Norman M. Naimark, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Post-War Struggle for Sovereignty

Abstract

asserts, such status offers an 'incredibly pliant mechanism' that is lucrative and powerful (p. 123).World Heritage is powerful, but the status has also proved Janus-faced, a point Meskell makes in her final three chapters. She describes in Chapter 6 how World Heritage has increasingly come to serve as a cultural weapon of erasure by some governments, an untoward development that Meskell examines in her sensitive account of Turkey's nomination of the medieval site of Ani-a former Armenian town once known for its '1,001 churches'. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on Syria and Mali, respectively, and offer a perceptive critique of the perils that can come with being UNESCO branded, as well as the Eurocentric worldview that pervades the popular, political, and legal response when that heritage comes under attack. This present nature of World Heritage is bitterly ironic given its utopian origins, a fact that imbues this fine book and commends it especially to readers interested in the twentieth-century history of intellectuals, heritage, internationalism, intergovernmental organizations, and cultural diplomacy and soft power.