Inconvenient Heritage

Erasure and Global Tourism in Luang Prabang

Lynne M Dearborn, John C Stallmeyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315426877
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Archeologia

The major international recognition of a World Heritage Site designation can bring important preservation efforts and a wealth of tourist dollars to an impoverished area—but it can also have destructive side effects. In a revealing study with lessons for tourism and preservation projects around the world, this book examines the redevelopment and packaging of Luang Prabang, Laos, as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites that "belong to all peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located." It tells the story of how the world's most prestigious preservation initiative led to a management plan designed to attract tourists and global capital, which in turn developed the most "appealing" parts of the city while destroying or neglecting other areas. This book makes a valuable contribution to tourism and heritage studies and international development.

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CHAPTER ONE

CULTURAL HERITAGE, THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT, AND WORLD HERITAGE TOURISM

Architecture is a continuing dialogue between generations, which creates an environment across time.

—Vincent Scully (1988)

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

—Winston Churchill (1943)

INTRODUCTION

The last thirty years have witnessed the unparalleled growth of tourism worldwide. People from all walks of life now travel to seek experiences beyond their daily lives in numbers far exceeding previous eras, when travel was a privilege enjoyed only by the elite. Travel to seek out the unique and extraordinary is fed by the establishment and growth of locations classified 16as World Heritage. These locations provide a ready source of places “certified” by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having extraordinary heritage and that are ready for tourists to experience. Cultural heritage, one of UNESCO’s classifications of World Heritage, includes “groups of buildings. . . which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity, or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science” (UNESCO 1972: 2). These building groups can encompass entire city districts, which become World Heritage Cities. Thus a key component of the tourist experience and of World Heritage Cities is the built environment that is consumed as part of the tourist experience but that also is (re)produced as a key component of heritage designation. The intersection of heritage, tourism, the built environment, and World Heritage designation results in a matrix of production, representation, and consumption in which meanings are ascribed by government entities, tourists, and local residents—meanings that may be very different from one another.

In this first chapter we untangle the terms heritage, tourism, the built environment, and World Heritage to understand how they relate to and inform the various productions and representations of significance and meaning at tourist sites. Our goal is an understanding of how they become integral parts of the daily experiences of both tourists and local residents of World Heritage Cities. We lay out the case that World Heritage designation relies on the careful and measured circumscription and erasure of particular pieces of the built environment. The built environment is not a neutral framework of space. Instead, buildings become meaningful for people as a result of “complex and continuous process[es] of socialization, symbolic interaction, and negotiation” (Harrison 2005a: 4). Buildings and the urban fabric they create, when closely and responsively built, provide the setting for daily life. It is through the daily lives and actions of residents and tourists in World Heritage Cities that we begin to understand the influence of erasure and augmentation in the production of meaning.

According to UNESCO, “heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations” (UNESCO 2009a). 17UNESCO believes that cultural heritage and natural heritage are irreplaceable sources of meaning and motivation for the world’s people. The initial document recognizing World Heritage and providing for its identification and protection, The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), recognized the need to protect both natural and cultural heritage. As defined by this Convention, Natural Heritage included:

Natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view;

Geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas that constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation;

Natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation, or natural beauty. (UNESCO 1972: 2)

Cultural Heritage, in contrast, included:

Monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings, and combinations of features that are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science;

Groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings that, because of their architecture, their homogeneity, or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science;

Sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites, that are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological, or anthropological point of view. (UNESCO 1972: 2)

18In 2003, after many years of discussion and study, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This document was put forth in recognition of the many global and local forces threatening intangible heritage that UNESCO and others believe is at the heart of the world’s cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development. This Convention defines intangible cultural heritage as:

The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups, and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. (UNESCO 2003: 2)

