Ms Thi Hien NGUYEN

• Vice Director, Center for Cultural Heritage, Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies, Viet Nam

• Session 1: Presenter 2
• Session 5: Commentator 3

The Borderline between the Government Management and the Role of Communities in the Safeguarding of ICH

: The Case Study of Vietnam

The Convention 2003 states that the works on ICH including the inventory making, safeguarding, and nomination and inscription shall have the involvement of the wide range of stakeholders. In reality, the collaboration between the stakeholders at the global, national and local levels does not always works out in a consonant manner. There is the discourse on the active and important role of the communities in the safeguarding of ICH, but the Vietnam’s law and other legal documents on cultural heritage do not state clearly about the role of the stakeholders and communities. Within the administration system in Vietnam, the management of the ICH is approached from the top-down, at the national level, from the Prime Minister to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. At the local level, the Provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism is in charge of managing the ICH in its territory. At the grassroots, the vice chair of the community is in charge of the culture (including ICH), but the community members, the main practitioners, and the numerous local non-governmental organizations have engaged in managing and practicing ICH. In my presentation, I will draw the borderline between the government management and the role of the communities in the safeguarding of ICH in Vietnam and analyze the collaboration between the government and local officials, researchers and communities in making the inventory, the safeguarding, the nomination and inscription. At the end, I will give some proposals and suggestions on the enhancement of the consonant collaboration between the stakeholders.

Associate Prof. Dr. NGUYEN, THI HIEN

Vice director, Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies

NGUYEN, Thi Hien got her Bachelor of Literature and Russian in Russia in 1987, Master in 1999 and Ph.D. in 2002 in folklore with a minor in religious studies at Indiana University, USA. Then, she worked as a postdoc fellow at American Museum of Natural History in New York (2003) and at University of California in Los Angeles, California, USA (2004). She was appointed as an associate professor in 2012. Currently, she is the Vice Director of Viet Nam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies, Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. She serves as a member of the Consultative Body (2012-2014) and a member of the Evaluation Body (2017-2020) of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention. She has served as the principle investigator of a number of projects on intangible cultural heritage in the National Target Program of Viet Nam. She has played an active role in filling five Vietnam’s files of ICH elements that have been inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. She was awarded three Certificates of Merits by the Prime Minister of Vietnam for her outstanding works in the intangible cultural heritage in Vietnam.

Her three major books include The Religion of Four Palaces: Mediumship and Therapy in Viet Culture (The Gioi Publishing House, 2016), Spirits Without Borders: The Legacy of Vietnamese Mediumship in a Transnational Era (co-authored with Karen Fjelstad) (Palgrave Macmillan Publisher, 2011), and Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities (co-edited with Dr. Karen Fjelstad) (Cornell Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006).