It seems to be a professional differentiation, but form the point of view of the social research, this differentiation makes no sense (unless if you work on the social representations of professionals). Any monument is linked to specific (and intangible) knowledge, representations, attachments, feelings and so on. I work on natural heritage (a topic supposed to be linked to strong materiality), and I this differentiation has never been useful for my research. Maybe a look to the "nature/culture" literacy (Latour, Descola, Viveros De Castro, Ingold, etc.) could help you to abandon this differentiation, or (I don't know) to be more sure of its inadequation in the context of the social sciences.

I agree with you. But the policy of governments and international organizations responsible for culture, differentiate between material heritage (including the environment and natural) and the intangible. One example is UNESCO, with the List of World and Natural Heritage (1972) and List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003). The recognition of UNESCO and the protection of these patrimonies is different.

Currently, I'm working on a research project on "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Patrimonialization, Management and Good Practices". It is an interesting question.

Yes, and we should consider that policies of governments are representations (or categories), but not scientific categories that we, as researchers, have to use as if they were useful concepts. They exist, just as any common sense or common representation, no more, no less. For instance, when I work on natural heritage, I always also work on some "intangible" dimensions of this type of heritage: knowledge and representations of actors, for instance. The two sides - material and immaterial - cannot be separated.

It seems to me that the distinction is particularly important in the case of works of art, because the nature of the work (its "ontology", philosophers would say) is utterly different. What is a musical work? Its score? As Nelson Goodman has shown, while there may exist an authograph of the score, its preservation concerns only the paper, the ink, the handwriting of the composer, but not the music itself which is as fully preserved in any modern edition of its score.

And what in the case of music of oral tradition (or of jazz, etc.)? What is then to be preserved? Recordings? Videos of performances? Who is the composer (or the originator)? In what sense can various performances be considered performances of the same work? Etc. etc.

These questions are crucial in the case of music, but arise in similar ways for any intangible cultural work.

The raison d'être of the distinction with respect to material works (sculpure, painting, architecture, etc.) is that these questions cannot be asked in the same way in both cases and, above all, that the answers are not evident in the case of intangible works. The point there may not be to find the right answers, but to describe how one should cope with the absence of answer.

I am also confronted with this (arbitrary) distinction. I thought I simply considered objects as material patrimony and information / intentions about objects as immaterial patrimony. For example, a traditional blouse is a material patrimony object, but the meaning of decorative stitches on it, and the occasion when it is worn belong to the immaterial patrimony.