Located Northern Vanuatu, Pentecost Island is home to a unique traditional marriage practice, different from practices on other outer islands of Vanuatu. Traditional marriage practices begin between families of future spouses with food gifts offered from the groom’s family to the bride’s family. If a marriage agreement is reached between the two families, the groom’s father will return later with mats for the future bride. Future gifts are exchange between the two families to prepare for the wedding ceremony, signaling respect and a sense of community between the families.

Central Asia stands at the crossroads of ancient civilisations. Its territory, crossed by the northern part of the great Silk Road, constitutes an ensemble of cultural heritage sites and monuments that express common historical experiences as well as reflect an extraordinary cultural diversity dating from prehistoric times to the Islamic period and beyond. For centuries, the phenomenon of intangible cultural heritage was a key factor for the transmission of indigenous cultural traditions for future generations as well as a matching point for intercultural dialogue in Central Asia—a region with unique oral and music traditions.

It had taken a few weeks for roads to be cleared of rockfalls and to be made safe enough for vehicles carrying essential goods and supplies in the wake of the June 2013 flash floods and landslides in the western Himalayan region, in particular the mountainous state of Uttarakhand. A small team from the specialist center that I was associated with, the Centre for Environment Education Himalaya, was traveling to a few of the villages that had been affected, which were also villages in which the center had been working for some years before the natural disaster. Those in the small group were anxious. There had been no way to contact people in the villages nor even local administrators in the sub-district offices. Phone lines had yet to be restored, and mobile phone towers were being slowly replaced. Had there been casualties amongst the groups the center had trained? Were homes and school buildings still standing? No-one would know until they reached.

Bangladesh is rich in intangible cultural heritage in all the five domains outlined in the 2003 ICH Convention namely oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, and festive events, knowledge about nature and the universe and traditional craftmanship.Four elements are inscribed in the UNESCO representative list and two applications are submitted in 2019. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has a list with literature of 54 elementsunder the 5 ICH domains, while researchers identified 123 elements. Comprehensive inventorying of living heritages is under process with the Government. Bangladesh, by ratifying 2003 Convention, assumes its obligation of safeguarding these elements of ICH. Among the elements, some are sustainable for the economic output of the objects associated with the elements. Others remain vulnerable for change in lifestyle, knowledge pattern, social and economic advancement, science and technology. Require safeguardfor sustainable development that includes transmission of the ICH elements for generations.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the most populated city in the country. It is also one of the most populated cities in the world with a density of 23,234 people per square kilometer within a total area of 300 square kilometers. The Greater Dhaka Area has a population of over 18 million as of 2016 (World Population Review, 2017). According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects (2014), the population of Dhaka was only 336,000 in 1950. Dhaka has always been a center of cultural vibrancy and has a long history and tradition of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The cultural vibrancy and heritage that have given glory to Dhaka for centuries often get buried under different modern-day civic problems. As an ever-expanding mega city, Dhaka is losing its cultural spaces to religious and ruling coteries. Many of the city’s prime spaces are now earmarked for various public and private business, commercial, or military purposes. The situation was not so deplorable even during the Pakistan era from 1947 to 1971.

Ikat making in Uzbekistan is an ancient type of applied art. The history of Ikat atlas and adras making technologies in the territory of Uzbekistan dates to the late antique period. Historically, Margilan, as the heart of the Fergana Valley, was the birthplace of advanced silk craftsmanship of Central Asia and the center for making atlas and adras—vivid and fine traditional fabrics.

My initial research among Lach community in Lac Duong town, Lam Dong province, Vietnam started with my participation in a project entitled “Establishment of associated mechanisms for conservation of landscape biodiversity and cultural space in Lang Biang Biosphere Reserve, Vietnam,” headed by Southern Institute of Ecology (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) in 2016. The project was successful to some extent in documenting characteristics of cultural spaces of ethnic peoples in the region and the reality of these spaces’ conservation in close relationship with that of biodiversity. Noticeably, being a world heritage, gongs cultural space was recognized as one of the crucial elements constituting the entire cultural spaces and cultural identity of local ethnic groups in the region and thus recorded as being imperative for conservative strategies and actions. These preliminary conceptualizations attracted me as an anthropologist to explore further insights into the socio-economic and cultural life of the Lach in the context of their daily life from 2017 to 2018. \n\nAs the people have been taking more active parts in their national and international integration, their social and economic spaces get expanded, adjusted and re-created. So are their cultural spaces in general and gongs cultural space in specific. This paper is to explore local gongs clubs of the Lach in Lac Duong town and gongs culture restoration activities at the parish church of Langbiang to reveal the fact that gongs cultural spaces of the Lach are far from static, fixed and in need of reservation. Rather, they are dynamic, inclusive and on the process of continuous meaning making as the result of the people utilizing their agency in creating initiatives and mechanism to practice their culture and transfer it to next generations. It is implied that by ways of local participation and community based training, cultural heritage can be prolonged and perpetuated itself alive.

With the arrival of the Kasato Maru at the port of Santos in 1908, a progressive process of Japanese immigration to Brazil began. Martial arts, an integral part of Japanese culture, were brought along with those first immigrants (Kobayashi, 2010). Brazil became the country with the largest number of Japanese immigrants, with São Paulo the biggest community of Japanese people outside Japan (Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Japonesa, 1992).\n

The beautiful body-sway of Malaysian traditional dance is often showcased outside the country as an effort by Tourism Malaysia to introduce local arts to the world. Aside from the mainstream traditional dance, Malaysian aborigines are also known for their unique traditional dance art. Unfortunately, these forms are not commonly known nor are they publicized as much as modern dance art.

Central Asia is a region that has served as the centre of social and economic, in particular cultural interrelations of East and West. The nations of this region have a rich cultural heritage and ancient traditions like any nation in the world. The nations of Central Asia - Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan – make up a unified cultural space, defined by great grassland steppes and famous mountains, nomadic culture and common history, relics and traditions. Throughout this region we find petroglyphs, keregsur, steles, ruins and other monuments attesting to the mingling of peoples in the Central Asian steppe since prehistory. The territory of our own nation, Mongolia, has indeed been the centre several nomadic empires at various stages in history, established by different peoples of Central Asia sharing a similar cultural origin – Hunnu, Khitan, Turks, Uighurs, Kyrgyz and Mongols.

India, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, is also one among the few countries named after a river system. The Indus River gave birth to the Indus Valley Civilization from where comes the word India. India is also the only country in the world with more than seven holy rivers, frequented by pilgrims even in the present day. Thus, water plays a central role in Indian society which is perhaps also because more than 60 percent of India’s geographical area is under agriculture. However, water availability in India has always been limited by the seasonal monsoon, and this has given rise to various traditional systems of water management in different parts of the country.

Traditional food systems of native peoples around the world are critical to cultural identity and customs as well as to the continuation of biological genetic diversity. However, such traditional cuisines are becoming increasingly vulnerable due to the advent of global food systems, agroindustry, and changing lifestyles as well as to shifting preferences and ignorance of original ingredients. Furthermore, territorial transformations and distancing from ancestral lands have led to the loss of knowledge regarding the benefits of diverse ecosystems and their natural resources.