Research

Core Questions + Theoretical Framework

Core Hypothesis

“Institutions (laws and conventions) sought to protect culture — but may simultaneously have erased the modes through which communities once survived on their own.”

External Variables — Colonization, modernization, tourism policy, and each country's heritage legislation — Korea's Act on the Safeguarding and Promotion of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Japan's Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, Taiwan's Cultural Heritage Preservation Act — together with the UNESCO 2003 Convention. In this research, 'institution' means these laws and conventions and their systems of designation, inscription, and support

Internal Variables — The tendency of individuals not to adapt immediately to changes of the era (the lives of individual artists)

Research Question — How did communities try to survive before and after institutionalization? What has the institution made us forget?

Extinction of Experience

'Extinction of experience' was proposed by lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle (1993): when opportunities for direct experience of nature disappear, affection and attention disappear with them; what loses attention falls out of protection, which further shrinks the possibility of experience — Pyle called this 'the cycle of the extinction of experience.' Soga & Gaston (2016) formalized it into two causes — loss of opportunity and loss of orientation — linked by feedback loops, and Christine Rosen (2024) extended it to a techno-social critique in which the human condition is replaced by 'user experience.' This research carries the lineage into intangible cultural heritage and cultural policy. In traditional performing arts, the extinction of experience is the process in which the relational, environmental, and institutional conditions under which embodied artistry was transmitted are dismantled — so that the very capacity to sense, embody, and convey the world in a particular way fails to pass between generations. We analyse it in three dimensions: sensory disconnection (embodied skill no longer passes from body to body — Bourdieu's embodied capital), environmental disconnection (the village-ritual grounds of Jeju, the court stage that vanished with the fall of the Ryukyu Kingdom, and the village ritual grounds of Taiwan's indigenous communities scattered by forced relocation — the loss of the environments where transmission lived), and institutional disconnection (institutions meant to 'safeguard' turn living practice into a fixed object of preservation — Smith's AHD). The three reinforce one another in a loop: institutions transform the habitat of transmission; a changed habitat changes how bodies transmit; as embodied experience thins, attention is lost, and policy doubles down on 'preservation.' The duality of institutions as cure and cause at once — and the alternatives each community has built to overcome it — this is the third dimension this research adds to the existing frameworks.

Archaeology of the Senses

Archaeology of the Senses — The Project's Lens

An excavation of memory that recovers the senses written into our DNA amid the anxiety of extinction. In the strata of traditional arts lie not only the identity of the source, but layer upon layer of tragedy and resistance, adaptation and transformation experienced across each era.

An archaeologist removes artefacts and places them in a museum. But we seek to enter into those strata. With senses. With bodies. With questions.

Our research methods are sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009) and constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). Direct encounters, participation in live performances, historical context analysis, capturing the duality of touristification and preservation, documentation of minority languages (Ryukyuan, Jeju dialect).

Comparative Structure

Primary In-depth Case

Jeju — Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut

UNESCO 2009. Sedentary survival. Comparison before/after institutionalization — what the island's geography protected remains an open question.

Comparative Case

Okinawa — Kumiodori and Ryukyuan Performing Arts

UNESCO 2010. Reorganized after the abolition of the Ryukyu Kingdom (1879). Transmission through lineages and master–disciple ties (based on field interviews).

Comparative Case — Outside UNESCO

Taiwan — Bunun Rituals on Stage

Not a UNESCO member. Reconstructing rituals as tourism and performance amid colonization and forced relocation. Our unique contribution.

Theoretical Anchors

Helena Norberg-Hodge

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (1991)

Tradition is not the past — it is the possibility of a future we have lost. What Ladakh possessed — community, self-sufficiency, sustainability — was 'a future yet to come.'

→ Traditional arts are an ancient future — the starting point of this project

Christine Rosen

The Extinction of Experience (2024)

When direct experience disappears, we lose the very way of being. Receiving with the body, feeling with the senses, and colliding with others — this is the way of being human.

→ Extinction of traditional arts = taxidermy. The process of changing from something living to something to be preserved.

Laurajane Smith

Uses of Heritage (2006)

Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) — state and expert discourses taxidermify intangible cultural heritage.

→ The institutional paradox: the mechanism by which protection erases community self-sufficiency.

UNESCO

Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003)

Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage — a shift from 'heritage' to 'living heritage.' Yet the inscription process itself paradoxically fixes tradition.

→ Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut (2009) and Kumiodori (2010) inscriptions — baseline for before/after comparison.

Victor Turner

The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969)

Ritual is the process of separating the community from everyday life and re-joining them. The experience of liminality maintains the community.

→ Framework for analysing how Yeongdeunggut, Ryukyuan performing arts, and Bunun rituals 'revive' communities.

Intangible Heritage Regimes by Country

These are what this research calls 'institutions.' A brief summary of each law's definition, purpose, and enactment.

UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003)

Defines intangible heritage as 'the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities, groups and individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.' Its core: safeguarding must guarantee vitality rather than fossilize, with communities at the centre. This is the basis for this research's use of 'intangible cultural heritage communities.'

Korea — Act on the Safeguarding and Promotion of Intangible Cultural Heritage (enacted 2015)

Enacted by separating intangible heritage from the Cultural Heritage Protection Act. It replaced 'original form' with the more flexible 'archetype,' and added 'promotion' alongside preservation as its purpose. With the Framework Act on National Heritage in force since 2024, the very word 'cultural property' changed to 'national heritage.' Holder recognition and transmission subsidies are the regime's pillars.

Japan — Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties (1950)

The world's first law to protect intangible cultural properties. It designates Important Intangible Cultural Properties and recognizes the individuals who embody them as holders (the so-called 'Living National Treasures'). Kumiodori was designated under this law in 1972 — on the very day Okinawa reverted to Japan.

Taiwan — Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (enacted 1982, fully revised 2016)

As Taiwan is not a UNESCO member, it cannot join the 2003 Convention and runs its own registration system for intangible cultural heritage under this act. The 2016 revision reorganized the intangible categories and strengthened provisions on indigenous cultures. Separately, the Council of Indigenous Peoples handles indigenous welfare and cultural support — the very support the Bunun community declined for the sake of its autonomy.

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