What is the post-industrial rural for? Intangible cultural heritage, rural world-making and core-periphery imaginaries

Abstract

In common with many other areas of Europe connected with national minority cultures, each of the case study regions is considered to be geographically both peripheral and rural. Within these settings, the insider-outsider relationship inhabits a geopolitical context that is ever-changing; yet within which ‘periphery’ and ‘rurality’ nevertheless continue to carry particular implications for the construction of place (and those people within it), potentially leading to entrenched perceptions and discourses. The minority culture may add voice to these narratives but may just as often be silenced, or misaligned with narratives constructed by a potentially dissonant gaze. This peripherality therefore carries particular sets of stereotypes and assumptions regarding the kinds of value that is ascribed to the region, and the affective markers that shape knowledges about it (see Eriksson 2008; Willett 2016). In this chapter Willett engages with these stereotypes, asking how they are entangled and resisted within the cultural practices in each of the case study regions. She uses the New Materialist device of the affective assemblage (Coole and Frost 2010) to explore the affective meanings that ICH generates, how they are shared, the symbolic repertoire utilised, and how this feeds back into centre-periphery perceptions of place.