Heritage and Cosmopolitanism

Meskell, Lynn

doi:10.1002/9781118486634.ch32

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…60 This collaborative system gave the Operational Guidelines an aura of legitimacy, making the process look like "teamwork" among the various actors involved. 61 The 2005 revision increased the complexity of the Guidelines, with the number of paragraphs jumping from 139 to 290. Since then, proposals for minor revisions have been discussed almost every year.…”

Section: Boundary Objects: the Operational Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The making and UN-making of consensus: Institutional inertia in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee

Liuzza

2021

Int J Cult Prop

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This article examines the process of text-based negotiations surrounding the documents of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It focuses on revisions to the Operational Guidelines of the Convention and utilizes ethnographic observation and textual examination to show how alternative, and often the most controversial, proposals are silenced through the practice of consensus. It expands anthropological perspectives on the inner workings of intergovernmental institutions and adds to the literature on heritage regimes by providing examples from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) most prestigious intergovernmental committee. Ultimately, the article enhances our understanding of the political tensions and practical limitations of policymaking within intergovernmental organizations in the United Nations, including UNESCO.

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Section: Boundary Objects: the Operational Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The making and UN-making of consensus: Institutional inertia in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee

Liuzza

2021

Int J Cult Prop

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“…11 In the country's most renowned natural heritage sites, such as the Kruger National Park, narratives about colonized people's histories remain marginalized as the category of cultural heritage emerged as secondary to natural heritage. 12 Elsewhere, botanical gardens have begun to embrace more complex narratives as biodiversity became their primary concern. John Hartigan discusses how in Spanish botanical gardens genetics-based plant science sparked renewed discussions about where species belong and interrupted the dominant taxonomic ordering principle.…”

Section: Rooting Colonial Narratives and Western Epistemologies At Kirstenboschmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radical Stories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

Boehi

2021

Environmental Humanities

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When the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden was established in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1913, it was envisioned as a site that served white citizens. Kirstenbosch was presented as a landscape in which plants functioned as representatives of their wild habitats. The botanical garden’s curatorial practices silenced histories of colonial occupation, frontier violence, colonial agriculture, and slavery that had shaped the land on which it was built. Narratives that celebrated colonial histories were cultivated in monumental gardening. Throughout its existence, Kirstenbosch has centered Western epistemologies. Where Indigenous knowledge systems were featured, they were mediated through ethnobotany. While human stakeholders lacked commitment to transformation, emergent ecologies evolved that interrupted colonial narratives and Western epistemologies. Discussing histories of wild almond trees, hybrid plants, and cycads, the author suggests that the emergent ecologies around them introduced radical stories to Kirstenbosch. The emergent ecologies’ storytelling is radical because it works at the roots of plants and historical genealogies, and it roots different narratives—of ruination and new flourishing, diversity and local becomings, multispecies kinship and love—into Kirstenbosch. In doing so, the emergent ecologies introduce possibilities for reimagining the botanical garden as an institution of environmental governance from within its confines and its disciplines.

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“…This had a twofold consequence. On the one hand, it inspired claims of belonging to World Heritage (Labadi, 2013; Meskell, 2015). This is how several Islamic monuments came to be registered on the UNESCO list.…”

Section: A Historical Ontology Of Heritagementioning

confidence: 99%

The concept of heritage and the grammar of Islamic fundamentalism

Dupret

Gutron

2020

Memory Studies

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Islamic fundamentalism is a way to oppose the counter-narrative of an exclusive Islamic civilization to the universalist master-narrative of history’s pluralistic heritage. Two methods of reading the past collide here. One is a genealogical method, which values anything that relates the present to its historical roots. The other is a fundamentalist method, which relies on sacred scriptures in order to identify a founding age it arrogates to itself and to condemn anything that does not correspond to it. These two perspectives function in a conflicting yet interdependent manner. This article aims to describe the operating modes of these two narratives. First, it examines how the concept of heritage acquired new meanings and transformed into an evaluation table with which to assess past, present, and future collective identities. Second, it describes some audiovisual productions relating to the antique city of Hatra, to the destruction of its statues by Islamic State’s fighters, and to its symbolism. On this basis, it analyzes these productions in terms of heritage master- and counter-narratives. Third, it addresses, in relation to the issue of heritage, the fundamentalist discursive structure, its grammar, the entrenchment of its rules, and the demarcation it implies between the community of believers and everyone else.

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Heritage and Cosmopolitanism

Cited by 13 publications

References 37 publications

The making and UN-making of consensus: Institutional inertia in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee

The making and UN-making of consensus: Institutional inertia in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee

Radical Stories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

The concept of heritage and the grammar of Islamic fundamentalism

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