. This text gives rise to two methods of publicization: a management of the observer position occupied by foreigners and the documentarization of the scholarly representation which spreads the scheme of intangible heritage in the media.

The management of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is based on a bottom-up process of heritagization. According to the 2003 Unesco convention, communities of practice must actively participate in the definition of their heritage objects. Moreover, these definitions must respect the living character of the heritage by describing it without freezing it. In this context, digital tools have proven to be particularly suitable for communicating about this type of heritage and for disseminating national inventories of these objects. On the one hand, they can make it possible to create participatory environments in which practitioners and amateurs can express themselves and, on the other hand, they make the continuous updating of inventory files possible and easy. This article aims to study and compare the different media and digital writings on which the French inventory of ICH is based.

This paper approaches the question of intangible cultural heritage by looking at the related cultural mediation or cultural education processes it calls for. Drawing on interviews and document analysis related to two cultural heritage inventory projects designed to document the heritage-in-making, this paper explores these mediation processes through the lens of the document, questioning the logics behind its conception and representations throughout these projects. The paper sheds light on a fundamental ambiguity towards the document, when its documentary production is strongly encouraged by the heritage institutions but also subject to controversy. By pointing the particular relationship to the document, this paper highlights and defines the specific nature and scenarios of the intangible heritage cultural mediations processes.

With the introduction of digital technology in the museum environment and the emergence of intangible cultural heritage, museographic practices are being reinvented. The article presents the method implemented to promote the fire festivals of the summer solstice in the central Pyrenees inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity since 2015. It describes the challenges and the process of museographic writing to design the model of a digital museum and develop its communication program. The challenge of the project was to articulate the specificities of this intangible cultural heritage with the potential offered by digital technology to develop a museum that is the most complete in its traditional functions of conservation, study and communication.

Based on the analysis of the mediation mechanisms deployed by the Cité du Vin, the Palais Bénédictine and Calvados experience, this article studies the digital enunciation strategies adopted by the design of their website. It also examines the different modes of experiential configuration engaged in a logic of prefiguration of the meaning of the visit of these places. The aim is to take a crossover look at the contributions of marketing, semiotics, SCI and user experience design in order to uncover a typology of experiences and digital mediations that these websites can offer.

To achieve the labeling of the Fêtes de Saint-Nicolas in the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, two cities, Saint-Nicolas-de-Port and Nancy, have to overcome their antagonism. Considering the territoriality of a festive practice not as a prerequisite but a searchable space, evolving and subject to adjustments, this article attempts to qualify this process of territorialization prior to patrimonialization. Starting from an asymmetry between two cities, one with a glorious past thanks to a relic of Saint-Nicolas and the other with a prosperous present to which the development of the Feasts of Saint-Nicolas contributes, will first of all be considered the terms of the opposition between these two cities. The illusory character of a binary structuring between cult maintenance and contemporary claim will be demonstrated from the many operations – statutory, cultural, spatial, communicational and legal – which help to territorialize the festivities on both sides and to shape the peculiarities in order to achieve a patrimonial consensus and a double recognition.

This article aims at questioning the semiotic and political stakes of “digital libraries”. To do so, it is based on the analysis of a specific example: Gallica and its white-labelling. From a semio-discursive approach, it highlights the way in which this object is part of a history of forms while semiotizing representations of documentation. Between logics of accessibility and openness, the “digital library” updates previous documentary logics while updating itself through the imaginary associated with the digital. Between mediation and mediatization, the “digital library” Gallica by its declination in white-labelling testifies of an industrialization of the documentary forms and leads to question the relations between mediation and communication.