World Heritage on the Ground: Ethnographic Perspectives 9781785330926

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures
Introduction: UNESCO World Heritage – Grounded?
Part I Cities
Chapter 1 Affects and Senses in a World Heritage Site People-House Relations in the Medina of Fez
Chapter 2 ‘UNESCO is What?’ World Heritage, Militant Islam and the Search for a Common Humanity in Mali
Chapter 3 Heritage Making in Lijiang: Governance, Reconstruction and Local Naxi Life
Chapter 4 Multiple Nostalgias: The Fabric of Heritage in Luang Prabang (Lao PDR)
Part II Archaeological Sites
Chapter 5 Thinking Globally and Acting Locally in Angkor
Chapter 6 One List, a World of Difference? The Dynamics of Global Heritage at Two Neighbouring Properties
Chapter 7 Civilization and the Transformation of Xiaotun Village at Yin Xu Archaeological Site, China
Chapter 8 The Business of Wonder: Public Meets Private at a World Heritage Site
Part III Cultural Landscapes
Chapter 9 Decolonizing the Site: The Problems and Pragmatics of World Heritage in Italy, Libya and Tanzania
Chapter 10 Prickly Prestations: Living with (World) Heritage in Osogbo, Nigeria
Chapter 11 Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape: Extractive Economies and Endangerment on South Africa’s Borders
Conclusion: Imagining the Ground from Afar: Why the Sites Are so Remote in World Heritage Committee Sessions
Index

Citation preview

WORLD HERITAGE ON THE GROUND

EASA Series Published in Association with the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Series Editor: Eeva Berglund, University of Helsinki Social anthropology in Europe is growing, and the variety of work being done is expanding. This series is intended to present the best of the work produced by members of the EASA, both in monographs and in edited collections. The studies in this series describe societies, processes, and institutions around the world and are intended for both scholarly and student readership. 1. LEARNING FIELDS Educational Histories of European Social Anthropology Edited by Dorle Dracklé, Iain R. Edgar and Thomas K. Schippers

15. HEADLINES OF NATION, SUBTEXTS OF CLASS Working Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe Edited by Don Kalb and Gabor Halmai

2. LEARNING FIELDS Current Policies and Practices in European Social Anthropology Education Edited by Dorle Dracklé and Iain R. Edgar

16. ENCOUNTERS OF BODY AND SOUL IN CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Anthropological Reflections Edited by Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

3. GRAMMARS OF IDENTITY/ALTERITY A Structural Approach Edited by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich 4. MULTIPLE MEDICAL REALITIES Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine Edited by Helle Johannessen and Imre Lázár 5. FRACTURING RESEMBLANCES Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West Simon Harrison 6. SKILLED VISIONS Between Apprenticeship and Standards Edited by Cristina Grasseni 7. GOING FIRST CLASS? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement Edited by Vered Amit 8. EXPLORING REGIMES OF DISCIPLINE The Dynamics of Restraint Edited by Noel Dyck 9. KNOWING HOW TO KNOW Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present Edited by Narmala Halstead, Eric Hirsch and Judith Okely

17. CARING FOR THE ‘HOLY LAND’ Filipina Domestic Workers in Israel Claudia Liebelt 18. ORDINARY LIVES AND GRAND SCHEMES An Anthropology of Everyday Religion Edited by Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec 19. LANDSCAPES BEYOND LAND Routes, Aesthetics, Narratives Edited by Arnar Árnason, Nicolas Ellison, Jo Vergunst and Andrew Whitehouse 20. CYBERIDENTITIES AT WAR The Moluccan Conflict on the Internet Birgit Bräuchler 21. FAMILY UPHEAVAL Generation, Mobility and Relatedness Among Pakistani Migrants in Denmark Mikkel Rytter 22. PERIPHERAL VISION Politics, Technology, and Surveillance Catarina Frois 23. BEING HUMAN, BEING MIGRANT Senses of Self and Well-Being Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth

10. POSTSOCIALIST EUROPE Anthropological Perspectives from Home Edited by László Kürti and Peter Skalník

24. BEING A STATE AND STATES OF BEING IN HIGHLAND GEORGIA Florian Mühlfried

11. ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICE IN THE PRESENT Edited by Marit Melhuus, Jon P. Mitchell and Helena Wulff

25. FLEXIBLE CAPITALISM Exchange and Ambiguity at Work Edited by Jens Kjaerulff

12. CULTURE WARS Context, Models and Anthropologists’ Accounts Edited by Deborah James, Evelyn Plaice and Christina Toren 13. POWER AND MAGIC IN ITALY Thomas Hauschild 14. POLICY WORLDS Anthropology and Analysis of Contemporary Power Edited by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Però

26. CONTEMPORARY PAGAN AND NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses Edited by Kathryn Rountree 27. FIGURATION WORK Student Participation, Democracy and University Reform in a Global Knowledge Economy Gritt B. Nielsen 28. WORLD HERITAGE ON THE GROUND Ethnographic Perspectives Edited by Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

World Heritage on the Ground Ethnographic Perspectives

Edited by Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2016 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2016 Christoph Brumann and David Berliner All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brumann, Christoph, editor. | Berliner, David, editor. Title: World heritage on the ground : ethnographic perspectives / edited by Christoph Brumann and David Berliner. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2016. | Series: EASA series ; v. 28 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015041486 (print) | LCCN 2016001155 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785330919 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785330926 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: World Heritage areas—Social aspects. | Ethnology. Classification: LCC G140.5 .W667 2016 (print) | LCC G140.5 (ebook) | DDC 363.6/9—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041486 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78533-091-9 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-78533-092-6 (institutional ebook)

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Introduction. UNESCO World Heritage – Grounded? Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

1

PART I. CITIES 1. Affects and Senses in a World Heritage Site: People-House Relations in the Medina of Fez Manon Istasse

37

2. ‘UNESCO is What?’ World Heritage, Militant Islam and the Search for a Common Humanity in Mali Charlotte Joy

60

3. Heritage Making in Lijiang: Governance, Reconstruction and Local Naxi Life Yujie Zhu

78

4. Multiple Nostalgias: The Fabric of Heritage in Luang Prabang (Lao PDR) David Berliner

97

vi  ◆  Contents

PART II. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES 5. Thinking Globally and Acting Locally in Angkor Keiko Miura

125

6. One List, a World of Difference? The Dynamics of Global Heritage at Two Neighbouring Properties Noel B. Salazar

147

7. Civilization and the Transformation of Xiaotun Village at Yin Xu Archaeological Site, China Shu-Li Wang

171

8. The Business of Wonder: Public Meets Private at the World Heritage Site of Chichén Itzá Lisa Breglia

193

PART III. CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 9. Decolonizing the Site: The Problems and Pragmatics of World Heritage in Italy, Libya and Tanzania Jasper Chalcraft

219

10. Prickly Prestations: Living with (World) Heritage in Osogbo, Nigeria Peter Probst

248

11. Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape: Extractive Economies and Endangerment on South Africa’s Borders Lynn Meskell

273

Conclusion. Imagining the Ground from Afar: Why the Sites Are so Remote in World Heritage Committee Sessions Christoph Brumann

294

Index 319

Figures

Figure 1.1. View of Fez from the Merinid tombs, 2011

40

Figure 1.2. Central courtyard in a guest house, a place of high involvement for senses and affects, 2011

50

Figure 2.1. The Cultural Mission in Djenné

70

Figure 2.2. The Great Mosque of Djenné as a backdrop on a market day

72

Figure 3.1. World Heritage emblem in the old town of Lijiang

83

Figure 3.2. Bars in the old town of Lijiang

86

Figure 5.1. APSARA maintenance workers at the Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom

133

Figure 5.2. The interrupted construction of a house for a young couple in February 2010

139

Figure 6.1. Borobudur temple compounds

154

Figure 6.2. Prambanan temple compounds

159

Figure 7.1. Xiaotun village, 2010

177

Figure 7.2. Wushengmiao shrine, 2011

185

viii  ◆  Figures

Figure 10.1. Inside the Osun grove, sculpture of Adebisi Akanji and Susanne Wenger depicting the deity of Iya Mapo

252

Figure 10.2. Votary maid with sacred calabash, Osun Osogbo festival, 2003

262

Figure 12.1. World Heritage Committee in session, Saint Petersburg 2012

297

Figure 12.2. Evening reception for the World Heritage Committee at Peterhof Palace, Saint Petersburg 2012

313

Introduction UNESCO World Heritage – Grounded? Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

In its 2014 session in Doha, Qatar, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the one thousandth site on the World Heritage List. This was heralded as a mixed blessing, signalling the unanticipated success of an international treaty with close to universal ratification (191 states) that has created a highly coveted global distinction for cultural and natural wonders but also the administrative challenge and risk of inflation that a potentially endless listing exercise poses. In what, aside from being a global clearinghouse for heritage valuation and conservation standards, has become a breathless bureaucratic machinery, there is often little time for asking fundamental questions. But if the opportunity arises, one issue is certain to draw attention: What does World Heritage actually do on the ground of the World Heritage properties, far away from the meeting halls where the Committee takes its decisions? Does World Heritage deliver on its promise of conservation and global curatorial responsibility or does it do other things, and through and to whom exactly? Does World Heritage bring local situations under the standardizing influence of global forces, or do these remain marginal to the social processes at and around World Heritage sites? And what happens when the reverence for heritage collides with other value orientations and livelihood needs? This collection presents a set of nuanced answers to these questions, based on the in-depth ethnographic exploration of selected sites on the World Heritage List. Impact studies of World Heritage properties, often with an applied interest, are by no means rare, and the World Heritage organizations themselves have compiled a collection for the fortieth anniversary of the convention (Galla 2012). In this volume,

2  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

however, all contributors are anthropologists – that is, specialists in the painstaking acquisition of local knowledge who have conducted longterm ethnographic fieldwork at the sites they discuss, supported by the required linguistic skills. Moreover, all have made understanding the local social situation their main priority, not merely a side pursuit subservient to a conservation agenda. What we therefore aim to deliver is a more comprehensive, fine-grained and less partisan understanding of what World Heritage does on the ground. The Ground and the Global In giving attention to localities, anthropologists assume that these retain their own social dynamics even in times of globalization, shot through with wider connections and force fields but not entirely reducible to these. Anthropological theoreticians of globalization have often emphasized how local communities adapt exogenous influences to their own social needs, variously labelling such processes ‘indigenization’ (Appadurai 1990), ‘creolization’ (Hannerz 1987), or ‘domestication’ (Tobin 1992), or they have focused on the ‘friction’ (Tsing 2005) generated when the global meets the local. World Heritage is a privileged site to research such dynamics: on one hand, it is premised on locality, as it is sites that are subjected to the heritage gaze here, not movable objects or the practices that are enshrined by the sister UNESCO convention for intangible cultural heritage. On the other hand, the World Heritage title subjects these localities to a global regime. Humanity in its entirety is assumed to acquire rights as well as duties over these sites. Tourists, conservationists, scholars, journalists and political leaders come and visit in often much larger numbers than before and can also have an influence from a distance. Mass-mediated images of the sites multiply in newspapers, books, films, websites and apps, vying with whatever representations the local residents embrace. Some of the star sites treated in this volume, such as Angkor, Borobudur or Chichén Itzá, drive this tension to extremes – places shaped by highly idiosyncratic past cultures they no doubt are, but the national and other diversity of its visitors, tour guides, researchers, conservationists and other stakeholders rivals that of typical ‘non-places’ (Augé 1995) such as international airports, and much of the interaction is conducted in globally distributed languages according to globally distributed social conventions. Yet within, around and alongside these transnational pockets, local life continues, often with limited direct contact to the emissaries of

Introduction  ◆  3

the wider world but deeply affected by their presence and decisions taken elsewhere. ‘The ground’ is thus a relative entity. In spatial terms, the World Heritage endeavour can be read as a somewhat romantic act of resistance: it carves out places of special significance in an age when, according to many, localities matter ever less in global social and economic processes which are instead characterized by mobility, displacement and deterritorialization, often enough of a traumatic nature. Challenging the ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey 1990) of our time, UNESCO World Heritage insists on meaningful place, and clearly fixed and bounded place in addition: in theory at least, World Heritage properties are precisely delimited pieces of land (or, less frequently, sea), and maps specifying their outlines are a fundamental part of how the properties are represented in nomination files and on the official website (whc.unesco.org). Yet the endless debates in the World Heritage Committee sessions about the appropriate boundaries for a given property and its surrounding buffer zone; the frequent amendments made over the course of time; the increasing popularity of ‘serial properties’ combining a number of spatially discrete components; and the expansion of concern to locations far away from the sites (such as when debating how distant high-rises or wind farms affect their ‘visual integrity’) all belie the idea that World Heritage properties are naturally delimited and that an unambiguous line can be drawn between heritage ground and ordinary ground. To no small extent, World Heritage List inscriptions produce the properties they stake out, in a more arbitrary and contingent way than is often admitted. What is true for space applies even more to the people and institutions who, by choice or by necessity, interact with World Heritage properties: even when living within or next to the latter, they do not inhabit bounded social worlds but are invariably more broadly connected. And marking out sites on a world map of curatorial responsibility inevitably increases the number of social actors near and far who will strive to become substantially engaged with the sites, perhaps by directly interacting with those who already are but affecting them indirectly in any event. If, as Arjun Appadurai suggests (1996: 3–11), the liberation of imaginations is the hallmark of the global age, World Heritage properties and their media and virtual representations are key anchors for many people’s imaginations of the world. Any in-depth study must therefore take account of how these sites, beyond being (constructed as) places, are nodes in global networks and linchpins of global imaginaries and how the local and the translocal are interconnected. As a World Heritage inscription opens up

4  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

avenues for the wider world towards the site, so it may open up avenues for site communities to the wider world, whatever constraints the given power imbalances may be imposing. Accordingly, the contributions to this volume approach the local through ‘ethnographies of encounter’ in Lieba Faier and Lisa Rofel’s (2014) sense, as sites where ‘engagements across difference’ in terms of culture, power and other resources (ibid.: 364) take place and, quite literally, make place. In studying World Heritage sites, we are following Ulf Hannerz’s time-honoured lead of going to ‘those interfaces where the confrontations, the interpenetrations and the flowthrough are occurring, between clusters of meaning and ways of managing meaning; in short, the places where diversity gets, in some way and to some degree, organized’ (1989: 211). Yet the chapters do not just contextualize contemporary World Heritage properties in wider geographical and social space; they also do so in time. To make sense of present-day configurations, they also follow the historical trajectories of the sites, often reaching back beyond the World Heritage designation. To understand why ‘Wondergate’ scandalized the Mexican public, for example, Lisa Breglia must draw the forgotten story of the appropriation of Chichén Itzá’s grounds to light. In addition to her chapter, those by Charlotte Joy (on Timbuktu), Noel Salazar (on Borobudur), Peter Probst (on Osogbo) and Lynn Meskell (on Mapungubwe) in particular demonstrate through substantial historical analyses how for these sites, the World Heritage inscription was neither the end of history (as conservationists intent on preserving current site conditions would hope for), nor its beginning (as critical heritage studies scholars sensitive to the changes wrought by a heritage designation might see it), but just another turning point in a richly twisted chronology. They show that the authorities in control, the meanings ascribed and the economies attached have shifted multiple times, not least through the presence and influence of external actors (colonial officials, researchers, Western artists in search of more authentic settings) who often appeared on the scene long before UNESCO did. Our ethnographies of encounter focus on the dynamics and interactions generated by a supranational political body which is part of the United Nations system. We consider this perspective an important complement to a view of global processes as driven by modern capitalism. Anthropologists have greatly enriched our understanding of how the latter has formed the modern world and shaped transcultural encounters, both through historical macroanalyses (e.g. Wolf 1982, Mintz 1985) and ethnographic studies of contemporary

Introduction  ◆  5

globalized sites of capitalist production, trade and service delivery (for just some of many possible examples, see Besky 2013, Constable 1997, Lyon and Moberg 2010, Mathews 2011, Ong 1987, Robinson 1986). It is thus understandable that in their overview, Faier and Rofel (2014) highlight capitalism, not international governance, and the evidence of the chapters in this book attests to the weight of neoliberal capitalism in many World Heritage sites (see below). Nonetheless, UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee are intergovernmental bodies formed by sovereign nation states, and while they may be as susceptible to a discourse of external audits, ‘results-based’ management techniques and ‘best practices’ as many a business firm by now, they are still dominated by political entities, not by corporations which have at best indirect representation in their meeting halls. To see them as subservient, and thus analytically reducible, to the workings of global capitalism and shareholder value is therefore too simple. Here, we aim at contributing to the anthropology of international institutions, an emerging subfield that has begun to frame meetings, publications and scholarly organizations (such as the EASA Network Anthropology of International Governance; http://easaonline. org/networks/aig/index.shtml) and had the study of the European Union by anthropologists of policy (e.g. Abélès 1992, Shore 2000) as a forerunner. Contributors have prowled the summits, offices and corridors of UN agencies and other international organizations, looked at local engagements with their policies and initiatives across the globe and often also combined both perspectives in tracing the mutual articulation of the different levels (e.g. Abélès 2011, Billaud 2015, Foyer forthcoming, Kelly 2011, Little 1995, Merry 2006, Müller 2013, Riles 2000). Aside from recent human rights processes, anthropologists have been particularly drawn to those UN bodies that operate on what is conventionally seen as anthropological turf, such as the highly interesting UN developments concerning indigenous peoples’ rights and traditional knowledge (e.g. Bellier 2013, Groth 2012, Koester 2005, Muehlebach 2001, Oldham and Frank 2008, Rößler 2008, Sapignoli 2012, Siebert 1997) and the – partly overlapping – UNESCO activities on ‘intangible cultural heritage’, a new category meant to embrace performative practices, rituals, folk arts and crafts, cuisines and the like (Arizpe 2011, Arizpe and Amescua 2013, Bortolotto 2007, 2011, Hafstein 2007, 2009, Kuutma 2007, Nas 2002, Savova 2009). These activities may appear as obvious objects of study since social/cultural anthropologists are recognized specialists in the subject matter, whereas with the architectural or natural wonders on

6  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

the World Heritage List, other disciplines such as art history, archaeology, geology or biology are often considered as having more technical expertise. Of course, this does not rule out an approach privileging processes over substantive content and foregrounding the social construction of discursive and categorical fundamentals, much as it applies to anthropologists studying, for example, the World Trade Organization (Abélès 2011). For its sheer social, economic and political weight alone – which in our assessment still considerably exceeds that of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) processes on traditional knowledge or the 2003 UNESCO convention on intangible cultural heritage – we consider the World Heritage Convention worthy of study. Yet we also think that anthropologists and others are insufficiently aware of how much the World Heritage endeavour has moved onto what is conventionally seen as anthropological ground. Anthropology has long been defined around the key concept of culture, understood in the inclusive, nonelite sense as the ideas, habits, customs, rules and material products shared by members of a given group or society. World Heritage too, despite innovatively including both cultural and natural heritage under its conservation canopy, is predicated on culture in numerous ways, starting with the fact that the natural sites comprise merely a quarter of the World Heritage List. And while enshrining unique masterpieces and civilizational achievements was the tacit premise at the outset, the list has opened up to everyday heritage such as vernacular architecture, industrial facilities, trade routes, canals or railway lines. Introducing the new category of ‘cultural landscapes’ in 1992 in particular paved the way for rice terraces, sacred groves and former maroon hideouts, with the connected myths and stories sometimes playing a key role. The World Heritage understanding of culture has thus converged with an anthropological one, similarly as with the word ‘culture’ in wider society (Brumann 1999: 9–11). But while anthropologists could thus lean back and celebrate their success, they instead are rather divided about it and the analytical value of the culture concept within the discipline (Abu-Lughod 1991, Borofsky et al. 2001, Brightman 1995, Brumann 1999, Fox and King 2002, Rodseth 1998, Stolcke 1995): some see it as useful, at least when employed in a responsible way that avoids essentialization, while others consider it beyond redemption, invariably leading to a politically problematic overemphasis on difference and a neglect of connections and shared reference points. There is general consensus in the discipline, however, that paying attention to the public and political usage of culture

Introduction  ◆  7

is important. World Heritage, as a key institution shaping laypeople’s views of respectable culture, thus offers itself for the study of what is being done with this word in the wider world. World Heritage is also a privileged site to study the relation between ‘culture’ and ‘heritage’ in the present. In contrast to ‘culture’ which alongside its public usage has been a key disciplinary concept from the outset, ‘heritage’ is not usually taken as a technical term by most anthropologists. They rather approach it as a label that society glues onto specific material, performative or intellectual units extracted from the vast expanse of cultural manifestations that, because of their age and stability over time, are considered as deserving of conscious preservation efforts. Heritage has been booming beyond belief in many parts of the world in recent decades, not least because of UNESCO’s missionary work. Therefore, much of what previously was addressed as ‘tradition’, ‘customs’ or ‘culture’ is now presented under this new and rather voracious label. (This is not always duly recognized, such as when proponents of ‘critical heritage studies’ reinvent the deconstructive arguments made earlier about ‘tradition’ [Handler and Linnekin 1984, Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983] or ‘culture’ [see above]). Until recently, ‘culture’ may have pointed more to shared lifeways and ‘heritage’ than to the great works of geniuses, but we see the terms as converging in UNESCO contexts now, not just through the conceptual expansion of World Heritage but through the extension of the protective drive to ‘intangible cultural heritage’ and to cultural diversity as such, which each have their own specialized UNESCO convention now (see below). Heritage is becoming more like (anthropologically conceived) culture, but will culture also become more like heritage, that is consciously perceived, packaged, edited (in Toby Alice Volkman’s [1990] sense) and put on display, with an external audience as the ultimate arbiter of value (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 2009)? And will culture be increasingly addressed from the partisan perspective of the ‘believer’ (in the sense of Brumann 2014a) that characterizes a great deal of both lay and scholarly engagement with heritage? Our own interest in World Heritage arose through ethnographic fieldwork in the World Heritage cities in Luang Prabang, Laos (Berliner 2010, 2011, 2012) and Kyoto, Japan (Brumann 2009, 2012b), and then at the meetings of the central World Heritage institutions (Brumann 2011, 2012a, 2013, 2014b). In the course of this research, we chanced upon several dozen other anthropologists who had done field studies of World Heritage sites, without much awareness of each other. It thus offered itself to ground this virtual community, so to speak, and in autumn 2012, we invited twelve prospective authors to the Max Planck Institute for

8  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, to discuss first drafts of the chapters in a workshop eponymous with this book. For contextualizing these chapters, some background of the historical trajectory and institutional apparatus of World Heritage is required, and this will be provided in the following section. We will then introduce the individual chapters and close with a consideration of the general questions and insights emerging from the case studies. The Rise and Institutional Setup of UNESCO World Heritage The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted in 1972, at one of the General Conferences of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN special agency with headquarters in Paris established in 1946. The convention was the fruit of older efforts to globalize cultural and natural conservation: after adopting the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 1954, UNESCO had orchestrated a number of safeguarding campaigns for threatened cultural heritage through the 1960s, most famously for the Nubian monuments of Abu Simbel threatened by Aswan Dam waters, but also for Borobudur, Moenjodaro and Venice (cf. Hassan 2007). It had also been involved in convening an international conference of cultural conservationists in Venice in 1964 where these adopted the Venice Charter – the foundational document of modern historical conservation – and decided to set up the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) as a worldwide membership association. In parallel, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the US National Park Service had worked for establishing a UN-backed register of national parks and a ‘World Heritage Trust’ for quite some time, and these multiple strands were merged under UNESCO auspices in the end (Stott 2011). The World Heritage Committee came together for the first time in 1977, and in 1978 it made the first twelve inscriptions on the World Heritage List which has kept growing ever since (for the early history, see Titchen 1995). Rather than concentrating on the interactions between sovereign nation states – the ‘normal’ subject matter of international rights – the World Heritage Convention postulated a superordinate level of concern, the common heritage of mankind, in a parallel with similar formulations in international treaties of the same time period on the high seas, outer space and Antarctica (Wolfrum 2009). But even though a

Introduction  ◆  9

kind of global heritage commons was thus envisioned, the convention works through its nation state signatories which are the operative arms that UNESCO or the Committee itself lacks. Only such ‘States Parties’ (with a double plural) may nominate sites within their own borders – so that Antarctica, for example, cannot go on the World Heritage List – and they are free to put forward whatever they select in the order of their own choosing. To be successful, candidate sites must demonstrate ‘outstanding universal value’, or ‘OUV’, according to at least one of the six cultural and four natural criteria (whc. unesco.org/en/criteria), and the nomination files supporting the bids have grown from a couple of pages to big tomes, often further embellished by audiovisual documentation. Once delivered to the secretariat of the convention – the World Heritage Centre, a bureaucratic unit occupying its own building within UNESCO headquarters in Paris – the nomination files are forwarded to ICOMOS (cultural sites) or IUCN (natural sites) for an evaluation. The latter is based on summoning specialists’ opinions from around the world and sending one or two experts to examine conditions of conservation and management on site. The evaluation contains a recommendation for ‘inscription’ on the list, outright ‘rejection’ or two different types of postponement for minor (‘referral’) or major (‘deferral’) revisions. The two Advisory Bodies, ICOMOS and IUCN (an organization of organizations which includes both government agencies and civilsociety organizations), are nongovernmental at least in part, but the World Heritage Committee is an intergovernmental body, composed of 21 states elected by the 191 States Parties in their biannual General Assemblies and formally independent from other UNESCO bodies. The Committee makes the decisions about nominations, measures for already listed sites, budget allocation and general policies, and does so with a firm sense of independence against the Advisory Bodies and the World Heritage Centre. Once a site has made it onto the illustrious list, the World Heritage Committee has both the right and the duty to monitor its state of conservation, relying again on the expert services of ICOMOS, IUCN and the Centre. A World Heritage Fund with rather limited means is available to support nominations and conservation measures. Yet the default assumption and precondition for listing is that the nominating state itself is capable of conserving the site, and with the lure of a World Heritage title, it is indeed often much easier to attract investors and donors. The World Heritage institutions themselves are rather strapped for cash, and the secretariat and Advisory Bodies routinely deplore insufficient funding. Just like in other UN bodies (Billaud 2015), even

10  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

core obligations must sometimes be met by temps and interns, particularly in the recent budget crisis occasioned by the withdrawal of US funding (22 per cent of the total) after Palestine was admitted as a full state member of UNESCO in 2011. The contrast of the UNESCO plight to the global visibility and traction of the World Heritage brand and the sums that nation states invest in dressing up their candidates could hardly be more pronounced. It is important to keep these constraints in mind when assessing the UNESCO World Heritage venture: there is little that the World Heritage Committee can impose upon a recalcitrant nation state, as there is also little it can offer to buy its cooperation. Government promises made before inscription are often not honoured afterwards, but there is usually only blaming and moral pressure to fear, given that sites can be deleted from the World Heritage List in theory but this has happened only twice so far. When domestic opinion is split over such perennial questions as that of conservation versus development, the World Heritage title can become a powerful argument, but where there is domestic consensus, whether voluntary or government enforced, Paris is usually quite far away. Myths of UNESCO power and largesse proliferate at many World Heritage sites, as Manon Istasse also reports in her chapter, and to realize how little the World Heritage system can actually enforce is disappointing for many. In addition to the softness of Committee power, its alleged Eurocentrism has also stirred much debate. The first inscriptions included quite a few African sites (cf. whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat) and until 1990, India was the overall leader in the number of World Heritage properties (cf. whc.unesco.org/en/list). European and in particular Western European states, however, have been particularly conscious of the benefits of the World Heritage title and dispose of the resources for preparing state-of-the-art nominations. Coupled with an implicit initial conceptualization of World Heritage around the typical built heritage of this part of the world, and certainly also influenced by the fact that much ICOMOS and IUCN personnel hails from there, European sites have accounted for almost half the listings until the present, with China only beginning to contest the pole position of Italy and Spain in recent years (cf. whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat). The balanced representation of nature and culture envisaged in the beginning did not materialize either, as least when the number of sites is considered (in terms of size, natural World Heritage sites are often much larger). All this provoked criticism already in the 1980s. Attempts to impose nomination quotas or even moratoriums on the list leaders to give the World Heritage have-nots a chance to catch

Introduction  ◆  11

up have had only limited success, however. Not least for this reason, the World Heritage system embarked on a reform course in the 1990s in which the conceptual boundaries of World Heritage were greatly expanded. This was the time when the above-mentioned ‘cultural landscapes’ were introduced, and the Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List, launched in 1994, also prioritized living heritage and everyday culture ‘in their broad anthropological context’ (document WHC-94/CONF.003/INF.6, see whc.unesco.org/archive/global94.htm#debut). Authenticity criteria were widened in the Nara Document of the same year (whc. unesco.org/uploads/events/documents/event-833-3.pdf) to also accommodate authentic use, spirit and feeling, not just unchanged material fabric which ends up privileging durable European stone monuments over the wooden and earthen structures of elsewhere in the world. As a result of all these measures, Belgian coal mines, wooden peasant churches in the Carpathians, a Polynesian chief’s domain, sacred groves in Kenya, the Bikini nuclear test site or the landing place of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritius are no less likely to make it onto the List now than Roman ruins, Gothic cathedrals or Baroque palaces. Also, only 30 out of 191 signatory states still had no World Heritage site in 2014. While this diversification reflects a general trend of ‘democratizing’ heritage, the blessing of the World Heritage institutions adds independent weight to it, and the cultural landscapes in particular were very much their invention (Gfeller 2013). Interestingly, much of the impetus for these reforms came from what, borrowing on Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, 1974b), could be called the regional and professional ‘semi-peripheries’ of the world system of heritage – Canadians, Japanese and Norwegians, not French or Italians; geographers, anthropologists and industrial archaeologists, not art historians (cf. also Gfeller 2013, 2015, n.d.). So even when the European countries were often the first to capitalize on the new possibilities, bringing in their wine regions rather than the sacred mountains for which the cultural landscapes had been dreamed up, World Heritage processes have still managed to considerably decentre and de-Westernize heritage conceptions. World Heritage has also been innovative in an indirect way, by pushing UNESCO efforts to also honour intangible cultural heritage, first with the Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (launched in 1997 and held in 2001– 2005) and then with a fully fledged Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted in 2003 (Arizpe 2011, Arizpe and Amescua 2013, Bortolotto 2007, 2011, Kuutma 2007, Smith and

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Akagawa 2009). Were it not for the accumulated dissatisfaction with the World Heritage Convention and the hope that the Global South would receive its due once performative arts, ritual practices and skills were also taken into focus, it is unlikely that this convention would have materialized in unprecedented speed and, against most experts’ advice, with the same emphasis on lists as the World Heritage venture (Hafstein 2009). Other UNESCO activities of the 1990s and 2000s, such as the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, have also emphasized cultural diversity (Nielsen 2011, Stoczkowski 2009), and World Heritage has thus been a cornerstone in a general UNESCO policy shift towards ennobling distinctiveness and away from the initial emphasis on the global dissemination of homogeneous educational standards. Compared to the 1990s, the 2000s have seen less programmatic innovation in the World Heritage system but more growth and procedural elaboration. From the late 1990s on, TV documentaries – in particular Japanese and German productions – contributed to making World Heritage a household name in many countries of the Global North, and the annual Committee sessions have grown into global mega-events with more than one thousand participants whose outcomes are eagerly anticipated worldwide. Procedures for nominations, evaluations, monitoring, reporting and decision making were all systematized and, most of the time, made more transparent, not necessarily to the benefit of the uninitiated who are facing a daunting machinery where the nomination manual itself (UNESCO 2011) boasts 140 pages. One is tempted to see this through a framework of Foucauldian governmentality (Foucault 1991) where only what is known, measured and rationally processed can be governed. Around the central World Heritage institutions and their year-round circle of expert meetings on specific questions, there has been growth and elaboration too, with World Heritage Studies university programmes mushrooming and Category 2 Centres – independently funded training institutions with UNESCO blessing that concentrate on particular aspects of World Heritage – opening throughout the world. Within the general growth industry of heritage studies, publications focusing on World Heritage form a sizable section, and major recent overviews of this emerging interdisciplinary field (Harrison 2012, Smith 2006, Tauschek 2013) dedicate considerable portions to the UNESCO venture. Increasing prominence and visibility, however, has also encouraged governments to tighten their grip on the World Heritage apparatus. While cultural and natural conservationists were still largely among themselves in the early 1990s, most delegations nowadays are led by

Introduction  ◆  13

the ambassadors or ‘permanent delegates’ that the nation states dispatch to UNESCO. Many of them have no specialized background, and when they are not involved in often poorly concealed horse trading among peers, their concerns are for peace and smooth international relations, not necessarily for conservation and the World Heritage venture. This has helped to normalize the expression of national interests within the World Heritage arena. The continuing geographical imbalance of list inscriptions, coupled with pent-up frustration with a system that is perceived as making a lot of demands for an unfunded title, has generated a new mode of operation since the 2010 session (Brumann 2014b): the Committee has taken to overruling the Advisory Bodies’ recommendations in a very matter-of-course way if these are not to the satisfaction of States Parties. While the initial push for the new mores came from strong states of the Global South, many northern states too are happy with what gives everyone the desired results, except of course those who expect consistency and a principled stance on conservation. The sometimes rather blunt and unembellished use of state power in the sessions presents a striking contrast to the above-mentioned sophistication all around it and to the charisma of the universalist mission that keeps motivating many among the specialized technical personnel, researchers and fans. Thus the fortieth anniversary in 2012 was celebrated with great fanfare but key functionaries such as UNESCO’s Director-General or the director of the World Heritage Centre presented rather critical assessments of the current situation. Sited Stories While this has been an executive summary of developments in the institutional core of World Heritage, the convention, just like this book, is ultimately about the World Heritage sites. And here, the 981 inscriptions on the World Heritage List correspond to at least as many stories, if only for the fact that quite a few of the properties are in fact whole series of spatially discreet sites. It is also obvious that there is quite some distance between the Committee and the sites, not only in spatial terms but also through the involvement of multiple mediators communicating back and forth, so that on both sides, there is often only a dim sense of what really goes on at the other end. What, then, goes on at the sites in this book? All chapters are about cultural World Heritage properties and all are concerned with World Heritage sites outside Europe, except for

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Jasper Chalcraft’s chapter where an Italian case in among the three rock art sites compared. Natural World Heritage sites have been studied by anthropologists and others using ethnographic methods (Buergin 2002, 2003, Dahlström 2003, Green 2009, Peutz 2011) and Meskell’s chapter on Mapungubwe reflects her earlier research experience (2012) with Kruger National Park which, for all its archaeological riches, has been framed as a natural site too (although not on the World Heritage List). Our contributions, however, concentrate on cultural heritage sites outside Europe since it is in these where World Heritage unfolds its greatest effects. Here, it is often the trailblazer for a heritage agenda and, as probably best demonstrated by Angkor (see Keiko Miura’s chapter), dramatic changes on the ground. In European countries by contrast, World Heritage often adds only rather thin layers to long-established national conservation frameworks and decades- or even centuries-old local adaptations to a heritage regime. What is interesting, then, is not only what happens at sites that are suddenly accorded the moral extraterritoriality of World Heritage, but also how heritage discourse, practices and policies get disseminated, translated and adapted in the process; we hope that the chapters are illuminating in this regard. Part I includes four chapters on urban World Heritage properties, and nearby cities also influence the social processes in the periurban sites described in Miura’s, Salazar’s and Probst’s contributions. World Heritage in cities often presents special challenges, given that the properties are often larger sections with multiple ownership where a conservation agenda is often not easily reconciled with development needs. Countless are the battles around modern construction in historical town centres reported in the World Heritage Committee sessions of recent years – high-rises in Cologne, Riga, Saint Petersburg, London or Seville; bridges in Bordeaux, Istanbul or Dresden; tunnels in Barcelona and again Istanbul. Manon Istasse’s chapter about the medina of Fez, which is a World Heritage property in its entirety, however, is not about landmark construction projects intruding upon historic urban fabric. Rather, she diagnoses the absence of UNESCO on the ground where it largely exists as a myth: several rehabilitation projects of the past are vaguely associated with it in the residents’ consciousness, but most Fassi do not know much about the date and precise scope of the World Heritage listing and tend to conflate UNESCO with national or local agencies whose inactivity or corruption they sometimes deplore. In actual fact, these latter agencies exert considerable independence, both against the distant World Heritage Committee and the local residents who are expected to obey their