The Convention goes on to note that “intangible cultural heritage,” also known as “living heritage,” is usually expressed in oral traditions and expressions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and traditional craftsmanship (UNESCO 2003: 2). Since 1972, in identifying and protecting examples of natural and cultural heritage of “outstanding universal value,” heritage professionals have increasingly recognized that natural and cultural heritage are often interlinked, and their preservation often cannot be considered independently. Likewise, there is now recognition that a “deep-seated interdependence between the intangible cultural heritage and the tangible cultural and natural heritage” (UNESCO 2003: 1) exists and must be recognized in identifying and preserving World Heritage.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Cultural heritage is intimately linked to works of art and architecture (UNESCO 1972). Ascribing meaning to these inanimate objects allows people to make 19sense of the past and to make personal connections between their present and the distant past. However, the significance and meaning of heritage in relation to a particular work of art or architecture can vary substantially, because these ascriptions are tied to individuals’ background, experience, and socialization. Historically, architecture has been the “gentlemen’s profession” and the purview of social elites (Ahrentzen and Anthony 1993). Architects often attribute meanings and significance to buildings that diverge from those ascribed by ordinary citizens. Buildings can evoke strong feelings for both architects and non-architects, not only for their aesthetics but also for the life that has been lived in and around them.

Buildings, particularly historic buildings, can elicit very different responses from architects, preservationists, and ordinary citizens. However, when buildings or groups of buildings become symbolic as representative of a particular heritage and thus worth protecting, the concerns of architects, preservationists, and ordinary citizens must somehow meld into a plan for conservation. Such heritage, although of the past, is connected to a living system, and, in the case study of Luang Prabang presented here, that living system includes the intact rituals, social structures, and daily lives of residents of the numerous villages that make up the city, an intangible cultural heritage. In such a city, the best heritage preservation interventions can hope for is to slow the rate of change, because to freeze the physical environment in some imagined space/time would delink it from its evolving associated living system. Inserting tourism and World Heritage Site status into the process of cultural heritage preservation adds complexity and potential debate to the equation, as added sets of actors influence conservation of the physical infrastructure of architecture and the urban environment.

Heritage and tourism exist in an uneasy relationship. Recently popularized heritage tourism brings this contradiction to the fore. Heritage is central to community formation and identity making (Turtinen 2000). Distinct from the idea of a factual history, heritage “relies on revealed faith rather than rational proof” (Lowenthal 1998: 7). Heritage grows and becomes more useful as a device for solidifying group identity as a result of the fabricated legacy that underpins it. Unlike history, heritage can sanitize the past by 20selectively forgetting evil or inconceivable acts. Such recrafting of the past in the memory of a people can bring disparate groups together in the act of building local and national identity. Thus heritage functions to define who is part of that identity and who is an outsider. Sites connected to this heritage become revered places to those who take on the associated identity. Heritage tourism, however, puts such heritage on display for others. Through the process of packaging and promoting heritage, important sites become tourist destinations. Designation as heritage adds social significance to buildings, places, and ways of life that may be in danger of disappearing, because their importance has waned under a new world order. “It does this by adding the value of pastness, exhibition, difference, and where possible indigenity” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995: 370). Through tourism these destinations also gain a new economic value.

Seen in such a way, heritage is local; it offers two types of value to a local population. The first is an identity value, something that can bring a community together, giving it distinctiveness and common purpose. The second is an economic value that can offer new life to a locale that has ceased to be economically viable. Given this local importance of heritage, the idea and the label of World Heritage are not without controversy. World Heritage as defined by UNESCO assumes that there is a “common heritage, reflecting and representing the history of man and nature. . . [suggesting] not nations or ethnic groups as imagined communities, but rather humankind as a moral and imagined community” (Turtinen 2000: 3). Thus world heritage as an idea juxtaposes the needs and the identity of a local population against the needs and the identity of all of humanity.

WHAT IS WORLD HERITAGE?

Lowenthal (1998) describes the use of heritage production by elites as a way to create meaning, gain identity, and establish legitimacy throughout history. The idea of identifying a World Heritage was first considered shortly after the end of World War I (Rakic 2007). The necessity of safeguarding particular sites deemed important to the history of humankind gained the attention of 21the world and UNESCO in particular in 1954 when the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt threatened the Abu Simbel and Philae temples. With funding from fifty countries, UNESCO led a successful campaign to have these two temples dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground (UNESCO 2009b).

