World Heritage and mosaic universalism

Abstract

This article analyses UNESCO’s project of worldwide cultural heritage preservation. It does so through a double lens, an ethnographic and a textual one. I first look at the ways in which World Heritage works in Palestine/Israel. Second, I analyse the discourse of World Heritage, arguing that recent World Heritage reforms, stimulated by critiques of the Eurocentrism of its approaches, adopt the language of liberal multiculturalism. Building on critical accounts of this political discourse, I show how multicultural heritage policies not only risk affirming and solidifying cultural differences, but also the asymmetries between them. Furthermore, I argue that, paradoxically, World Heritage reinforces nation-states, and particularly state apparatuses’ reach and control over heritage sites and processes, often at the expense of the grassroots. By analysing a series of workshops in Jerusalem and Ramallah, I detail the ways in which highly innovative local Palestinian practices of heritage conservation tend to be silenced by the World Heritage mechanism, and trace a discursive process of erasure of politics and ‘locality’ from UNESCO’s representation of humanity’s heritage. I place this erasure in the context of expert anxieties regarding a contaminated universalism.

Past in the Present: A Living Heritage Approach - Meteora, Greece

“…This led to the suppression and even breaking of the indigenous/ Introduction: definition and development of conservation -the concept of authenticity 13 non-Western communities' associations with their heritage: the communities' (traditional) knowledge, management systems and maintenance practices were abolished, and the communities were physically removed from heritage places (Said 1978;Abu-Lughod 1989;Byrne 1991, 270−276;Layton 1989, 11;Bahrani 1998;Scham 2003, 173−176;De Cesari 2010;Meskell 2010, 192).…”

Assessment of World Heritage List Nominations under Country Profile of Turkey

“…Pressouyre 1996: 33-7). Simultaneously, UNESCO's World Heritage project has been viewed as an example of international dominion, or more specifically, a Western colonial mission (De Cesari, 2010;Meskell, 2002;Rowlands & Butler, 2007). Even the meaning of variables and the authenticity of World Heritage project have been questioned by some researchers; some academicians proposed a different view as well such as Reyes (2014).…”

Bombardeando patrimonio en el Campo de Tiro Militar de El Teleno (León): de la sublimación de la naturaleza a la construcción social del patrimonio cultural

“…Pese a la supuesta tarea de la UNESCO de proteger los lugares y monumentos de significación universal, las designaciones de Patrimonio de la Humanidad de facto se basan en las tradiciones patrimoniales nacionales, reproduciendo, ampliando y expandiendo sus lógicas e infraestructuras (De Cesari, 2010). Por otro lado, si tenemos en cuenta la proximidad de la bimilenaria Astorga y su enorme potencial arqueológico, a nadie se le debería escapar la posibilidad de valorización patrimonial que ofrece la construcción de un parque cultural integrador.…”