Introduction  ◆  15

rulings. Rather than this institutional level, however, Istasse emphasizes personal experience: for the owners and residents, their traditional courtyard houses are not ‘heritage’ but lived-in spaces that produce affects and engage the senses. She presents a nuanced analysis of the whole spectrum from Moroccan residents of many generations’ standing to recently arrived foreigners who converted their structure into a guest house popular with tourists. In the personal relationships of these owners and residents with their houses, there are strong feelings they liken to love at first sight, and the beauty of floor mosaics, the peace of city sounds muffled by the thick outer walls, the pleasant touch of wood or the allure of a favourite space such as the rooftop terrace may add up to a feeling of belonging and intimacy. Living in and working hands-on with the houses provides an expertise in its own right, quite different from that of scholars and conservationists. Large-scale urban ensembles such as the medina are therefore always personal and social spaces, not just monumental spaces, and the tangible effects of a World Heritage designation may only reach so deep precisely because of the accumulated personal and social loading of the constituent spaces. Charlotte Joy takes us to the contested World Heritage sites of Mali which made global headlines in 2013. The Islamist rebels then occupying the northern half of the country began to demolish World Heritage properties in Timbuktu and Gao, urged on by the fact that the World Heritage Committee had put the Sufi tombs, mosques and other sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger a few days earlier. What for the UNESCO arena was priceless heritage counted as unIslamic violations of sharia prescriptions with the rebels, and defying UNESCO and the ‘international community’ was precisely the objective of their destructive acts. Joy points out the closeness of threats to people and things in many of the political statements during the crisis and shows how UNESCO’s universal humanism and intergovernmental setup is ill-prepared to deal with substate forces such as the disadvantaged Tuareg minority in the north of Mali. Yet she also places the incidents within a long series of triumphant destructions and reconstructions in Mali, often related to the shifting power balance between different interpretations of Islam. Here, the tolerant ‘Black Islam’ was more contested than current Western sympathies with urban residents allegedly helpless against fanatic incursions would have it. The recent standoff can be seen as one between competing ideologies with global ambitions, pitting Islamic fundamentalist morality and social criticism against the UNESCO gospel of world peace through the celebration of cultural diversity. Joy then moves onto her

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earlier field site of Djenné (Joy 2010, 2011a, 2011b) where the tension between religion and heritage has also surfaced repeatedly but where destructions have also had more worldly motives such as real estate values. The contestations are about Mali’s future much more than the past and none of the involved actors, including UNESCO, should be construed as politically innocent. Much more economic than religious or political is the idiom of heritage spoken in Lijiang in Yunnan province, southern China, whose old town has become a tourist magnet with both domestic and international guests since its World Heritage inscription. Yujie Zhu relates that the People’s Republic has joined the World Heritage arena belatedly but is now a very active player on both the World Heritage and the intangible cultural heritage fronts, and Lijiang’s rise must be seen within this context. Half of the city’s residents are Naxi – that is, members of an ethnic minority – and this and Lijiang’s image as Shangri-La in Western imaginations converted it into a backpacker paradise and then a more broadly popular destination. Under the slogan of ‘cultural industry’ that is heard across the country these days, the Lijiang Old Town Conservation and Management Bureau (LCMB), a government-owned business corporation, has been in control of all planning, conservation and development measures. It strongly prioritizes commercial viewpoints, showing little compunction over reconstructing entire streets, displaying ethnic culture in theme-park settings or pushing out local Naxi in favour of immigrant shopkeepers. Local residents consider the packaged programmes where Han majority tourists experience Naxi family life as a mixed blessing, feeling like living museum objects even if they value the generated income. It is the entrepreneurial state whose developmentalism strongly directs heritage transformations in this city today. Focusing on another erstwhile backpacker haven in another People’s Republic, David Berliner analyses how Luang Prabang was converted into the ‘nostalgiascape’ it is for many of its visitors today. The acclaimed Buddhist centre and colonial summer resort suffered for its association with the overthrown royal line but then became ‘UNESCO-ized’, as Berliner has it, with a multiplicity of foreign, most often French, agencies involved in conservation measures and a World Heritage inscription. The tourist boom has driven out many residents from the centre of town in favour of guest houses and has converted the alms-giving morning ritual to the Buddhist monks into a popular attraction, provoking much local criticism. Berliner distinguishes the ‘endo-nostalgia’ of locals who – selectively enough – yearn for the good old days from the ‘exo-nostalgia’

Introduction  ◆  17

of foreign tourists and experts for a colonial Indochina they have not experienced themselves and that perhaps never was. Locals are appreciative of the rise in income and well-being that tourism has brought them but grumble about the conservation rules driven by ‘exo-nostalgic’ viewpoints imposed on their homes. They also do not share the ‘exo’ obsession with loss, seeing their own lives as shot through with traditions that will run on whatever happens to buildings. Heritage as a coproduction in Luang Prabang results from a convergence of the different actors’ interests, but this should not be confounded with a consensus on values and meanings. Part II moves on to archaeological World Heritage properties and to ‘star sites’ which enjoy special international or national fame (Yin Xu in China), draw huge tourist crowds and, in the cases of Angkor and Borobudur, have been key localities of UNESCO involvement. Keiko Miura brings her decades-long experience in multiple functions at Angkor to an in-depth analysis of the ‘success story’ told by UNESCO and other international actors at a site that for its sheer grandiosity, but also as a symbol of postgenocidal nation building and peace restoration, has received an unprecedented amount of international attention and support, all the way up to the International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor founded in 1993. Miura’s tale is one of rivalries between big political bodies, often with the international or specially dedicated ones – such as APSARA, the national body managing the site – feuding with ordinary government ministries and departments, and the picture is complicated by key individuals moving through several of these bodies at both the national and the international levels in the course of time. But tension emerges also between the authorities and the local residents at or near this extraordinarily far-flung site, as the locals have used it for cultivation, collecting wood and forest products, raising fish and grazing livestock for a long time. Religious worship and the demand for new temple buildings also clash with a conservation regime oriented to the physical fabric, much as continued religious use could be seen as authenticating the site in its own right. By and large, local practices and rights have been increasingly restricted, making resettlement almost inevitable, and the new opportunities in tourism often benefit recent immigrants and outsiders much more than the communities of longer standing. The sustainability of heritage usage to which all involved actors subscribe thus remains a challenge, given also the infrastructural requirements of millions of tourists which have occasioned a building boom around Angkor. Clearly, some locals benefit while

18  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

others do not, and heritage designation, while ostensibly about conservation, is once again a shorthand for massive social change. In his study of the Javanese sites of Borobudur and Prambanan, Noel Salazar takes up another prime beneficiary of the global conservationist gaze, as Borobudur was the subject of one of the abovementioned safeguarding campaigns preceding the World Heritage Convention. A mere forty kilometres apart and both near the city of Yogyakarta, the stronghold of traditional Javanese culture, these two World Heritage properties offer a natural comparison. Their heritage fates are also linked, given that the originally joint World Heritage nomination was separated only later on. In the process, Borobudur ended up more ‘Buddhist’ and Prambanan more ‘Hinduist’, both of which belie the syncretism of the classical Javanese kingdom. Relating the complex history of Borobudur as colonial excavation site, postindependence national symbol, fundamentalist target and global tourism magnet, Salazar spots similar rivalries between different government authorities as in Angkor, and here too locals are often excluded from management decisions but fully exposed to their consequences. He also describes the diversity of tourist and religious engagements, with the latter involving unexpected candidates such as the nearby Muslim population, that nonetheless consider Borobudur as a sacred protector. Prambanan is no less the subject of bureaucratic infighting and local grievances include the muting of the local connection of the Siva temples, as the legendary Javanese princess on whose demand the complex was originally built fails to appear in the UNESCOsanctioned narrative and official property name. Salazar concludes by strongly emphasizing how the plethora of meanings brought to these sites by diverse constituencies are part and parcel of World Heritage fame, urging us to study them in more depth. Shu-Li Wang returns us to China, to the Yin Xu Archaeological Site, the oldest excavated capital of Chinese history where the famous oracle bones with their 3,000-year-old inscriptions were found. Many argue that this is the most important ancient archaeological site of the country. Her main focus is on the experience of nearby villagers whose everyday lives have been transformed by conservationbased restrictions. They see their agricultural production curtailed, but also their place-based personal memories unhinged by forced relocation, and their restaurant and souvenir-shop ventures catering to the tourists have met with uneven success. A cultural performance group set up as an alternative source of income also foundered, and the absence of government support is widely deplored. The villagers raise their own symbolic claims about the site, however, seeing the

Introduction  ◆  19

Shang kings as their own ancestors even when the historical record shows the villages to be rather recent creations. This does not fully absorb their resentment, however, as high-handed state policies intent on picturing China as a great civilization have brought few benefits to themselves and often clash with their own, nonmonumental sense of place and time. Lisa Breglia returns to her earlier field site of Chichén Itzá in Mexico to report on spectacular new developments. With 7 July 2007 as a deadline, a private initiative led by Swiss-Canadian entrepreneur Bernard Weber and initially supported by the World Heritage Centre organized an internet vote to identify the ‘New 7 Wonders of the World’, complementing the famous seven wonders of the ancient world of which only the Pyramids of Giza survive. Chichén Itzá’s campaign was widely publicized in Mexico and received high-level government backing, with all doubts about the less-than-transparent nature of the venture being swept aside, and the Maya site eventually won its place among the New 7 Wonders. Public attention shed new light on the distribution of benefits from the famous Maya site, however, and in what became known as ‘Wondergate’, the fact that the land on which the Temple of Kukulkan, the Great Ball Court or the Temple of the Warriors sit was the private property of a family of landowners and tourism entrepreneurs provoked a public outcry. Breglia herself contributed her share here, as the media consulted her because she had written about this aspect earlier (Breglia 2005, 2006). She places these developments within the context of the neoliberalization of heritage agendas: sensing the site’s potential for such ventures as hosting concerts by the likes of Pavarotti or Elton John, the federal state of Yucatán eventually bought up the central portions through a parastatal subsidiary (aptly named CULTUR). INAH, Mexico’s powerful national agency for conservation, correspondingly lost control, much to the concern of guards and other on-site personnel who feared for conservation standards but also saw their own private side businesses (such as ticket reselling scams) threatened. All this happens against the backdrop of heritage entrepreneurialism through public-private partnerships in the vicinity, such as several museum ventures which likewise target the international tourists flocking to nearby Cancún and other beach resorts. Overall, the private corporate sector pockets most of the takings and leaves little for the local Maya populations. World Heritage properties, Breglia’s chapter reminds us, are property in all senses of the word. The final part III then takes up the broad and fluid new heritage category of cultural landscapes that often is the solution of choice for

20  ◆  Christoph Brumann and David Berliner

locations where a range of different sites and valuations coexist. Some of these may still be neglected, however, and Jasper Chalcraft tries to explain cases of iconoclasm – intentional destruction and vandalism – at three prehistoric rock art sites on the World Heritage List: Valcamonica in Italy, the Tadrart Acacus in Libya and Kondoa-Irangi in Tanzania. He sees these as reactions to the inherently colonial nature of the World Heritage venture, nurtured by antipathies towards the UNESCO institutions and Advisory Bodies that sideline site communities instead of bringing benefits. Local populations both at Kondoa-Irangi and in the Tadrart Acacus Massive have their own sitespecific knowledge and grounded traditional practices, but the rock art plays a minor role in these, and where the latter is under physical threat by the former, national authorities have not hesitated to fence the sites and restrict activities, thus creating resentment. Hopes for improving local livelihoods through tourism have also been disappointed. Even in Valcamonica – the very first World Heritage site of the affluent country with the most list inscriptions of all – there is substantial local antipathy to the rock art, again because of exclusion from economic benefits. In these contexts, iconoclasm takes a number of forms and different levels of intentionality: careless drills for installing viewing platforms by the site managers, accompanied by scratching attacks by unnamed (but locally well-known) perpetrators in Valcamonica; beer spitting and flicking onto the rock images by ritual practitioners in Kondoa-Irangi; a protracted act of vandalism in Tadrart Acacus attributed to a frustrated individual but possibly motivated by the authorities’ reducing the tour guides’ revenues by fencing off the sites. Chalcraft concludes that in all cases, national and international authorities imposed their own views of the deep past, privileging these over local visions both of that past and of a sustainable present. In the absence of any attempts towards a dialogue, the resulting antagonism ends up endangering the sites that World Heritage universalism strives to protect. Peter Probst pursues the intriguing question of how heritage – supposedly priceless and beyond petty economic calculation – is related to the gift that in much anthropological theorizing, starting with Marcel Mauss’s seminal essay (1925, 1954), has been juxtaposed to its conceptual other, the commodity, in an analogous way. Gifts engender exchange, thereby constituting sociality, and rise in value with the length and scope of exchanges, just like heritage which accrues value through the length of transmission and intergenerational transfers. For Mauss, gifts also were the first step to contractual relations in human history, which he saw with much sympathy, lending his

Introduction  ◆  21

support to the fledgling League of Nations. Probst applies this lens to his erstwhile field site (2004, 2011), the sacred grove of Yoruba goddess Osun in the city of Osogbo, Nigeria. This grove was listed as World Heritage not just for its initial function as a ritual site but also as the place of a major artistic revival initiated by European artists and young Yoruba in the newly independent Nigeria. With its annual festival for the protector goddess of the city, the grove is now a major rallying point for the trans-Atlantic African diaspora. Probst tells the story of the World Heritage bid, supported by the above-mentioned Global Strategy and UNESCO’s Africa 2009 programme, but also by President Obasanjo’s symbolic politics. He then traces the exchanges taking place in the grove, between Osun, the oba (traditional king) and the worshippers giving their sacrifices, but also between the growing number of actors who have a stake in what here too is property in a rather literal sense. Tensions are manifested when the oba plays down the religious significance of the grove in favour of its heritage value, thus trying to placate his Christian and Muslim supporters, or when here again a public-private partnership with corporate investors wrests control from local authorities. Heritage, Probst argues, needs to be understood as a relationship embedded in spheres of exchange that generate both social and material forms of value. Very material values and the corporate investment generated through them also play a crucial role in the current transformation of the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape that Lynn Meskell addresses. The World Heritage inscription honours the remains of the first precolonial kingdom in southern Africa, many of them in less than optimal condition today. Attempts to identify historical ‘homelands’ for all ethnic groups through archaeological research, thereby propping up apartheid ideology, and the De Beer diamond corporate giant’s support eventually led to Mapungubwe’s designation as a national park and to the World Heritage bid. Yet much as the latter emphasizes the cultural aspects, SANParks – the parastatal authority in charge of the national parks – highlights nature and wildlife in their site management, in a parallel to what Meskell observed in Kruger National Park (2012). When lions and leopards are reintroduced, walking tours of archaeological sites become unlikely. The nearby coal mining operation – a reason for the ICOMOS recommendation to postpone inscription that was overturned by the Committee – highlights the cultural value of the property, however, thus downplaying its own environmental impact, and Meskell vividly pictures South Africa’s political manoeuvring in recent Committee sessions where it succeeded in fending off any painful decisions on Mapungubwe. Under

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the Zuma government, neoliberal regimes and corporate interests clearly trump earlier political instrumentalizations of pan-African heritage glory. In a conclusion, Christoph Brumann pursues the question why all these stories and the social, economic and political conditions at the World Heritage sites play such a small role when the World Heritage Committee meets once every year. One should expect the Committee to be best informed, given also that most of session time is spent with the discussion of individual properties and candidate sites rather than general issues. But the sheer number of almost one thousand sites means that only a small portion can be taken up. Also, the workload of the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies discourages unprovoked fact finding, and the mandate of the convention is for the physical protection of the sites, not the site populations. More importantly, the Committee is an intergovernmental body of state members intent on mutually ensuring their sovereignty so that government versions of site conditions often remain unchallenged. But there are also more subtle obstacles, such as when an unspecialized diplomat’s testimony offered spontaneously during the session sounds so much more vivid and believable than the dry technical reports into which the results of specialist desk reviews and site missions are condensed. Site community representatives often have a hard time making their voices heard in this diplomatic environment, and while the call for respecting indigenous rights has become louder, it still does not bind the nation states. Brumann pays special attention to how the Timbuktu crisis (see Charlotte Joy’s chapter) was dealt with in the 2012 Committee session. Trapped in its own procedural machinery and distracted by the anxiety of States Parties to see their World Heritage bids speedily realized, the Committee took three days to issue an official condemnation. As a ground onto itself governed by its own logic and by agendas that often have little to do with conservation, the Committee has not much space for the World Heritage grounds elsewhere in the world. Avenues for Exploration Every new candidate to the World Heritage List has to demonstrate that it is outstanding and unique. Diversity is thus a built-in virtue, and diverse too are the social experiences at World Heritage sites. Here, the chapters demonstrate that national and local conditions are clearly more influential than the global level: what happens at World

Introduction  ◆  23

Heritage properties is not determined in Paris or at the ambulatory World Heritage Committee sessions. Yet what also emerges is that conceiving World Heritage as bringing ‘benefits beyond borders’ (Galla 2012) applies in an unintended way: in many of the above cases, actors and forces from far beyond the properties take control and pocket the economic and other surplus arising while local communities become ‘heritage victims’ (Meskell 2009: 11); locals see their customary rights and practices restricted by conservation requirements without satisfactory compensation, no matter that growing rice between the Angkor ruins or flicking beer onto the Kondoa-Irangi rock art are customs of long standing that might themselves be seen as having heritage value and that the houses in the medina of Fez are private property. Forced or quasi-compulsory resettlement, as in Angkor, Yin Xu or Chichén Itzá, disrupts local senses of place and grounded history in favour of more monumental visions, and hoped-for tangible benefits through tourism or support for conservation remain elusive for considerable segments of the local populations in Djenné, Lijiang, the archaeological sites and the rock art sites. The frustrations thus created may even lead to destructive acts. Yet demonstrating the local specificity of the World Heritage experience, most people in Luang Prabang and Osogbo are quite happy with the revenue boost brought by the World Heritage title. And had the Han Chinese shopkeepers migrating to Lijiang been Zhu’s focus, rather than the local Naxi, his account would have read differently as well. In all cases, however, the benefits of heritage are spread to an increased number of recipients in the considerably expanded networks forming around World Heritage sites. And even when the sum total of benefits grows at the same rate, simplistic visions of a win-win situation where just about everyone ends up better off through a World Heritage inscription are revealed as wishful thinking. Invariably also, there are not just additional national and international actors, they also concern themselves with aspects previously all but ignored (cf. also Bendix, Eggert and Peselmann 2012: 14), thus further constraining local control. All this has also been described for heritage sites that have not yet seen UNESCO glory, such as for the ‘monumental time’ that conservation authorities impose on the ‘social time’ of the historic town centre of Rethymnos, Crete, and its residents (Herzfeld 1991). The arrival of World Heritage, however, significantly widens the circle of concerned people and institutions, and outside a European and North American context, World Heritage has often been the key vehicle for spreading the heritage gospel in the first place.

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A striking parallel in the case studies is the rise of new institutions that accompanies World Heritage status: if a real power shift occurs, it is from conventional bodies to these new authorities, rather than from the national level to the transnational one of UNESCO. This echoes Regina Bendix, Aditya Eggert and Arnika Peselmann’s observation that ‘the implementation of the international heritage regime on the state level brings forth a profusion of additional heritage regimes’ (2012: 14) and also the findings of many contributions to Daniel Fabre and Anna Iuso’s volume (2009). As one case in point, APSARA in Angkor is a new government agency that joins, and competes with, older units of Cambodian state bureaucracy. More common across our cases, however, is the spread of business models in World Heritage management, be it through parastatals – that is, government-owned corporations – or public-private partnerships. LCMB in Lijiang, CULTUR in Chichén Itzá, SANParks in Mapungubwe and the partnership of Osogbo authorities with Infogem Nigeria Ltd. all testify to the fact that there is increasing pressure on heritage to pay its way. At the same time, it appears that the conventional authorities such as INAH in Mexico are losing ground, meaning that their conservation priorities recede as well. Rather than keeping heritage ‘priceless’ and carving out spaces where the common good may not be commercially exploited, the state has taken to embrace the market here. This may be bad news for orthodox conservation and for scholarly sophisticated appreciations of site histories, but it may also be conducive to hopes for development and a broader, less elitist and more sensual sharing of heritage pleasures. Further research is evidently required but might end up confirming that World Heritage reshuffles power balances and institutional frameworks most of all nationally, one step below the global level. Yet heritage struggles are not just over benefits, but also over meanings. Here, the case studies demonstrate that religious significance in particular does not automatically square with World Heritage glory. In Birgit Meyer and Marleen de Witte’s terms (2009: 277), the sacralization of heritage may be less problematic than the heritagization of the sacred, at least for some people. The assault on the Timbuktu tombs and mosques is an extreme case of course, deliberately playing to a global audience, as also was the Islamist bombing of Borobudur. But on a less dramatic scale, people insist on religious meanings also in other locations visited by the chapters, such as by rioting when suspecting infidels of doing restoration work on the Great Mosque in Djenné; by continuing to restore and renew temples in the Angkor heritage area; by ignoring the rock art but not the spiritual sites

Introduction  ◆  25

in which it is found in Kondoa-Irangi; or by condemning either the increasing eventization (the Osun believers) or the ‘pagan’ residue (Christians and Muslims) of the Osun festival in the Osogbo grove. Heritage often serves to render harmless the potentially disruptive nature of religious sites but, the chapters show, this does not always work. And then also, shelling the stone Buddhas of Bamiyan, destroying folk Islamic aberrations in Timbuktu or bulldozing the statues of pagan gods in the ancient Assyrian city and World Heritage property of Hatra, as Islamic State militants did in 2014, ostensibly take the original function of these sites seriously, thus giving them a rather ‘authentic’ reading. The relatively peaceful reconciliation of religion with heritage status in the secular societies of Europe should not be taken for granted as a universal default condition. All of which should temper optimism about the role of heritage for UNESCO’s peace-building mission. ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’, the UNESCO constitution famously states (http:// portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15244&URL_DO=DO_ TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). But while the Timbuktu and Borobudur monuments did not create the tensions that led to their being ravaged, we hear of diverging interests and of social division arising in almost every case the book presents. Rosy ideas of World Heritage projecting social harmony to whatever is reached by its magic touch are undermined by this evidence. This is not to deny the possibility that World Heritage may indeed increase well-being and reduce conflict levels, but whether it does so, and to which degree precisely, is a manifestly case-specific question. This means that the assumption that World Heritage status protects the physical sites so honoured should be taken with some caution. Spectacular victories over modern construction projects demonstrate that World Heritage inscription carries weight in the right political context, but the status can also stir up destructive impulses. Such destruction can have clear political motives, as in the religious conflicts just mentioned or in cases where an enemy’s heritage is targeted in wartime for purposes of demoralization, such as in Dubrovnik or Mostar during the Balkan War. But Chalcraft’s chapter reports what seem to be more personal deeds, expressive perhaps of widespread misgivings but committed in secrecy and on an individual initiative. He also shows that destruction is a matter of definition: the residents of Kondoa-Irangi seem to be free of destructive intents when their – socially rather constructive – rituals demand physical interactions with the rock art, and the site managers in Valcamonica

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had visitor benefits in mind when drilling the rocks for new viewing platforms. Again, World Heritage claims to do its conservation work for our universal benefit, but the hegemony of heritage conservation to the contrary, many people remain untouched or even outrightly provoked by it. A love for World Heritage is no more natural than the spread of harmony and peace around the sites. Equally contingent is a nostalgic embrace of the pasts that produced the World Heritage buildings and remains. For the archaeological sites, these pasts may be simply too remote in time, even if Xiaotun villagers convert the Shang rulers into their own ancestors and if among the Maya living around Chichén Itzá, pride in the site and its global recognition is universal (Breglia 2006), despite their meagre share in the tourist business. Nostalgia seems more likely when the past embodied in the site is relatively recent and seen as connected with the present. This applies to Luang Prabang and Timbuktu, but what we find in their heritage regimes and tourist appropriations is ‘exo-nostalgia’, in Berliner’s terms – that is, the longing of outsiders for a past they have not experienced themselves (and whose colonial dimension they do not problematize). By contrast, old-time Luang Prabangers, while not bitter about the past, prefer the possibilities of today, much as Timbuktu residents are preoccupied by the challenges of crumbling houses and absent sewage systems, not the mystical desert city. There is more of ‘endo-nostalgia’ in Istasse’s Fez example where old Fassi too are drawn to the courtyard houses of the medina, approaching them through personal memories rather than Orientalist fantasies. What the old-timers experience in terms of nostalgia, however, seems to be present despite, rather than because of, the official authorities’ interventions, and the claim that heritage recognition encourages a general shift from spontaneous ‘endo-nostalgia’ to a staged ‘exo-nostalgia’ for outside consumption, while deserving further study, is certainly not disproved by our cases. Should we stay aloof from what we observe? Most anthropologists and also most contributors to this volume see their main task as analysing social situations, not necessarily improving them, and the choice of research topic does not force us to be ‘heritage believers’, in Brumann’s (2014a) terms – that is, people who personally identify with heritage discourses and practices. The two least detached chapters, however, are from contributors with primary or additional training in archaeology who cannot so easily keep their cool when irreplaceable material traces of the past are endangered by corporate profiteering and government collusion (in Mapungubwe) or conservation regimes that turn a deaf ear to understandable local concerns (at the Italian, Libyan and Tanzanian

Introduction  ◆  27

rock art sites). Chalcraft in particular is outspoken when castigating the World Heritage regime as colonial. While not all contributors would support this assessment, the crucial role of past colonial domination in constituting the sites and their heritage value emerges from almost every chapter, and the fraught social situations described certainly encourage critical assessments and political realism. On a more general level, seeing the World Heritage phenomenon as adding a further ‘heritage-scape’ to the ‘-scapes’ identified by Appadurai (1990), as argued by Michael Di Giovine (2009), probably overstates its importance. Yet Appadurai’s optimistic prediction of the nation state’s being ‘on its last legs’ (1996: 19) is certainly not borne out; both in the World Heritage Committee sessions and at the sites in this book, we see national actors and forces very much on top of things. Yin Xu and Angkor in particular demonstrate the intimate relation between heritage and state apparatuses intent on providing their subjects with roots and glory, even if the tone is more triumphant in the former than the latter case. And as Angkor shows, international donors and supranational organizations may seek out a site precisely because of its potential for post-traumatic nation building. At least among the educated elites, however, World Heritage does contribute to the deepening of the ‘global ecumene’ (Hannerz 1996), a worldwide space of shared discourses and imaginations. No other institution does more to bring global heritage policies in touch and often also in sync with each other, and the commitment to heritage conservation, both verbal and actual, in the world is stronger than if World Heritage had never been invented. The main homogenizing effect, however, may be at the procedural and pragmatic rather than the substantive level: we see more convergence in the signboards, lighting systems, management plans, heritage impact assessments or fencing strategies than in the meanings and values attached to specific sites and in the social phenomena unfolding around them. Beyond the aforementioned parallels such as the weak position of local populations in authoritarian states or the increasing role of publicprivate corporate hybrids in managing the properties, much diversity remains. World Heritage is best described as an effort to bring about a ‘global system of common difference’, to use Richard Wilk’s (1995) phrase, a large-scale conceptual and institutional framework not for erasing diversity but rather for encompassing and administering it, by agreeing on the legitimate axes of differentiation and competition. World Heritage places each site in a space of comparison, thus rendering it commensurable, but produces less uniformity than might be believed.

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What can the anthropological focus of this book contribute to heritage studies? We think that within this quickly growing interdisciplinary field, many of the celebratory or, conversely, very critical studies of specific heritage institutions or sites often rest on a narrow empirical basis. Critical readings of the texts produced by the World Heritage Convention and other UNESCO bodies are indispensable, but to gauge the full impact of the documents and trace their entanglement with social and political realities, in peripheral locations just as in the UNESCO meeting halls, in our view requires the sustained, close-up approach of ethnographic fieldwork. Not only is ‘a great deal of UNESCO’s agenda . . .”lost in translation”’ (Bendix, Eggert and Peselmann 2012: 14) when it travels, the will to communicate varies a great deal to begin with between the parties involved. As the chapters demonstrate, fieldwork allows us to find out how far the much-quoted ‘authorised heritage discourse’, or ‘AHD’ (Smith 2006), really extends, what the lay and subaltern views in a field dominated by political and economic elites and by experts focused on the material rather than the social fabric look like, which hidden interests are at play and how of all this intertwines in the concrete social setting. Every chapter in this volume describes facts and views that have never made it into the nomination files, evaluations, mission reports and decision texts of the World Heritage system. While one may debate whether ‘conservation’ in a narrow technical sense requires this information, we are convinced that a comprehensive understanding of the social environment of World Heritage properties calls for it and that ignoring the latter is often the root cause for the technical conservation problems the World Heritage institutions deal with (see in particular Chalcraft’s chapter). The chapters should curtail overenthusiastic belief in the idea that an appreciation for heritage can simply be transported intact over large spatial and cultural distances: what we present are mixed and often complex messages. They neither unanimously speak for demonizing the World Heritage venture, nor do they encourage its glorification.

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Note We would like to thank Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Ulf Hannerz and Michael Rowlands for their spirited comments on the initial drafts of the chapters. Élise Demeulenaere and Rachel Giraudo had to withdraw due to other commitments but are to be thanked for enriching our joint discussions. We received valuable hints from three anonymous reviewers. David Eubelen worked conscientiously on the index for which we are grateful. We would like to thank the Berghahn team, notably Molly Mosher, Jessica Murphy and Duncan Ranslem. Special thanks go to our editor, Eeva Berglund, whose meticulous, reliable and reasonable work had outstanding value for us.

Part I Cities

Chapter 1 Affects and Senses in a World Heritage Site People-House Relations in the Medina of Fez Manon Istasse

For those living next to it, officially designated heritage can be a political tool, an economic resource and, arguably, a human right. My fieldwork in the World Heritage site of Fez, Morocco,1 shows that people also relate to heritage through the senses and affects. Nonetheless, World Heritage policies, and heritage policies in general, mainly focus on technical (which techniques and materials to use in the preservation of such element of heritage), economic (some projects of preservation are aimed at poverty alleviation) or political aspects (possible links with the principles of good governance and participation of local populations). These policies and strategies miss both the sensory and the affective aspects of heritage. In Fez, too, members of institutions in charge of the medina and its heritage hardly take account of senses and affects when they implement conventions, programmes and projects. This stance often leads them to deny any heritage competence to inhabitants, be they Moroccans or foreigners. Inhabitants are accused of not being educated about heritage preservation and of not taking proper care of their houses; they are believed to simply let their houses deteriorate, to want to replace traditional mosaic with modern tiles and to have no taste. The only professionals of heritage to integrate the senses in their practise are those working in cultural tourism and pedagogues. They insist on the necessary physical contact with heritage as a tool for discovery. Heritage then becomes a theme for guided tours of the city,

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allowing people to visit elements of heritage that are usually inaccessible. For example, in France, many primary or secondary schools include ‘heritage classes’ in their pedagogical plans. For one week, pupils and teachers spend time with heritage professionals and participate in their activities. For instance, they practise the making of ceramics or stained glass, or they learn about the architecture of a specific place with a professional architect or historian. Scholars mainly investigate World Heritage sites in terms of conflicts between actors and levels (Fontein 2006, Collins 2008), the political and discursive uses of heritage (Turtinen 2000, Smith 2006) or the underlying values and concepts (Pocock 1997, Ilcan and Philips 2006, Cameron 2008). Senses and affects are marginal in their reports. There are however some exceptions. Muriel Girard (2006) investigates what are called émotions patrimoniales (heritage emotions) among tourists and guides in Fez. In her view, heritage is at the core of an enchanted relation that tourists develop with material traces such as the road network or buildings, the atmosphere – contrasts, colours, odours and sounds – or the encounter with the Other. The tourists see something that doesn’t exist at home. Going further in the investigation of emotions and heritage, Nathalie Heinich (2009) argues that emotions cannot be separated from the heritage experience. Her focus on the criteria and regimes of values underlying heritage making demonstrates that experts leave little room for affects in their daily occupation. On the other hand, Anthony Pecqueux (2006) shows that both experts and nonexperts do have affects. Also, JeanLouis Tornatore (2010) presents a more nuanced view of the absence of affects by characterizing heritage experts’ work as a game between expert detachment and affective involvement. Among the French scholars belonging to the research group ‘Emotions patrimoniales’, Véronique Dassié (2006) argues that the destruction of numerous trees in the Park of Versailles during the storm of December 1999 raised various emotions. These emotions are not sufficient to set off action around heritage, but contribute to an ‘intimization’ of heritage through which individuals established a link between the storm and their personal experience. Many French people finally undertook patrimonial action – they adopted a tree or donated money. Noël Barbe and Tornatore (2006) on the other hand are interested in the politicization of emotions after the Luneville Castle fire in 2003. This politicization transformed the disaster into a heritage cause and fostered mobilization for the reconstruction of the castle. Bruno Etienne (2006) aims to understand how an emotion may become a heritage emotion in the first place. According to him,

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the passage from the familiar and intimate to the public creates the heritage emotion. These studies of heritage emotions take as a basis a disaster destroying or threatening elements that are not considered as heritage by everybody. This disaster, the following emotions and their politicization facilitate the addition of a patrimonial status. In this sense, the disaster is both a traumatic event and an opportunity. By contrast, in Fez, there is no disaster, no major pending threat. Rather, I focus on affects and senses that contribute on a daily basis to the relation with an element of heritage, namely houses. Houses-as-heritage have caught the interest of several scholars (Fabre and Iuso 2009). However, only few of them (such as Brumann 2009) really focus on the sensual and affective relation with houses and on how inhabitants take care of and care about houses – scholars most of the time take for granted the official heritage quality of houses and investigate how inhabitants appropriate or reject this quality. The focus on the daily relations with houses (the one I have adopted) sheds light on dividing lines among inhabitants in their relation with the houses – the two main distinctions in Fez being between Moroccan and foreign inhabitants, and between long-term and short-term residents. I start with a presentation of the medina of Fez and its inhabitants. I continue with an overview of heritage in Fez and I stress the glaring absence of UNESCO, which is present only as a myth in the tales of many inhabitants, as an argument of justification or as a label to promote the city. I also describe the institutions in charge of the medina and its heritage, very much present in their turn, and the inhabitants’ definitions and perceptions of heritage. I then dedicate a large part to the senses and affects in the relations that inhabitants have with their houses. I conclude with some thoughts about the importance of senses and affects in daily life with houses and their heritage qualification. The Medina of Fez Fez benefits from an established reputation as a holy city (the city of Moulay Idriss II) and as a cultural centre (the city of the first university in the world, the Qaraouiyine) with a unique architectural style (the Arab-Andalus style). According to tourism guidebooks, local guides, foreign and Moroccan inhabitants, scholars and members of various institutions, Fez is at first sight a traditional city (the most conservative in Morocco), a mysterious city (a city with a ‘deep

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Figure 1.1.  View of Fez from the Merinid tombs, 2011 (photo: Manon Istasse).

spirit’, with a maze of small streets where it is easy to get lost) and a medieval city (no cars are allowed within the city walls, where donkeys still carry goods). Located in a plain near the Atlas Mountains, Fez was Morocco’s first capital city. Berber and Arab dynasties successively chose Fez as their political centre. Similarly, various populations have followed on each other: Berbers, Arabs and Sephardic Jews arrived in the ninth century, Algerians in the fifteenth and sixteenth, French under the Protectorate in the twentieth century, rural migrants since the 1950s, and Sub-Saharan students attending universities and high schools, as well as tourists and foreign residents more recently (Burckhardt 1992). This mix of populations, dynasties and origins influenced the appearance and the importance of the built heritage and urban planning. The look of Fez dramatically changed between 1912 and 1956 under the French Protectorate, as it lost its status of capital city while the French authorities built a New City two kilometres away from the medina (Jelidi 2012). Major changes with respect to population, tourism development and cultural heritage policies followed independence in 1957. According to the last population census of 2004,2 about 20,088 households

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live in the medina, which means about 300,000 inhabitants. Among them, 43.5 per cent own their dwelling (which may only be a room in a shared house); 44.8 per cent rent it; and the others benefit from free housing (i.e. they squat or live in the house of a relative who does not live in the medina). The population census counted 193 foreigners – although this number appears too low, and British and Americans in particular were absent. Four years later, in her investigation of foreign guest-house owners, Widad Jodie Bakhella (2008) counted about 300 foreigners: 50 per cent of them were French, 17 per cent British, 9 per cent American, while no other Western nationality exceeded 3 per cent. Moroccan inhabitants are mainly rural migrants who settled in the medina in the early 1980s. They replaced the Fassi elites3 who started leaving Fez in the late nineteenth century, with the main move occurring after independence. Some Moroccan elites, administrators and scholars (Lahbil-Tagemouati 2000) refer to this population change to explain the degradation of the medina, and some even speak of ‘foundoukization’4 (El Faiz 2002) to describe the endless arrival of migrants. In their view, migrants neither have the money nor the sense to take care of the houses of the medina. Some have been recently renovated,5 others are in serious decay – about 3,700 out of the 12,000 – and about three collapse each year. If Moroccan elites now live in the New City, in Casablanca, Rabat or abroad, new elites, or ‘neo-Fassis’ who are mainly owners of guest houses (McGuinness 2006), have settled in the medina instead. In the late 1990s, the ‘ryad mania’, the trend of foreigners buying traditional houses in Morocco,6 reached Fez and the first Moroccan-owned guest house opened in 1999. In December 2012, the Association of Guest Houses listed 63 official guest houses, 16 locations de meublé7 and about 100 unofficial tourist accommodations. Out of the 63 guest houses, 34 are Moroccan owned. Heritage in Fez The medina has been a World Heritage property since 1981, when UNESCO listed 280 out of the 300 hectares8 that it covers. However, UNESCO and World Heritage in Fez are rather noticeable by their absence. The nearest UNESCO field office is located in Rabat. There were once, but not anymore, UNESCO-paid consultants – Titus Burckhardt, Stefano Bianca, Frank Foulon and Frank

