ABSTRACT
In a rather unexpected development for UNESCO as the sponsor of the extension of heritage programmes to the intangible, the use of intangible cultural heritage in tourism promotion campaigns and in other areas of commercialisation of traditional culture has led to considerable diplomatic tensions between neighbouring countries with the same, or similar, cultural heritage. It is perhaps less surprising that many of these disputes about heritage are to be found in Southeast Asia, an area that historically has always been at the crossroads of, and receptive to, dierent cultural inuences (Antons, 2013a). In addition, as elsewhere during the centuries of colonial expansion, the borders in this region were drawn by European colonial powers with little knowledge of, or regard for, local ethnic and cultural aliations. They often permanently divided local communities that henceforth belonged to dierent colonies and, following decolonisation in the twentieth century, to dierent nation states (Antons, 2012a, 2013b).