On the heels of additional successful campaigns to safeguard particular well-known sites deemed universally important, UNESCO adopted The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, also known as The World Heritage Convention, in 1972. Simply put, this Convention identifies “some parts of the world’s natural and cultural heritage which are so unique and scientifically important to the world that their conservation and protection for present and future generations is not only a matter of concern for individual nations but for the international community as well” (Slatyer 1983b: 138). Through UNESCO’s adoption of this convention, the idea that some heritage has universal value—in other words, is a World Heritage—that surpasses its local and national value was proposed to a world audience. Along with the recognition that some cultural and natural sites embody World Heritage came the commensurate responsibility that all countries of the world have a shared duty to protect this heritage of “outstanding universal value” (UNESCO 1972).

UNESCO

UNESCO and its affiliated expert bodies (that is, ICOMOS, ICCROM, IUCN) constitute several of the important actors operating on a global scale within the field of heritage at the present time. As such, these organizations “are not only guardians of the past but also influential and powerful producers of culture” with the “power to define and diffuse beliefs and practices for cultural and natural heritage” (Turtinen 2000: 3). In addition to providing a means of safeguarding and preserving heritage of outstanding universal value, UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention was conceived as an instrument “for international cooperation and assistance through exchange of information, sharing of expertise, transfer of resources, and training of experts in the field of conservation” (Slatyer 1983a: 140). The World Heritage Convention designates The 22World Heritage Committee as the policy and decision-making body. It is composed of a rotating membership of twenty-one of the signatory States Parties to The Convention.

The World Heritage Committee is composed of each member-party’s official delegation of specialists for natural and cultural heritage. Conducted at its once-yearly meeting, the business of the Committee is begun early each year by an elected Bureau of seven Committee members. The Bureau carefully considers and makes recommendations to the full Committee concerning nominations to the World Heritage and World Heritage in Danger Lists as well as requests for funding and assistance. The Secretariat, provided by UNESCO, assists the Committee by registering nominations to the World Heritage Lists and requests for assistance, as well as preparing documents for meetings. The Secretariat is also charged with implementing the decisions of the Committee and executing approved requests for specialists to provide preparatory assistance, technical cooperation, emergency assistance, and support for training (Slatyer 1983a).

Once a nomination has been registered by the Secretariat it is transferred to the appropriate international organization of experts (ICOMOS, ICCROM for cultural properties, IUCN for natural properties), who rigorously evaluate whether it meets the criteria for “outstanding universal value” and should be recommended for inscription to the World Heritage List. These expert evaluations are then forwarded to the Bureau, which can make one of three recommendations to the full Committee: inscription, rejection, or deferment requiring more information. At its year-end meeting, the Committee acts on the Bureau’s recommendations. Through this process of nomination, evaluation, and decision on inscription, “UNESCO and the expert bodies provide a global ‘grammar’ with which the dispersed local phenomena can be made sense of, coordinated into, and managed as global heritage” (Turtinen 2000: 5).

Although the process outlined above is presented as impartial by virtue of its highly standardized process and execution by transnational scientific experts, the perspective and criteria applied by UNESCO and its affiliated expert bodies are value-laden, growing from a “western” perspective. These entities decide the terms by which World Heritage is defined and inscribed. 23Likewise, the central role of UNESCO and its affiliated experts in this process clearly influences how the world’s nation-states frame and preserve local heritage on the world stage. The world’s nation-states have much to lose in terms of image and economic and social benefits if their nominations to the World Heritage List are rejected. This power imbalance has been identified and discussed by several authors, including Harrison, who notes:

In UNESCO-organized activities, “supervision” by experts can sometimes come to mean domination by experts. UNESCO support is valued, prestigious, and important, and in many respects UNESCO sets the agenda. Where, even if mistakenly, it is felt inclusion on the World Heritage List might bring more tourists, and would thus increase economic prosperity and status, it might be considered politic to do what the experts suggest. (Harrison 2005a: 8–9)

The link between inscription of a site on the World Heritage List and potential to increase tourism revenues is not lost on the nation-states that are signatories of The World Heritage Convention. UNESCO Wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Chapter One Cultural Heritage, the Built Environment, and World Heritage Tourism
• Chapter Two Inconvenient Heritage
• Chapter Three Laos: History and Context
• Chapter Four The Built Environment of Luang Prabang
• Chapter Five Emending the Built Environment: Erasure and Addition in Luang Prabang
• Chapter Six A Dialogue: Global Flows and Local Culture
• Epilogue
• References
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Authors