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Van de Kerchove, among others. Nowadays, UNESCO or ICOMOS consultants come when needed, that is to say, when a member of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture calls them to monitor the consequences of a project. The last time was in 2010, during the construction of a tourist and residential area in the buffer zone. Also, the only UNESCO sign within the medina walls was removed in January 2011. The billboard of the CIPA (Centre International pour la Promotion de l’Artisanat; International Centre for the Promotion of Craft Industry) displayed the World Heritage logo. This is not to say that UNESCO did, or does, nothing in Fez. It participated in the restoration of some monuments. Dar Adiyel, a palace housing the museum of Andalusian music, is presented as an example of international cooperation between UNESCO, Italy and Morocco. Also, four major international preservation campaigns and projects took place: the 1985 UNESCO campaign, the 1992 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project, the 1996 World Bank project (the first to be partly realized in Fez) and the current Millennium Corporation project. Finally, in 1993, Fez actively contributed to the creation of the Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) of which it is now a member. In a way, UNESCO has succeeded in making Fez a city of universal concern, a place of encounter between international sponsors, academics, public authorities and tourists. However, the two institutions in charge of the medina – ADER Fez (Agence de Développement et de Réhabilitation; Development and Rehabilitation Agency) and the Inspection of Historical Monuments – assert their freedom from UNESCO. ADER was created in 1989 as a semi-public institution, but it became a public limited company in the early 2000s because of financial problems (bribery within the ADER and problems of public funding). This technical authority of the medina is invested with the mission to ‘carry out programmes related to the safeguarding of Fez according to governmental prerogative’. It means fulfilling general aims (to adapt the medina to its demographic and economic evolution) as well as very precise urban works (to prevent houses from collapsing) and data collecting. The ADER employees created a Geographic Information System (GIS) providing detailed data about the medina. In the medina, ADER propped up buildings, set up tourism circuits with the help of other institutions and established three kinds of programmes to financially and technically help inhabitants in undertaking works in their houses. Heritage is however the main responsibility of the Inspection of Historical Monuments, an administration that is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture. The inspector and his eight

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employees carry out research and inventories and propose and control files of cultural elements to list. The Inspection members also undertake works involving listed buildings. Finally, they monitor restoration and rehabilitation works engaged by other institutions in order to check the conformity to national heritage regulations and the respect of the architectural structure – the disposal, the plan of the house – and of the architectural decoration. Even if the Inspection represents UNESCO in Fez, the inspector doesn’t consider UNESCO members as superiors. To him, and to many members of institutions in Fez, UNESCO is at best a justification to support an argument or a label to promote the city. For instance, the inspector and the municipal employees use it to support different actions of preservation. While a municipal employee refers to the acceptance of UNESCO to use reinforced concrete in the rebuilding of a minaret in Meknes, the inspector refers to UNESCO to avoid the recourse to modern materials. Institutions concerned with tourism development brand the medina as a World Heritage site to attract tourists. This use of heritage in justification and promotion processes has been brought to light by Berliner (2010) and Michael Herzfeld (1991) in other heritage sites. UNESCO is not just an institution, it is a myth (Lahbil-Tagemouati 2000) in the discourses of Moroccan and foreign inhabitants. Most of them don’t know when the medina was listed, what UNESCO is and what it undertakes or undertook in Fez. They mistake ADER technicians for UNESCO experts, and they associate UNESCO with the positive image of a saviour giving money to preserve the medina. In the view of most inhabitants and members of tourism institutions, the concrete benefit of World Heritage listing is financial: tourists are coming. Some inhabitants nonetheless have a critical or oppositional discourse vis-à-vis UNESCO, accusing it of not taking care of the medina and accusing UNESCO members and Moroccan politicians of stealing money. More than UNESCO as a myth in discourses, the medina as a cultural heritage doesn’t seem to resonate with inhabitants’ interests. Houses are first and foremost places to live and are at best – and hardly – considered as a familial heritage or an economic heritage when the house has been turned into a tourist accommodation. There are many ways that heritage exists in Fez. First of all, people use ‘heritage’ as a word – or several words – in Moroccan Arabic. Turāth is used to talk about the material and immaterial objects handed down by the forefathers. These objects are most of the time connected to religion (din) or the way of life (taqālīd) and are still in

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use. Turāth is, for instance, the Qaraouiyine mosque, Andalus music or books related to religion – exegesis, but not the Koran. Āthar means historical monuments, and more precisely ruins that are not used anymore, such as Volubilis, a Roman site – also listed as World Heritage – located about seventy kilometres from Fez. Warth is another kind of heritage and designates ‘inheritance’, familial heritage, such as a familial house. Foreigners refer to heritage when talking of the medina as a medieval city similar to a certain extent to those of the European Middle Ages. To them, the medina is out of time and place; it is exceptional and unique. They also speak of their houses as a personal heritage, that is to say, a plus in their lives, an economic heritage when used for tourist accommodation and sometimes a cultural heritage for being located in a World Heritage site or for historical or architectural uniqueness. Secondly, heritage as a category is used among members of institutions in charge of the medina, which is listed as a cultural heritage, and more precisely as a historic city, after UNESCO criteria ii and v. The medina is also a national heritage hosting both tangible and intangible heritage. Several foreign aficionados also subsume the medina and houses under the category of heritage when complaining about the disappearance of know-how, when rhapsodizing in front of a piece of old mosaic or feeling the former glory of a decaying house. Heritage is finally present within restoration and preservation actions. Moroccan inhabitants undertake construction and maintenance works in their houses, be they owned or rented. Many inhabitants undertake maintenance works as soon as they have the money – financial support is a crucial matter since traditional materials are expensive. Some modernize their houses. Others mention their will to preserve the houses not for any heritage reason, but to keep it ‘as it has always been’. They do not see modern devices – such as a gas cooker or a television – as threats to authenticity, but they still favour traditional materials and know-how. Foreigners are also involved in the preservation and restoration of houses through buying, upgrading and furnishing them. Most foreigners try to respect traditional materials and techniques as long as it doesn’t cost too much and does not raise too many problems, such as the necessity of bribery, less comfort or functional issues. In furnishing and decorating their houses, they favour old and local items. They put kaftan (traditional women’s clothing) into glass frames and hang them on the wall, they use jars for preserved meat as plant pots or they decorate their houses with objects such as carpets, plates or

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bread stamps they bought in the medina. A few foreigners openly undertook construction works in the medina by cleaning fountains, restoring msid (Koranic primary school) or repairing and repainting the walls of a street. Finally, others have opened businesses specializing in the restoration of houses after they assembled a team of local construction workers and craftsmen selected for their skills. In sum, UNESCO seems absent and most inhabitants show little explicit interest in heritage. However, I became aware that houses in the medina are experienced as heritage, but also as something else than heritage. This something else, I suggest, can be appreciated if we look more closely at the role of affects and senses, both in the description informants gave of their houses and the observable practises relating to houses. Affects and Senses in Fez In anthropology, scholars speak of a corporeal turn initiated by Foucault and focused on the body and embodiment, of a sensorial (or sensual) turn (Classen 1997) and of an ‘affective turn’ (Clough 2007) as attempts to make room for affects and senses in their discipline9 and to overtake main dichotomies between the universal and the specific, the rational and the irrational, nature and culture, the body and the mind. Some have specifically explored the physical features and the affective potentials of materials and materiality, using case studies such as houses (Miller 2001) or heritage (Meskell 2005; Dassié 2006). These turns gave rise to numerous studies and to a proliferation of terms and notions related to the senses (sensations, feeling and perception) and to affects (passions, emotions and impressions). In the following, I consider affects as states of mind related to pleasure or unhappiness, of appeal or repulsion towards an object, a situation, a human being (Schore 1994). Affects are not prelinguistic or preconscious, rather they link to memory (Leitchman, Ceci and Ornstein 1992). Affects serve to preserve the trace of past events, actions and encounters and bring them into the present as potentials (Mazzarella 2009). They may intervene in actions and decision making, as Daniel Cefaï (2007) and William Mazzarella (2009: 298) put it: ‘Any social project that is not imposed through force alone must be affective in order to be effective.’ Affects finally refer to the capacities to affect and to be affected, to engage and to be engaged with the object of affection (Navaro-Yashin 2009). Before I develop this potential in the conclusion, I list the senses and affects I met, heard and observed in

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the way inhabitants related with their houses in order to shed some light on their attachments to them. But first I want to stress the role of language, since it was through speech that most of my informants told me about their senses and affects. I could observe their physical, facial or voice changes during the visits, discussions and walks we had, but the ‘confirmation’ always came from their words. This use of language, as Joël Candau (2000) puts it, is necessary for sharing, while it is also limited. In this context, language doesn’t determine senses and affects but contributes to their communication. Senses When talking about the medina and houses, informants mentioned several senses. Sight is the most frequently cited. Several inhabitants mentioned they could spend hours in the patio looking at the architectural decoration made of mosaic, carved plaster and painted wood. Another, a Moroccan, underlined the importance of observing master craftsmen at work to learn from them the necessary know-how to restore houses. An American resident living for a long time in the medina used to scan the details of any house he entered to determine the age and architecture of the house. As a French art historian said during one of his stays in the medina, ‘Sight is the first thing when you enter into a house. You are dazzled. There are a lot of things to see.’ When entering a house, foreigners mentioned they were sometimes amazed by the architectural decoration in the patio (i.e. central courtyard). Some associated this ‘unveiling’ of the house interior with breathlessness and speechlessness in front of what is beautiful or what was beautiful before its current state of ruin. In this context, many informants mentioned a ‘love at first sight’ with the house when they were searching for a property to buy. A Moroccan guest-house owner remembered, ‘I saw a house that hit my eye [khalani ntere b l’farha], and I loved it.’ Aside from simply looking at a house, informants linked this sense of sight with affects, such as love and well-being, and qualities of the house, such as brightness and beauty. Informants described the patio (its luminosity, its greenery, its decoration) and the rooftop terrace (its panoramic view) as places instigating a deep visual discovery of the house and the medina. In relation with the qualities of the house, many foreigners cited what can be called the ‘too much’ aspect of Moroccan architectural decoration. As a result of the many eye-catching details, one doesn’t

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know where to look first. As a consequence, furnishing a house may be challenging. As an American guest-house owner explained: ‘I’ve left the walls, especially in the suite,10 blank. You do need a place for your eyes to go to, but simple, clean, white. That’s a challenge of putting furnishing in a house like this, with all that zelij [mosaic]. I use the furnishing as a way to fasten the edges. Everything is very symmetrical, and there is no curb, there are no soft edges.’ Some informants associated sight with a capacity or with (a lack of) knowledge. Sight is a personal skill one develops according to one’s interest. According to a Moroccan guest-house employee, both curiosity and interest underlie the capacity to have a deep look at something, and one has to learn to look at things with at least curiosity. To not have ‘the eye’ may then lead to mistakes. A French resident recently settled in the medina removed all the old mosaic from his house, without realizing what he was destroying: ‘According to [an American expert], I had wonderful zelij on the floor, pure marvels. They were in a very bad condition. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see it was wonderful zelij.’ Another guest-house owner sharing his time between France and Morocco linked sight with the ability to put one’s feeling into words: ‘At first sight, one may see the difference in style [between houses]. But to talk about it is another matter.’ However, talking about what they saw did not prove difficult for many inhabitants. A glaring example is a French guest-house manager who usually presents to her guests the patio she bought eight years earlier. She explains the symbolism of the architectural decoration and shows off the patterns and drawings with the help of a laser pointer, punctuating her explanations with, ‘Do you see it?’ Tourists then comment on what was not blindingly obvious to them, with either ‘I see it!’ or ‘I don’t see anything!’ Also, some make jokes about what might sometimes seem far-fetched: ‘Ah there, a plane!’ or ‘Look at Darth Vader over there!’ The sense of hearing was often mentioned in order to contrast the peaceful house and the noisy medina. The house provides quiet sounds, an auditory atmosphere related to a feeling of well-being. Informants generally mentioned the sound of water in the fountain, the birds singing in a tree or the remote prayer call. They asserted that they felt at peace and secure in the house, as if they were protected from external noises. Bad soundproofing constituted an exception. A Moroccan inhabitant underlined that it was sometimes very easy to hear what happened or what was said in adjacent houses because of the open rooftops and thin walls. In a different register of sounds,

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a German guest-house owner bought her house partly because the house called to her: ‘At the beginning, it bewitched me. It told me “Buy me, save me. It is me!”’ She later added: ‘When I saw this house, I said “wow”. I entered, and I felt strange. In my head, I couldn’t realize I was about to buy this house. The house was empty, but I heard the laughter of children filling the house. It was a joyful house.’ Informants hardly mentioned the senses of touch, smell and taste. Taste most of the time related to the claim that homemade food is better than food from any restaurant, be it guest-house owners praising their own cuisine or Moroccans explaining why they never go out to eat. The aforementioned long-term American resident quite automatically touched walls and wood to appreciate them, as many foreigners tend to touch the wood of doors and furniture and the mosaics when seeing them for the first time. One day, he pointed to the mortar on a street wall. He pressed his hand on the old mortar and showed me that it was barely soiled. He then pressed on the newer mortar and it turned white. He attributed the difference in quality to a loss of know-how among the workers. A Moroccan inhabitant mentioned the sense of touch when talking about the coldness in winter and the appreciated freshness in summer of the mosaic surfaces. In the same vein, a Moroccan architect made a clear distinction between the tactile qualities of materials: ‘When you touch [the mosaic], it is not the same as hen you touch wood. There is a difference in the temperature. The tactile quality of mosaic is very important.’ Aside from the house’s materials, a French guest-house owner remembered the first breakfasts on the terrace in spring when the skin is warmed by the sun. Touch may also be interiorized, as the French art historian explained: ‘I thought I had to be soaked up by the house, because it has a life in itself. One can feel the house is alive. And I felt I was impregnated with this by staying in the house, sitting in a corner, looking and being touched by the house.’ Older Moroccan informants recalled the smell of burnt cedar or sandalwood – a weekly tradition from the past that is still practised by some families today. Many mentioned the smell of food being cooked in the kitchen, for instance the smell of boulfaf (liver brochette with pieces of meat rolled into fat and dipped into cumin and salt) filling the house during the Sheep Feast period and lingering for several days in the rooms. I personally remember that, when I was living with a Moroccan family, clothes always smelled of cedar when taken from the wardrobe. That said, odours are not always fresh and good. Guest-house owners often mentioned the difficulty in avoiding bad smells rising from the drains.

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Finally, the description of senses in a house could sometimes turn into an outburst. When we visited a building site, a French inhabitant resident managing a building company stopped in front of the plasterer working on a frieze around a door: ‘It is pure happiness. This work is very sensual in the way he holds the tool, the way he progresses along the frieze.’ He said he really admired the plasterer but would be unable to do the same work because he was not ‘clever enough with [his] hands’. When presenting his garden, and ArabAndalus gardens more generally, to tourists, a French guest-house owner described them as a ‘festival for the senses’, since the plants provide smells (flowers, trees), tastes (fruits, spices), colours (flowers, leaves) and sounds (wind in the leaves, water in the fountain). Affects Many informants declared that they had no particular affect for their houses. Affects nonetheless appeared during the discussions. Among senses, I have mentioned ‘love at first sight’, a sensation that mixes physical reactions, personal skills, qualities of the house and affects. Some informants particularly stressed the affective side of this initial shock and the good feeling it provided. As a French guest-house owner living in France put it, ‘We had visited a lot of houses, in a lot of different neighbourhoods. And in some houses, I think it is a matter of energy and waves. I felt . . . Yes, I think houses have energy. And, I felt people had been happy in our house.’ The patio and the rooftop terrace were the most frequently cited rooms instigating these positive affects. A French guest-house owner thought the patio was a key element for the well-being of tourists thanks to its size, decoration and openness. Another suggested that the patio is so ‘strong’, it is impossible to not feel something: ‘Everybody is impressed when entering the house.’ One should add the bedroom in private houses that several Moroccans gave as their favourite room because of the intimacy it provides. Also, in tourist accommodations, the salon, if provided with a chimney, is one of the favourite rooms for the atmosphere it spreads during wintertime. It is a place to meet people and to warm oneself after a long day in the medina. Another kind of affect relates to the humility and respect induced by living in buildings with such impressive architecture, as a French newcomer declared: ‘I think architecture is so imposing here that something happens. People respect something. People look at houses, and are maybe overwhelmed, but not in a wrong sense. I think that all

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Figure 1.2.  Central courtyard in a guest house, a place of high involvement for senses and affects, 2011 (photo: Manon Istasse).

that is beautiful in them goes out. People become completely societal again, they feel respect. You feel humble, but you feel good. You feel impregnated with something beautiful and maybe new.’ According to a Moroccan inhabitant, in traditional houses you have to ‘keep your feet on the ground’, because the house is so huge and amazing that ‘you feel small and cannot get a big head’. Going a step further, a Moroccan guest-house owner explained that she developed a strong loving relationship with her house: ‘I knew it [i.e. the house] already when I was a child.’ Her father wanted her to buy the house, but it was too expensive. It was only after the father died that she could afford it. So she has the satisfaction of doing what her father wanted her to do. And ‘once you have restored it, you give your best. So the house acquires a soul. The relationship with this house is filled with love.’ Well-being is one of the most cited affects, and relates to peace, security, positive energy, a sense of magic and intimacy. The French manager of a building company declared: ‘Compared to the very alive medina, in terms of activity and noise, I would say that when you enter the house, you find tranquillity, a heaven, a place where you want to settle with your bundle. And then to rest, to have warmth in

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winter, freshness in summer. I felt good the first time I entered this house.’ A Moroccan guest-house owner admitted he sometimes got lost in his house: ‘Each time I come to my house and I sit in a corner, I forget myself. I forget myself until I watch the clock, and that it is a bit late, and that I have to go back home. I don’t know how time passes there.’ Informants associated well-being with a number of different elements, among them the atmosphere and the symmetric layout of the house. Inhabitants also mentioned the sound of the water running in the fountain, or the sight of greenery in the patio. Some pointed to luminosity that gives ‘a good vibration’. The same qualities of houses may also provoke negative affects, however. For instance, a French woman looking for a house to buy described entering into one ‘medina high-rise block of council flats [high house with many windows in the patio]’: ‘I got dizzy just by seeing all the openings! At some point, I had to go out! There were I don’t know how many rooms, plus what was between the floors.’ Affects, of course, are not always positive. A feeling of loss or disappearance, or nostalgia, is one commonly cited affect. Most informants, be they inhabitants or members of institutions, mentioned the heyday of Fez under the Merinid dynasty (thirteenth to fifteenth century). Moroccan inhabitants often brought up past ways of life in the houses: Doors were open even during the night. People visited each other. Water was flowing everywhere, from the fountains in the house to those in the streets and mosques, running through the open pipes in the streets. A Moroccan architect said: ‘When I go to my grandparents’ house, I always remember. For me it is . . . in each corner of this house, there is a mark. And maybe somebody else coming to my grandparents’ won’t have the same feeling, because he doesn’t know the life there was.’ Moroccan members of institutions concerned with heritage also shared this feeling of loss and nostalgia. Some mentioned their childhood in the medina but, at the same time, they underlined that life was easier in the New City where they were currently living. One of them, working at the Inspection of Historical Monuments, was nostalgic for the great days of UNESCO, when major restoration works took place in the 1970s and 1980s and when ‘everybody respected UNESCO’. This same man was upset by a house that had been radically transformed by its current owner. That person had not only destroyed the former architectural layout and decoration, but also replaced them with features at odds with the medina. Those who have not experienced the medina during their childhood – that is, elites who moved out in the late 1950s – were longing, like foreign inhabitants, for it as a model of authenticity and architectural skills.

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For their part, most foreign inhabitants did not lament a disappeared way of life, as for them life in the medina was, to a certain extent, like inhabiting a medieval European city. Nonetheless, they mentioned houses described in books and TV documentaries and depicted in Orientalist images and writings produced under the Protectorate. And these have disappeared. They may then have rhapsodized in front of an old piece of mosaic and complained about the disappearance of skills. In their view, workers are not what they used to be, contenting themselves with reproducing the shapes and patterns of their forefathers so that the array of patterns and the refinement are diminishing. Foreigners moreover develop personal memories linked with their houses. The aforementioned American guest-house owner associated individual rooms with specific moments of her life: ‘I can walk into each room and I have got memories of people and events that happened long before most of my friends here now were even here. So I can remember parties I had in 2004. My personal history is completely interwoven with the history of the house. If I were to sell the house, it would be difficult, because I would be selling ten, twelve years of my life.’ Some foreigners acknowledged that they sometimes cried in their houses. During our interviews, an Australian guest-house owner cried several times when she recalled hard or joyful moments: ‘It is emotion, excuse me’ punctuated her discourse. A French guest-house owner declared that she often says to her clients, ‘I filled the swimming pool with my tears. Because I cried, I cried, I cried. I sometimes cried of despair.’ She carved the words salam (peace) and hub (love) in the second patio of her house as an act of atonement. The American guest-house owner said that she experienced the tears of the former owners: ‘The mother in the family I bought the house from, she didn’t want to sell, but the father did. So when they gave me the keys, the woman cried, that’s so awful. “Please promise me, all my children were born in this house, my history is in that house, don’t change it too much. Don’t do anything crazy to it.”’ Many foreigners recalled their sadness and anger during restoration or remodelling works, which took more time, money and energy than expected. A German guest-house owner, who experienced ‘bad moments’ during restoration work, told me, ‘The house made me suffer a lot. There is a lot of my suffering inside. It was 2.5 years of nightmare.’ Among Moroccan inhabitants, many saw their house as a burden because it reminded them of the economic crisis in the 1980s and the bad moments they had to face. Finally, some of the few Moroccan and foreign residents who got actively involved in the preservation of the medina admitted their

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disappointment with the difficulty of carrying out preservation works. They explained their current inactivity by the lack of support among Moroccan inhabitants who did not join the movement, by the lack of support from public authorities and institutions in charge of the medina and by conflicts between Moroccan and foreign owners invited to participate in discourses and actions of preservation. Conclusion I have shown how UNESCO and cultural heritage do not occupy the front stage in the daily lives of Fez medina inhabitants. Indeed, houses are first and foremost sensual and affective objects to which people become attached in different ways. How they are experienced has to do with whether residents are Moroccan or foreign. Their experience of past ways of life differs according to Berliner’s distinction between endo-nostalgia and exo-nostalgia (see this volume). While the first is the ‘nostalgia for the past one has lived personally’, as in the case of Moroccan inhabitants, the second is the ‘nostalgia for the past not experienced personally’, as in the case of foreign inhabitants. Moroccan residents link their physical and affective relations with houses to their long experience of them and to their childhood, while foreign residents rely on their short – but sometimes intense – experience of the houses and on what they have read or seen on television. Physical and affective relations are firstly associated with discovery for the foreign residents. Each house they visit provides them with new objects for physical feelings. In addition, affects are the main components of their relations with houses. With time, foreigners become familiar with sensuous and affective relations, and informants generally find it more difficult to talk about them. Physical senses for their part are associated with knowledge. Foreigners do not anymore look at a house to discover it, but to link it with other houses they have visited or to an architectural style. They do not touch mosaic walls to feel them, but to have an idea of their quality. However, affects and senses constitute a meeting point between inhabitants busy with their daily lives and members of institutions, or experts, busy with heritage. Both experts and inhabitants may be sad when a house collapses, even if not for the same reason. The former would be sad because they know they cannot rebuild the house identically, the latter would be sad because a part of their life, of their neighbourhood, or their friends, has died. More generally, the sensual and affective attachment of inhabitants to their house may give rise

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to a genuine interest in preservation, in contrast to the experts’ usual denial of heritage skills and preservation to nonexperts. In that view, houses constitute one of their focuses of attention, if not one of their passions. The supposed suppression of affects by members of institutions (Heinich 2009) could be termed ‘professional affects’. These kinds of affects show a concern for the past on the one hand and for following the rules on the other. Experts fear that Fez will be put on the List of World Heritage in Danger and they remember their childhood in medina houses. If they share affects, inhabitants and experts also share knowledge. They play with the image of Fez as a medieval and timeless city whose way of life is stuck in the past. Fez is immobile in time, as one can forget time in one’s house or as Islamic art in a museum in Fez may provide a direct experience of the past. Foreigners praise the medieval aspect of the medina. UNESCO consultants, such as Stefano Bianca (1980), played with this feature of timelessness in their reports, urging the preservation of the city. In addition to the importance of senses and affects in people’s relations with houses, I argue that focusing on them sheds light on what people care for. A focus on the senses clearly shows that inhabitants are looking for and care about beauty (the love at first sight with a beautiful house) and harmony (criticism of the overwhelming number of eye-catching details in houses), as well as a sense of calm (with a peaceful auditory atmosphere and well-being) through a house pleasant to touch or the sun skimming the skin on the rooftop terrace. Affects also point to what inhabitants care about. The affect of love at first sight suggests a concern for beauty, while biographic affects – souvenirs, nostalgia, sadness – underline a concern for the past and for what’s possible. Inhabitants also care about physical and ontological security with affects such as well-being and humility. Véronique Dassié (2006) has written about the ‘intimization’ of things, an opportunity to affect the object and to be affected by the object. This two-way relation engages an inhabitant with their house though their entire body, creating an attachment to the house (Hennion and Teil 2004). An example is the aforementioned German guest-house owner who openly declared that her house caused her to suffer during restoration work after it had called to and bewitched her. The house affected her, just as she affected the house by undertaking major work. This relation of mutual influence raises the question of the presence of things, their availability, their consequences in any situation (Miller 2001, Ingold 2007b). Having physical features, they offer the potential for use, for engagement. Inhabitants select their favourite

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rooms in a house according to the rooms’ material features and the affects they raise. If the central courtyard and the rooftop terrace appear to be appreciated for their light and their atmosphere, rooms around the courtyard are disliked for being damp and dark – except for when a fireplace heats them up. Senses and affects participate in this selection of material features, they take part in the attention human actors give to things (Mazzarella 2009). The French guest-house owner, in his desire to bring light to his small and overdecorated house, failed to see the beauty of the mosaics that covered his walls; the American resident considered as an expert, on the other hand, did not see the potential of the house as a tourist accommodation as he was looking more closely at its age and its architectural decoration. Once engaged, things are accountable for the consequences they instigate (Jansen 2013), as their availability is a condition for the emergence of a possible future. One of these consequences is the qualification of a thing as heritage, in which senses and affects take part. I do not claim the existence of a direct link between specific senses and affects and heritage making. Senses and affects take part in the relation with houses-as-home as they take part in the relation with houses-as-heritage. In terms of affects and senses, heritage and daily objects are not mutually exclusive. However, senses and affects are components in the making and actualization of heritage. They participate in what human actors, be they experts (Heinich 2009) or nonexperts (this chapter), give attention to, care for and care about. I started from the absence of UNESCO and interest in heritage among the inhabitants of a World Heritage site, the medina of Fez in Morocco. I showed how important affects and senses are, however, in residents’ daily relations with part of this official heritage – that is, their houses. I showed that houses are places to live prior to being elements of heritage, and argued that recognizing the affective relationships people have with houses draws our attention to what human beings care for. Whatever their differences, officials, scholars, Moroccans and foreign residents all care about as well as care for these houses, but in ways that are not immediately mutually recognizable. Manon Istasse is a postdoctoral researcher at CURAPP, Université Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France, where she currently studies the role of learned societies and local associations in the promotion of heritage in Picardie. She obtained her PhD in anthropology from the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her publications include “Eating

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in Northeastern Cambodia: A Socio-Anthropological Approach of Highland Food in Ratanakiri” (White Lotus, 2015).

Notes 1. I carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Fez from November 2009 to June 2011 around the orientating question, ‘How does one live in a World Heritage site?’ My fieldwork mainly consisted of observations in houses and tourist accommodations, interviews and discussions with inhabitants – be they Moroccan or foreigners – and members of institutions. I followed several members of institutions in their daily activities, and I worked for several weeks in the archives of the city. 2. Cf. www.lavieeco.com/documents_officiels/Recensement%20population. pdf. If the figures do not perfectly fit the reality of the medina inhabitants, they at least give an idea. 3. By Fassi elites, I mean the great families and the great names in Morocco (Benhaddou 2009, 2010). These families are associated with the foundation and the rise of Fez and they now control positions in the senior administration and technocracy and manage public or private companies. Chorfa (sing. charīf, pl. churafā) descend from the Prophet Mohammed and his wife Fatima and could take care of commercial activities. They were – and still are – named ‘Moulay’ or ‘Sidi’ for men and ‘Lala’ for women. They bear the family names of Idrissi, Alaoui and Skalli. Oulema (sing. ‘alim, pl. ‘ulamā) held religious knowledge. They taught at the Qaraouiyine university, frequently participated in decision and law making in the makhzen (government) and were responsible for the respect and transmission of traditions. El Fassi, Bensouda, Mernissi and Guennoun are among family names of this category of elites. Finally, there were numerous merchant families, such as Berrada, Tazi or Benjelloun. These traders came to Europe to export leather and carpets and to import industrial goods. 4. A foundouk, or caravanserai, was a warehouse and an accommodation for merchants. They were the first buildings to be overcrowded by rural migrants. A house is seen as ‘foundoukized’ when at least four families without any kin relationship inhabit the house (El Faiz 2002). 5. Ambivalence characterizes the medina. If it generally may appear dilapidated (but has it ever appeared new and fresh?), some streets benefited from the renovation of a house facade while in others, wooden braces are needed to keep facades from collapsing. 6. There are three main kinds of houses in Morocco: ryad, a house with an interior garden; dār, a house organized around a central courtyard (but without a garden); and ksar, or palace. After this ‘ryad mania’, the word

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‘ryad’ became part of everyday life and acquired three different meanings. The media used it to refer to any house located in a medina in order to attract buyers, foreigners linked it to Orientalism and exoticism in their imaginary and Moroccans made it any house owned by a foreigner and any tourist accommodation in the medina. The ‘ryad mania’ (Kurzac Souali 2007) refers to the massive purchase of Moroccan houses by foreigners. It started in Marrakech in the 1980s and then spread to other major Moroccan cities during the 1900s. 7. This category of tourist accommodation, specific to Fez, allows owners to welcome tourists if they have less than five bedrooms. 8. Figures vary substantially according to the consulted source. 9. Some study the senses in architecture and urbanism (Porteous 1990, Sennett 1994). They point to the primacy of sight and the success of hygienic ideas – the erasure of smells, for instance – in the shaping of both houses and cities. Gibson (1979) proposes an ecological approach to visual perception that Ingold (2000) further develops. According to them, experiences and senses participate in the engagement of human beings and their entire body with and in their environment. 10. In a guest house, a suite is a bedroom with a private bathroom and a private living room. The latter distinguishes it from a simple bedroom.

Bibliography Bakhella, W. 2008. ‘Le phénomène d’acquisition des anciennes demeures par les étrangers: Un processus de mise en tourisme de la médina de Fès’, unpublished MA thesis, Department of Geography, Université Mohammed V, Rabat. Barbe, N., and Tornatore, J.-L. (eds.). 2006. Les formats d’une cause patrimoniale: Émotions et actions autour du château de Lunéville. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Benhaddou, A. 2010. Les élites du Royaume. Paris: Riveneuve. Bianca, S. 1980. Fez: The Ideal and the Reality of the Islamic City, retrieved 4 June 2008 from www.archnet.org/library/pubdownloader/pdf/2626/ doc/DPC0103.pdf. Brumann, C. 2009. ‘Outside the Glass Case: The Social Life of Urban Heritage in Kyoto’, American Ethnologist 36 (2): 276–99. Burckhardt, T. 1992 [1960]. Fes: City of Islam. Cambridge: ITS. Cameron, C. 2008. ‘From Warsaw to Mostar: The World Heritage Committee and Authenticity’, APT Bulletin 39(2–3): 19–24. Candau, J. 2000. Mémoire et expériences olfacitves: Anthropologie d’un savoir-faire sensoriel. Paris: PUF. Cefaï, D. 2007. Pourquoi se mobilise-t-on? Les théories de l’action collective. Paris: La Découverte.

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Clough, P. (ed.). 2007. The Affective Turn. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Collins, J. 2008. ‘“But What if I Should Need to Defecate in Your Neighbourhood, Madame?” Empire, Redemption and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site’, Cultural Anthropology 23(2): 279–328. Dassie, V. 2006. ‘Une émotion patrimoniale contemporaine: Le parc de Versailles dans la tempête’, retrieved December 2010 from http://hal. archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00501999/en. El Faiz, M. 2002. Marrakech, patrimoine en peril. Paris: Actes Sud. Etienne, B. 2006. ‘“Ca m’a fait quelque chose de le voir en flammes”: Esquisse d’une conceptualization des émotions patrimoniales (Analyse d’un corpus de lettres de réaction à l’incendie)’, in N. Barbe, and J.L. Tornatore (eds.), Les formats d’une cause patrimoniale: Émotions et actions autour du château de Lunéville. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, pp. 103–42. Fabre, D., and A. Iuso (eds.). 2009. Les monuments sont habités. Paris: Maison des sciences de l’Homme. Gibson, J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Girard, M. 2006. ‘Imaginaire touristique et émotion patrimoniale dans la médina de Fès (Maroc)’, Culture & Musées 8: 61–90. Heinich, N. 2009. La fabrique du patrimoine: De la cathédrale à la petite cuillère. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Hennion, A., and G. Teil. 2004. ‘Le goût du vin: Pour une sociologie de l’attention’, in V. Nahoum-Grappe and O. Vincent (eds.), Le goût des belles choses. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, pp. 111–26. Herzfeld, M. 1991. A Place in History. Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ilcan, S., and L. Philips. 2006. ‘Governing Peace: Global Rationalities of Security and UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Campaign’, Anthropologica 48(1): 59–71. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skills. London: Routledge.    . 2007, ‘Materials against Materiality’, Archaeological Dialogue 14(1): 1–16. Jansen, S. 2013. ‘People and Things in the Ethnography of Borders: Materializing the Division of Sarajevo’, Social Anthropology 21(1): 23–37. Jelidi, C. 2012. Fès, la fabrication d’une ville nouvelle (1912–1956). Lyon: ENS Editions. Kurzac-Souali, A.-C. 2007. ‘Rumeurs et cohabitation en médina de Marrakech: L’étranger où on ne l’attendait pas’, Hérodote 4(127): 64–88. Lahbil Tagemouati, N. 2000. Dialogue en médina. Casablanca: Le fennec.    . 2010. ‘La médina de Fès a-t-elle une valeur?’ in R. Cattedra et al. (eds.), Patrimoines en situation: Constructions et usages en différents contextes urbains. Beirut and Rabat: Presses de l’Ifpo/Centre Jacques

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Berque. Retrieved October 2013 from http://books.openedition.org/ ifpo/864. Leitchman, M., S. Ceci and P. Ornstein. 1992. ‘The Influence of Affect on Memory: Mechanism and Development’, in S. Christianson (ed.), The Handbook of Emotion and Memory: Research and Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 181–200. Mazzarella, W. 2009. ‘Affects, What is it Good for?’ in S. Dube (ed.), Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 291–309. McGuinness, J. 2006. ‘Errances vers un Orient imaginaire? Les polymigrants de la Médina de Fès (2000–2005)’, IBLA 198: 179–208. Meskell, L. 2005. ‘Objects in the Mirror Appear Closer than They Are’, in D. Miller (ed.), Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 751–70. Miller, D. 2001, ‘Possession’, in D. Miller (ed.), Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors. Oxford: Berg, pp. 107–22. Navaro-Yashin, Y. 2009. ‘Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(1): 1–18. Pecqueux, A. 2006. ‘Catalogue d’émotions patrimoniales: Le cas du château de Lunéville, de son incendie à sa reconstruction’, in N. Barbe and J.L. Tornatore (eds.), Les formats d’une cause patrimoniale: Emotions et actions autour du chateau de Lunéville. Rapport final à la Mission à l’ethnologie. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, pp. 65–102. Pocock, D. 1997. ‘Some Reflections on World Heritage’, Area 29(3): 260–68. Porteous, D. 1990. Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Schore, A. 1994. Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sennett, R. 1994. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: Norton. Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge. Tornatore, J.-L. 2010. ‘L’esprit de patrimoine’, Terrain 55: 106–27. Turtinen, J. 2000. ‘Globalizing Heritage: On UNESCO and the Transnational Construction of a World Heritage’, SCORE Working Paper 12. Stockholm: Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research.

