This paper focuses on the process of "heritagization" within nation-states, which runs parallel to the global heritage regime initiated by UNESCO. Involved in this process of heritagization are multiple actors with competing political and economic interests, and the formation of collective identities both internally and externally. Indonesia, the subject of this paper, is a country where a central government-led cultural policy has been pushed forward in the process of national integration. After the end of the "New Order" regime of the second President Suharto, which embodied this vision immediately after independence and permeated the nation to its very core, local cultural practices became a new tool for asserting the uniqueness of regions separated by certain boundaries, as a competition among provinces and regions accelerated with the decentralization of power. At the same time, however, such cultural practices stimulated a process in which traditional region-specific crafts became an easily consumable resource.
The act of listing cultures within the framework of a heritage regime means that some cultural expression is lifted out of their original context and made visible alongside other cultural expressions. As a result, local cultural practices are elevated to a higher context and made visible, thus becoming objects of consumption beyond the local framework. The boundaries that enclose the cultural elements being listed are elastic and contractible, which is why consumption based on these cultural events is possible on a wider scale.