Into the Contact Zones of Heritage Diplomacy: Local Realities, Transnational Themes and International Expectations

Abstract

Heritage is increasingly promoted as a tool for economic and social development to help rebuild societies that have suffered conflict and deep social trauma. Heritage diplomacy is an emergent form of cultural relations that forms a ‘contact zone’ between different stakeholders and divergent expectations. This paper explores some aspects of this field of heritage diplomacy and develops a basic typology by contrasting the tension between the uses of ‘charismatic heritage diplomacy’ and more ‘careful heritage diplomacy’. It examines differences between local realities and international expectations of heritage by bringing together two case studies: one from a Creative Europe–funded project where civil society actors develop strategies for working with the difficult heritage that lies behind nationalist myths, and the other from a British Council–funded programme dealing with endangered heritage in the MENA region. Critical studies of heritage-making often pitch the local against the international, with grassroot activities contrasted with international rhetoric surrounding heritage places, objects and practices. However, this dichotomy can mask other actors and social dynamics, not least the subtleties of how the collective traumas of conflict play out in the cultural field. The idea of heritage diplomacy as a ‘contact zone’ (Clifford 1997) highlights that heritage-making in (post-)conflict cultural relations is an ontological encounter between international agents and the traumatised communities for whom the stakes are, inevitably, higher. Mediated through the transnational best practices of heritage professionals, and through the visible pragmatism of civil society heritage activists, the impacts of heritage-making nevertheless remain complicated and entangled.

Indigenous heritage in diplomacy: repositioning Taiwan in the Austronesian network and its cultural implications

“…This paper attends to the ways in which Taiwan's cultural diplomacy is finding a new basis in Indigenous heritage. It investigates the case of Taiwan in dialogue with scholarship on heritage diplomacy to determine heritage's role “as a form of governance” (Winter, 2015, 2020) and as a “contact zone” (Chalcraft, 2021). Heritage can be both the enabler and the product of diplomacy (Huang and Lee, 2019) as heritage interpretation with its territorial dimension is prone to memory conflicts that this special issue is addressing.…”

“…Heritage can be both the enabler and the product of diplomacy (Huang and Lee, 2019) as heritage interpretation with its territorial dimension is prone to memory conflicts that this special issue is addressing. While the nation states appear to be the dominating actors in the contact zone of heritage diplomacy, the theorisation of “careful heritage diplomacy” (Chalcraft, 2021) and subaltern geopolitics (McConnell, 2017; Sharp, 2013; Sidaway, 2012) illustrates the potential role played by non-state actors (including Indigenous peoples) and the processual nature of geopolitics. As Davies (2021) observes, the initiation of soft power exchanges outside the realm of official diplomatic interaction potentially reinforces effective people-to-people networks, which may be useful to both Taiwan's international relations and to the local and transnational capacity building of Indigenous communities.…”