Chapter 2 ‘UNESCO is What?’ World Heritage, Militant Islam and the Search for a Common Humanity in Mali Charlotte Joy

Since Mali’s independence in 1960, the link between cultural heritage and national identity in Mali has attracted widespread scholarly attention (see for example Arnoldi 1999, 2006, 2007, De Jorio 2003, 2006). As is the case for many newly independent states, Malian politicians invoked the country’s past to predict a great future. In particular, the former President Alpha Oumar Konaré (1992–2002), a trained archaeologist, focused attention on the country’s archaeological and architectural heritage during the 1980s. This was achieved through his role as minister for youth, sports, arts and culture as well as through the networks he accessed as a consultant for UNESCO (1981–92) and as president of the International Council of Museums (1989–92). Alpha Oumar Konaré’s influence in large part led to the declaration of three UNESCO World Heritage sites – Timbuktu (1988), Djenné (1988) and Dogon Country (1989). Mali, with its distinctive form of built earthen architecture, was put firmly on the international heritage map. In the case of Djenné and especially in the case of Timbuktu, the heritage being officially recognized by UNESCO was Islamic architecture – the Djingareyber, Sankoré and Sidi Yahia Mosques in Timbuktu and Djenné’s Great Mosque. However, the Islamic nature of Mali’s cultural heritage has been somewhat played down over the years by UNESCO,1 as the institution operates within

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a largely secular model of heritage as ‘monument’. For UNESCO, the mosques in Mali inscribed on the World Heritage List are primarily iconic buildings needing protection from desertification and decay. Although continuous throughout Malian history, the negotiations around Mali’s Islamic identity have been brought to the fore by recent political events. The global press has extensively reported the destruction of tombs of Sufi saints and the alleged destruction of Islamic manuscripts in Timbuktu by Ansar Dine and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).2 Recent events in Mali have shifted UNESCO’s concerns away from anxiety focused on the way in which architectural techniques and materials are acquired and transmitted (as discussed by Marchand 2009) towards a much broader fear of an attack on the form of Islam represented by the cultural heritage of Mali and adhered to by the majority of the country’s population. This concern is due to the fact that the international community has historically seen Mali as a bulwark against radical Islam (Soares 2005). The distinction between the so-called ‘Black Islam’ found in Mali (a synchretic form of Islam that embraces petitionary prayer and the use of amulets and animal sacrifice) and ‘Mediterranean Islam’ (brought over from the Arab peninsula), was noted as early as 1906 by Robert Arnaud, the director of the French Colonial Office of Muslim Affairs (Badru 2006). Back at the turn of the twentieth century, Arnaud stated that the French colonial administration would do well to support ‘Black Islam’ in Mali as he considered it less dangerous to the colonial agenda than ‘Mediterranean Islam.’ The Current Crisis in Mali The series of events that led to the current crisis in Mali started with a military coup, led by Amadou Sanogo, a midranking officer in the army, in March 2012. The coup was provoked by anger about the corruption of the Malian political elites and their mismanagement of funds from international donors. A particular grievance was the lack of training and equipment given to the Malian army in their fight to control the north of the country. The political unrest in the south of the country created an opportunity for Tuareg/Tamachek rebels in the north (the MNLA, or Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad), to join forces with members of AQIM and take control of the north of Mali down to the area that borders Mopti, the former French colonial administrative capital of Mali, a city 120 kilometres from Djenné.

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The conflict in the north of Mali has deep historical roots. In a podcast, the anthropologist Bruce Whitehouse, in conversation with Vicki Huddleston (the former US ambassador to Mali), emphasizes the need to understand the historical grievances of the Tuareg against the Malian State.3 Whitehouse begins with decolonization, but the conflict can be traced even further back to the time of the first French colonial contact with the region. In a series of rebellions that started in 1916 against the French and continued at intervals against Malian governments, the Tuareg have made clear their desire to have their own independent homeland, known as Azawad, which in its original form aimed to include parts of Niger, Mauritania and Algeria. The most recent MNLA efforts to create an independent homeland are limited to the north of Mali. However, the MNLA’s agenda has been somewhat subsumed to the Islamic agenda of the Ansar Dine faction of the uprising that would like to see shari’a law imposed across the northern territories. The international press, most notably the New York Times, has sent a steady stream of reports from the north of Mali detailing the brutal imposition of shari’a law on the unsuspecting residents of towns such as Gao and Timbuktu, including stonings, amputations and strict restrictions on the movement and behaviour of women.4 The military intervention led by the French in January 2013 has led to the recapture of the towns in the north and the defection of the MNLA and part of Ansar Dine to the side of the French. However, the situation remains very fragile with a continued lack of a political stability in Bamako and the threat of terrorism in the north. In August 2013, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was elected president of Mali in a second round of voting. The international community has upheld the election results. The Protection of People and the Protection of Things Amongst these concerns about a destabilized Malian state and human rights abuses, a concern for the country’s cultural heritage is still finding a voice. As a reaction to the destruction of ancient tombs of Muslim saints in Timbuktu, Mali’s culture and tourism minister urged the United Nations to take action to preserve her country’s heritage.5 In response, UNESCO has launched a Special Fund for the Safeguarding of Mali’s World Heritage Sites and is urging governments and individuals to donate money to the cause. In February 2013, the reported destruction of part of the collection of Islamic manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu has added to UNESCO’s

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fears for the country’s cultural heritage and led it to commit millions of US dollars on rebuilding the country’s stricken heritage.6 In January 2013, the International Criminal Court officially opened its investigation into the situation in the north of Mali since the beginning of 2012. The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has determined that there is a reasonable basis to believe the following crimes were committed: (1) murder; (2) mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (3) intentionally directing attacks against protected objects; (4) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court; (5) pillaging; and (6) rape.7 In its report, the ICC categorizes the ‘impact’ of each alleged crime and goes on to state whether or not it warrants further investigation. In relation to the destruction in Timbuktu, it states: ‘The destruction of religious and historical World Heritage sites in Timbuktu appears to have shocked the conscience of humanity.’ The ICC statement is noteworthy for the moral proximity it assigns to the physical destruction of people and things. The ‘shocked conscience of humanity’ reflects a concern perceptible in the media coverage of the events in Mali: both people and things subjected to trauma and stripped of their dignity. UNESCO’s Founding Philosophy With its 1948 declaration, ‘Solemn Appeal Against the Idea that Wars Are Inevitable’, UNESCO was setting out what T. V. Sathyamurthy defines as the organization’s ‘self-conception’ (1964: 138). As a special agency of the United Nations, UNESCO was established to help foster peace on a global scale. Part of its remit was to encourage individual nation states to include peace-building messages in their national educational curricula. It was also considered important for UNESCO to support newly independent states that were overcoming the ‘harmful after-effects of colonialism’ (ibid.: 141). In his book on the history and current state of UNESCO, J. P. Singh describes UNESCO’s philosophy as ‘rooted in humanism and enlightenment’ (2011: 19). Since its inception, UNESCO has drawn on the writings of intellectuals and ‘experts’ (such as Claude LéviStrauss, Michel Leiris, Jack Goody, Julian Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) to furnish it with a vision. It has consequently aligned itself with a particular view of the world, one that is largely Western, secular, progressive and has a definitive position on

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what it means to be human and to have individual human rights. At the same time, UNESCO as an institution based in Paris, has been influenced (perhaps disproportionately) by the French intellectual tradition and has had to deal with ideological differences with the intellectuals it chooses to engage in conversation, such as Lévi-Strauss. In his twenties, Claude Lévi-Strauss was a committed political activist belonging to a circle of young socialist intellectuals who were profoundly affected by the catastrophe of the Great War, which they had not participated in. They were all virulently pacifistic and antinationalistic. The revolution to which they aspired would have to be made without violence, by a radical transformation of the moral conscience, which would lay the foundations of a new humanism, necessary to build an egalitarian, fair and peaceful society. They wanted relationships between peoples to be placed under the responsibility of international authorities, which would be able to resolve conflicts between States without recourse to war.8 Years later, in 1971, Levi-Strauss fell out with UNESCO after delivering a lecture on the ills of globalization and demographic growth, suggesting that ‘culture’ could be protected not through a global educational programme but through seeing globalization as a threat to cultural diversity. A certain amount of distance between cultures was therefore not a threat to humanism but a prerequisite for allowing cultures to flourish. For Lévi-Strauss then, and now for UNESCO that has moved towards this position, a common humanity is a much about difference as it is about similarity. The current crisis in Mali therefore offers an opportunity to consider the work of UNESCO anew. The work of UNESCO is premised on a particular humanist worldview that sees global peace and development as achievable through intercultural dialogue and understanding. Yet despite an early visionary hope for UNESCO, this dialogue in practice is constrained to state-level conversations and cannot easily include the voices of individuals or groups within nation states, such as the views of the Tuareg in Mali. Additionally, whilst peace is considered to be the ultimate objective of the institution, military intervention, such as the recent one of the French in Mali, has UN support. At the heart of UNESCO’s search for a common humanity, there seems to be a paradox, illustrated in part through the institutions’ relationship with Claude Lévi-Strauss. The paradox is one of proximity whilst maintaining a respectful distance. UNESCO’s humanist vision is undermined by too much difference (e.g. the destruction seen in Timbuktu) yet it seeks to protect cultural particularities from the ills of globalization and homogenization.

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A Brief Historical Context: Islam in Mali A brief foray into the history of Islam in Mali indicates that the destructive events in Timbuktu are not a new phenomenon, and people in Mali have for a long time been dealing with competing religious ideologies linked to political movements. From approximately 1050, traders and missionaries brought Islam to West Africa, although for a long time this new religion remained an elite cult (Le Vine 2007). The link between the different waves of Islam brought to Mali and the cities of Timbuktu and Djenné in the historical record are primarily through reports of destruction. Although written documents on the history of Mali are scarce, the importance of both Timbuktu and Djenné as centres of Islamic scholarship began with the Ghana Empire (approximately seventh to eleventh century) and is documented by scholars, as is the importance of both cities as staging posts on the trans-Saharan trade route (Imperato 1989, Levtzion 1981). Although the rulers of the Ghana Empire were largely animist, they accepted the presence of a large number of Muslim traders and administrators who enabled the trans-Saharan gold trade (Fisher 1982). Islam was then brought more widely to Mali in successive waves of jihads. Religious ideologies have also played a central role in the dramatic destruction and reconstruction of religious buildings in the past. In his paper on the Great Mosque of Djenné, Jean-Louis Bourgeois (1987) describes the destruction of Djenné’s first two mosques and the systematic destruction of Djenné’s small neighbourhood mosques, considered at the time to be politically dangerous. Speaking of the first mosque, Bourgeois explains: Re-plastered every year, it was the pride of Djenné until the nineteenth century, when it met a formidable adversary in Sékou Amadou, founder of the Peul’s Empire Masina (r. 1818–43). The Great Mosque challenged his political ambition and his fundamentalist Muslim beliefs. Amadou preached a spare, extremely rigorous Islam. He grew increasingly disgusted with the easy-going practices of Djenné, which was as famous for its wealth and sophistication as for its piety. He considered its scholars lax and frivolous. . . . In 1818, Sékou Amadou rallied the Peuls and launched a jihad, or Muslim holy war. . . . Djenné, resistant, succumbed only after a nine month siege. Once conquered, the town rebelled, and two years later Amadou subdued it again, this time more harshly. . . . In both Djenné and Timbuktu, Sékou Amadou required all men to attend Friday services in the main mosque, each at an assigned place, so that absences could be easily noted and punished. (1987: 51)

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As will be explored later, debates around the way Islam is practiced in Djenné continue to this day. These debates remain both about the architecture of religious buildings and the comportment of people. When the French colonial authorities began to take control of Mali (then part of the French Sudan) in the late nineteenth century, they turned their attention to the Sufi Muslim brotherhoods as forces for peace and stability (Le Vine 2007). According to Benjamin Soares (2005), postindependence Malian governments have all sought to be associated with Islam. After independence in 1960, Mobido Keita avoided alienating religious leaders, as many came from the Malinké ethnic area that was the seat of his support. After Moussa Traoré’s coup in 1968, the government forged closer links with Muslim leaders until the regime became more oppressive and a number of religious leaders fled the country. Amadou Toumani Touré’s accession to power on 26 March 1991 and the subsequent democratic election of Alpha Oumar Konaré in 1992 marked the rise of Islam in Mali through the flourishing of civic associations, many of which had Islamist agendas. Gradually, the Islamic agenda in Mali took on more formal incarnations, such as the opening of a privately owned Islamic radio station in Bamako in 1992 and the creation of a High Islamic Council, a body that was intended to represent the views of the Islamic Associations and the mosques. In 2002 and again in 2007, Amadou Toumani Touré won the presidential elections as an independent candidate and represented the religious views of the Malian people due to a pragmatic political culture closely affiliated to Islam. In terms of actual government, however, Muslim religious specialists have as a rule not been involved in the making of public policy decisions due to an overarching paradigm of development needing technical and administrative experts (ibid.). This is somewhat changing with the rise of Islamic civil societies that are very keen to stress the link between Islam and development. Despite having been traditionally seen by the West as a positive example of tolerant Islam in West Africa (ibid.), by the 1990s a concern for the destabilization of the region was already tangible through the increased militarization of Mali by the United States, in line with a decrease in the hope of the buffering effects of a ‘civil society’ immune to the influence of radical Islam. A consideration of some of the recent debates about Islam, secularism and politics in Mali forces us to rethink some of the assumptions many have made about the prospects for ‘civil society’ in

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Muslim-majority countries in particular and in postcolonial societies more generally (ibid.: 79). Over the last ten years, the activities of militant groups in the east and north of Mali have led the Malian government to obtain international help with anti-terrorist training after the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (also known as GSPC) broke away from the Algerian Groupe Islamiste Armée in 1998 and was reported to be involved in the kidnapping of thirty-two tourists in 2003 on the Malian-Algerian border. In 2007, the group was renamed Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (the AQIM that we know today) and came to the international community’s attention in January 2009, when it kidnapped two Swiss nationals, one German and one Briton near the Mali-Niger border. Islam in Mali today is therefore the result of a continuous succession of claims and counter-claims, both internal and external. It therefore comes as no surprise that Islamic architecture in Mali has been the focus of violent contestation, now and in the past. Within this debate, the work of UNESCO (carried out by the Malian government’s commitment to protecting World Heritage sites through its cultural missions) can be characterized as being limited in its appreciation of the dynamic nature of Islam in Mali. Through seeking to maintain the mosques in Timbuktu and the mosque in Djenné as ‘national monuments’ and tourist destinations, UNESCO’s insistence on architectural integrity and the focus on the techniques of the masons and materials used does not take into account the primary function of the buildings as places of worship. Different Claims to Moral Authority? UNESCO’s claim to moral authority comes in part from its structure: it is made up of Member States that each, nominally at least, have a voice in the agency’s decisions. The many ‘experts’ employed by UNESCO are either drawn from the Member States or are nongovernmental bodies such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) or the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM). Members of staff flow fluidly between the different bodies that are associated with UNESCO. Other ‘experts’ that UNESCO brings into its fold are academics, cultural practitioners, politicians, ‘ambassadors’ for certain causes and so on. UNESCO works towards longterm objectives (such as the broader UNs’ Millennium Development

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Goals), as well as a great number of shorter-term projects and as responding to situations of conflict, such as the situation in Timbuktu in 2012–13. Within the domain of culture, UNESCO has had the most impact through its legislative output, most notably the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (known as the World Heritage Convention) which led to the creation of the World Heritage List. All sites inscribed on the World Heritage List are judged (by experts, such as those mentioned above) as having ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ (OUV). There is no fixed definition of OUV as it is a term constantly being revisited and updated by UNESCO, but broadly speaking the sites that are said to have OUV have cultural or natural significance that ‘is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and of importance for present and future generations of all humanity’. In the humanist enlightenment sense therefore, UNESCO conceptualizes a common humanity striving forward and leaving in its wake sites, landscapes and buildings of great value. These places, some of which are representative of traumatic pasts such as Robben Islands or the Island of Gorée, become the basis for a conversation about what it means to be human, in all its diversity. The World Heritage List is therefore not just a list akin to a ‘wonders of the world’ list but is meant to highlight sites that come to stand for pivotal times in human history, both good and bad. The World Heritage List taken as a whole is intended as a document of human achievement and failings, lessons from the past to tell humanity how best to conceptualize its future. In practice on the ground, this lofty ambition meets a political reality and before each round of ‘proclamations’ of new World Heritage sites, there has been a strenuous behind-the-scenes effort on behalf of Member States to lobby for their particular candidate sites. Additionally, the only sites recognized by UNESCO are those put forward by Member States; there is therefore no mechanism for people to independently put their case to UNESCO. This is particularly problematic in the case of sites that have come to represent counterideological viewpoints within Member States. The search for moral authority also has many religious incarnations. Faisal Devji (2008) states that the aim of his book The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics is to suggest that ‘a global society has come into being, but possesses as

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yet no political institutions proper to its name, and that new forms of militancy, like that of Al-Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, whilst representing in their own way the search for a global politics’ (2008: 8). Devji traces the origins of the creation of a ‘global’ identity to the time of the Cold War and the first moon landing. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt (1969), he argues that for the first time the ‘global’ was a visual and conceptual reality, and the fear of the annihilation of vast parts of the world led to a very particular kind of global citizenship that can now be seen in current environmental and global humanitarian movements, as well as in global militant Islam. Devji (ibid.) suggests that it is only through understanding radical Islam as a humanitarian movement motivated by a sense of global citizenship and guilt that it can be understood. The destructions of the tombs in Timbuktu could therefore be about both the forms of Islam that are considered legitimate, and also the forms of global politics that are considered legitimate. In this way, UNESCO is not only participating in conversations about what it means to be Muslim in Mali today through drawing attention to buildings and sites, but through its very presence, which comes to be associated with the buildings it seeks to protect and its global humanitarian project. As described by Christoph Brumann (this volume), UNESCO’s condemnation of the destruction of the Cheick Sidi Mahmud Tomb in Timbuktu caused Ansar Dine to respond: ‘UNESCO is what?’9 This statement can be understood as a rejection of the form of moral authority embodied by UNESCO, of which it does not feel a part. If, as Devji suggests, militant Islam is seeking legitimacy for its humanitarian project through global media stunts, it is not surprising that UNESCO should be its target. As a retort, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova opened a daylong meeting convened by UNESCO in Paris on the subject of the rehabilitation of Mali’s cultural heritage with the words, ‘When a World Heritage site is destroyed, because of stupidity and violence, the whole of humanity feels it has been deprived of part of itself; that it has been injured.’10 The actions of Ansar Dine are therefore ideologically invalidated; they are dismissed as ‘stupid’ and violate an assumed common feeling of humanity. UNESCO’s Vision, the Malian State and Minority Voices Before the dramatic events of 2012 in Mali, UNESCO officials in Djenné and Timbuktu had already been dealing with fears over the

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Figure 2.1.  The Cultural Mission in Djenné (photo: Charlotte Joy).

long-term survival of the sites, not from destabilizing outside influences but from long-term cultural changes and environmental concerns. Djenné was declared a World Heritage site in 1988 due to its remarkable architecture, its urban fabric of ‘rare harmony’ and four archaeological sites bearing witness to a pre-Islamic civilization. At the time of the inscription, concerns centred on the vulnerability of the built and archaeological heritage due to poverty and climatic conditions. Another concern widely vocalized by Western academics was for the archaeological heritage of Mali (Renfrew 2000) that was thought to be vulnerable to looting because it was pre-Islamic material culture and therefore held little appeal for the present-day Muslim population. This assumed ‘rupture’ has since been questioned by anthropologists working with looters (Panella 2002) and through ethnographic fieldwork near the sites in question (Joy 2012: 55). In 1994, the creation of three ‘cultural missions’ (Missions Culturelles) by the Malian Government saw Malian personnel installed in offices near each World Heritage site. These heritage professionals have regular access to international training and are the brokers of access to the cultural heritage at the sites. At first, as their names indicate, the Cultural Missions were supposed to be temporary services put in place to help local populations

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best manage their own cultural heritage. Now, they have become permanent structures, partly due to their success, but also due to the recognition that their ‘mission’ has not yet been accomplished. Politically speaking, the Cultural Mission’s status has altered with a change of president. Under Alpha Oumar Konaré (1992–2002), the Cultural Missions were floating structures that answered directly to the culture minister. Now, all three Cultural Missions have become integrated into the Ministry of Culture and are consequently a couple more steps removed from power. In terms of local politics, Cultural Missions have a complicated status. For example, the Cultural Mission in Djenné, by its own admission, is often disliked by the local population, as it has to impose legislation that comes from central government (ibid.: 34). In Djenné, the Great Mosque, built in 1907 (the third mosque to stand near the central square, as discussed above), has been the focus of many controversies, all linked to the fact that the mosque is both a monument (in a UNESCO sense) and a place of worship. Some were small, such as disagreements around additions to the building. One was over a gate to stop animals from entering the mosque that was allowed after some negotiation by the Cultural Mission, on the condition that it was built in wood. Another was over the desire of the imam to beautify the mosque by adding tiles to the building. The cultural mission rejected this plan. A third ongoing issue is the fact that non-Muslims (loosely meaning tourists) are not allowed in the mosque due, it is said, to a controversial photo shoot that took place in the Mosque in the 1980s, involving scantily clad women. The Tourist Office in Djenné (OMATHO) has repeatedly tried to change this restriction, but to no avail. During the first Djenné Festival in 2005, controversy arose when the date of the annual remudding of the Mosque was proposed by the festival organizers to coincide with the tourist season (February, rather than the more common occurrence in April). This arrangement was only reached after repeated negotiations between the ‘heritage elite’ in Djenné and the mosque elders (ibid.: 187). The most controversial recent intervention has been a large-scale restoration project by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) between 2006 and 2011. Each year, the Mosque is remudded during a special crépissage ceremony involving all the residents of the town in a day-long celebration. The accumulation of mud has led to the structural instability of one of the towers and the roof. The restoration work consequently consisted of removing one hundred years of accumulated mud and restoring the Mosque to its original angular

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Figure 2.2.  The Great Mosque of Djenné as a backdrop on a market day (photo: Charlotte Joy).

1907 appearance. It also practically meant that the traditional crépissage ceremony could not take place for five years. Tensions between the local population and the AKTC led to a riot in 2006 and the temporary withdrawal of the AKTC from Djenné. This riot was played down by local authorities in order to not endanger further funding of the project, despite numerous arrests and beatings in Djenné and the death of one young man who drowned trying to flee the police that had been sent in from Mopti as reinforcement (ibid.: 122). The alienation of the local population from their annual remudding festival, albeit for a limited period of time, did not go uncommented on by people in Djenné. In Djenné, an appeal to the vulnerability of the cultural heritage was used to justify the funding of (amongst many other projects) a seven-year Dutch housing restoration project, an Aga Khan’s project to restore the mosque, an EU-funded museum and the British Library’s funding of a digitization project for Djenné’s manuscripts (ibid.: 66). In this sense, things, rather than people, are conceptualized as vulnerable. At the same time, a concern with built heritage implicitly refers to the vulnerability of people whom, without substantial outside assistance, are thought to be unable to robustly safeguard

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their cultural heritage. UNESCO’s World Heritage Project also allows for a shift in emphasis away from individuals in need of assistance in a particular place at a particular time, towards a detemporalized appeal for assistance with safeguarding cultural heritage that is universal and a global moral responsibility. The argument goes that it is somewhat incidental that the site of the Old Towns of Djenné is found in Mali. UNESCO would embrace similar historically and architecturally important towns found anywhere in the world if they were to meet the ‘objective’ criteria of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ (OUV) as part of UNESCO’s global humanitarian mission. In May 2012, UNESCO officials published a document about its condemnation of the destruction of a building in Mali, but this time is was in Djenné, under peaceful circumstances. They consider that the demolition of the Old Courthouse appears to be a symptom of the lack of adequate protection and planning controls. The building was a large and significant example of the traditional architecture of Djenné and occupied a prominent place on the market square near the Grand Mosque. The building had been restored as part of a project funded by the Netherlands funds-in-trust which renovated one hundred buildings between 1996 and 2003. The World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies note that the demolition of the Old Courthouse has impacted adversely on the integrity of the property. Many smaller buildings have been demolished or rebuilt since the inscription, and the World Heritage Committee has encouraged the development of planning tools to halt this trend. The Old Courthouse is, however, a case of one of the most prominent buildings in Djenné being demolished, not because it was in a bad state of repair but because its plot was seen to have high value. The replacement building suggested in drawings that have been submitted bear little resemblance to what was there before and, with their elaborate pseudo-Sahelian style, will present an uncomfortable intrusion into the urban landscape. The World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies recommend that the Committee request the State Party to provide revised plans and drawings that are sympathetic to the urban surroundings; and that the urban regulations should include clear presumption against demolition.11 UNESCO therefore apprehends architectural destruction and change at World Heritage sites differently depending on the context. Due to the bureaucratic dilution of UNESCO’s output, the protection of cultural heritage becomes standardized and generalized and categories such as ‘World Heritage in Danger’ are labels that are applied as easily to situations of gradual urban change through

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desertification (as was the case in Timbuktu before the current crisis) to acts of violent iconoclasm (as is the case today). In times of crisis, however, World Heritage status does have a galvanizing effect on the international community, and phrases such as the ‘shocked conscience of humanity’ can be used by the ICC in reference to the impact of the destruction of sites. In the same document, punishments such as executions, stoning, amputations, flogging and beatings by armed groups are categorized as having ‘had a severe impact on victims and their families, who are left traumatized and stigmatized in their communities’. Affording protection against the trauma and stigma of having ones cultural or human rights violated goes to the very heart of UNESCO’s foundational ‘defences in the minds of men’ ideology. The UNESCO label attached to the site under attack is used as a basis for global moral outrage, even if few are aware of the political machinations behind the process of becoming a World Heritage site in the first place. The material integrity of the site becomes, for the duration of the conflict at least, a global moral concern. Conclusion UNESCO’s approach to the protection of cultural heritage has historically centred on attempting to impose some form of material stability and continuity. However, the assumed link between the protection of ‘things’ (sites, buildings, landscapes) and the protection of dignity or ‘cultural rights’ has yet to be theorized in a convincing way (see for example Hodder 2012 for a discussion of the study of material culture’s attempt to theorize the relationship between people and things). Additionally, it can be argued that UNESCO’s enlightenment ideology will inevitably meet resistance on the global political stage. These two areas of instability, the material and the ideological, mean that the protection of Mali’s cultural heritage, whilst ostensibly being about the protection of the past, should perhaps be conceptualized as a struggle over the country’s future. The struggle over territorial borders, the creation of a new Tuareg or Islamic state and the tension between the richer south and poorer north of the country all have an impact on UNESCO’s work in Mali. Poverty and displacement have long been a reality for the residents of Mali, many of whom have in become migrant labourers in Burkina Faso or further afield and have had to find multiple livelihood strategies to keep themselves

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and their families alive. The collapse of tourism is a new challenge for the residents of the World Heritage sites of Djenné, Timbuktu and Dogon Country, as well as for the towns that connected them on the tourist circuit, such as Mopti, Ségou and San. In the past, the leaders of Mali have turned to its cultural heritage as a source of political acumen and as a narrative for their future actions. In this current conflict, the territorial integrity of Mali, in part described through its cultural heritage, again becomes a political rallying point. UNESCO’s involvement in this conflict may appear to be from a detached position of defending the ‘conscience of humanity’, yet it has been participating and shaping the debate about cultural heritage, rights and dignity from the outset. Similarly the World Heritage sites in Mali, whilst benefiting from the halo of ‘outstanding universal value’, are part of a political landscape that has evolved out of a long series of conversations between Malian political elites and the international community about what has value and what forms of cultural heritage should or should not have meaning in the present. Charlotte Joy is a lecturer in social anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of The Politics of Heritage Management in Mali: From UNESCO to Djenné (2012).

Notes 1. I am using UNESCO here to refer to the institution in its broadest possible sense – including the UNESCO-affiliated officials working in Mali and the Malian government’s adherence to the organization’s dictates. 2. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/ article/2012/07/10/a-tombouctou-les-islamistes-s-attaquentaux-mausolees-de-la-plus-grande-mosquee_1731671_3212.html and http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2012/07/02/les-manuscrits-detombouctou-sont-en-danger_1728057_3212.html. 3. African Online Digital Library, ‘Episode 72: The conflict in Mali’, retrieved 26 March 2013 from http://afripod.aodl.org/2013/03/afripod-72. 4. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/ world/africa/women-protest-shariah-law-in-mali.html. 5. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9369271/Timbuktu-shrinedestruction-a-war-crime.html. 6. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/789682a671e5-11e2-89fb-00144feab49a.html.

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7. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/ press%20and%20media/press%20releases/Pages/pr869.aspx. 8. UNESCO Courier 5 (2008): 5. 9. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldafrica-18657463. 10. Retrieved 9 February 2013 from http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/987. 11. Djenné Report on the State of Conversation, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, May 2012, Document 116716.

Bibliography Arnoldi, M. J. 1999. ‘Overcoming a Colonial Legacy: The New National Museum in Mali 1976 to the Present’, Museum Anthropology 22(3): 28–40.    . 2006. ‘Youth Festivals and Museums: The Cultural Politics of Public Memory in Postcolonial Mali’, Africa Today 52(4): 55–75.    . 2007. ‘Bamako, Mali: Monuments and Modernity in the Urban Imagination’, Africa Today 54(2): 3–24. Bourgeois, J.-L. 1987. ‘The History of the Great Mosques of Djenné’, African Arts 20(3): 54–63, 90–92. Cortier, É. 1906. ‘De Tombouctou à Taodéni: Relation du raid accompli par la compagnie de méharistes du 2e Sénégalais commandée par le capitaine Cauvin. 28 février –17 juin’, La Géographie 14(6): 317–41. De Jorio, R. 2003. ‘Narratives of the Nation and Democracy in Mali: A View from Mobido Keita’s Memorial’, Cahiers D’ Études Africaines 172, 827–55.    . 2006. ‘Politics of remembering and forgetting: The struggle over colonial monuments in Mali’, Africa Today 52(4), 78–106. Devji, F. 2008. The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Hodder, I. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationship between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Joy, C. 2011. ‘Negotiating Material Identities: Young Men and Modernity in Djenné’, Journal of Material Culture 16(4): 389–400.    . 2012. The Politics of World Heritage in Mali: from UNESCO to Djenné. Walnut Creek, Cal.: Left Coast Press. Le Vine, V. 2007. ‘Mali: Accommodation or Co-existence?’ in W. Miles (ed.), Political Islam in West Africa: State Society Relations Transformed. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, pp. 73–99. Marchand, T. 2009. The Masons of Djenné. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Panella, C. 2002. Les Terres Cuites de la Discorde. Leiden: CNWS Renfrew, C. 2000. Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Sathyamurthy, T. 1964. The Politics of International Cooperation: Contrasting Conceptions of UNESCO. Geneva: Librairie Droz. Singh, J. P. 2011. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Creating Norms for a Complex World. London: Routledge. Soares, B. 2005. ‘Islam in Mali in the neoliberal era’, African Affairs 105(418): 77–95

Chapter 3 Heritage Making in Lijiang Governance, Reconstruction and Local Naxi Life Yujie Zhu

Since the UNESCO World Heritage Convention was ratified by China in 1985, the country has had forty-seven of its national sites inscribed as World Heritage. The ratification of the World Heritage Convention expresses the country’s efforts to build up its national identity and pursue economic development through the revitalization of cultural traditions and the promotion of heritage tourism. The heritage discourse in China has created space for dynamic negotiations between the local and the global, and culture and economy, in the practice of heritage governance and management. After being listed as a World Heritage site by the World Heritage Committee in 1997, the old town of Lijiang has become one of the most popular destinations in China for both international and domestic tourists. This chapter explores how the local government of Lijiang has practiced heritage conservation and promoted heritage tourism through the initiation of cultural industry projects in the past two decades. In this process, the local heritage agency has developed its own interpretation of heritage conservation; it commercializes local heritage for the purpose of maximizing benefits. This chapter follows Laurajane Smith’s (2006) view that heritage is a sociocultural phenomenon that determines who has the power to define and reconstruct the past. Through the case study of Lijiang, I argue that it is often not the local community who identifies what aspect of the local culture should be preserved or presented. Instead,

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it is the authorities – with the help of the tourism industry and authorized agencies – that define ‘authentic culture’ and promote it accordingly. The official heritage discourse utilizes the cultural expression of identity and sense of place for political and economic control. This control has an emotional, cultural and political impact on local people’s lives. Notwithstanding, the heritage industry is not a one-man show; it is celebrated and contested by groups of people that shape policies and practices together. This chapter examines the cultural politics of heritage making in Lijiang by (1) discussing the national and local heritage politics of China; (2) contextualizing Lijiang’s response to the global and national development of heritage and its status as a World Heritage site; (3) examining how Lijiang Conservation and Management Bureau, the city’s local heritage agency, was created and restructured, and how it conducts heritage conservation and reconstruction based on its own economic and political agenda; and (4) analysing ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’, a project co-developed by the local heritage agency and a private company, in which various families are selected in the town to present Naxi culture to tourists. The chapter is based on nine months of fieldwork in the old town of Lijiang during 2010 and 2011. Heritage Politics in China In her seminal Uses of Heritage, Smith argues that there is a hegemonic authorized discourse about heritage, ‘which constitutes the way we think, talk and write about heritage’ (2006: 11). It is a discourse based on the knowledge of technical and aesthetic experts and is institutionalized in state agencies and amenity societies. She suggests that heritage discourse and norms are dominated by politics and related to material structures, institutional complexes and practices. The institutionalization of the heritage system in China follows Smith’s theory. China’s adoption of the ‘World Heritage system’ brought several discursive and institutional transitions to the country, including the redefinition of heritage, as well as changes in the governmental structure, the legal system and the nationwide application of heritage discourse.1 Governmental conservation agencies have undergone a process of reframing and reorganization in recent years. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Ministry of Culture (Wenhuabu) was established and has taken responsibility of cultural policies, which included managing national museums, archives and monuments. Along with a series of

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institutional reforms after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the State Bureau of Cultural Relics (Wenwuju) was founded (later renamed State Administration of Cultural Heritage, or SACH) as a state-level agency for cultural heritage conservation in 1988.2 Concurrently, the Ministry of Construction (Jianshebu) began to manage natural and mixed cultural and natural heritage sites. Nominations for World Heritage sites are initiated at the local level with specific policies, but remain under the overall coordination of the SACH and the Ministry of Construction. In addition to institutional reforms, China drew from the new heritage categories of UNESCO to define its own deployment of the term ‘cultural heritage’ (wenhua yichan).3 This includes cultural landscapes, intangible heritage, industrial heritage, underwater heritage and cultural routes heritage. Along with the official adoption of these new categories, the definition of ‘cultural heritage’ has been broadened both in terms of what it constitutes and its preservation principles. Since issuing the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics (1982) and the Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China (2000), the Chinese government and professionals have adopted international conservation concepts (such as authenticity) in heritage documents and conservation policies (Zhu 2015). Through these legal instruments and national policies, SACH has created a dominant standard discourse for controlling the heritage knowledge and practices. At the local level, most heritage sites open local offices to prepare for the nomination procedures, and later, to establish site management and promotion mechanisms. These local heritage offices receive sufficient intellectual support from scholars and experts to create zoning laws and draw the line between heritage and non-heritage areas. This government-led, scholar-supported approach justifies the heritage practices and empowers the local authorities to search for the best interests of the region. Economic development has taken priority in policy making and implementation, where heritage tourism and the cultural industry are considered as the driving forces. Admission fees accordingly increase once the sites are listed as national or World Heritage sites (Zhu and Li 2013). In particular, generating profit from land sales has been widely used by local authorities to utilize heritage and promote the real estate industry. Examples of this tendency are seen in the reconstruction of hutong in Beijing, the Tang Imperial City plan in Xi’an and the replication of the Austrian village of Hallstatt in Guangdong.

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The politics of cultural heritage in China are not homogeneous but negotiated (Blumenfield and Silverman 2013). The negotiation does not only happen between the central and local governments but also includes other players, such as business operators, scholars, tourism investors and local communities. These groups of people have created a variety of new narratives. For instance, individuals collect cultural relics and build up private museums to present the local living heritage and community life. Scholars in universities and academic institutes4 develop research projects to support the development and promotion of local culture in the name of ‘intangible heritage’. These research institutes cooperate with regional governments, conduct academic conferences related to cultural heritage and announce ‘heritage declarations’ (yichan xuanyan). The growth of heritage tourism – both by domestic and international tourists – also stimulates a search for and consumption of original culture and living heritage, especially in the ethnic minority areas (Swain 1990). In sum, utilizing heritage has been one of the most effective strategies for both the central and local governments to claim political legitimacy and economic benefits. A large number of conservation and development practices have begun to emerge in the heritage sites of China. Although other actors have participated in this heritage industry, China’s central and local governments continue to dominate the heritage discourse. Lijiang: From a Historic Town to a World Heritage Site Lijiang is a prefecture-level city,5 located in southwest China, 600 kilometres from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. The old town has an area of 3.8 square kilometres. While the majority of China’s population is Han, Lijiang is populated primarily by Naxi.6 This main ethnic group accounts for about 50 per cent of the total population (Lijiang Bureau of Statistics 2010). Naxi people still maintain a number of traditional cultural practices in their daily life. The first image of Lijiang to reach a global audience was in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon (1933), in which it was portrayed as the paradise of Shangri-la, an authentic but forgotten place frozen in time (Su and Teo 2009). Joseph Rock and Peter Goullart, who had both successively stayed in Lijiang, published descriptive accounts of the town, reinforcing the image of China’s peripheral area as an oriental paradise of authenticity, ancientness, tradition and nature.

