Global Heritage

A Reader

Lynn Meskell, Lynn Meskell

• Editore: Wiley-Blackwell
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118769102
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Museum Administration

Examines the social, cultural and ethical dimensions of heritage research and practice, and the underlying international politics of protecting cultural and natural resources around the globe.

• Focuses on ethnographic and embedded perspectives, as well as a commitment to ethical engagement
• Appeals to a broad audience, from archaeologists to heritage professionals, museum curators to the general public
• The contributors comprise an outstanding team, representing some of the most prominent scholars in this broad field, with a combination of senior and emerging scholars, and an emphasis on international contributions

1
UNESCO and New World Orders

Lynn Meskell and Christoph Brumann

UNESCO and Cultural Heritage

It is remarkable how thoroughly an organization once set up to propagate the new – “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed,” as the most quoted sentence from its constitution has it – is now publicly associated with conserving the old. In the most broadly defined portfolio of any UN body, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with its headquarters in Paris has increasingly shifted from E to C. Education continues to be the primary commitment and to drive its programmatic vision, however, globally UNESCO has come to stand for heritage, and it is the heritage programs that attract the largest part of the extra-budgetary resources on which the cash-strapped organization so heavily depends. That heritage is so tightly linked with UNESCO and that long sections of recent scholarly overviews of the field (Harrison 2012; Smith 2006; Tauschek 2013) are dedicated to the UNESCO conventions is significant, given the small operating budgets of the UNESCO programs (Meskell 2013a). Clearly, UNESCO’s symbolic weight is considerable and can be converted into power and material gains in many domains.

The rise of heritage within UNESCO is indicative of a changed orientation towards human diversity within the organization. UNESCO’s early initiatives, such as its statements on race, highlighted human unity, enlisting the services of prominent anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss. The organization strove to disseminate literacy, Western agricultural models, and birth control – a unitary package of modernity – to the states of the Global South that have always been a key concern. For a progress so conceptualized, cultural diversity was an obstacle, not a virtue. During the 1960s and 1970s, however, the optimistic belief in economic development faded, and, instead, the 1972 World Heritage Convention and other activities began to highlight the outstanding achievements of particular cultures in order to make them world property, attempting to wrest them away from the national frameworks of cultural and natural conservation. A further shift has occurred in the 1990s and 2000s where the common heritage of humanity worthy of preservation expanded, from the wonders of nature and material culture to customary practices and even cultural diversity as such (Stoczkowski 2009). In UNESCO pronouncements, economic development and globalization are now a threat rather than a promise, bound to dissolve ethnic, national, and religious identities; against this specter, the celebration of cultural diversity and the variety of human accomplishments is expected to promote the mutual respect and understanding that ensures world peace and human advancement. Targeting “the right kind of culture” (Nielsen 2011) for UNESCO entails customs and practices that respect basic human rights and are tolerant of their contenders. How much of this is wishful thinking in a world divided by cultural values and alignments should be obvious. But for an organization working to be inclusive of its members – the world’s national governments – such aspirational formulations sidestep uncomfortable pronouncements about desirable and undesirable values and practices.

Given these constraints, edifying and aesthetically pleasing places and practices are easier to agree upon than some cultural norms of proper female comportment, for example, and this has certainly contributed to bringing heritage as (ideally) harmless culture to center stage within UNESCO contexts. Fitting for an organization so much premised on the aftermath of war, the first step in 1954 was the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (to which a Second Protocol was added in 1999), and the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property too especially applies to conflict and post-conflict societies. Yet with the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the focus shifted to all kinds of heritage sites, also those not immediately endangered by destructive or criminal human action. Some thirty years on, the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was of a more specialized nature but the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the 2005 Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions decidedly widened the scope established by the World Heritage Convention. The 2003 Convention in particular enjoys comparable attention because of its analogous lists of global fame with all their celebratory potential. Even so, the World Heritage Convention continues to play in a league of its own, starting with the fact that intangible heritage “cultural expressions” are often (and mistakenly) referred to as “World Heritage” whereas the reverse does not usually occur. In this chapter we concentrate on World Heritage and the 1972 UNESCO Convention that aspired to create and conserve it.

The History and Institutional Framework of World Heritage

Many modern precepts of heritage crystallized in Europe in synchrony with the origins of the nation-state. Intimately connected to the Enlightenment project, the formation of national identity relied on a coherent national heritage that could be marshaled to fend off the counter-claims of other groups and nations. In the post-Westphalian world, “sovereign nation-states no longer exclusively define the field of global political relations or monopolize many of the powers organizing that field, yet states remain significant actors as well as symbols of national identification” (Brown 2010: 24). As in many other globalizing arenas, the creation of UNESCO and the shift to global heritage ended up reinforcing the interests of the state since it is so strongly pegged to national identification, prestige, and the recognition of a particular modernity. In fact, the state continues to be a particularly intransigent force in all of UNESCO’s operations by the very structure of the organization that has states as its members. Within the UN family, nation-states are impossible to bypass or dislodge whether one is talking about human rights or heritage rights and, in cases of doubt, political sovereignty often takes precedence over the protection of people or things. Underwriting all practices of protection is the tension of balancing preservation with the material needs of living communities. Indeed much recent work underscores that conservation, like corporatization, has effectively displaced both human histories and local presence (Breen 2007; Brockington and Igoe 2006; West, Igoe, and Brockington 2006).

UNESCO’s commitment to peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding developed out of the universalist aspirations for global governance envisaged by the League of Nations (Singh 2011; Valderrama 1995). While upholding modernist principles of progress and development, it simultaneously subscribes to the liberal principles of diplomacy, tolerance, and development. It should be noted that UNESCO’s mission stemmed from a specifically European organization called the International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation (ICIC) which operated between 1936 and 1946 (Droit 2005; Hoggart 2011), rather than being a direct offshoot from the United Nations. Founded by prominent intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann, the ICIC was established to create a “state of mind conducive to the peaceful settlement of international problems within the framework of the League of Nations” (Valderrama 1995: 3). Not surprisingly, its activities were focused on education, universities and libraries, and internationalism. Given this history of emphasizing recognition and reconciliation, the long-standing ethos of cultural diversity, and the protection of minority lifeways, it is not surprising that UNESCO has emerged as the most prominent structural avenue to the global governance and promotion of cultural heritage. Within the United Nations, UNESCO may not be as powerful as high-profile international peacekeeping, environmental initiatives, or development programs. Rather, it is perceived as the cultural arm, the visionary agency, and the “ideas factory” for the larger organization (Pavone 2008).

The principle that natural and cultural heritage situated across the globe requires an international mandate and authority for its management, preservation, and protection stretches back a century. From the League of Nations in 1919, to the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) and its International Museums Office in 1926, to the Athens Conference of 1931 on the protection and conservation of monuments of art and history, there has been a growing international movement. In 1945, UNESCO was created with a constitution mandating “the conservation and protection of the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science.” With modernist construction and development projects and unseen ecological damages heightening a sense of urgency, this commitment transformed into proactive international assistance: the first in a series of safeguarding missions coordinated by UNESCO was launched in 1959 for the Nubian monuments of Egypt, threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam but then transplanted to a site out of reach of the rising waters (Allais 2013; Hassan 2007). International expert meetings such as that held in Venice in 1964 were responsible for drafting the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (the Venice Charter) and for the founding of ICOMOS (see below). During the 1965 US White House Conference, the idea of a World Heritage Trust was proposed and the term “world heritage” was coined (Allais 2013: 7; Bandar...