NON-MATERIAL CULTURAL HERITAGE NEEDS LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION IN ARMENIA

Noyan Tapan
Oct 23, 2007

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN. Cultural globalization has called
forth the necessity to bring out problems of preservation of national
indentity, national culture, including keeping of non-material cultural
heritage, and to find a new solutions to them. Karine Khodikian, the
RA Deputy Minister of Culture, stated this at the October 23 third
international three-day conference under the title "Knowledge and
Symbol, Belief and Custom," dedicated to preservation of non-material
cultural values.

According to her, the whole non-material cultural heritage and system
of values need legislative and institutional protection today in
Armenia. At that, not only adoption of individual laws by the state,
but also bringing them in line with international standards regulating
the sphere is necessary.

Garnik Guyumjian, the Head of the State Programs, Cultural Cooperation,
Science and Education Unit of Cultural Policy Department of the RA
Ministry of Culture, said in his speech that the Ministry has already
worked out a bill On Non-material Cultural Heritage, which is at the
interested Ministries. The law’s adoption pursues a single purpose,
to regulate legal interrelations in the sphere, to specify state
governance bodies’ authorities, to establish the directions, in which
international cooperation should be carried out. G. Guyumjian said
that Armenia joined the International Convention On Preservation of
Non-material Values in 2005.

G. Guyumjian said that the bill will have a special provision on
preservation of non-material cultural heritage in the Diaspora.

Ethnographer Levon Abrahamian’s report on the subject "Indefinite
Limits of Non-material Culture" rendered clear the borderline between
material and non-material values. "Non-material culture is everything
surrounding us, which is not tangible. In my opinion, we should start
from what is lost or disappears from our life. For instance, a singer
sings, his ability to sing is a non-material, not tangible value:
the matter is how to preserve the ability to perform (a bad or good
song or performance are not important)," the ethnographer said giving
assurance that material values cannot be be created today unless we
have non-material values.