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Lijiang has become an attractive destination for Western backpackers and Japanese tourists since its official opening to foreigners in the early 1980s. China’s opening of frontier areas influenced national and regional policies concerned with economic and political reform. In 1988, the government of Yunnan Province added tourism as an industry in its master plan for social and economic development. The role of the tourism industry shifted from being an easy way of increasing foreign currency to part of the official strategy for domestic economic development. In October 1994, the Yunnan Tourism Planning Conference was held in Dali and Lijiang. During the closing ceremony, the Governor of Yunnan Province announced that Lijiang would apply for World Heritage status soon. Lijiang underwent a preliminary evaluation conducted by a group of national experts in June 1995. After the investigation, SACH decided to put Lijiang on the national Tentative List for nomination. Following the decision, the Lijiang government established a heritage nomination group to initiate the formulation of the nomination dossier. However, a major earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Lijiang in February 1996. Approximately 350,000 houses collapsed, and more than 300,000 people were forced out of their damaged homes. Three weeks after the earthquake, a team of experts from ICOMOS and SACH came to Lijiang to investigate the effects of the earthquake. The experts found serious destruction of building stocks; however, the site still maintained its urban fabric as a historic ensemble with unique value. They encouraged the local government to continue its work on the nomination, which it submitted to UNESCO later that year. One year later, accompanied by officials from SACH, an ICOMOS expert conducted a three-day evaluation in May 1997. Subsequently, ICOMOS recommended inscribing the site on the World Heritage, and the World Heritage Committee did so in December 1997, making Lijiang the first World Heritage site in an ethnic minority area of China. The success of the World Heritage nomination and its branding as a World Heritage site provided a new ‘name card’ for Lijiang. The old town has turned into a ‘hot spot’, with a steadily increasing flow of tourism, migration and business investment. In 2009, it attracted 7.6 million visitors and received 8.8 billion yuan in revenue from tourism (Lijiang Bureau of Statistics 2010). The influx of tourists and businesspeople brought dramatic changes to the place and its culture. Many Han Chinese have started to settle down in Lijiang. Meanwhile, a number of Naxi people cannot bear the overcrowding

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Figure 3.1.  World Heritage emblem in the old town of Lijiang (photo: Yujie Zhu).

in the town, so they move out and live in the newly built area outside the old town. Lijiang thus transformed from a historic trade centre to a popular heritage tourism destination. Local heritage agencies recognize the commercial value of what they consider as ‘the appropriate culture’ (Su and Teo 2009), and utilize it as a cultural resource for tourism development. Accordingly, the local government developed its distinctive strategy of heritage governance to achieve the development goals. The Government Agency on Heritage Conservation and Development The Lijiang Old Town Nomination of World Heritage Working Group was established in 1995, when the town was inscribed on the Chinese Tentative List by SACH and began to prepare the World Heritage nomination. After the inscription, a new government office – the Protection and Management Committee of the Lijiang Old Town World Heritage Site (Shijie wenhua yichan lijiang gucheng baohu guanli weiyuanhui bangongshi) – was set up in 2002. Receiving approval from the People’s Congress of Yunnan Province in 2005, the committee was transformed from a coordinating and advisory body to an administrative agency – the Lijiang Old Town Conservation and Management Bureau (LCMB) (Shijie wenhua yichan lijiang gucheng baohu guanliju).

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Compared to the former temporary working group and the committee, LCMB plays multiple roles of planning, implementing and managing that had been fulfilled by different administrative bodies previously. According to the Regulation on the Protection of Lijiang (Lijiang baohu tiaoli), LCMB is in charge of implementing the conservation law and the master plan, preserving cultural relics, enhancing infrastructure and public utilities and facilitating marketing and business development. Similar to what Yujie Zhu and Na Li (2013) describe in the case of Mount Emei, this new agency in Lijiang has become an exclusive authority on heritage governance. For instance, LCMB is authorized to impose a fine on any individual or organization that disobeys the Regulation on the Protection of Lijiang (Su 2010). As a key player in redistributing heritage resources and establishing regulations, LCMB can administer sociocultural and economic events outside the constraints of the central government. The overwhelming power and policy discretion of LCMB makes it capable of implementing policies in its own interests. Reconstruction: New Image of an Old Town LCMB oversees the conservation and reconstruction of buildings in Lijiang. After the earthquake, the government cooperated with the World Bank to redesign the urban and social fabric of the town. In the project, dozens of concrete buildings that had been constructed in the 1950s were demolished, and low-rise dwellings with strict control of height and the facade were built. Timber materials and ethnic decorations were applied to create the traditional appearance of Naxi buildings. Furthermore, LCMB paved the original streets with polished marble and decorated the system of canals with greenery and flowers. It also rebuilt and widened two main streets in the north of the town. The buildings of these streets were replaced with hundreds of small houses. These changes were meant to recapture the aesthetic features of Lijiang during the nineteenth century (Peters 2013). To set up the property and buffer zone based on the World Heritage Operational Guidelines, a clear boundary was drawn between the heritage area (the old town) and the new town. Since 2003, LCMB has cooperated with the Global Heritage Fund7 in a conservation project to restore residential architecture. LCMB spent five years restoring about 300 traditional Naxi houses in the town. Indeed, what the government needed from the Global Heritage Fund was not only the financial support but the reputation of a

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‘successful international cooperation’, as confirmed by a local official. In 2007, the project was honoured with the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award of Merit. However, after that, LCMB stopped the conservation project while still presenting its achievements at numerous conferences to publicize the success. In 2005, LCMB launched the World Heritage Lijiang Commercial Development Plan (Shijie yichan lijiang shangye fazhan guihua) and issued several policies concerning the construction and business development of the town. Most decisions put more emphasis on the interests of the tourism industry than on the historical value of the site itself. Among them, the conversion of Sifang Square (Sifangjie) is a good example. Sifangjie is the central square of the old town of Lijiang. It used to be the most important hub on the Ancient Tea Horse Road (Chama gudao). The square has been the centre for product exchanges between businesspeople and locals for several hundred years. As a local Naxi man remembered: ‘During that time, there were various shops in the square, such as herbal shops, grocery stores, tailor shops, blacksmiths, leather shops and paper making workshops.’ Since the start of the open-door policy, many businesspeople from Zhejiang, Fujian and Sichuan have migrated to Lijiang to sell jade and jewellery produced in other provinces. Sifang Square still served as a main market for the local Naxi to buy and sell daily necessities. Sifang Square was heavily damaged during the earthquake of 1997. The government demolished most of the post-1950 buildings around the square and rebuilt new houses in nineteenth-century style. LCMB designed several commercial development projects to beautify the market and contracted them out to private companies. The shopping malls and houses built in and around the square were intended to serve tourists, not local populations. Since the government owned the shopping malls, LCMB could profit from renting them to outsiders. As the former chairperson of LCMB reported: ‘We opened a new shop every day around the market at that time.’ The emergence of these new shops was paralleled by a steady decline in local businesses. Local grocery stores and restaurants eventually disappeared, as they could not compete with the new souvenir shops and fancy restaurants. In response, LCMB established a new market for locals close to the south gate of the old town. But the distance of the new market from the centre inconvenienced local residents. A local Naxi complained: ‘In my childhood, we used to go to the market every day. But now, everything has changed. . . . I have to walk twenty minutes to the new market to buy fresh vegetables, and then carry heavy bundles

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back home by walking another twenty minutes. . . . It’s much better to live in the new town and shop in the supermarket.’ According to the World Heritage Lijiang Commerce Development Plan issued by LCMB, Sifang Square is designed as a tourist destination for sightseeing and photographing. Tour guides present the history of Lijiang and introduce the town’s tourist attractions. Tourists can pay to ride horses to imitate the tea caravans (mabang) which used to traverse the Ancient Tea Horse Route.8 They can also watch or even join in traditional dancing with old Naxi people at the square. This local dance, called datiao, involves rhythmic movements executed by a circle of dancers (Su and Teo 2008). LCMB sponsors a group of local elders to dance twice a day, dressed in traditional Naxi costume. Daily activities in Sifang Square have shifted from what once was local community life to a tourism-oriented service. Development: New Shops Come, Local Naxi Leave Heritage tourism converted Lijiang from a historic trade town into a tourism marketplace. Since 2000, people from Zhejiang, Fujian, Sichuan and Guangdong provinces have gradually moved into Lijiang. Along with their arrival, a number of shops serving tourists opened in the old town. In 2010, 70 per cent of the shops solely targeted tourists; only 20 per cent served both tourists and local inhabitants (Lijiang Bureau of Statistics 2010). Main streets around the town centre like Dongda Street, Xinhua Street, Xinyi Street or Wuyi Street are fully occupied by tourist shops, cafes and restaurants; they sell

Figure 3.2.  Bars in the old town of Lijiang (photo: Yujie Zhu).

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souvenirs, dresses, videos and local food. The town looks like a shopping mall – it is replete with heritage symbols, ethnic culture and a romantic atmosphere. According to a survey conducted by Xiaobo Su and Peggy Teo (2009: 146), tourism in Lijiang has ‘improved social service and increased employment’ among local Naxi people. However, I have heard complaints from many Naxi residents that the cost of living has been rising at an incredible pace, and the increased congestion, noise and pollution have ruined their once peaceful life. A local Naxi who currently lives in a village outside Lijiang told me: Lijiang used to be my homeland, and I spent my whole life in the town. I refused to move out when my son invited me to live with him in the new town ten years ago. However, I am not willing to stay here right now. It’s loud and crowded with outsiders. When I walk in the street of the old town, I feel like a stranger. The food in restaurants is no longer good, but costs much more. I can only hear Han Chinese in the street, no more Naxi being spoken. None of my old friends live here. It’s not my home any more.

Like him, a number of original Naxi residents moved to the new town. They rent their houses to immigrants for five to ten years at a high rate, and purchase newly built apartments outside the old town. As Su (2012) describes, tourists and businesspeople now take possession of the place that was once an integral part of town residents’ everyday life. This ‘replacement’ phenomenon is noticed and criticized by the media and scholars. An article entitled ‘Lijiang, whose old city it is?’ (Lijiang, shuide gucheng?) was published in the newspaper Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekly) in 2003. In the article, Ying Yi (2003) questioned who owns Lijiang as a World Heritage site, the local community or the government. Indeed, the problem of over-commercialization of Lijiang was not only captured by the domestic media, but also drew the attention of the World Heritage Committee. Negotiation: Maintaining World Heritage Status for Development In 2007, the World Heritage Committee examined the state of heritage conservation in Lijiang. They expressed concern over the uncontrolled commercial projects being carried out within the property, claiming that they might negatively impact heritage values.9 For this reason, in its Decision 31 COM 7B.69, it requested a joint mission

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by the World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS, with the purpose of assisting national and local government departments in identifying and assessing the current conservation and management mechanisms. The ‘reactive monitoring mission’ to Lijiang was carried out 10–19 January 2008. According to a memo from LCMB, the Lijiang government prepared this event in great detail and spent 400,000 yuan (approximately 60,000 US dollars) on the official reception. LCMB organized a two-day workshop to discuss the problems of the site. It included the participation of local authorities and other stakeholders, such as conservationists, urban planners, tourism operators, hotel owners and industry investors. During the workshop, UNESCO and ICOMOS specialists expressed two major concerns. Firstly, there was no clear demarcation of the heritage property’s boundaries. Indeed, the Lijiang government invited a group of experts from Tongji University in Shanghai to draft a Conservation Master Plan in 2003. These experts retained the three-level protection zone concept (derived from the National Historical and Cultural City Master Plan adopted in 1983) and added their thoughts about conservation to the plan. Since the decision makers from LCMB attempted to reduce the core area and buffer zone of Lijiang for the benefit of tourism-related projects, this conservation plan, especially the proposed buffer zone boundary, was not adopted by the local government. The experts’ second concern was the integration of the Conservation Master Plan into new development projects. As the UNESCO representative mentioned, many ongoing projects intended to enhance the beauty of the heritage site yet destroyed the ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ of the property. ICOMOS recommended that the local government should strictly control real estate development projects in the buffer zone of Lijiang. For instance, one project called Lijiang World Heritage Forum (Lijiang shijie yichan luntan) was proposed by the Jade Dragon Tourism Development Company as a commercial area in the southern part of the town, inside the buffer zone. ICOMOS pointed out that the project threatened the integrity and authenticity of the property and its design should be reconsidered to maintain the historic fabric. The experts from UNESCO and ICOMOS clearly expressed their concerns in the mission report: The mission suggested the site management authority to take a valuebased management approach in the elaboration of a Conservation Master

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Plan and other conservation strategies. . . . It is necessary to re-define the statement of outstanding universal value of the Old Town of Lijiang, including the relationship/social significance between the tangible heritage and intangible heritage values, as a base of the Conservation Master Plan and Site Management Plan. . . . Boundaries of both core and buffer zones of the site should be clearly demarcated in the large scale topographical maps and submitted to the World Heritage Centre as soon as possible. (Jing and Nishimura 2008)

LCMB reacted to these concerns. An updated Conservation Plan with a clear indication of the buffer zone and a management plan that integrated all the development plans were submitted in 2008 and were accepted by the World Heritage Committee session in the same year. A site monitoring office was set up under the supervision of LCMB to collect tourism data for better management in 2009. The local authority responded actively to maintain the label of World Heritage. Through negotiating various political rules, social norms and cultural values at the international, national and local levels, LCMB developed its own trajectory for long-term development. LCMB indeed has a different opinion about conservation and heritage development. As the director of LCMB said: ‘We are willing to cooperate with the international organizations. They are our friends. But they are still outsiders (waimian laide ren) and do not really understand Lijiang. Lijiang was a business town in its history. In Naxi, the name of the town can be translated into “warehouse”. If there is no business, there would be no Lijiang.’ His statement legitimized the use of entrepreneurial heritage management plans. For example, the new lighting project of the old town was criticized in the workshop of the UNESCO mission. The ICOMOS expert mentioned several times that the lights were too gaudy along the streets and transformed Lijiang into Disneyland. However, LCMB did not heed the advice but kept the lighting system. The design was thought to meet expectations of tourists and investors. In addition, in the above-mentioned case of the Lijiang World Heritage Forum, the Jade Dragon Tourism Company was supported by the government because of its economic contribution to the town. The project was approved in 2009 and completed in 2010. Currently, the company is planning its second real estate project in the south of the old town. LCMB thus succeeded in keeping the World Heritage brand, while continuing its pursuit of political and economic benefits.

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Heritage Making of Local Life: ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ In the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005, UNESCO acknowledged the ‘cultural industry’ as a fundamental tool for promoting cultural diversity. China adopted the idea of the ‘cultural industry’ from the international community, applied it for economic development and now expects the cultural industry to be another pillar industry of the national economy. ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ as a Cultural Industry Project In cooperation with local enterprises, the heritage agency in Lijiang developed cultural industry projects as an economic strategy for promoting tourism. It organizes religious and ethnic festivals each year. LCMB also established tourism service centres in different entrances of the town. These centres provide tour guide services and sell souvenirs. Beyond those, LCMB outsources most projects to commercial corporations. Naxi Cultural Industry Company is one of LCMB’s main outsourcers, and they have cooperated on a number of projects since 2000. The general manager of Naxi Cultural Industry Company, Mr Liu,10 is a local Naxi businessman. He has been active in the local cultural industry since the very beginning of the tourism development in Lijiang. He organized several large-scale cultural projects, such as the opening ceremony of the religious festival in 1999. In 2000, he developed the idea of ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ (Zoujin naxi renjia) in his project Dongba Kingdom (Dongba wanguo), a cultural theme park located twenty kilometres from Lijiang at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. In the theme park, Mr Liu established ten exhibition houses with various themes of Naxi culture. LCMB recognized the potential value of this project, thus inviting him to extend the idea to Lijiang in 2003. Different from the theme park project, LCMB selected ten traditional Naxi courtyards living with local Naxi residents in the old town. Most of these courtyards only needed minimal reconstruction after the earthquake, and all are well maintained. The themes of Naxi culture portrayed in the courtyards include Naxi handicrafts, clothing, music, religion and food. These selected residential houses are primarily located at Qiyi and Wuyi Streets. According to the project description: Qiyi Street and Wuyi Street used to be the area of handicrafts family workshops . . . A whole family lives in each courtyard that includes

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grandparents, husband, housewife and children. Those courtyards could present visitors an authentic picture of the old days in Lijiang, particularly how people lived and worked with their family’s traditional handicrafts. It is a place where local people speak Naxi dialect and dress in Naxi costume. The courtyard is a good ‘window’ for visitors to learn about authentic Naxi life . . . Each courtyard has an exhibition room to present the history and cultural background of the theme, as well as a show room, where people could witness the process of the manufacture. The family could sell their handicrafts to visitors as souvenirs. (Author’s translation from the unpublished project documents)

‘Local Family Life’ for Display and Sale Based on the project design by LCMB, a local family resides in each of the houses. They are financially supported by the government to live and work there and exhibit particular aspects of Naxi culture. They are expected to wear ethnic clothes during visiting hours. Some courtyards are accessible for free while others charge entrance fees. During the above-mentioned monitoring mission set out in 2008, the director of LCMB guided the representatives to all the selected theme houses and invited them to dinner at one of the houses, the Naxi Wedding Courtyard where a traditional wedding was performed (Zhu 2012). The director of LCMB presented ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ as an innovative project of heritage conservation and sustainable development. As introduced by him, ‘The wedding ceremony aims to protect local culture heritage, even if it is a paid service.’ He received positive feedback from the mission experts. LCMB not only uses ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ to propagate their success in heritage development, but also strives to gain economic benefits from the project. Profits are shared between the Naxi Cultural Industry Company and LCMB. However, during my interview in 2011 with the director of LCMB, he was not satisfied with Mr Liu’s work because the company did not earn sufficient revenue. He was planning to choose another company for developing other projects. Mr Liu had a different opinion regarding the management of ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’. He said, ‘I have devoted myself to the promotion of traditional Naxi culture, rather than just using it as a way to make money. I am not one of those immigrant businessmen. I am a Naxi businessman. I earned money, but I also strived to protect Naxi culture in this heavily commercialized town. However,

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they [LCMB] are the boss, so I have to follow their rules.’ According to Mr Liu, the courtyards displayed in the ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ project should not be regarded as those portrayed in his former project, Dongba Kingdom. Instead of being used as tourism resources, he proposed to establish a platform of cultural inheritance for local residents. Mr Liu invited local Naxi to learn the traditions of these houses. He also kept most of the courtyards for free exhibition. As he has to pay salaries and maintenance fees, there is relatively little revenue. Mr Liu knew that he had to change this and gain more profit; otherwise he would lose his long-term contract with LCMB. Objectifying Local Family Life, Making Authentic Heritage LCMB does not only have an impact on the company with which it cooperates. It also affects the people living in the displayed houses. Laoqing is the owner of one of the selected houses. He used to own a family workshop to produce and sell copper products to local Naxi people for a living. In 2005, Laoqing’s courtyard was selected by LCMB to highlight his copper-making craftwork. Agreeing with the selection, Laoqing makes copper products in his family workshop during daytime. His wife sells the products to tourists and educates them about her husband’s craft. According to the Commerce Development Plan adopted by LCMB, all shopkeepers (both locals and people from other cities) in Lijiang should wear traditional Naxi clothing. LCMB included this clause in the project rules and asked Laoqing and his wife to conform. As Mr Liu explained, ‘this makes the family more authentic in front of tourists’. By constructing stereotypes of local traditions and customs, LCMB and Mr Liu’s company aim to present the authentic life of Naxi people to tourists. The residents of these selected houses are reluctant to accept the rules and struggle with adopting their new routines. Laoqing told me, ‘In the beginning, we felt very uncomfortable. We had to get dressed and meet strangers every day at our house. We had to smile at them all the time in front of cameras. They like to visit each of our rooms, the kitchen, the living room and even our bedroom. Sometimes I feel like I am treated as a museum object, instead of a human being.’ In the context of ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’, it is not the local residents themselves who represent their culture. The authorities decide what should be presented. The local Naxi are brought into line with the heritage discourse of ‘Naxi family life’, designed by the

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heritage agency and the company. Ordinary ways of life are reformulated to allure tourists. After being selected to the ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ project for five years, Laoqing and his family have found their way of presenting their new ‘family life’ to tourists. He said, Now, everything has changed. We have simply accepted it as our daily job. We get dressed, open our doors to welcome guests, everyday like a routine. We have learned how to present authentic Naxi culture as the tourists like. We have better and more stable income. We have even made friends with some of those who have come from big cities and are now our neighbours. But we still keep our bedroom closed. After all, we need some privacy.

In the heritage-making process, the local government and the company used family life as cultural recourses for tourism promotion. The authorities define authenticity based on their own political and economic agendas. This approach of certification or ‘authentication’ often lacks the consideration of the voices and emotions of actual participants (Zhu 2015). The constructed cultural practices of ‘Encountering a Naxi Family’ have transformed local family life into museum objects, in the name of heritage and cultural industry. Accordingly, people such as Laoqing and his family accepted a new identity in the process of continuous encounters with new information and people. Conclusion This chapter examines the heritage-making and administrative process and its influence on local family life in Lijiang against the backdrop of the dialectic relationship between the World Heritage system and Chinese practices. The success of Lijiang’s heritage nomination stimulated the restructuring of the existing management system and the establishment of LCMB, a local agency specialized in heritage conservation and development. My findings reveal that this heritage agency has become a main regulator in defining what heritage is and how it can be interpreted for tourism consumption. Marketization and state intervention are very well coordinated (Wu 2008) to promote economic growth while maintaining authoritarian control. LCMB is capable of interpreting heritage regulations and international guidelines to suit the interests of local economic development. What does the brand of ‘World Heritage’ mean to Lijiang? The implementation of heritage reconstruction and the emerging cultural

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industry successfully transformed the town into a popular tourism destination. The money tourists spend on admission fees, souvenirs, transport, food and accommodation makes a significant contribution to the growth of the local economy. Lijiang seems to achieve remarkable economic success while generating both national and local pride through being named a World Heritage site. However, where is the local community in this picture? Most of the value added in the heritage industry tends to be appropriated by the local government, tourism operators and the Han businesspeople from outside. Their wealth, education, business skills and networks make them a predominant force in the market. Naxi people, the original residents, find it much more difficult to catch up with the rapid change particularly in the tourism-dominated environment. As a result, an increasing number of Naxi residents rent their houses to tourists and businesspeople and move outside the old town (Su 2012; Salazar and Zhang 2013). Lijiang gradually becomes a reinvented heritage site without the original residents – thus losing the core of the cultural value that the local officials proclaimed to UNESCO. It is not surprising to find a story like that of Lijiang in China, especially when economic development has topped the national agenda for more than three decades. Using tourism as a driving force to push the economic growth of heritage sites is not rare. In many developing countries, heritage tourism often leads to a rise in the price of land, gentrification and stratification (Salazar and Zhu 2015). However, the local community is not always a passive recipient, but often negotiates its position and voice against these effects (Zhu 2015). Heritage sites thus become battlefields among different groups of people with conflicts related to pride and the pursuit of profits (Harrell 2013). Is there a better solution to accommodate different voices and reconcile tourism development and heritage preservation? How does a local heritage agency like LCMB adapt to this tendency and seek for more cooperation with various players? Although these questions remain to be answered, the moral implication of cultural heritage and the rights of marginalized people should be addressed. Yujie Zhu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University. His publications include ‘Cultural Effects of Authenticity’ (International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2015), ‘Performing Heritage’ (Annals of Tourism Research, 2012) and the edited volume Sustainable Tourism Management at World Heritage Sites (2009, with Gabor Vereczi). He is the vice chair of the Commission on the Anthropology of Tourism, International

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Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and an executive committee member of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.

Notes I am grateful to all the government officials, residents, immigrants and other informants I interviewed in Lijiang. I would also like to thank Anna Li for her continuous support and encouragement in completing this research. 1. A detailed discussion of the administrative and discursive transition of heritage in China can be found in Yan 2012. 2. The agency has been reformed several times with the expansion of institutional functions with different names such as the Bureau of Social and Cultural Management. 3. The new term ‘cultural heritage’ (wenhua yichan) replaced the earlier concept of cultural relics (wenwu). This conceptual shift indicates China’s willingness to embrace international norms and standards, meanwhile adapting them to its own context. 4. More than twenty universities and colleges have established cultural heritage research centres and postgraduate programs for heritage studies. 5. Due to the large population and area, the administrative divisions of China have five levels: province, prefecture, county, township and village. 6. Naxi is the main ethnic group in this region, with many of them living in Lijiang. Members of a different ethnic group call themselves Mosuo, but are also officially classified as Naxi by the government. 7. Founded in California in 2002, Global Heritage Fund (GHF) is a nonprofit organization that focuses its funding and heritage conservation efforts on the developing world. 8. Sigley (2013) argues that in recent years, the notion of Ancient Tea Horse Road has also been constructed as a heritage discourse, and utilized as resources for tourism development. 9. Proposals have even been made to put Lijiang on the list of World Heritage in Danger. 10. All the names of interviewees appearing in this chapter are pseudonyms.

Bibliography Hilton, J. 1933. Lost Horizon. London: Macmillan. Jing, F., and Y. Nishimura. 2008. ‘UNESCO WHC–ICOMOS Reactive Monitoring Mission to the Old Town of Lijiang, China (10–19 January

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2008)’, retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://whc.unesco.org/ document/10058. Lijiang Bureau of Statistics. 2010. Lijiang Statistical Yearbook 2010. Lijiang, China. Peters, H. 2013. ‘Dancing in the Market: Reconfiguring Commerce sand Heritage in Lijiang’, in T. Blumenfield and H. Silverman (eds.), Cultural Heritage Politics in China. New York: Springer, pp. 115–40. Salazar, N. B., and Y. Zhang. 2013. ‘Seasonal Lifestyle Tourism: The Case of Chinese Elites’, Annals of Tourism Research 43(4): 81–99. Salazar, N. B., and Y. Zhu. 2015. ‘Heritage and Tourism’, in L. Meskell (ed.), Heritage Ethics: An Anthropological Reader. New York: WileyBlackwell, pp. 240-258. Sigley, G. 2013. ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Southwest China’, in H. Silverman and T. Blumenfield (eds.), Cultural Heritage Politics in China. New York: Springer, pp. 235–46. Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge. Su, X. 2010. ‘Urban Conservation in Lijiang, China: Power Structure and Funding Systems’, Cities 27(3): 164–71.    . 2012. ‘It is My Home. I will Die Here: Tourism Development and the Politics of Place in Lijiang, China’, Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography 94(1): 31–45. Su, X., and P. Teo. 2008. ‘Tourism Politics in Lijiang, China: An Analysis of State and Local Interactions in Tourism Development’, Tourism Geographies 10(2): 150–68.    . 2009. The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China: A View from Lijiang. London: Routledge. Swain, M. 1990. ‘Commoditizing Ethnicity in Southwest China’, Cultural Survival Quarterly 14(1): 26–29. Wu, F. 2008. ‘China’s Great Transformation: Neoliberalization as Establishing a Market Society’, Geoforum 39(3): 1093–96. Yan, H. 2012. ‘World Heritage in China: Universal Discourse and National Culture’, PhD dissertation, University of Virginia. Yi, Y. 2003. ‘Lijiang, shuide gucheng? (Lijiang, Whose Old City it is?)’, Southern Weekend, July. Retrieved 13 September 2012 from http://www. china.com.cn/chinese/feature/368351.htm. Zhu, Y. 2012. ‘Performing Heritage: Rethinking Authenticity in Global Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research 39(3): 1495–1513.    . 2015. ‘Cultural Effects of Authenticity: Contested Heritage Practices in China’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 21(6): 594-608. Zhu, Y., and N. Li. 2013. ‘Groping for Stones to Cross the River: Governing Heritage in Emei’, in T. Blumenfield, and H. Silverman (eds.), Cultural Heritage Politics in China. New York: Springer, pp. 51–71.

Chapter 4 Multiple Nostalgias The Fabric of Heritage in Luang Prabang (Lao PDR) David Berliner

Ethnographies of Nostalgia Nostalgia, in the sense of a ‘longing for what is lacking in a changed present . . . a yearning for what is now unattainable, simply because of the irreversibility of time’ (Pickering and Keightley 2006: 920), is a central notion that permeates many contemporary discourses and practices (Boym 2001, Davis 1979). Postmodernist theorists have seen in it a distinctive attitude towards the past inherent in contemporary culture, ‘a reaction against the irreversible’ (Jankélévitch 1983: 299) to be found everywhere and one that these days is often commodified. Since the rediscovery of memory by social scientists (Berliner 2005), and in particular its emotionality (White 2006), nostalgia has attracted anthropologists’ attention. For us, there is a great deal to be researched in these laments about loss and the vanishing of the ‘breath of air which was among that which came before’ (to use Walter Benjamin’s terms [2006: 390]), which we keep hearing in the field. Terms including ‘structural’ (Herzfeld 1996), ‘synthetic’ (Strathern 1995), ‘armchair’ (Appadurai 1996), ‘colonial’ (Bissell 2005), ‘imperialist’ (Rosaldo 1989), ‘resistant’ (Stewart 1988) or ‘for the future’ (Piot 2010) have been appended to nostalgia to approach its complexity, at the intersection of the individual, the social and the political. In this chapter, I will not use ‘nostalgia’ to describe a feeling per se,

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an overly subjectivist stance for anthropologists, whose appraisal of such a state might only be elusive. Rather, I see nostalgia as a specific posture vis-à-vis the past seen as irreversible, a set of publicly displayed discourses, practices and emotions where the ancient is somehow glorified, without necessarily implying the experience of first-hand nostalgic memories. First, nostalgia as a theory (Robertson 1992) and a practice (materialized, for instance, in museum object collections) has played an important role in the history of our discipline (as well as in the field of sociology). As much as continuity is a key idea for social scientists (Berliner 2010; Robbins 2007), anthropology has, from the beginning, held on to nostalgia for disappearing worlds and ruptured equilibriums, far away or close to home, as in the case of folklorists (Bendix 1997). In Bronislaw Malinowski’s ‘Argonauts’ (1922) or Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ‘Tristes Tropiques / A world on the wane’ (1961 [1955]) we find examples of anthropological discourse as forms of cultural necrology, deploying what French ethnologist Daniel Fabre (2008) termed the ‘paradigme des derniers’ (paradigm of the last ones). And whilst anthropologists have slowly abandoned this genre of speech and writing, without definitely stepping out of the ‘posture of the nostalgist’ (Faubion 1993: 36),1 nostalgic discourses and practices are foundations underlying the fields of heritage and tourism. A lot has been written on nostalgia as a resource for preservation agents, UNESCO experts, private investors and tourism companies (e.g. Dann 1998, Frow 1991). Numerous scholars have explored the ways in which current experiences of tourist consumption involve nostalgia (e.g. Graburn 1995, 2000, Gyimothy 2005,2 Peleggi 2005), often addressed through the theme of authenticity and rooted in evolutionary theory. In this chapter, acknowledging the entanglement of tourism, consumption and nostalgia in contemporary ‘heritagescapes’ (Di Giovine 2008), I extend the discussion of nostalgia. First, based on my fieldwork in Luang Prabang, an ancient royal town of northern Laos which became a UNESCO Listed World Heritage Site in 1995, I propose that it is necessary to disentangle the multiple nostalgic attachments which lie behind the often-cited label ‘nostalgia’ from those which are not necessarily nostalgic. Following Bissell’s study in Zanzibar, which distinguishes between different forms of both colonial and revolutionary nostalgia, circulating among developers, preservationists and inhabitants, I suggest that, in Luang Prabang, we examine how ‘nostalgia takes on very different forms and dimensions, engaging an array of social agents, interests, forces, and locations’ (Bissell 2005: 239). I concur that ‘nostalgic discourses . . .

