UNESCO and World Heritage ─ National Contexts, International Dynamics

Today UNESCO is above all associated with World Heritage. World Heritage has become an established global “brand†with great appeal to many stakeholders, as it boosts tourism-related income while conferring political and cultural capital on to nation states and regions. There is, however, a growing sense of crisis in the World Heritage system. World Heritage encapsulated an optimistic, internationalist vision to foster global community based on notions of outstanding universal value representing a shared natural and cultural heritage of humanity. Yet, the World Heritage system also functions as a form of “Olympian internationalism†in which national prestige is won through competition on the international stage, much like in the modern day Olympic Games. Tensions between national interests and international dynamics tend to grow rather than diminish as UNESCO struggles to achieve geographical and political balance in the ever-growing World Heritage List, while maintaining objective criteria for inclusion. Moreover, critical scholarship in the field of Heritage Studies has increasingly called into question the legitimacy of the World Heritage system both as a discourse and as techno-political practice dominated by forms of expertise detached from local contexts. From this perspective, UNESCO’s World Heritage system epitomizes the tendency of what has been called the Authorised Heritage Discourse to become bureaucratic, top-down and non-participatory. In light of this current mix of success and crisis, it is timely to take stock of the status and development of the UNESCO World Heritage system.The main difference between heritage and World Heritage being the international dimension, heritage studies would also benefit from a focused analysis of the phenomenon of World Heritage as situated at the intersection of the national and international systems. By combining critical perspectives with a thorough understanding of the UNESCO World Heritage system, this volume addresses these two issues. Bringing together case studies from East and North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America, and the former Soviet Union that examine the influence of UNESCO’s World Heritage agenda from 1960s to the present, it unravels the international dynamics and national contexts that shape the ideas and practices of the World Heritage system. It questions why and how heritage acquires an international dimension and what the implications are, nationally and locally, of the World Heritage listing.