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are anything but singular’ (2005: 216) and that, as anthropologists, we try to locate ‘the multiple strands of nostalgia circulating’ within our field sites (ibid.: 235). I explore diverse categories of often disconnected actors (UNESCO experts, local elites, expatriates, Asian and Western tourists, Lao in the diaspora, Buddhist monks and inhabitants) and their multiple engagements with nostalgia. I show how their engagements, rooted in personal experiences, imply specific presentday postures towards time (past, present and future), history, heritage, development and culture. These attachments may constitute a source of convergence: for instance, by bonding diverse actors in a community of loss which laments the vanishing of Luang Prabang atmosphere. At the same time, multiple nostalgic attachments give rise to misunderstandings and tensions, as many lack the same relationship to heritage. I then argue that people’s investments in heritage are not only past-orientated but also point towards certain visions of the future, expressing diverse hopes and fears about the kind of world that future generations will inhabit. Secondly, I emphasize that, far from being a feeling hidden in the confines of the self, nostalgia is ‘a force that does something’ (Dames 2010: 272) in contemporary Luang Prabang. I argue that, by attempting to preserve spaces, practices and objects, UNESCO experts and national heritage professionals effectively transform them. In a thought-provoking piece, Yael Navaro-Yashin has shown that an appraisal of melancholia centred ‘on the subject, or the interior experience of the human being, . . . misses significant aspects of relations that generate melancholia’ (2009: 16). I agree with Navaro-Yashin that one has to go beyond the exploration of the inner world of our interlocutors. However, in this chapter, I analyse the pragmatic effects of nostalgia. Following Bruno Latour (2005), I pose the question: how do nostalgic attachments ‘make do’ (what he terms ‘faire faire’)? My aim is to delve into what I term the transformative aspects of nostalgia in the production of heritage.3 Instead of stopping transmission and culture mechanisms, heritage recognition creates aesthetic forms, historical narratives, politics of transmission and, more generally, new social configurations. Of course, what is produced draws on something of the past, but also reproduces it as something new. This is clearly evident in Luang Prabang. There, state programmes, UNESCO projects, cosmopolitan gentrification and tourism development have been fostered in parallel, but their making of heritage ‘hijacks history’ (Herzfeld 2011). The geographer David Harvey has illustrated how cultivation of nostalgia, promoted by contemporary cultural organizations around the

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world, can produce ‘sanitized collective memories, the nurturing of uncritical aesthetic experiences and the absorption of future possibilities into a nonconflictual arena that is eternally present’ (2000: 168). Practices of preservation also recycle the past, transforming urban textures into ‘nostalgic palimpsests’ (Dawdy 2010), and create new landscapes, seemingly innocuous and ready to be consumed by tourists. In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Luang Prabang was a neglected town after the Socialist Revolution of 1975 owing to its association with the royal family. Since 1995, Luang Prabang has been turned into a UNESCO sanctuary and a tourist attraction, where French Indochina is somehow celebrated and the pains caused by the Communist experiment are silenced. This chapter aims to explain how such transformation, from neglected town to UNESCO site, is perceived and rendered possible, by describing (1) whose nostalgias are being voiced and displayed; (2) the conversion of discourses about heritage and loss into nostalgic actions on the ground; (3) the diverse mediations (institutions, agents and objects) that facilitate these processes; and (4) actors’ manoeuvres and identifications (or lack thereof) in these newly constituted heritage worlds. At a time when one can observe the global institutionalization of the preservation attitude, this chapter aims to contribute an insightful understanding of heritage planning and the cultivation of nostalgia as forms of ‘ongoing ruination’ (Stoler 2008: 195), a kind of violence that renders the landscape silent, represses its traumatic past and reduces it to a charming spectacle for tourists, idealizing Luang Prabang’s history. Luang Prabang, a UNESCO Sanctuary Famous for its thirty-four Buddhist monasteries and orange-robed monks as well as for its colonial architecture, Luang Prabang was a royal town and a transnational centre of Buddhist learning (StuartFox 1997). With fifty thousand inhabitants, it is located on the peninsula formed by the Mekong and Namkhan Rivers in the mountainous region of northern Laos. Its history has been punctuated by the succession of kings. In the fourteenth century, King Fa Ngum established the Lane Xang Kingdom on the territory occupied by the Khmu (an ethnic group of Lao PDR) and, accepting a golden statue of Buddha, adopted Theravada Buddhism. Since the fifteenth century, Luang Prabang has seen successive invasions by foreign powers: Vietnamese, Burmese, Siamese, Chinese Haw, French, Japanese and finally

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Americans. Having signed an agreement with the reigning king in 1893, French colonizers drew the national borders of Laos and established a protectorate which persisted until 1953 (Ivarsson 2008). In the 1950s and 1960s, the creation of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party led to the 1975 Socialist Revolution (and the dethronement of King Sisavang Vatthana), which forced many supporters of the king into exile. Following extended negotiations involving Lao and French actors, the UNESCO assembly awarded Luang Prabang World Heritage status at the 1995 Berlin Conference. Under the UNESCO umbrella, a multiplicity of institutional agents launched and continue to participate in the preservation project. These range from the Paris- and Bangkok-based experts, to architects, engineers and cultural and tourism consultants based in Luang Prabang who are not employed by UNESCO, but funded by a host of international organizations that operate closely with it, such as Agence Française du Développement, the European Union and the Asian Bank for Development. Also, as part of the France-UNESCO convention, continuous technical and financial support flows from France, fostering a certain style of cultural preservation à la française centred on monumental material heritage, as captured by certain inhabitants when they describe Luang Prabang as ‘Luang Paris’. In architectural terms, Luang Prabang peninsula, the former centre of political life with its royal and noble residences, features many heritage-listed constructions built of wood (‘traditional houses’) or brick (‘colonial houses’) as well as stone temples. The conservation of traditional and colonial houses, temples and natural and aquatic spaces is carefully monitored by the Maison du Patrimoine (Heritage House). This national institution operates under the Ministry of Information and Culture, and employs a mixture of Lao architects and foreign experts (mostly French) who implement UNESCO-Paris preservation policies. Heritage House aims to ensure adherence to the Luang Prabang conservation plan, established in 2000 by French UNESCO architects. It monitors, for example, the overdensification of urban spaces and denounces new illegal building activities within the protected perimeter, as well as the inappropriate use of architectural forms and materials (height, painting, light, windows and fences). Heritage House also prevents the demolition of listed houses and protects wetlands, vegetation cover, river banks and trees. Finally, it seeks to regulate rampant economic activities by foreign investors who rent many downtown houses to transform these into guesthouses and restaurants. Above all, Heritage House strives to preserve and

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restore many pre–Second World War religious and ordinary listed monuments in the town. By contrast, the UNESCO office based in Bangkok has launched its own conservation projects, putting clear emphasis on intangible heritage preservation, such as sculpture classes for monks to learn how to restore their temples themselves (IMPACT 2004). The Nostalgic Charm The charm of London does not come from its monuments, which have nothing special, nor from its mediocre perspectives, but from all the rest, the streets, the houses, the shops, the people. (Perec 1995: 84)

Although UNESCO-Paris and UNESCO-Bangkok experts and those based in Luang Prabang hold different perspectives on the modalities of preservation, most are, nevertheless, animated by the same spirit. Notwithstanding the diversity of perceptions and conservation projects, their common goal is to preserve the ‘outstanding value of the site’, articulated around four propositions: (1) Luang Prabang is a unique and ancient site, its authenticity rooted in the precolonial and colonial past. (2) Luang Prabang’s authenticity is mostly connected to its charm. As underlined by a UNESCO functionary I met in Paris, ‘Heritage in Luang Prabang, it is the life, the atmosphere, the quietness, the spirit of the place.’ The spirit of Luang Prabang is often mentioned by experts, tourists and outsiders, who deploy a specific aesthetic objectification of the site. Since the 2008 International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) conference in Québec, where participants adopted a declaration of principles and recommendations to safeguard it, ‘l’esprit du lieu (the spirit of the place)’ has become a crucial concept in UNESCO preservation policies, a notion defined ‘as the physical and the spiritual elements that give meaning, value, emotion and mystery to place . . . made up of tangible (sites, buildings, landscapes, routes, objects) as well as intangible elements (memories, narratives, written documents, festivals, commemorations, rituals, traditional knowledge, values, textures, colors, odors, etc.)’ (ICOMOS 2008).4 (3) This charm is very fragile and in need of being urgently preserved from annihilation. Drawing upon a social-Darwinist

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rhetoric, encapsulated in the trope of the vanishing inherited from early anthropologists,5 most experts use nostalgia tropes to describe how Luang Prabang is losing much of its character. In their words, preserving the town represents a romantic quest for tradition and sincerity with a certain fear of the artifices of modernity and globalizing forces. For instance, in the IMPACT brochure edited by UNESCO-Bangkok in 2004, a picture of a car parked in a temple supports the caption: ‘Today temples are sometimes not treated with the respect they were given in the past’, the car being the symbol of modernity in a traditional temple. (4) Luang Prabang’s charm is mostly threatened by the assault of Asian and European tourism. Accordingly, what is at the heart of most experts’ bitterness is the vanishing of Luang Prabang’s spirit under the threat of tourism. As one of my UNESCO interlocutors in Bangkok stated with a tone of cultural necrology, ‘Luang Prabang is under lots of pressure now. The whole town is being used by tourists only. Even the monks are leaving the town. We are losing the spirit of the place.’6 In fact, my interviews with foreign experts in Paris, Bangkok and Luang Prabang revealed the same set of underlying ideas about Luang Prabang’s spirit: a Western romanticized perception of Buddhism and colonial conceptions of other people’s traditional life, conveying nostalgia for local rituals, for a feeling of quietness and isolation in the Tropics and for local people living their traditional life in their traditional houses and temples. Such Orientalist longing for a vanishing atmosphere is reminiscent of the ‘charme nostalgique’ captured by the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch as ‘ce je-ne-saisquoi dont on ne peut assigner la place’ (‘this nonlocalizable I-do-notknow-what’) (1983: 303), which is even more precious now that it is disappearing. This idealized Luang Prabang is, indeed, a town of bygone days. Many locals rent their houses in the centre of the town to foreign investors and happily build large houses in the suburbs. Every day hundreds of tourists stroll around the old town. Thirty-nine hotels, more than 190 guesthouses and a night market for tourists have opened up, whilst sixty-nine restaurants have blossomed along the Mekong and the Namkhan rivers. In contrast to this urban growth which violates many heritage regulations, foreign experts aim to ‘recreate the past atmosphere of Luang Prabang’ (as a French architect claimed) or to keep its ‘sleepy ambiance’, leading to the adoption of concrete

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preservation measures such as the restoration of temples and houses with ancient material and techniques, the control of the electricity level and of commercial advertisements in the town or the transformation of old houses on stilts into cultural centres where traditional events or concerts are organized. A UNESCO-related architect recommends making a list of authorized offerings by worshippers to the temples so as to avoid the current gifts of cement, acrylic painting, industrial tiles and other modern construction materials. Such anxieties about losing Luang Prabang’s atmosphere, whether it is tangible or intangible heritage, leads to very tangible decisions, with a recent verdict by the World Heritage Committee stating that Luang Prabang should ‘halt the progressive loss of its fabric and traditions in the face of development pressures’ (Boccardi and Logan 2007: 26). This is a warning to Lao officials that ‘if the Lao traditional heritage in particular continues its steady decline, the Town of Luang Prabang is heading towards a situation that would justify World Heritage in Danger listing’ (2007: 26). Experts in Offices Versus Experts in the Field It is important to make a distinction between the experts I have met in Paris and Bangkok offices and those based in Luang Prabang. The bureaucrats in Paris and Bangkok exhibit typical UNESCO institutional nostalgia, a rhetoric deployed around the foundational idea of time as irreversible and the means to resist its passage, but this nostalgia is rarely, if ever, connected to any lived, personal experience. Such ‘armchair nostalgia’ (Appadurai 1996: 78) fits well with the stereotypical image of the expert posture, usually described as cold and disembodied (Boyer 2005). In contrast, although they deploy the same alarmist discourse, experts living in Luang Prabang display a very different attitude and their nostalgia is clearly articulated. Dedicated to the process of preservation in situ and familiar with the history and culture of the region, they deploy the trope of the vanishing spirit, but combine it with their life experience in the town, a combination which makes their feeling of loss even more intense. As one of them recounted with a tone of bitterness, ‘We feel nostalgic for the ancient Luang Prabang. Look, my former house is now a pizzeria.’ Indeed, some experts have been based in Luang Prabang for more than ten years, and have observed the changes to the town. They are the individuals mobilized for heritage making in the field. Most of the time, their language is the language of indignation

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and denunciation. A UNESCO consultant in Luang Prabang insisted that ‘the town has changed a lot over the last ten years. Soon the town centre will be emptied of its inhabitants. Locals are selling their houses and going to the suburbs. . . . Here it is like Disneyland now. It’s a disaster!’ According to another expert who spoke with bitterness, it is already ‘too late. Luang Prabang is a failure.’ For these experts, the current metamorphosis of the town is described as ‘a tragedy’, ‘a wreck’, ‘a horror’, in which they conceive their preservation work as ‘a never-ending struggle’. ‘In Luang Prabang, it’s a permanent struggle. I am like a mercenary here. I am alone against all’, exclaimed one French architect. To describe cultural loss, most foreign experts metaphorically invoke tak baad, the morning alms-giving ritual. During this ritual, inhabitants of Luang Prabang give food to monks who chant their blessings and transfer the merit of the offering to the giver. Because of the many visiting tourists, tak baad has, according to another French heritage expert, turned into a ‘circus’, ‘a zoo where tourists feed monks like they would feed animals’. Seen as predation, the everyday experience of tourism reinforces in them the feeling of losing the spirit of the place. Locals, too, are perceived as a major threat to the good preservation of Luang Prabang’s ambiance. Whilst the Luang Prabang Conservation Plan forbids pane glass and recently manufactured windows, flower pots and fences, as well as the use of lacquer, which the experts in situ describe as ‘kitsch’, all of these are widely adored by locals. Moreover, against these UNESCO rules, some town-centre residents cram their land with as much construction as they can (e.g. when building a guesthouse), while in recent years local authorities have rented out listed state buildings to foreign investors. In the end, the residents of Luang Prabang and the Lao government are often denied any aesthetic and patrimonial competence by the UNESCO experts. Like the inhabitants of Rethemnos in Greece (Herzfeld 1991), they are referred to by heritage experts as ‘useless’, ‘unable to preserve their own heritage’. Needless to say, the posture held by experts in situ is the antithesis of the stereotypical image of bureaucratic disembodied expertise. When walking the streets of Luang Prabang, I witnessed them running around construction sites, shouting at local architects and workers, sometimes yelling at tourists who did not respect local codes of behaviour. Some can even be seen participating in local religious rituals. They do not have the ‘self-restraint’ (retenue) described by the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich (2009), who studied the researchers of the Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel in France. In Luang Prabang,

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experts’ mobilization is nostalgia based, active and very much embodied, to the extent that many people from Luang Prabang pejoratively refer to them as ‘more Lao than the Lao themselves. They want to teach us how to be a Lao’. Struggling with materials, inhabitants, local authorities and tourists, UNESCO experts nevertheless constitute crucial mediators in the heritage-making process. A Transnational Community of Loss Like the UNESCO experts in situ, expatriates in town, as well as Lao elites and intellectuals (mostly Lao from the diaspora who return to their country after decades of exile in France, Australia, Germany or North America), share the sense of losing the Luang Prabang atmosphere, albeit with some differences. Nostalgie revendiquée is for these expats lamenting the disappearance of the Luang Prabang they knew when ‘there was no traffic jam, but bicycles’ and ‘only one car for the whole town’. For their part, exiles returning to Laos (after over thirty-five years abroad) regret the vanishing of the Luang Prabang they knew before 1975. Theirs is a mixture of nostalgia for the presocialist era and a patrimonial discourse often reinforced by their diasporic condition. Significantly, tak baad has also become the metaphor of cultural loss. Many expats and returnees express concern about the morning alms-giving ritual becoming a spectacle ‘relying mostly on tourists and foreigners who live here, because local people have left the town centre’. For them, a tourist scene has replaced the symbiotic relationship that had existed between monks and villagers for centuries. A Lao who has lived abroad for many years said, When I see tourists who come here and they take photos of tak baad, I am shocked. Tak baad is not a spectacle. It’s meditation by begging food. We have a saying here that when you open a window, you have fresh air entering the room, but also mosquitoes and flies. Fresh air makes us alive again, but mosquitoes, one should expel them, kill them or domesticate them.

Here, ‘fresh air’ designates the opening up of the country to the nonsocialist world in the 1990s and the ‘mosquitoes’ are the polluting tourists. This indignation sometimes leads to a corps-à-corps between expatriates and tourists. A French man living in the town since 1996 recounted that he had ‘almost had a fight with a tourist yesterday,

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because he was taking pictures of the monks very closely’. Purportedly, he sometimes attends tak baad and takes pictures of tourists at close range ‘to show them how unpleasant it is’, an attitude of indignation which is not shared by most monks, who, generally, like to be photographed (Suntikul 2009). The fear of losing the Luang Prabang spirit leads to concrete initiatives from Lao and expatriates alike. The latter have launched numerous campaigns to sensitize tourists to cultural issues concerning the alms-giving ritual and have created cultural centres to preserve ‘the traditional arts and cultural heritage of Luang Prabang in their most authentic forms’. For instance, the Champa Cultural House, run by a Lao who has lived in France for twenty years, offers lessons to youngsters in traditional Lao arts (music, dance, gold thread embroidery or ceremonial flower arrangement). Strongly opposed to the use of synthetic materials imported from China, the director, who has local priorities in mind (local transmission for young generations and not for tourists), wants to reproduce artisanship à l’ancienne, ‘to help young people embrace what had been lost during the old regime of restrictive Communism’. Such conservation practices require working in collaboration with old artisans from the royal era, a very sensitive issue in present-day Luang Prabang. Finally, there are a number of civil servants and local elites (not from the diaspora) who share the same patrimonial attitude vis-àvis Luang Prabang’s culture and fear of tourism. Indeed, certain local elites feel sadness about the rapid loss of culture. One such intellectual emphasized that ‘UNESCO is good. But since UNESCO arrived, there have only been Europeans in the streets. We are worried that we are going to lose our culture now.’ He expressed nostalgia for the town ‘before it became picture perfect’ (cited in Stewart 1988: 233). Like many educated Lao, such local elites emphasize the rise and detrimental influence of Thai culture (through television and tourism) and the colonial position of France in the UNESCOization of their town, denouncing the fact that ‘too many French people work here. Only Lao should be authorized to work at the Heritage House.’ A civil servant who has opened a Children’s Cultural Centre where local children can learn traditional games and instruments believes that Luang Prabang represents the material legacy of the glorious past of Lao culture and constitutes a national centre for its preservation. Yet he feels that it should not display too many royalist connotations, hence his view that ‘we are now revitalizing some past rituals, but not those connected to royal history. There are some things we do not want to revive.’ Discourses and practices (as held by UNESCO

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experts in Paris, Bangkok and Luang Prabang, French, German, Australian and North American expatriates, Lao from the diaspora, as well as some local intellectuals and civil servants) participate in the invention of a community of loss, sealing Luang Prabang’s fate as a town of cultural preservation and transmission. Such a nostalgiascape is engendered out of transnational ramifications, similar to the transnational production of historical memory of the Vietnam War ‘that involves variously situated actors and their global engagements with memory’ (Schwenkel 2006: 20). It is diversely experienced, with individuals engaging with their own Luang Prabang (whether Orientalist or pre-Communist), situated between fantasy and reality, coloured by their own agendas and influences. Nostalgic Consumption for Tourists The discourse of experts resonates with the experiences of most tourists. A nostalgic site aimed at assuaging a fear of loss that many educated Westerners and Asians (experts or tourists) share today, Luang Prabang has become a key destination for tourists in Southeast Asia. According to local statistics provided by the Tourism Office, Luang Prabang attracted 260,000 tourists in 2005, a boom compared to 62,000 in 1997.7 In line with Erik Cohen’s observation of some thirty years ago (1979), Luang Prabang constitutes an arena for diverse tourist profiles, from French backpackers, Thai and Chinese tourists, expatriates living in Bangkok, Lao living abroad or in different provinces, British couples on honeymoon or gay tourists, many of whom are not always driven by nostalgia (Caton and Almeida Santos 2007). Some young travellers, mostly Western backpackers, stop in Luang Prabang to ‘chill out’ and drink alcohol following a trip ‘into the jungle’. The town has also become a sexual heterotopia for foreign men (Westerners and Asians alike) seeking to encounter Lao men (Berliner 2011). During the New Year festivals, many Lao from other provinces visit Luang Prabang to perform their religious duties in some of the most famous Buddhist temples of Lao PDR. Similarly, a large number of exiles living abroad return to the country to see their families who stayed after the Socialist Revolution. For those who have experienced the suffering of exile, Luang Prabang does not represent a painless heritagescape, but rather a trigger for pre-1975 nostalgic reminiscences and vivid memories of pain. That said, my fieldwork demonstrates that many tourists continue to see Luang Prabang as a charming small town set amongst the

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mountains with its ‘amusing’ French influence and Buddhist mystique. Most Westerners fall for the Indochinese spirit of Luang Prabang, which plunges them into an idealized past world reminiscent of Marguerite Duras’s novel L’Amant, with its old cars, fans, antique furniture and bright colours.8 They also enjoy approaching Buddhist novices and chatting with them, an experience described as ‘charming’, ‘full of respect’. Monks can easily turn these exchanges to their advantage by obtaining tourists’ addresses and, in many instances, gifts or cash. Many Western visitors emphasize the authenticity of the place, exemplified by one French woman who exclaimed, ‘Here, it is the pure, real humanity.’ A British visitor described the town as ‘a sort of Indochinese Oxford’. Tourists, however, also lament the contemporary vanishing of such purported authenticity. Three Dutch persons standing in front of a temple regretted that locals ‘don’t wear traditional clothing anymore’ and an American woman, upon noticing televisions in people’s homes, emphasized that it made her realize how ‘people lose their traditions here’. Whilst many Westerners lament the ongoing vanishing of the town’s precious atmosphere (considering their visit as well timed ‘before it disappears forever’), Thai tourists throng to Luang Prabang to see ‘how Thailand was fifty or a hundred years ago’. As an inexpensive destination, it represents for many Thai an assortment of fun (rafting speedboats on the Mekong), nostalgic curiosity, exoticism (observing so-called Lao backwardness and eating French baguettes) and religion (fervently giving alms to the monks and offerings to famous images of Buddha). Asian tourists do not experience the same yearning for the Indochinese spirit as do Westerners. Yet Luang Prabang represents for them a picturesque old town preserved from the craze of urban modernity. Whether they fall for colonial nostalgia per se, exoticism or both, Luang Prabang constitutes for most tourists a site for nostalgic imagination, where the ancient is glorified and the coevalness of time denied (Fabian 1983), despite being presented in a sanitized manner with paved roads, clean guesthouses and tasty food. Such enchantment with the ancient is indeed continually reinforced by tourism companies, restaurants and hotel owners (mostly foreigners, French, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Singaporean, but also Lao elites), who are engaged in the ‘business of nostalgia’ (Peleggi 2002), offering a pre–Second World War vision as merchandise to be consumed by visitors. Needless to say, the past delivered to visitors preserves something, but it also deletes and distorts. For instance, the painful history of the town, the forced abdication of the last king and the historical cooperation with Americans during the Vietnam War are not explicit

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parts of the town’s advertised heritage. As one of my elderly interlocutors commented, ‘Luang Prabang was a damned town for years after the Revolution. Then UNESCO comes and wants to make a nice town here. Tourists don’t know that. But we have suffered a lot here.’ Walking in the streets of Luang Prabang and talking with tourists, one is reminded of this ‘past without the pain’. Such an anaesthetized past was analysed by Laurel Kennedy and Mary Rose Williams (2001), who describe how postwar Vietnam is now becoming a harmless tourist attraction. In Luang Prabang, through a specific selection of monuments, a patchwork consisting only of precolonial and French colonial architectural traces, it is as if an ‘eternal phantasmatic Indochina’ (Norindr 1997) and French colonialism, defined as a quite harmonious integration of cultural traditions, are in some way celebrated. And for those who want to be critical of the international organization (as is often the case – see Collins 2008), one can identify, in UNESCO actions in Luang Prabang, legacies from the French empire. For most tourists, however, attachment to Luang Prabang’s heritage and complicated history is very superficial: no mobilization, occasionally some indignation for the loss of a culture they do not belong to and a universalistic fear of loss of cultural diversity. Before moving on to another activity, tourists experience vicarious nostalgia, en passant, for a Luang Prabang whitewashed into a consumer brand. The Fruits of Heritage Whilst for heritage experts, foreign tourists, expatriates and Lao elites, Luang Prabang symbolizes a spirit requiring immediate salvage from the destructive assaults of rapid modernization, most locals are ambivalent about the UNESCO-generated urgency to resist loss and destruction. Are the residents of Luang Prabang nostalgic about the past when ‘there were no traffic jams and there was little tourism and no television’? How do they experience the transformation of their town into a heritage site? Do they identify with the UNESCO policies defining preservation as a collective ‘moral and political obligation’ (Debray 1997)? Clearly, when it comes to heritage, there are a diversity of views divided along lines of age, class, social status and education. Much depends on the benefits gained from tourism and the heritage economy. There are, however, some common perceptions about moladok, the local word used to designate heritage (most interlocutors do not mention ‘UNESCO’ as such). Moladok is not a new Lao word.

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People use it to refer to familial heritage, mainly conveying ‘something which has to be kept and passed on between generations’. However, the term has recently acquired a new meaning, an idea suggested by some when they confessed that, ‘Before, we never heard about moladok.’ For many, new meanings attached to moladok do not seem apparent as yet, aside from its touristic and economic connotations. As in Zanzibar (Bissell 2005), heritage-making policies are indeed top-down external strategies implying, for most inhabitants, a kind of deference to institutional authority. As one interlocutor stated, ‘We do moladok because we respect the government.’ Yet most people from Luang Prabang emphasize how their life has positively changed over the last ten years. All are proud to see that their town is now an internationally recognized site, where tourists come from all over the world and inject substantial revenue. The increase in economic resources is often mentioned as a positive impact of UNESCOization, creating new job opportunities, albeit unequally, for many people in Luang Prabang and the surrounding countryside (guesthouse staff, rickshaw drivers, ethnic handicraft producers, etc.). Also, most highlight that renovations are rendering Luang Prabang cleaner and more aesthetically attractive and that, by helping to refurbish temples, ‘moladok helps Buddhism’. The statement ‘life has been better here since moladok’ is one I heard hundreds of times throughout my interviews. Given the many years of traumatic history in Laos and Luang Prabang, this makes sense. In casual interactions, people rarely speak about heritage. When they do, it is mostly to denounce how heritage regulations are strict and recommendations difficult to follow, even ‘hellish’ (‘moladok monahok’). Indeed, Heritage House is mostly perceived as a restrictive institution which ‘forbids one from doing this or that’. Clearly, the local UNESCO policies have fostered a sense amongst some inhabitants that, as one interlocutor expressed it, ‘Moladok wants to limit our property rights. These lands are ours. Before moladok, we repaired houses the way we needed but now we have to ask for permission at the Heritage House.’ Moreover, adherence to ‘moladok style’ is constraining for some Lao architects, who cannot create new architectural forms, but have to follow architectural typologies and use materials imposed by UNESCO-related architects. This creates a sense of architectural standardization in the town centre, denounced by some Lao elites and foreign expatriates: ‘Here it’s not a town for invention, but for preservation.’ The idea of intactness, cherished by foreign experts, is vigorously contested by residents of Luang Prabang. To preserve the ancient, as it was, makes little sense to most inhabitants, who have a practical

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conception of heritage. Holding an aesthetic competence denied to them by most foreign experts, many declare their fondness for the renovation of Lao traditional wooden houses and also applaud temple renovations. They do not, however, embrace the categorical imperative of Heritage House to use old materials, seen as less solid and the most expensive (to the extent that some people cannot afford to renovate their houses). As one informant stated, ‘The problem with moladok is that they want us to preserve everything “old style”, whilst people here want to make modern adaptations. Heritage House is too obsessed with the ancient.’ The residents’ rhetoric is rooted in a shared political narrative about accessing modernity, and, within the context of postwar Laos, this narrative is not framed nostalgically. Whilst experts cling to colonial nostalgia, many people from Luang Prabang are not lamenting the vanishing of an idealized epoch. A good example is exemplified by one interlocutor who said, ‘Things have changed a lot here since 1995, and that’s very good like that.’ Locals are clearly not entirely enamoured with the past as saved by UNESCO. For those who gain benefits from UNESCOization, the past is the past and was not a better world than today: ‘We have no regrets; before was good, now it’s even better.’ Local discourses tend to emphasize an aspiration towards modernity, with an expressed desire to see ‘even more tourists and planes flying to Luang Prabang’. In this context, worldwide heritage recognition is associated with rapid changes rather than with continuity. Local attitudes towards preservation are seen as a step into, rather than a retreat from, modernity. This contrasts the Luang Prabang as imagined by visiting experts and foreign travellers. Preserving traditional houses, in addition to sustaining tourism, is seen by many locals as a way to conserve relics of the past for future generations, ‘to remember how we lived in the past’ and ‘to show to our children and grandchildren, but we don’t want to live in them anymore’. Ordinary Nostalgias, Hopes and Fears The discourse of Lao state officials about Luang Prabang heritage functions similarly, and is not evidently nostalgic. As Colin Long and Jonathan Sweet (2006) have shown, the colonial past, traditional houses and rituals which UNESCO strives to preserve are intimately connected to royal history and heritage, a currently silenced period of the town’s history and a very sensitive research topic. Moreover, the museumification of Luang Prabang, which freezes the royal past and

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renders it harmless to the present, has also to be understood through the lens of Lao nationalism, which ‘strategically uses the assistance of global organizations such as UNESCO to further its nationalist aims’ (ibid.: 449). As Grant Evans (1998: 122) underlines, in 1975 revolutionaries immediately transformed the king’s palace into the Royal Palace Museum, with the political intention to depoliticize it and keep the past under control. However, claiming absence of nostalgia among people from Luang Prabang would provide only a partial picture of the current situation. As discussed above, exiles returning to Laos lament the disappearance of pre-1975 Luang Prabang. There are many old people who secretly cherish memories of the ancien régime and regret the cultural changes, denouncing, for example, the changes in female clothing or hairstyles and the manners of young people. Some inhabitants of Luang Prabang feel sadness regarding transformations of sociability – ‘People have less time for family and friends because it’s all about business now’ – and many stress the dire practical consequences of tourism to their lives (such as the expansion of the airport and drug smuggling for tourists). In addition, others criticize monks who spend their time pursuing tourists and using internet cafés. Many remember a better past unburdened by preservation policies, nostalgically complaining about the loss of freedom to build houses with any material. Comparing Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot histories of their island’s partition, Rebecca Bryant has lucidly shown how visions of lost homelands are also ‘visions of homelands yet to be realized’ (2008: 399). The women’s narratives that Bryant analyses ‘complicate our notions of nostalgia through a longing for a homeland that is not absent but rather apocalyptic – a homeland not of the past but of the future’ (ibid.: 404). In Luang Prabang too, rapid changes produce certain anxieties about the future. Nostalgia is being crafted within such horizons of expectations. Interestingly, for some, these fears take the form of postcolonial imagination. In Luang Prabang, many people gossip about the risk to the town of becoming a ‘meuang Falang’ (literally a ‘French town’ and, by extension, a town of ‘Westerners’). For example, one man suggested that ‘within ten years, there will be only Falang in town. They buy everything here.’ For some, Heritage House works hand in hand with foreigners ‘to transform Luang Prabang into a meuang for Falang only’, and moladok is seen as a ‘new form of colonization by the French’. Others emphasize that its precise role is to control foreign investors in the town. Practically, such ideas are reinforced by certain Lao officers from Heritage House, who castigate locals about heritage regulations. I observed that some

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tend always to defer to ‘Falang’ authoritative decisions, which allows them to escape being blamed by the locals and to delegate responsibility to the former French colonizers (on similar bureaucratic deference, see Herzfeld 1991). In sum, such gossip and interaction reveal the uncertainty under which many residents live and emphasize their feeling of dispossession in postcolonial contexts, rendering them ‘exiles in their own homeland’ (Stewart 1988: 235). Contrary to UNESCO-related experts, expatriates and both Lao from the diaspora and a segment of the local elite, few inhabitants vocalize regret for the demolition of old houses or their fear for the disappearance of traditional rituals. My research demonstrates that the ways in which most residents from Luang Prabang describe permanence and loss do not correspond to the sense of loss expressed by UNESCO experts, Lao elites, Western expatriates or travellers. I was surprised that few elderly and young people actually complain about the possible vanishing of the tak baad ritual. Alarmist discourses are now increasingly circulated through campaigns launched by expatriates and Lao elites. This is of practical concern to some religious leaders whose temples are located within the tourist area. In contrast, many residents insist on cultural persistence, emphasizing that they are ‘keeping on with tradition. Tradition is not changing.’ For one woman, ‘custom is not disappearing, even with tourism. Lao people do conserve their traditions. Tak baad won’t vanish. It’s a Lao tradition.’ Whilst for an elderly man, ‘even if people rent out their houses and leave the town centre, I am not worried. Even with Falang, Lao tradition will persist. Lao tradition is always the same. And now the Falang help the Lao to preserve tak baad.’ In my many interviews with local people, they revealed that they do not long for the return of what seems to some foreign experts and tourists as lost forever, and that they do not share the traits of the latter’s cultural alarmism. Exo-/Endo-Nostalgias Evans (1998) and subsequently Long and Sweet have emphasized how Luang Prabang’s UNESCO recognition is rooted in nostalgic imagination, ‘a quest for an Idealized, Orientalized “real Asia”’ (Long and Sweet 2006: 455). However, claiming the existence of a single nostalgic posture is problematic. As Marilyn Strathern lucidly expresses it, ‘While we might imagine that we could share other people’s nostalgia for a vanishing culture, we cannot share it for the particular persons they miss or the places they have left. Here your (their) nostalgia is

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most emphatically not my (our) nostalgia’ (1995: 111). This chapter is an invitation to refine this proposition by underlining the multiple dimensions of nostalgic investments deployed by diverse groups of people in Luang Prabang. In order to clarify this complex theoretical situation, I propose distinguishing between two nostalgic postures: nostalgia for the past one has lived personally (what I term ‘endonostalgia’), implying a sense of personal ownership of the past; and nostalgia for the past not experienced personally, a vicarious nostalgia I term ‘exo-nostalgia’. The latter is common amongst Western tourists and UNESCO experts based in Paris, whose externalist discourses about cultural loss do not refer to their own historical past. At the other end of the continuum are diverse endo-nostalgic forms held by Luang Prabang inhabitants: royalist nostalgias for some, a lament about the loss of certain values for others, but never an alarmist discourse on the necessity to sanctify heritage and culture, not a wish to forgo the benefits brought about by tourism. The distinction between endo-nostalgia and exo-nostalgia is, of course, not absolute, and there exists a grey area of ambivalence between the poles. Some experiences qualify as ‘endo’ and ‘exo’, such as the nostalgia felt by experts in situ which combines an exo-nostalgic discourse based on an in-depth knowledge of local history and culture (a nostalgia for a culture which is not theirs, for other people’s culture and history) with a longing for the vanishing charm of a town they have long known (endo-nostalgia). The endo-nostalgia of expatriates, mainly rooted in their personal experience of the town, the emotional attachment to ‘their’ Luang Prabang of the past, is in some aspects very similar to the endo-nostalgia of Lao from the diaspora who are born in Luang Prabang but then forced into exile. They lament the disappearance of the town of their childhood, combined (for some) with a patrimonial discourse reinforced in diaspora. In between insider and outsider, there is also the nostalgic experience of European tourists who wish to bring their children to Luang Prabang to enjoy it as they did when brought as children by their parents. Rooted in different notions of historiography and senses of history, such nostalgic postures expose a divergent dynamic of temporality and, in particular, specific forms of engagement with the future. Indeed, far from being synonymous with a preoccupation with the past, nostalgia reveals relationships that exist between the past, the present and the future. Following the historian Reinhart Koselleck (2004 [1979]), one might treat discourses and feelings about the passing of time as always already framed within the ‘horizons of expectations’ in the present. The nostalgias of Parisian experts and international tourists

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are intertwined with their desire to imagine in Luang Prabang another world, a world still able to resist cultural homogenization and to preserve ethnic diversity. Whilst their horizon is crafted in universalistic terms, it is not the same for experts and expatriates living in Luang Prabang, or for the Lao diaspora, whose royal nostalgia also conveys their dreams of political change. Whereas many people from Luang Prabang fearfully stress the current transformation of their town into a ‘Luang Falang’ (a Luang Prabang owned by Westerners), a world in which they feel dispossessed, some cling to the futurity of their new urban landscape. As one elderly man concluded, ‘Who will remember UNESCO in thousand years? Laos and Buddhism will still be there, but who will remember UNESCO?’ Hope is never far from nostalgia. I have shown that Luang Prabang constitutes an arena for multiple nostalgias, variously experienced by different groups of often disconnected people who occupy diverse positions. However, while engaging with the town of their own, together they produce a heritage scene. A locus of different values, Luang Prabang is an illustration of a network of interconnections between diverse people with various interests, concatenated around heritage. UNESCO experts, foreign tourists, expatriates and Lao elites from the diaspora share a sense of longing for the ancient (their past or otherwise) and, in some cases, glorify the Indochinese past, an image used by tourism companies and local private investors. Such an image is beneficial to the development of tourism, crucial to most inhabitants, and seems to converge with a Lao nationalist reading of history, freezing royal and Indochinese eras as ‘things from the past’, thus rendering them harmless to the present. In that regard, heritage in Luang Prabang constitutes a ‘boundary object’ (Star and Griesemer 1989), which assembles the disparate interests of disconnected individuals who are all invested in the production of a certain kind of fantasy that brings money to locals (although unequally), a sense of cultural righteousness to UNESCO and pleasure to tourists. This convergence takes place despite apparent misunderstandings between multiple parties who do not to share a common sense of heritage. Nor does the convergence rely on similar nostalgic postures. How, then, to explain such a concatenation around Luang Prabang’s heritage? Whether it is bureaucratic, lived or consumerist, nostalgia motivates UNESCO experts and civil servants to protect monuments and safeguard arts. The appetite of tourists for nostalgic consumption is also highly transformative as it inspires locals to sell Indochinese nostalgia. Simultaneously, since its patrimonial recognition, the town centre is being bought by members of the ‘cosmopolitan class’, people with

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money from Singapore, Thailand, France or Australia, who open restaurants and hotels displaying the style of the ‘Indochinese spirit’. Such nostalgic gentrification, which also sells nostalgia to tourists, largely emanates from foreigners who see Luang Prabang as a charming place to live and a profitable place in which to invest. A heritagescape such as this is evidently not immune to the pressures of international capital which contribute to the conversion of the town into a ‘Luang Falang’, a consumer brand sold on the basis of its artificial uniqueness. But in Luang Prabang, patrimonial and consumerist nostalgias alone cannot explain the transformation of the town into what it is today. In post-Soviet Russia, Petra Rethmann (2008) has shown that nostalgia is rendered possible by a certain kind of political de-ideologization. In Moscow, the development of capitalist consumerism has allowed the deployment of nonsubversive nostalgias for empty forms and material ruins (such as the Sculpture Park, Manezh Square and Moskva Pool) that tend to take over local forms of memory attached to them. Certainly, UNESCOization and the transnational community of loss have to be thought of concomitantly with the development of capitalist consumerism. But also, importantly, they converge with national political necessities. In Lao PDR, such necessities are anti-royalist and framed in evolutionist terms that are clearly neither de-ideologized nor nostalgic. Here, the scene of heritagization reveals its very complexity in conjunction with nationalistic projects, the ordinary hopes of inhabitants for prosperity, cultural globalization, colonial legacies and the deployment of multiple nostalgias. David Berliner is associate professor of anthropology at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. His books include Mémoires religieuses Baga (2014) and the edited volumes Anthropology and Nostalgia (2014, with Olivia Angé) and Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches (2007, with Ramon Sarro). He is a past editor of the EASA journal Social Anthropology / Anthropologie sociale.

Notes This chapter first appeared in 2012 as ‘Multiple nostalgias: The fabric of heritage in Luang Prabang (Lao PDR)’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18: 769–86. Permission to republish it here is gratefully acknowledged. I have benefited tremendously from the generous comments of Anne Allison, Juliet Bedford, Chiara Bortolotto,

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Christoph Brumann, Catherine Choron-Baix, Olivier Evrard, Nathalie Heinich, Michael Herzfeld, Holly High, Martin Holbraad, Johanna Markkula, Lynn Meskell, Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic, Pierre Petit, Charles Piot, Mike Rowlands and Michael Stewart. Also I would like to thank Matthew Engelke and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful remarks on an earlier version of this text. 1. Although it does not rely on the trope of the disappearing savage, anthropology continues to be motivated by nostalgia. First, it is as if we have ‘nostalgized’ the heterogeneous, the local, the particular, the weak. As anthropologists, aren’t we drawn sentimentally to the indigenousness of our interlocutors (whether they are close or far away), their very locality against the idea of an undifferentiated modernity? Secondly, even when they wager on rupture, scholars are ‘longing for continuity in a fragmented world’ (Boym 2001: xvi), a world of persistent indigenousness in disrupted times. Lastly, notwithstanding our research subjects, it is also our methods that we ‘nostalgize’. Participant observation functions as an impossible quest for intimacy and sincerity. It is often voiced by anthropologists as a longing for a future understanding never to be fully realized. See High (2011) for an important discussion of the ethnographer’s melancholia. For a fuller treatment, see Berliner (2014). 2. Gyimothy (2005) coined the notion ‘nostalgiascape’ to better understand a yearning for the past expressed in tourist consumption. Looking at inns in Denmark, she emphasizes how these countryside buildings constitute nostalgiascapes which activate romantic and patriotic memories of rural Danishness. 3. Such transformative aspect of nostalgia is elegantly captured by novelist Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when he writes: ‘In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine’ (1984: 4). 4. The preservationist discourse of UNESCO is committed to specific modes of framing heritage – essentially focusing on the built environment, and using technical and bureaucratic means to conserve it in a certain state. By extension, experts believe that it is possible to maintain the spirit of a place in the same way. One wonders, however, how it is possible to monitor an atmosphere. 5. Anthropologists have long worked for UNESCO (e.g. Métraux or, more loosely, Lévi-Strauss) and their number has increased over the last few decades. The history of the complex relationship between UNESCO and anthropologists remains to be written. 6. See the article by Starin (2008), an example of such an alarmist perspective. 7. For a detailed analysis of the impact of tourism in Luang Prabang, see Gujadhur and Rogers (2008). 8. The novel (Duras 1984) and film realized by Annaud in 1992 (which received three million viewers in France) have been influential in promoting certain visions of French Indochina. For instance, a French blogger visiting Luang Prabang wrote: ‘Luang Prabang . . . could have hosted the

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love between Marguerite Duras and the “man of Cholen”. . . . Parked in front of an old house, I even believe I recognize the gleaming car of the Chinese, as if the lovers had outdistanced my words, my desires’ (retrieved 17 August 2012 from http://foodinandout.over-blog.fr/articletamarindl-invitation-a-plonger-luang-prabang-laos-2-66506161.html).

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Collins, J. 2008. ‘“But What if I Should Need to Defecate in Your Neighborhood, Madame?”: Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site’, Cultural Anthropology 23: 279–328. Dames, N. 2010. ‘Nostalgia and Its Disciplines’, Memory Studies 3: 269–75. Dann, G. 1998. ‘“There’s No Business Like Old Business”: Tourism, the Nostalgia Industry of the Future’, in W. Theobald (ed.), Global Tourism, 2nd edition. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, pp. 29–43. Davis, F. 1979. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: Free Press. Dawdy, S. L. 2010. ‘Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity’, Current Anthropology 51: 761–93. Debray, R. 1997. Transmettre. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob. Di Giovine, M. 2008. The Heritage-Scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism. Plymouth, NH: Lexington Books. Duras, M. 1984. L’Amant. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Evans, G. 1998. The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Fabian, J. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Objects. New York: Columbia University Press. Fabre, D. 2008. ‘Chinoiserie des lumières: Variations sur l’individu-monde’, L’Homme 185–86: 269–300. Faubion, J. 1993. ‘History in Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 35–54. Frow, J. 1991. ‘Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia’, October 57: 123–51. Graburn, N. 1995. ‘Tourism, Modernity and Nostalgia’, in A. Ahmed and C. Shore (eds.), The Future of Anthropology: Its Relevance to the Contemporary World. London: Athlone, pp. 158–78.    . 2000. ‘Learning to Consume: What is Heritage and When is it Traditional?’ in N. Al Sayyad (ed.), Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage. London: Routledge, pp. 68–89. Gujadhur, T., and P. Rogers. 2008. ‘Pro-Poor Tourism and the Value of Heritage in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR’, in K. Luger and K. Woehler (eds.), World Heritage and Tourism: Protecting and Using from a Sustainable Perspective. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag. Gyimothy, S. 2005. ‘Nostalgiascapes: The Renaissance of Danish Countryside Inns’, in T. O’Dell and P. Billing (eds.), Experience-Scapes: Tourism, Culture and Economy. Copenhagen: Business School Press, pp. 111–27. Harvey, D. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heinich, N. 2009. La fabrique du patrimoine: De la cathédrale à la petite cuillère. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Herzfeld, M. 1991. A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton, NJ: University Press.    . 1996. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. London: Routledge.

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   . 2011. ‘Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of History’, Current Anthropology 51: 259–67. High, H. 2011. ‘Melancholia and Anthropology’, American Ethnologist 38: 217–33. ICOMOS. 2008. ‘Québec Declaration on the Preservation of the Spirit of the Place 2008’, adopted at Québec, Canada, 4 October, retrieved 17 August 2012 from http://www.international.icomos.org/quebec2008/ quebec_ declaration/pdf/GA16_Quebec_Declaration_Final_EN.pdf. IMPACT. 2004. Tourism and Heritage Site Management in the World Heritage Town of Luang Prabang, Lao PDR. Honolulu: Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture in Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO Bangkok and School of Travel Industry Management, University of Hawai’i. Ivarsson, S. 2008. Creating Laos: The Making of a Lao Space between Indochina and Siam, 1860–1945. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Jankélévitch, V. 1983. L’irréversible et la nostalgie. Paris: Flammarion. Kennedy, L., and M.-R. Williams. 2001. ‘The Past without the Pain: The Manufacture of Nostalgia in Vietnam’s Tourism Industry’, in Hue-Tam Ho Tai (ed.), The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 135–63. Koselleck, R. 2004 [1979]. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (trans. K. Tribe). New York: Columbia University Press. Kundera, M. 1984. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (trans. M. H. Heim). New York: Harper & Row. Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1961 [1955]. A World on the Wane (trans. J. Russell). London: Hutchinson. Long, C., and J. Sweet. 2006. ‘Globalization, Nationalism and World Heritage: Interpreting Luang Prabang’, South-East Asia Research 14: 445–69. Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Meskell, L. 2012. ‘The Rush to Inscribe: Reflections on the 35th Session of the World Heritage Committee, UNESCO Paris, 2011’, Journal of Field Archaeology 37: 145–51. Navaro-Yashin, Y. 2009. ‘Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15: 1–18. Norindr, P. 1997. Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peleggi, M. 2002. The Politics of Ruins and the Business of Nostalgia. Bangkok: White Lotus Press.    . 2005. ‘Consuming Colonial Nostalgia: The Monumentalization of

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Historic Hotels in Urban South-East Asia’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 46: 255–65. Perec, G. 1995. L’infra-ordinaire. Paris: Le Seuil. Pickering, M., and E. Keightley 2006. ‘The Modalities of Nostalgia’, Current Sociology 54: 919–41. Piot, C. 2010. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rethmann, P. 2008. ‘Nostalgie à Moscou’, Anthropologie et Sociétés 32: 85–102. Robbins, J. 2007. ‘Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity’, Current Anthropology 48(1): 5–38. Robertson, R. 1992. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Rosaldo, R. 1989. ‘Imperialist Nostalgia’, Representations 26: 107–22. Schwenkel, C. 2006. ‘Recombinant History: Transnational Practices of Memory and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Vietnam’, Cultural Anthropology 21: 3–30. Star, S. L., and J. R. Griesemer. 1989. ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39’, Social Studies of Science 19: 387–420. Starin, D. 2008. ‘World Heritage Designation: Blessing or Threat?’ Critical Asian Studies 40: 639–52. Stewart, K. 1988. ‘Nostalgia: A Polemic’, Cultural Anthropology 3: 227–41. Stoler, A. 2008. ‘Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination’, Cultural Anthropology 23: 191–219. Strathern, M. 1995. ‘Nostalgia and the New Genetics’, in D. Battaglia (ed.), Rhetorics of Self-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 97–120. Stuart-Fox, M. 1997. A History of Laos. Cambridge: University Press. Suntikul, W. 2009. ‘The Impact of Tourism on the Monks of Luang Prabang’, in L. Turgeon (ed.), The Spirit of the Place: Between Tangible and Intangible Heritage. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université de Laval, pp. 301–12. White, G. 2006. ‘Epilogue: Memory Moments’, Ethos 34: 325–41.

Part II Archaeological Sites

Chapter 5 Thinking Globally and Acting Locally in Angkor Keiko Miura

‘Think globally, act locally’ has become a popular slogan since the early 1970s in the fields of environmentalism, development, town planning, education, business and so forth in the course of globalization. This slogan may be interpreted that, in consideration to world concerns, one is to act locally. This could well be applied to the cosmopolitan theme of protecting natural and cultural heritage sites of ‘outstanding universal value’ as World Heritage sites, which is to be achieved through ‘good’ local management practises. In the course of time, however, tensions and conflicts have emerged between global ideals and local application in a number of World Heritage sites, as reported in this volume and elsewhere (Harrison and Hitchcock 2005, Labadi and Long 2010, Robinson et al. 2000, Waterton and Watson 2011, White and Carmen 2007). The Angkor World Heritage site in Cambodia offers an exemplary case of complex contestations having emerged among a variety of players, where global ideals have come, intentionally or by misinterpretation, to freeze many traditional local practises on the ground, further intensifying conflicts between managing authorities and local inhabitants. This situation counters the universalizing theme of promoting a culture of peace advocated by UNESCO (UNESCO 2015). Among the numerous World Heritage sites on the List, Angkor, inscribed in 1992, has a special status for the World Heritage Centre and UNESCO. The site is regarded not only as one of the

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largest archaeological working sites (cf. ICC 1998: 5, Lemaistre and Cavalier 2002: 125), but also as one of the most successful restorations achieved, to the point of having been removed from the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger in 2004, as described in one of the ‘Success Stories’ on the Centre’s website (UNESCO 2012a). Even though this chapter does not intend to undermine or negate this success, it has to be said that the Angkor story misleads us to believe that everything has gone well with site management. I have learnt other stories through working in the Culture Unit of the UNESCO office in Cambodia from 1992 to 1998, with a six-month interval working with the Japanese Government Team for Safeguarding Angkor (JSA 2006),1 followed by two years of PhD fieldwork in Angkor from 1999 to 2001 (cf. Miura 2004) and ongoing research thenceforth (cf. Miura 2008, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c). In total, my involvement with the issues surrounding Angkor and Cambodia has stretched over two decades, a time when conflicts among players at different levels were revealed, as were the inadequacies of balancing the sustenance of community lives, tourism development and the conservation of monuments and sites. Using the case study of Angkor, I try to show how difficult it is to apply locally what is considered ideal globally.2 In the first place, we need to ask ourselves whose ideal is spreading throughout the world, what kind of mechanisms exist locally in order to achieve this objective, and at which expense, which shortcomings there are and what other global idealism cuts across this particular universal theme. Peace Building and Cultural Rehabilitation All the sites nominated as World Heritage sites have naturally been considered as worthy of world attention, protection and prestige. Among them, Angkor stands out because of its scale, grandiosity and historicity. Another important factor is related to Cambodia’s tragic past and the ‘success’ of consorted efforts of the international community to ‘save’ Cambodia and its national symbol – Angkor3 – from decay, neglect and illicit traffic of artefacts (cf. Miura 2011a: 12–15). Cultural rehabilitation is an integral part of, if not central to, the reconstruction of a society or nation. It goes along with the global theme of peace building and its local application. Sites with such significance include the Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan (cf. Meskell 2010: 194–95) and

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the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls (UNESCO 2013), though all these sites are in different situations vis-à-vis conflicts, and the last two sites continue to be in precarious states. It is therefore no surprise that the UNESCO expert sent to Angkor by the director-general since 1994 was thereafter entrusted to negotiate the protection of heritage with authorities in former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. Archaeologists, sociologists, historians and anthropologists have also begun to pay attention to heritage sites in conflict zones and the potential of heritage in reconciliatory contexts (cf. Meskell 2010). The civil war in Cambodia had lasted over two decades, starting with the spreading of the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s as a battlefield of the Cold War. Cambodia went through the genocidal Pol Pot regime that reduced the country to rubble between April 1975 and January 1979. After having toppled the Pol Pot regime, the Phnom Penh government led by Heng Samrin was not recognized as representing a sovereign country in the United Nations because of the presence of Vietnamese advisors and military, and the civil war continued. Nonetheless, peace negotiations among the warring parties proceeded, and the Vietnamese troops left Cambodia by 1989. Subsequently, four warring parties agreed to sign the Peace Agreements in Paris in 1991 (UNESCO 1993: 18–19), which was a major step forward for the international community to actively help maintain peace and reconstruct Cambodia, and for UNESCO to proceed with its cultural mission to safeguard Angkor. Cambodia therefore became an international target of a successful operation. As one can see, cultural rehabilitation has both symbolic and practical meanings in Cambodia as in other postconflict societies, namely to unify the divided nation and restore the vestige of prestigious heritage. Angkor has become the only symbol of dignity that the present generation of all walks of life can share in Cambodia, so safeguarding Angkor is tantamount to saving Cambodia in its entirety. The scenario of trying to make Angkor a showcase World Heritage site was already laid out and followed faithfully. Angkor, with its approximately 401 square kilometres comprising local inhabitants in a number of villages, was inscribed in 1992 as a World Heritage site and added to the List of World Heritage in Danger at the same time. The site includes Angkor Park, established in 1925 by the French and consisted of three sections, Banteay Srei, Angkor and Roluos. The French colonial idea of managing a heritage site was to convert it into a park, and this has been more or less adopted throughout the West and spread worldwide, mainly through UNESCO (Clémentin-Ojha and Manguin 2007, Dagens 1989: 99, Miura 2004: 123).

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The international community has poured a wealth of human, technical and financial resources into Cambodia, and at the same time the safeguarding of Angkor World Heritage site has vigorously been promoted through the International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC) established in Tokyo in 1993. ICC4 has UNESCO working as the standing secretariat. The function of ICC is to serve as a locale for introducing new projects to be examined or launched, reporting on the progress of existing projects or discussing the technicalities of restoration or other matters, while trying to solve problems, mistrust or rivalries among participating international teams and individual experts of restoration, conservation, research, development and tourism. The establishment of such an intergovernmental committee for a single World Heritage site is rather rare, mostly occurring with sites in postconflict countries. Despite its uniting function, however, ICC also became a prominent stage for disputes amongst international and national actors, as we shall see later. Political settlement and cultural rehabilitation have taken more than two decades, and both paths have encountered a number of challenges and setbacks. The restoration and conservation of Angkor monuments and sites are nevertheless considered as a big ‘success’ by ICC experts and the World Heritage Centre (cf. UNESCO 2010, 2012a). This ‘success’ runs parallel to that of international work on the rehabilitation of Cambodian sociopolitical and economic lives. The next section will discuss what has taken place behind the scenes of such a ‘success’. Conflicts at National and International Levels The nomination of Angkor as a World Heritage site has been achieved through the concerted efforts of Cambodia and UNESCO. It stood as a symbol of advancing peaceful reconciliation of the divided nation and sociocultural rehabilitation. Soon afterwards, however, conflicts emerged, and Angkor became a new battlefield between national players, international experts and Cambodians and foreigners. To make it even more complicated, some Cambodians returning to the country to take up high managerial positions have either foreign passports or dual citizenship. This makes the lines between international, national and local obscure. The main disputes were over how to protect and manage Angkor and who should lead it. The first conflict occurred between the director of the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh and the Cambodian minister of state for

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Angkor. This began with the latter holding both foreign and Cambodian nationalities and having also worked as an international consultant with the UN Human Settlement Programme. The issue was who should lead the task of managing the conservation and development of Angkor. Clearly related to the first conflict, the next issue concerned the scale of protection zones and UNESCO’s taking initiative or, according to the minister, their lack of coordination and consultation with the national authority for matters related to Angkor and its management. Unlike other World Heritage sites, some conditions at Angkor were yet to be met at the time of nomination, but these were waived because of the urgency of protecting it. These included the establishment of permanent boundaries, buffer zones, a national protection agency, protective legislation and international monitoring and coordination (UNESCO 1993: 22, Miura 2011a: 14–15). The Zoning and Environmental Management Plan for Angkor (ZEMP) was executed by the UNESCO office in Cambodia and funded by the UN Development Agency (UNDP) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). For the project, a multidisciplinary group was formed of twenty-five experts invited from eleven countries (ZEMP Expert Team 1993: chaps. 1, 5). As mentioned earlier, UNESCO and the Cambodian minister of state for Angkor had a serious conflict over zoning and other matters, resulting in the replacement of the director of the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh. Some experts with the ZEMP project were also in disagreement with the team leader, a specialist of park management, mainly regarding the final report submitted to the Cambodian government. The thick original draft report consisting of the respective experts’ research findings and recommendations was synthesized by the team leader into a thin final report that left out many important details. ZEMP nonetheless became a zoning model for other World Heritage sites, such as Vat Phou and Associated Ancient Settlements within the Champasak Cultural Landscape. Conflicts over management also emerged within APSARA, the national authority in charge of managing the site established in 1995 (APSARA 1998). Two Cambodian architectural experts who had studied in France became the first vice president (the aforementioned minister of state)5 and director-general of APSARA (ICC 1995: 13). The vice president became increasingly frustrated with the director-general, who did not act strongly enough against development schemes planned in Angkor, some of which were considered unsuitable for a World Heritage site or in violation of the zoning guidelines (cf. APSARA 2008: 212–20). At the ICC meeting in 1998, the

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vice president claimed that the services of the director-general (who was also present) were no longer needed.6 One year later, the minister of state for Angkor (who had previously been vice president of APSARA) was reappointed as its chairman and CEO, absorbing the position of the expelled director-general as well (cf. ICC 1999a: 5). APSARA also had conflicts and rivalries with other national authorities, including the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Ministry of Tourism and the Siem Reap provincial authority, to name but a few. In particular, the rivalries of the vice president of APSARA and the minister of culture and fine arts became so intense that the ICC meetings sometimes became a stage of public denouncement and harsh exchanges. In fact, the creation of APSARA as a new authority has resulted in other authorities being deprived of opportunities to gain economic profits as well as prestige through their work in the Angkor area. In particular, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts contains the Angkor Conservation Office (ACO), which had historically been in charge of restoration and conservation of Angkor monuments and sites. ACO’s loss of authority over the management of Angkor was a serious blow to its staff, who obviously resented working under the authority of APSARA. In addition, a studied ignorance of the authority and presence of APSARA has often been revealed, with the building of hotels inside the protection zone permitted by other authorities. Even the Heritage Police, newly established under the authority of the Ministry of Interior in 1997 (APSARA 1998: 246–49), often took initiative in managing the site and imposed its own regulations on local inhabitants, based on its own view of how a World Heritage site should be presented to the visitors and managed, without consulting APSARA (cf. Miura 2004). In 1998, the third director of the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh was replaced, same as the first, following a few months of conflicts with the minister of state for Angkor (APSARA’s chairman) and also the minister of culture and fine arts (ICC 1998: 5–6). Cambodia became a fairly difficult country for UNESCO to work in, with Angkor the most sensitive area of operation. ICC at times criticized the Cambodian government, especially concerning the entrance fees to Angkor Park collected by a private company, Sokha Hotels. Japan, the largest donor to Cambodia from the 1990s to the 2000s and a cochair of ICC, was especially critical of this situation, insisting that a part of the park’s revenue be used for covering expenses of restoration and conservation. As a consequence, a substantial part of the revenue was gradually diverted to APSARA, which seriously lacked financial and human resources

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from the beginning (ICC 1999b: 12; APSARA 2000: 2–3; Miura 2004: 173). Through 2000, APSARA, together with ICC, had been cautious of rapid development of the site, but the Cambodian government was becoming increasingly impatient with ICC’s slow approval processes for development projects, mainly for tourism. Since the latter half of the 1990s, the business sector had become fairly active in proposing to the government lucrative enterprises in the Siem Reap-Angkor area, especially targeting Angkor Wat. The battle between APSARA, supported by ICC, and the Cambodian government became apparent in June 2001 when the Cambodian government suddenly replaced APSARA’s chairman cum CEO, a staunch conservationist, with his deputy (Miura 2004: 172, 2011a: 23). One month after the restructuring of APSARA, a representative of the Cambodian government said at the ICC Plenary Session that ‘this restructuring was a decision made by the Royal Government as it undertakes a new stage in its agenda – that being the sustainable development of the Angkor site – at a time when the safeguarding phase is coming to a conclusion’ (ICC 2001a: 8). In the Technical Committee six months later, the Cambodian government showed more obvious frustration over the continuing cautious decision processes of ICC, stating, ‘we have to show an entrepreneurial spirit’. The government expressed the wish that answers concerning investor projects be given more quickly. . . . A sound and light project will be submitted to the Committee for consideration. . . . I suggest that the Technical Committee either make a promise to give an answer quickly or at least indicate a specific date by which a decision will be made to give the project the go-ahead or not. Angkor is sleeping! We will wake it up! (ICC 2001b: 8)

Conflicts on the Ground between Local Inhabitants and Managing Authorities The nature of the World Heritage listing and the fact that State Parties are the only authorized representatives of their countries’ ‘heritage values’ are conducive to local conflicts between states and their people over meaning and what to preserve (Askew 2010: 39), and how to use the heritage space and resources. Paying attention to the ‘living aspects’ of heritage, some heritage sites such as Angkor are considered as ‘living heritage sites’. There is a range of interpretations

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to this notion, but the main aspects discussed are that the heritage has been used for worship or any other activities, and certainly not ‘dead’ as just ruins; a site with a living population certainly falls into this category (Miura 2004, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c). Among Cambodian officials, there are discrepancies in the understanding of what aspects make the site ‘living’; they tend to think that the presence of tourists is the most important factor, rather than the people ‘living’ in and making use of the site. Conflicts fought between national and international actors and institutions through 2001 mostly took place in offices and meetings. In the actual site itself, many of the local inhabitants who were hired by international restoration and conservation teams were fairly content, but the situation changed dramatically over the Khmer New Year of April 2000. While APSARA had been preoccupied with internal and external conflicts, limited funds and a lack of staff and expertise, the Heritage Police had taken initiatives in managing the site. These included the imposition of a number of restrictions on traditional practises of local inhabitants.7 While local inhabitants were primarily worried about their livelihoods, the Heritage Police officially stated that its main task was to protect the values of the World Heritage site, thus it was necessary to restrict many of the traditional local practises conducted there. The understanding of the Heritage Police chief was that the global value of the World Heritage site superseded its local uses (Miura 2004: 154–70) , another case of a state official’s establishment of a hierarchy of heritage that UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee have not asked for (cf. Rodger 2007: 13). The restrictions imposed by the Heritage Police were primarily over access to and use of old heritage space and its materials and resources through long-held practises of the local population as their customary rights. Locals had engaged in the cultivation of rice in large monumental sites, resin tapping, cutting trees, firewood collection and the releasing of cows and buffaloes to graze in large monumental grounds, especially in and around Angkor Wat. Violations meant that fines would be charged, but foreign researchers working on-site spotted cattle belonging to the Heritage Police grazing in an ancient temple ground even after the ban was imposed on the local population. Still, the Heritage Police collected self-imposed dues from local inhabitants, and others who worked individually in the site selling souvenirs, food and drinks, caretakers of religious statues and those who cultivated rice in ponds and lakes inside large monumental sites or collected forest products (Miura 2004: 153–85). These restrictions were much stricter than suggested in the zoning guidelines which

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Figure 5.1.  APSARA maintenance workers at the Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom (photo: Keiko Miura).

had been formulated according to the ZEMP recommendations (APSARA 2008: 212–23). Following the emergence of confrontations between the Heritage Police and the local inhabitants as well as Buddhist monks from monasteries in the Angkor area, a meeting was organized by APSARA

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in August 2000 in the Angkor temple of Ta Nei. The participants included local villagers, monks, representatives of the local government, APSARA, the Heritage Police, NGOs operating in Angkor and international researchers. The issue was split into two parts: the first was related to the notion of the World Heritage site and actions taken or not to be taken on-site as discussed by Cambodian officials; the second concerned the lives of local inhabitants, who were mostly farmers. Local farmers were asked to respect the rules and restrictions, and tolerate the resulting hardship, because Angkor was accorded the prestige of a World Heritage site, and thus was no longer for local inhabitants only. The latter, supported by international researchers, NGO staff and parts of the local authorities, asked that they be allowed to engage in rice cultivation and firewood collection. Formerly, trees and some lakes and ponds in Angkor Thom and other Angkor temple sites had been owned and cared for by certain families of local villages, but many of the trees had been illegally logged by Cambodian and Vietnamese soldiers during the period of the Vietnamese occupation according to some local witnesses (Miura 2004: 144–45). The lives of local inhabitants had changed dramatically since 2000 because of these restrictions. By then, many people from outside the perimeter of the World Heritage site began to move in and/or buy up land in the site illegally, creating more stress on the limited natural resources. The turn of the century marked a clear beginning of conflicts between local inhabitants and managing authorities, with the latter’s control becoming tighter. Local inhabitants came to realize that living in a World Heritage site entailed hardship despite their initial hopes for improvement through benefits acquired from tourism development in Siem Reap-Angkor.8 Tourism development did advance in the 2000s (cf. Hing and Tuot 2007, Winter 2007, Baromey 2011), but local inhabitants only profited to a limited degree because most lucrative jobs were offered to urban dwellers or people from other provinces with higher education and, very importantly, connections to the owners or managers of tourism-related enterprises (Miura 2004: 186–211, 2011b: 114, 116, Hing and Tuot 2007). The restrictions imposed by the Heritage Police on the local inhabitants in 2000 were incorporated in the Royal Decree on the Zoning and Management of the Siem Reap-Angkor region issued in 2004 (APSARA Authority 2005, Miura 2011a: 25). This Royal Decree also stressed the exclusive authority that APSARA was provided with in matters concerning the Angkor site, thus trying to eradicate unlawful conducts of individual persons and other authorities at the same time.

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The authority of APSARA vis-à-vis other governmental departments became really firm then, especially after Sok An – one of the most powerful vice ministers in Cambodia – was appointed as chairman of APSARA that year. The phase of sustainable development shifting from that of emergency conservation began in 2004, following the Paris Conference held in November 2003 on the tenth anniversary of the Tokyo Declaration (cf. ICC 2004). After the restructuring of APSARA in 2004, another reshuffle came about in 2008; each time it expanded and became more bureaucratic and a political tool, with some posts being used for political appointments after the victory of the ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The years of APSARA restructuring clearly corresponded to the national elections that took place in 2003 and 2008; in both cases, the CPP won the majority of votes. The local villagers have observed that the government would loosen restrictions before the elections, only to tighten them again afterwards. Although the shift of focus in Angkor from conservation to sustainable development was announced at the end of 2003 and practically began in 2004, the conservation regime continued with renewed vigour and expansiveness. The enthusiasm of APSARA for the conservation of monuments and sites had created tensions with the monks in Angkor who wished to construct new vihear (temple halls) and rebuild other old structures even in the 1990s. The practise of reconstruction is related to merit making in the canon of Theravada Buddhism, however this is considered as damaging to the authenticity of buildings and the site by a European standard of conservation. The conservation regime began to spread to local villages after 2004 because for APSARA the conservation of traditional village landscapes in Angkor must be in line with their understanding of UNESCO’s notion of conservation. After all, many senior politicians were either educated in the French system in Cambodia or in France. This meant that the styles, numbers and locations of existing houses of old (not new) ‘legal’ villagers had to be maintained. Any violations resulted in demolition. The legitimacy of ‘old’ inhabitants was determined by the fact of their ‘living’ in the particular place in the year of survey, either 2000 or 2004, when APSARA recorded the names of owners, their family members and the maps of vernacular buildings in their house compounds in Zones 1 and 2 (Core and Buffer Zones, respectively). The strict imposition of conservation regime in villages is also related to rapid population growth, mainly due to illegal immigration and land transactions. Those who came to live

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in villages in Zone 1 or 2 are considered as illegal inhabitants whose houses were exposed to demolition. Those whose houses were subject to demolition however included many ‘old’ inhabitants and their children. Local villagers traditionally practised village endogamy and matrilocality, meaning that married daughters often built their houses in or around the compounds of their parents’ houses. This was no longer allowed according to the new regulations. Only the renovation, reconstruction or extension of houses of ‘old’ legal inhabitants were allowed if a request for a building permit was submitted to and approved by APSARA. Some even say that requests for the construction of chicken huts, cowsheds, fences and toilets were rejected, and if residents went ahead with construction before receiving permits, the structures would be destroyed. In the past, a building permit was issued by the village chief and the commune chief,9 but with the new system, traditional authorities were barred from issuing permits – only APSARA could do so. Some villages and communes assumed that this would apply only to substantial houses and not for small wooden shacks with palm-leaf roofs and walls favoured by the poor, but APSARA imposed its absolute authority. Delays in the issuance of permits of up to more than three months often made the villagers impatient, and they would frequently start construction for fear of termite damage to wood they had already purchased or in consideration of auspicious days, the approaching rainy season or other personal needs (Miura 2011c: 121–44). Inside APSARA, there were miscommunications and rivalries between the departments. Corruption among staff was reported by Buddhist monks and local villagers. Some APSARA staff were said to have received substantial amounts of bribe money in exchange for permitting even modern concrete houses or those for young couples, whereas the poor often became the victims of merciless destruction of ‘illegally’ built houses. Intimidation and violence were sometimes used and valuables were often said to have been stolen by APSARA staff before demolition. Some villages and individual inhabitants who were either obedient or had powerful connections could escape demolition, and so did villages together that challenged APSARA’s demolition teams armed with guns. Because most victims of house demolition were from among the vulnerable, and the handling of building permits and punishments was unfair, the confrontations between APSARA and local inhabitants became more severe than those with the Heritage Police in the earlier period. When a young pregnant woman had her makeshift hut demolished by APSARA during her absence, many fellow villagers protested. The woman

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took the case to a human rights organization and also talked to the Voice of America (official external broadcast of the US government) and some local newspapers. After this incident, APSARA was said to have become more cautious with local villagers than before. Yet mistrust between local inhabitants and APSARA has prevailed. Local inhabitants were deeply fearful of APSARA, whose regime they often compared with the Pol Pot regime; some argued that they had not voted for APSARA (Miura 2011c: 126–44). Sustainable Development and Sustainable Management? The shift to ‘sustainable development’ was in line with changes to international policy priorities over the last two decades (cf. Stephen 2004: 13–14). The concept of sustainable development was initially discussed in the sphere of environmental protection and development, implying the sustainable use of natural resources, and then was gradually incorporated in the culture sector. In the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, ideals of strategic management and use of heritage as part of economic development were officially expressed, and resulting strategies were formulated (Sørensen 2007: 75). In 2005, the idea of sustainable development also brought changes in the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention. Paragraph 6 states: ‘Since the adoption of the Convention in 1972, the international community has embraced the concept of “sustainable development”. The protection and conservation of the natural and cultural heritage are a significant contribution to sustainable development’ (UNESCO 2012c: 11). In 2012, sustainable development and community participation became the focus of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the World Heritage Convention (ibid.: 5). Sustainable use of natural and cultural resources in tourism development and by local communities is stressed, and there is an emphasis on community participation in the planning and approval of sustainable tourism and heritage management (ibid.: 11–15). Given these developments, where and how can we see sustainable development in the Angkor World Heritage site? Sok An, as APSARA chairman, told at the ICC Plenary Session in December 2004: ‘The first challenge is HERITAGE CONSERVATION. . . . The second challenge, that of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . . . all partners and decision-makers in the area of economics are now in agreement to make cultural heritage the engine of development, with special emphasis on cultural tourism’ (ICC 2004: 13).

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The link between conservation and sustainable development has been expressed on a number of occasions by APSARA directors since 2004 (cf. ICC 2006a: 122, 2006b: 33). APSARA’s policy tries to realize sustainable development in four ways: first, by promoting cultural tourism in a sustained manner; second, by imposing on local villagers strict restrictions on building and the exploitation of natural resources and land use; third, by reducing the present local population through encouraging young reproductive couples to voluntarily migrate outside the World Heritage site; and fourth, by working with the local communities to respond to their needs for sustainable community development and living. Sustainable tourism, in part relating to the needs of conservation, has been promoted by restricting access of large vehicles into Angkor Thom in order to prevent narrow gates from being destabilized. Tourists in large buses can change vehicles near the south gate, to minibuses, open electric cars or elephants, while other visitors may arrive by hired motorbike taxies, remorques (a French word for a trailer that Cambodians use) or tuk-tuks (a Thai word), bikes or taxies. The number of international visitors to Siem Reap-Angkor, however, has exceeded one million people per annum since 2007, and if we add domestic tourists, the total number of visitors exceeded two million in 2008 (Neth 2011: 151) and has increased further since (cf. De Launey 2011, Winn 2011). Both UNESCO and conservation experts have been fairly anxious over the sustainability of monuments and sites as well as the sustenance of tourism. For instance, the stairs to the upper level of Angkor Wat have been closed to tourists, with the exception of the east access that has a rail to prevent the erosion of stones and accidents, and there is also a strict cap on the number of people allowed on the hill of Phnom Bakheng at sunset (cf. De Launey 2011, Winn 2011). Traffic congestion and dust at the foot of the hill has become a common experience for visitors. The rampant construction of accommodations and tourism-related facilities in Siem Reap was also accompanied by the influx of immigrants into the region, and the increased pumping of water has caused stress to the water table (JICA 2006: 119). The infrastructures of Siem Reap have not developed in line with the rapidly increasing number of visitors. Occasional heavy rain easily causes floods of the Siem Reap river and nearby roads, while open sewer systems and canals are littered and stink (cf. De Launey 2011). Not only is the sustenance of tourism at high risk, the local communities have also received fairly limited benefits. In 2007, Siem Reap was the third-poorest province in Cambodia, even while

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it is the highest-earning province (Hing and Tuot 2007: 27, 39, De Lopez et al 2006: 6, Esposito and Nam 2008: iii–36). The second strategy of APSARA, keeping local inhabitants away from natural resource exploitation and the use of the site, has already been discussed. In order to prevent further stress on natural resources, the Cambodian government set aside a land area of 1,012 hectares at the Run Ta-Ek commune northeast of the Angkor group of the World Heritage site. Young couples were not allowed to build new houses in their villages in the World Heritage site, but were instead encouraged to move here, where the number of houses and population is supposed to maintain the conditions of their home villages. Nearly one hundred families have moved into the area since the second half of 2010, but others are hesitant to make the move because of how difficult it is to make a living in an area that is far from the market, touristic sites and their parents. Even though Run Ta-Ek is located outside the World Heritage site, APSARA calls it an ecovillage for sustainable development, trying to convert it into a model village to be emulated in the surrounding area (APSARA Authority 2008, Miura 2011a: 128–30). In order to support the needs of local communities, some departments of APSARA began to render services to them, including the

Figure 5.2.  The interrupted construction of a house for a young couple in February 2010 (photo: Keiko Miura).

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provision of a community forest where trees were planted for domestic consumption in Zone 2 and the allocation of an organic farm of five hectares to be managed by some local villagers. In addition, APSARA rehabilitated roads and canals in some areas, and emergency measures were taken when floods occurred. With some international partnership, APSARA also tried to assist local communities in reducing poverty and benefitting from tourism development. For instance, the Angkor Participatory Natural Resource Management and Livelihoods Project was launched in 2009 for five years by New Zealand Aid. This project contains programmes such as capacity building of communities and APSARA, participatory natural resource management, the monitoring and evaluation of food security and the development of other livelihood activities (ICC 2006a: 123–25, Khuon 2006a: 117, 2006b: 7, NZMFAT 2012). In partnership with APSARA, UNESCO in 2010 also launched a similar five-year project that aims to improve governance, alleviate rural poverty and contribute towards environmental sustainability and economic development. It is named the Angkor Heritage Management Framework Project, with funding and experts from Australia and Cambodia, and has been implemented mainly in Zones 1 and 2 and, exceptionally, in a site in Zone 3. The project assists in conserving the heritage values of Angkor, improving visitor experiences and providing benefits to the local community (cf. UNESCO 2012b). All these projects have the potential to improve the lives of local communities as well as their relationships with APSARA, but there are over 110 villages in the site, with a population exceeding 130,000 people in 2011 (Khuon 2006b: 2; 2011: 1). Thus, the benefits from such projects are limited to those areas within the villages where projects have been actually conducted, while local inhabitants who have not been successfully incorporated in tourism development are still suffering from the restrictions on living in this World Heritage site. The year 2012, however, saw a loosening of building restrictions before the commune election. Apparently, one month before the heads of all local authorities from the level of the village to the province were summoned by APSARA, who told them that cow sheds, chicken houses, fences, toilets and houses for ‘old’ legitimate inhabitants would be permitted, and a list of such buildings should be submitted to APSARA by the village chief, unlike previously when individual families had to go to the APSARA office many times in order to receive a permit. As a result, a number of villagers, including young couples, managed to build houses – and some even concrete ones – but others knew that they would either be too late or not have

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enough money. In other villages, chiefs failed to inform the villagers. The construction frenzy was stopped by APSARA one month after the election. Still, those who failed to build in that year had a clear idea and strategy for the future because there would be national elections in July 2013. One wonders if this contributes more to the sustainable management of the Angkor World Heritage site or to the resurgence of local political struggles. Conclusion This chapter discussed how global themes related to heritage, such as heritage conservation and sustainable development, have become manifest on the ground using the case of the Angkor World Heritage site in Cambodia. The significance of Angkor among World Heritage sites is not only its grandiosity, beauty and historicity, but the fact of its becoming a model ‘success’ case of restoration, removing most threats to the monumental conservation. Angkor represents a postconflict heritage that has required and received considerable international attention and efforts in restoration and conservation to be in line with cultural rehabilitation, socioeconomic reconstruction and peace building. Behind the success, what has emerged are many actors at different social levels and with often conflicting concerns who have come up with diverse interpretations of heritage notions and values, and different ways of dealing with heritage. The main actors that emerged were national and international experts, politicians, Heritage Police, other officials, UNESCO directors and local inhabitants. Some actors are confused, and some have changed their views on what heritage is and how to promote conservation and sustainable development, as well as on how to balance the two. The gap in interpretations was occasionally purposefully exploited by certain actors, especially authorities and the powerful, to promote their own agendas or pursue their own profits. It can be said therefore that Angkor World Heritage site has become a meeting ground and a stage for diverse actors who contest and negotiate their concerns, practises and limitations. The zoning, intended for the protection of monuments and sites, has also come to serve as invisible barriers for local practises and physical movement. Sustainable development is often taken to mean sustainable tourism and local participation in it, but the case of Angkor has shown that not only is tourism sustenance at risk, but local participation is fairly limited, too. Local communities have not been encouraged to actively participate in heritage making to begin with, but rather are

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instructed on what to do and what not to do and on who is or is not allowed to live in the site. Local inhabitants have been exposed to confusing and often contradictory policies and measures taken by relevant managing authorities and individual officials. Those exploited have also learnt from the processes taking place in the site, and their own painful experiences suggest strategies in which international media and advocacy of human rights are the key elements for their survival. The government’s need for votes has also temporarily shifted the positions of local inhabitants to a somewhat more equal one, if only to reconcile temporarily with the authorities. Universal democratic principles cut across the globalism of heritage conservation, from which we learn of a range of possible consequences to ‘think globally, act locally’. The Angkor case may become a model for managing other history-heavy postcolonial and postconflict World Heritage sites, assessing the kinds of issues that may emerge on the ground and preventing potential problems or preparing for ways to deal with them when such issues arise. In some cases, ‘think locally, act globally’ may be more effective or appropriate for sustainable heritage management. For that, diverse voices can be taken up to formulate locally specific policies, reflecting on particular environments, resources and needs. The collection of such case studies can be reflected back to global policy making and implementation of diverse ways of dealing with matters regarding heritage. Here anthropologists may contribute to a certain extent with ethnographic findings. Keiko Miura is a part-time lecturer at the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, and obtained her PhD in social anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. From 2009 to 2014, she was a research fellow of the Cultural Property Group, Göttingen University. Her most recent publication is ‘Discourses and Practices between Traditions and World Heritage Making in Angkor after 1990’ (in M. Falser, ed., Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission: From Decay to Recovery, 2015). She is a member of ICOMOS Japan.

Notes 1. This is a UNESCO-Japan Funds-in-Trust project for research and restoration, in which I conducted cultural anthropological research in the Angkor site.

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2. See also Winter (2007), who studied heritage and tourism in Angkor through exploring ‘conceptions of culture and development, the politics of space, and the relationship between consumption, memory and identity to illustrate the intense battleground which has formed around Angkor since it became a World Heritage site in 1992’ (ibid.: 2). 3. The term is generally used to refer to the historical period of Khmer civilization that developed extensively from 802 to 1431 ad and is also used as a general term for the monuments and sites built during that time. The most prominent monuments are Angkor Wat, built as a Hindu temple in the twelfth century, and Angkor Thom, the then capital city, constructed from the end of that century to the early next century. 4. This body organizes two annual international meetings, i.e. a plenary session and a technical committee. In between, a quadripartite meeting takes place with two cochairs (Japan and France), UNESCO and Cambodia. 5. Copresidents were assumed by two prime ministers (ICC 1995: 13). 6. This was not apparent in the report, but it was clear in the meeting that I witnessed. 7. The Declaration itself was issued 16 November 1999 (Miura 2004: 227). 8. Siem Reap is the gateway city to Angkor Park. 9. Cambodian administrative structure is based on the French system, i.e. village, commune, district, province and the central government.

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De Lopez, T., et al. 2006. Towards Sustainable Development in Angkor, Cambodia: Social, Environmental and Financial Aspects of Conserving Cultural Heritage. Research Report No. 2006-RR5. Phnom Penh: Cambodian Research Centre for Development (CRCD). Esposito, A., and S. Nam. 2008. ‘Siem Reap: Urban Development in the Shadow of Angkor. Briefing Document for the 2008 Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development Forum, 26–29 October’, Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development Forum. Harrison, D., and M. Hitchcock (eds.). 2005. The Politics of World Heritage: Negotiating Tourism and Conservation. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Hing, V., and S. Tuot. 2007. Pro-Poor Tourism: Siem Reap Case Study. Phnom Penh: Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI). International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC). 1995. Report of Activities. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 1998. Fourth Quadripartite Meeting. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 1999a. Fifth Quadripartite Meeting. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 1999b. Sixth Plenary Session. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 2001a. Eighth Plenary Session. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 2001b. Eleventh Technical Committee. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 2004. Eleventh Plenary Session. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 2006a. Fifteenth Technical Committee. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO.    . 2006b. Thirteenth Plenary Session. Phnom Penh: ICC-UNESCO. Japanese Government Team for Safeguarding Angkor (JSA). 2006. Annual Report on the Technical Survey of Angkor Monument 1996. Tokyo: JSA. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Nippon Koei and Kokusai Kogyo. 2006. The Study on Integrated Master Plan for Sustainable Development of Siem Reap/Angkor Town in the Kingdom of Cambodia: Final Report, vol. 2: Executive Summary. Tokyo: JICA, Nippon Koei and Kokusai Kogyo. Khuon, K.-N. 2006a. ‘A Commitment to Community Engagement’, in J. C. Chermayeff and associates (eds.), Phnom Bakheng Workshop on Public Interpretation: Angkor Park, Siem Reap, Cambodia. December 4–6, 2005. Siem Reap: World Monuments Fund and Center for Khmer Studies, pp. 115–17, retrieved 19 January 2011 from http://www.wmf. org/sites/default/files/wmf_publication/Phnom_Bakheng_Workshop_ on_Public_Interpretation.pdf.    . 2006b. ‘Angkor-Site Management and Local Communities’, paper presented at conference ‘Angkor-Landscape, City and Temple’, 17–22 July, University of Sydney.    . 2011. ‘Land Use, Housing and Living in the Angkor Park: The Vision of the APSARA National Authority’, paper presented at the workshop ‘“Rebirthing” Angkor? Heritage between Decadence, Decay, Revival and the Mission to Civilize’, Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’, University of Heidelberg, 10 May 2011.

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Labadi, S., and C. Long (eds.). 2010. Heritage and Globalisation. Abingdon: Routledge. Lemaistre, A., and S. Cavalier. 2002. ‘Analyses and Management Prospects of the International Angkor Programme’, Museum 54(1–2): 117–25. Meskell, L. 2010. ‘Conflict Heritage and Expert Failure’, in S. Labadi and C. Long (eds.), Heritage and Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 192–201. Miura, K. 2004. ‘Contested Heritage: People of Angkor’, PhD thesis, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.    . 2008. ‘The Need for Anthropological Approaches to Conservation and Management of Living Heritage Sites: A Case Study of Angkor, Cambodia’, in E. A. Bacus, I. C. Clover and P. D. Sharrock (eds.), Interpreting Southeast Asia’s Past: Monument, Image and Text. Singapore: NUS Press, pp. 377–90.    . 2011a. ‘World Heritage Making in Angkor: Global, Regional, National and Local Actors, Interplays and Implications’, in B. HauserSchäublin (ed.), World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: Göttinger Universitäts-Verlag, pp. 9–31.    . 2011b. ‘From Property to Heritage: Different Notions, Rules of Ownership and Practices of New and Old Actors in the Angkor World Heritage Site’, in B. Hauser-Schäublin (ed.), World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: Göttinger Universitäts-Verlag, pp. 97–119.    . 2011c. ‘Sustainable Development in Angkor: Conservation Regime of the Old Villagescape and Development’, in B. Hauser-Schäublin (ed.), World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: Göttinger UniversitätsVerlag, pp. 121–44. Neth, B. 2011. ‘Angkor as World Heritage Site and the Development of Tourism: A Study of Tourist Revenue in the Accommodation Sector in Siem Reap-Angkor’, in B. Hauser-Schäublin (ed.), World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: Göttinger Universitäts-Verlag, pp. 147–76. New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (NZMFAT). 2012. New Zealand Aid Programme: Cambodia, retrieved 30 September 2012 from http://www.aid.gov.nz/where-we-work/asia/asean-regional/cambodia. Robinson, M., et al. (eds.). 2000. Tourism and Heritage Relationships: Global, National and Local Perspectives. Sunderland: Centre for Travel and Tourism & Business Education Publishers. Rodger, J. 2007. ‘World Heritage Site Branding: The Blaenavon Experience’, in R. White and J. Carmen (eds.), World Heritage: Global Challenges, Local Solutions. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 13–16. Sørensen, M. L. S. 2007. ‘What Does Sustainability Have to Do with It? Reflections upon Heritage Language and the Heritage of Slavery and

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Missionaries’, in R. White and J. Carmen (eds.), World Heritage: Global Challenges, Local Solutions. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 75–80. Stephen, W. (ed.) 2004. Think Global, Act Local: The Life and Legacy of Patrick Geddees. Edinburgh: Luath Press. UNESCO. 1993. Safeguarding and Development of Angkor (Prepared for the Inter- Governmental Conference on Angkor, Tokyo October 12–13, 1993). Paris: UNESCO.    . 2010: ICC-Angkor: 15 Years of International Cooperation for Conservation and Sustainable Development. Phnom Penh: UNESCO.    . 2012a. ‘The List: Success stories. Successful restoration’, retrieved 1 September 2012 from http://whc.unesco.org/en/107.    . 2012b. ‘The Angkor Heritage Management Framework Project (Australian Funds-in-Trust and the Royal Government of Cambodia)’, retrieved 30 September 2012 from http://www. unesco.org/new/en/phnompenh/culture/tangible-heritage/ the-angkor-heritage-management-framework.    . 2012c. ‘World Heritage: Sustainable Development’, retrieved 12 January 2013 from http://pfdmedia.com/read-online/wh_65_eng_oct_2012.    . 2013. ‘World Heritage List’, retrieved 10 January 2013 from http:// whc.unesco.org/en/list.    . 2015. ‘Culture of Peace and Non-Violence’, retrieved 7 March 2015 from http://en.unesco.org/cultureofpeace. Waterton, E., and S. Watson (eds.). 2011. Heritage and Community Engagement: Collaboration or Contestation? Abingdon: Routledge. White, R., and J. Carmen (eds.). 2007. World Heritage: Global Challenges, Local Solutions: Proceedings of a Conference at Coalbrookdale, 4–7 May 2006, hosted by the Ironbridge Institute. Oxford: Archaeopress. Winn, P. 2011. ‘Cambodia: Commercial Overload at Angkor Wat’, Global Post, 11 September, retrieved 15 January 2013 from http:// www.globalpost/com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/110909/ cambodia-angkor-wat-tourism. Winter, T. 2007. Post-Conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism: Culture, Politics and Development at Angkor. London: Routledge. ZEMP Expert Team. 1993. Zoning and Environmental Management Plan for Angkor (Discussion Draft). Phnom Penh: UNESCO.

Chapter 6 One List, a World of Difference? The Dynamics of Global Heritage at Two Neighbouring Properties Noel B. Salazar

People ascribe a variety of meanings to ‘heritage’. Traditionally, authoritative expert analyses determined the historical, aesthetic, scientific, ethnological or anthropological value of both cultural and natural heritage. Only recently has the professional heritage field begun to embrace such factors as economics, cultural change, public policy and social issues. Such a holistic approach is particularly important in the context of ‘world heritage’, where actors on local-to-global levels interpret, appropriate and use monuments, sites and landscapes in multiple ways. The contradictions inherent to the UNESCO concept of World Heritage have been noted before: From the beginning, a universalistic narrative was associated with World Heritage. These outstanding sites ‘belonged’ to the world. Yet contrary to the deterritorialization characteristic of other global phenomena, these sites were firmly situated within national boundaries. They thus reflected a contradiction commonly found within United Nations rhetoric as it vacillates between equating cultural identity with national identity on the one hand and presenting cultural identity as a surface manifestation of an underlying universalism on the other. (Barthel-Bouchier and Hui 2007: 5)

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The advantage of ethnographic approaches in the critical study of (world) heritage is that they focus on the way heritage values and meaning function, including in everyday life, and in particular on the complex local-to-global deliberations in which they are formed and expressed. Based on long-term fieldwork in Indonesia, I explore in this chapter how the dynamics surrounding World Heritage play out differently on the ground, even in the case of two neighbouring properties, namely Borobudur and Prambanan. I detail how translocal processes of heritage policy making and management influence its values and meanings – both in times of stability and of turmoil – but also how ‘foreign’ elements are incorporated and strategically (mis) used by local service providers in the heritage products told and sold to visitors (be they domestic or international). Nusantara Heritage (and) Politics I cannot deny being rather upset by the unequal attention given to the different Javanese antiquities, due to which the Prambanan temple complex has – completely unjustly – been forced into the position of a rival to Borobudur. It would be far closer to the historical truth to regard Prambanan and Borobudur as twin pinnacles of early Central Javanese culture, a culture in which Buddhists and Hindus generally lived peacefully together and helped each other in building their respective sanctuaries. (Jordaan 1996: x)

Indonesia counts around seventeen thousand islands and a rich cultural heritage that bears clear traces of a long history of trade and exchange across Nusantara, the Indonesian archipelago and with the wider Indian Ocean region (Lombard 1990). Until 2012, the country’s cultural World Heritage sites – Borobudur Temple Compounds (World Heritage List entry no. 592, inscribed in 1991), Prambanan Temple Compounds (642; 1991) and Sangiran Early Man Site (593; 1996) – were all located in the central part of Java, Indonesia’s fifthlargest and most populated island.1 The earliest signs of habitation in this fertile volcanic area are prehistoric. At Sangiran, over fifty fossils of Meganthropus palaeo and Pithecanthropus erectus (‘Java Man’, now reclassified as part of Homo erectus) were discovered. From the seventh century ce, Central Java was dominated by Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms, giving rise to the monumental sanctuaries of Borobudur and Prambanan and many other temples (Dumarçay 1986). Both compounds testify to Central Java’s glorious past during its

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so-called classical period, the time between approximately 775 and 900. Islam (mostly Sufism), coming mainly via India, gained ground in the inner areas of Java during the sixteenth century. The Dutch began to colonize the archipelago in the early seventeenth century. Indonesia’s legal framework for cultural heritage preservation and management dates back to the colonial period (Kagami 1997). In 1901, the then Dutch East Indies Government set up the Committee for Archaeological Research on Java and Madura. In 1931, an ordinance on monuments (Monumenten Ordonnantie S. No. 238: 1931) was passed, with the aim of preserving historical monuments (mainly within the colonial domain). Even though the intentions were different, these policies were taken over by the Indonesian government after independence in 1949. While the colonial authorities had wanted to demonstrate and justify their presence as the preserver of Indonesian cultural heritage, the new Indonesian government mainly wanted to assert sovereignty over its ‘national patrimony’ – mostly material remains of a (partly imagined) glorious precolonial past. Barely two years after independence (in 1951), a UNESCO Office was established in Jakarta. Although serving the wider Southeast Asia region, it helped bring Indonesia’s cultural heritage to global attention. Indonesia signed the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in 1989. In 1992, a new law concerning items of cultural property was enacted to replace the 1931 ordinance (Ministry of Culture and Tourism 2003). The Indonesian government also has its own national list of heritage conservation (cagar budaya). State claims of cultural guardianship are often manifested in national museums, such as the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta (Shepherd 2006). In terms of popularity, this museum was quickly superseded by monumental heritage sites such as Borobudur and Prambanan and by the national theme park Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in Jakarta (‘Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park’), which also contains miniatures of Borobudur and Prambanan (Salazar 2011). In 1990, the then Ministry of Education and Culture filed a joint ‘Nomination of Borobudur and Prambanan Temple Compounds’ for inclusion on the World Heritage List. This combined submission made sense, given that Borobudur and Prambanan are symbolic of the peaceful relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism in ancient Java (Kim 2007). However, the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee followed the recommendation by ICOMOS to ask Indonesia for two separate files, because both complexes were built for different religions.2 The Indonesian authorities accepted this request and provided a new (more complete) nomination file for Prambanan. Going symbolically against UNESCO’s general aim to ‘produce peace in

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the minds of men’ (cf. Di Giovine 2010, Salazar 2006), this process led to a stress on dissimilarity rather than commonality: Borobudur and Prambanan as symbols that represent the (hostile) relationship of two competing dynasties and their two religions – the reification of a historically disputed rivalry (Jordaan 1996, Kim 2007). Although both inscriptions include smaller temples (Mendut and Pawon as part of the Borobudur Temple Compounds and Bubrah, Lumbung and Asu as part of the Prambanan Temple Compounds), all the attention went to the ‘monumentality’ of the main structures, and this is no different when it comes to how the properties are visited by tourists. It is also no coincidence that most of Indonesia’s cultural World Heritage sites are situated on Java. After all, it is the central government in Jakarta that nominates candidates for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. During Major General Suharto’s New Order era (1966–98), the various governments (led by Javanese) strongly favoured Central Java in their (re)invention of Indonesia, promoting it as the cultural heart of the country. They ‘sought and obtained worldwide support for the restoration of [Java’s] ancient ‘“World” heritage sites’ (Dahles 2001: 16). This ‘sites and monuments’ approach to culture, as Heidi Dahles (2001: 17) calls it, stressed the promotion and consumption of so-called high culture.3 Ironically, the democratic reforms and the shifting of power from the central government to the local level during the last decade, a process referred to as otonomi daerah, have fuelled an intense new ‘localism’ that has had direct, and often negative, implications on cultural preservation (Silver 2007). The processes of democratization have helped spread the politics of heritage and tensions between local, national and global actors across the archipelago.4 The fact that heritage matters in Indonesia now fall under the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (previously the Ministry of Culture and Tourism) and the general decentralization of power indicate that the nationalist agenda has shifted into an economic one. At Borobudur (the single most visited ‘attraction’ in Indonesia) and Prambanan (receiving about half of Borobudur’s visitors), the challenges related to tourism are ongoing (Salazar 2010a). Much of this has to do with the ways in which both properties are (mis)managed. In 1973, at Indonesia’s request, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), in collaboration with the local Gadjah Mada University, began the surveys that culminated in a 1979 Master Plan for the construction of the Borobudur and Prambanan Archaeological Parks (Black and Wall 2001). The plan divided the Borobudur area into five zones: (1) Sanctuary or core zone: the area of the actual monument;

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(2) Archaeological park or buffer zone: an area with tourism and conservation facilities; (3) Land-use regulated or development zone: the immediately surrounding rural environment; (4) Historical scenery preservation zone: the wider surrounding landscape; and (5) National archaeological park zone: reserved for scientific activities and maintenance work. The plan was partially adopted (only the first three zones) by presidential decree in 1992 (Keppres R.I. 1/1992) and implemented first at Borobudur and then at Prambanan, without any local community involvement (despite the fact that some people had to be displaced to make room for the creation of the parks). The actual monuments fell first under the responsibility of the National Archaeology Department of Indonesia and are, due to the process of regional autonomy, now under the authority of the provincial Archaeology Departments. Both archaeological parks are administered by PT Taman Wisata, a state-owned enterprise, whereas the development zones are under the authority of the local government (Borobudur is located in Central Java while Prambanan is in Yogyakarta). Not surprisingly, this fragmented distribution of authority (that not even those working at the properties fully understand) leads to multiple problems, including the development of ill-planned tourism infrastructure (Salazar 2010a).5 There are, for instance, continuous tensions with vendors harassing visitors inside the park (Zone 2) to buy their trinkets. As there is no limit on visitor numbers, vandalism is a serious problem at both parks. The general disrespect for the monuments is a major issue among domestic tourists, who comprise around 80 per cent of all visitors. In addition, local tour guides have a hard time handling the increasingly diverse group of international tourists (Salazar 2008, 2010b). Tourism planning and development at both parks has been severely criticized for excluding the local community. Mark Hampton (2005) catalogues the barriers separating local community members at Borobudur from equitable market access. These include their exclusion from the planning process, lack of knowledge and capital, interethnic and interclass rivalries, extra-local competition, state appropriation of tourism revenues, corruption and mercenary governmental policies. The ongoing management problems at Borobudur is leading to rumours within Indonesia that the site would lose its World Heritage status, although it was never placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage in Danger List. Many of the challenges indicate how wrong earlier standardizing heritage policies were that neglected the way in which monuments such as Borobudur and Prambanan sit within a wider cultural landscape to which they are inextricably tied, both tangibly and intangibly (cf. K. Taylor 2003).

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Apart from politics, but not unrelated to it, religion plays an important role, too, in understanding how various actors relate to ‘world heritage’. Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. The fact that Borobudur and Prambanan are now located in a predominantly Muslim area adds to the complexity of managing, maintaining and interpreting the compounds.6 When drafting up and implementing their top-down management plans, the authorities seriously underestimated the sacred value placed on the monuments by the local communities. Commenting upon Borobudur, Heather Black and Geoffrey Wall write: ‘The assumption was that since the people are officially Moslem, the ancient Buddhist monument would have no spiritual value for them. This assumption was most certainly mistaken, for indeed, the people who lived near the monument valued it as a sacred place, believing that as long as they lived there, it would protect them’ (2001:131).7 In 1985, Muslim fundamentalists who viewed Borobudur as a symbol of Indonesia’s pre-Islamic pagan past bombed nine stupas on the upper terrace. The militants perceived the government’s renovations of the structure (largely for purposes of tourism) as emblematic of the state’s refusal to embrace Islamic law. They therefore selected Borobudur as a target and, in response, the New Order authorities made it clear that all temples on Java were to be considered as heritage monuments, not religious or sacred places where ritual activities are held (or, according to the ICOMOS description, as ‘religious complexes’). In fact, collective ceremonies at Borobudur were forbidden since 1983 (Errington 1993). While New Order policies tried to turn Borobudur and Prambanan into ‘national monuments’ at which religious people were prohibited from performing rituals, times have markedly changed. The designation of Borobudur and Prambanan as World Heritage, and the increased global attention that comes with it, has led to a local revival of both religions and compounds as places of worship and pilgrimage (Salazar 2010a). Buddhists, for instance, regularly use Borobudur for spiritual ceremonies, the largest of all being the annual celebration of Waisak, a public holiday commemorating the birth of the Buddha. We Are the World. . . . Borobudur Belongs to Us One of the world’s wonders A: Is the Borobudur temple influenced by Hinduism? B: No, it is influenced by Buddhism.

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A: Where is it located? B: Near the town of Magelang. A: Why is it said to be one of the world’s wonders? B: Because of its unique style and because there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. A: When was it completed? B: In the middle of the ninth century. A: When was the temple discovered? B: In 1814. (Suntoro 2002: 51–52)

Borobudur is only spoken about in superlatives. As the above example from an English language manual for Indonesian tour guides illustrates, it is often described as one of the seven (forgotten) wonders of the world and one of the greatest Buddhist monuments ever built. In 2012, the main structure was officially recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest Buddhist temple (Claim No. 396-198).8 Borobudur was designated as World Heritage in 1991, based on the following UNESCO criteria: (i) it represents a masterpiece of human creative genius; (ii) it has exerted great influence, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture; and (vi) it is directly or tangibly associated with events or with ideas or beliefs of outstanding universal significance.9 The following year, Bank Indonesia released a new 10,000 rupiah banknote with a representation of the monument. The whole process of ‘iconization’ of Borobudur involved discursively simplifying the monument’s mixed Hindu-Buddhist architectural heritage into a ‘plain’ Buddhist masterpiece (while Prambanan became known as a ‘plain’ Hindu site). That Borobudur is as iconic as the Taj Mahal, India (inscribed in 1983), or Angkor, Cambodia (inscribed in 1992), as is also stressed by the World Heritage Centre. The UNESCO website for Borobudur mentions: ‘This colossal temple was built between ad 750 and 842: 300 years before Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, 400 years before work had begun on the great European cathedrals.’10 And art historian Françoise Choay wrote, ‘The Parthenon, Saint Sophia, Borobudur, and Chartres call to mind the enchantment of a quest that, in our disenchanted world, is proposed by neither science nor critical analysis’ (1996: 183). In contrast, few local people (not even those working at the property) actually understand what World Heritage designation implies, who or what is behind the nomination process and what follows once a property has been inscribed on the list. The main complex was built between 760 and 830. Although it is commonly represented in a simplified manner as a Buddhist

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Figure 6.1.  Borobudur temple compounds (photo: Noel B. Salazar).

structure (e.g. the example of the tour guide manual above), the lower terraces of Borobudur have the characteristics of Javanese Hindu architecture (Soekmono 1976).11 While the basic plan was kept, during the construction phase builders changed it from either a prehistoric Indonesian or Hindu monument into a Buddhist stupa, with 1460 relief panels, more than 500 life-sized Buddha statues and a central dome on top. Seen from the air, the structure looks like a giant Buddhist mandala. It functioned ‘as a Buddhist stupa, at once a representation of the Buddhist cosmos and a yantra, a meditation tool to be used by those seeking enlightenment’ (Errington 1993: 33). This was practical because ‘after Borobudur was completed there was no need for the pious to make the long journey to India to worship at sites associated with the Buddha. The pilgrim made instead a shorter physical expedition and, by walking around and up the temple-mountain, made a symbolic journey into the spiritual meanings of the Buddha’s teaching’ (J. G. Taylor 2003: 39). Borobudur was abandoned from the eleventh century onwards, due to the changed political situation (the decline of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms and the Javanese conversion to Islam) and a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from nearby Mount Merapi. The complex fell into disuse and disrepair and lay buried under volcanic ashes for centuries.

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During the brief British presence on Java under Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1811–16), a full survey of the ruins was commissioned. Borobudur was perhaps the first major monument to draw the attention of the British in Southeast Asia, almost fifty years before Henri Mouhot brought the ruins of Angkor to the attention of Europe. Raffles (1830), who had a personal interest in Javanese antiquities, ordered the clearance of the Borobudur ruins. The work was started by the Dutch engineer Hermann Cornelius and continued for many decades under the Dutch East Indies government. Borobudur became a place of secular pilgrimage (tourism) for adventurous Europeans: ‘in 1844 a teahouse was built on the topmost stupa that had once sheltered a relic of the Buddha’ (ibid.: 40). In 1896, King Chulalongkorn of Siam (now Thailand) visited Borobudur and the Dutch colonial authorities accepted his request to take ‘eight cartloads of sculptures, wall panels, carved animals, and guardian kala heads’ from the monument back with him to Bangkok (ibid.: 40). Interestingly, throughout the ages Borobudur has attracted the interest and respect of non-Buddhists: The reason for the longevity of Borobudur lies perhaps in the fact that it did not ever lose its position within Javanese cultural memory, and visitors continued to go to the monument. Chinese ceramics and coins dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries have been found at the site, and a fourteenth-century Javanese poem indicates that pilgrims continued to visit the shrine. By the 1850s, nearly four decades after Borobudur had been reclaimed from the jungle, the Javanese were again performing rituals at the shrine; especially important was the first day after the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan when crowds of people, both Chinese and Javanese, assembled at the site. (Ray 2008: 440)

This tradition continues until today, as many non-Buddhists (including locals) visit Borobudur for spiritual reasons. In this sense, Borobudur functions as an iconic place towards which people’s spiritual energies are directed, in ways that are remarkably similar to Machu Picchu (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1983) in Peru. The first major conservation work lasted from 1907 to 1911. While the structure was restored close to its original form, except perhaps the pinnacle, the landscape around the site changed considerably as a result. Another restoration of Borobudur became part of General Suharto’s first five-year plan, announced in 1969 (Errington 1993). The year before, the UNESCO General Conference had already

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voted to raise funds to safeguard Borobudur. In 1972, the year of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1972), UNESCO launched a twenty-five million US dollar international safeguarding campaign. Properties for which such international campaigns were launched often became World Heritage, and the World Heritage concept itself developed from the first international campaigns launched by UNESCO in the 1960s.12 In fact, a 1976 ICOMOS document (Jokilehto 2008: 59) suggested Borobudur as a monument that would perfectly fit World Heritage criterion (i) – the only criterion all parties seem to agree on. While the Indonesian government paid for nearly three-fourths of the safeguarding work, a commemorative plaque placed nearby the monument thanks the international donors. Without downplaying the role of UNESCO and the generous financial support of many countries, however, no doubt is left about the good stewardship of Indonesia to which the world owes an icon such as Borobudur. The massive repairs and reconstruction lasted ten years (Brown 1983). As mentioned before, four years before the end of the conservation works, a management plan was already in place. In the process of levelling and digging the area around the monument, workers uncovered a variety of objects of interest to archaeologists, but ‘since no provision had been made for that eventuality, the official restoration schedule was adhered to, and no archaeological work was done. The area was eventually covered over and paved after serving as a work-site’ (Errington 1993: 55). This once again illustrates the fact that those in charge were mainly interested in the monumentality of the main structure. If various stakeholders who are professionally involved with Borobudur think differently about the value of the monument, the same could be said about the visitors. My own fieldwork revealed that there is a noticeable difference between different types of tourists (Salazar 2008, 2010a). For domestic visitors from Java, the highlight of a visit to Borobudur is when they arrive at the upper terrace, with seventy-two Buddha statues seated inside perforated stupas. Men try to touch the finger or ring of a statue, women the foot of a Buddha, while making a wish, as it is widely believed that doing so will bring good luck (cf. Cochrane 2009). On-site tour guides strategically play with such performative beliefs (Salazar 2010a). For instance, they tell tourists to walk three times around the main stupa at the top of the monument in order to become spiritually ‘pure’. This gives the guides some time to rest, smoke a cigarette and chat with colleagues (who have told their clients exactly the same).

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Borobudur nicely illustrates how the island of Java has undergone ‘foreign’ influences throughout its history, and this not only through its architecture (J. G. Taylor 2012). One of the reliefs at Borobudur, for example, depicts a vessel with outriggers like the wings of a bird. This was the kind of boat that Austronesian seafarers had used, even centuries before Borobudur was erected, to sail across the Indian Ocean to East Africa. This journey formed part of the ancient Cinnamon Route, which brought spices from the Indonesian archipelago to East Africa and then onto Egypt and Europe. In 2003, a replica vessel successfully made the crossing – and the project was called the Borobudur Ship Expedition. Right beside the World Heritage monument, there is the Borobudur Ship Museum where the outrigger sailing vessel can be visited, alongside route maps, information about the spice trade and the expedition and some of the ship’s equipment. The local Indonesian guides at Borobudur know about the museum and they know some of its history and background, too. However, they prefer not to share this information with visitors because it complicates the simplified and officially sanctioned narrative of Java’s historical splendour (often presented as having grown independently from foreign influences). Besides, the idea that Javanese ‘high’ culture might have been socioculturally influenced by Africa(ns) is not a popular one. Since its inscription, the state of Borobudur has been discussed regularly at World Heritage Committee meetings.13 In 1995, the Committee questioned the commercial plan to use the main structure for a sound and light show. A joint UNESCO/ICOMOS mission in 2003 revealed a number of problems, including plans by the local government to construct a three-story shopping centre, known as ‘Java World’ (Jawa Jagad), near the property.14 The local community (hundreds of poor hawkers and their families) heavily protested against this plan because it would take away even more from their scarce benefits (Hampton 2005, Silver 2007). Blocked from access to the archaeological park (Zone 2), local vendors took to crowding the entrance and car park, causing chaos and congestion. The World Heritage Committee asked the Indonesian authorities to organize and control the informal commercial activities within Zone 2 and recommended, as a second step, a socioeconomic study to plan for a more viable commercial and marketing strategy with long-term benefits for members of the surrounding community. The lack of coordination between the authorities responsible for managing the different zones of the property was noted, too. As these issues were only very slowly addressed by Indonesian authorities, they returned every year on the Committee’s agenda until 2007.

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With a view to enhancing the capacity of the Indonesian authorities to improve the state of conservation at Borobudur, in 2008 the World Heritage Centre developed a technical cooperation project under the Netherlands Funds-In-Trust with UNESCO.15 Vandalism and littering by visitors and uncontrolled vendors in Zones 1 and 2 remain issues still today. Also, the lack of local participation in decision-making processes still needs to be addressed (Kausar and Nishikawa 2010). As I discovered while conducting fieldwork in Central Java, other conflicts went unnoticed under UNESCO’s monitoring radar (Salazar 2010a). In 2002, Magelang Regency passed a directive regarding the management, security and orderliness of its tourism sites. The proposed measures, reinforced by a circular letter in 2005, were intended to improve the conditions of the people living around Borobudur. Among other things, the directive stated that all tourists visiting the complex need to take an on-site guide (licensed by the Magelang Regency), but because most tourists arrive on package tours (with guides from neighbouring Yogyakarta), this necessitates a change of guides at the entrance gate, at an extra cost. In 2006, when the measure took effect, the guides from Yogyakarta protested loudly against the transfer rule, stating that the Magelang guides at Borobudur were ‘of a lesser quality’ and that this would have a damaging impact on tourist satisfaction in particular and the image of Indonesian tourism in general.16 They were also upset because they had never been involved as stakeholders in the decision-making process. Not-so-Little Sister Prambanan Prambanan temple is the largest Hindu temple in the world outside of India. It resembles the temples in South India. . . . Also in Cambodia, in Angkor Wat, there are five pillars. . . . Can you see the birds here? [pointing to a wall relief ] It’s the cockatoo here. The cockatoo is a symbol both for Hindus and Buddhists. . . . [At the statue of Loro Jonggrang] If women want to look prettier, you have to touch the face [of the statue] and then [touch] your own face, three times. After the visit, one becomes really pretty. But it only works for women. For you and you and you [pointing to the men in the party], if you touch the face, afterwards you walk like this [imitates a stereotypical feminine gait]. . . . The face of Jonggrang is very black because every day girls and women come to touch it. . . . The Javanese only come to visit the statue of Jonggrang, and then, finished! (Local tour guide at Prambanan, from fieldwork notes)

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Figure 6.2.  Prambanan temple compounds (photo: Noel B. Salazar).

Forty kilometres southeast of Borobudur, a large group of temples (one of the largest in Southeast Asia) was erected around 850 ce (Subarno 2006). One century later, however, the Hindu court and most of the population moved to east Java and the temple complex was left behind. The structures themselves collapsed during an earthquake in the sixteenth century. The Prambanan Temple Compounds, named after the neighbouring village, were designated as World Heritage in 1991 on the basis of two criteria: (i) the site is an outstanding example of Shiva art in Indonesia, and the region; and (iv) the site is an outstanding religious complex, characteristic of Shiva expression of the tenth century.17 While the main temple complex is indeed a good example of Hindu religious bas-reliefs (and the largest Hindu temple outside of India), Sewu Temple, which is also part of the Prambanan Archaeological Park, is Indonesia’s largest Buddhist temple (Borobudur is, strictly speaking, not a temple). The ‘discovery’ of Prambanan is contested. The earliest written foreign report of the ruins is by Cornelis Lons, an officer of the Dutch East India Company who made an excursion to Prambanan in 1733; he found damaged statues among the piles of stone blocks and transported some statues to the house of his boss in Batavia (now Jakarta). However, the official version of discovery, the one reproduced in guidebooks and by tour guides, is quite different. On Prambanan’s official website,18 one could for a long time read the following:

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In 1811, Collin Mackenzie, a surveyor in the service of Thomas Stamford Raffles during Britain’s short-lived rule over the Dutch East Indies, came upon these temples by chance. Although Raffles subsequently commissioned a full survey of the ruins, they remained neglected for decades. Dutch residents carried off sculptures for garden ornaments while local villagers used foundation stones for construction material.

According to the above account, the Dutch colonizers played no role at all in the discovery of the temple complex and are held coaccountable for its decay. Even though Raffles, the ‘Father of Singapore’, established only a brief presence on Java during the Napoleonic Wars (1811–16), his book The History of Java (1830) turned out to be one of the most influential colonial writings on Java (helped by the fact that, apart from later authors such as J. H. Boeke, W. H. Rassers and J. S. Furnivall, most of the Dutch colonial writings were never translated). Startlingly, this is what Raffles himself wrote about Prambanan (1830: 7): With respect to the ruins at Brámbanan, we find, upon the authority of a Dutch engineer, who in 1797 went to construct a fort at Kláten, on the highway between the two native capitals, and not far from the site of the temples, that no description of its antiquities existed at that period. He found great difficulty in clearing away the rubbish and plants, so as to obtain a view of the ruins and to be enabled to sketch them. The indifference of the natives had been as great as that of their conquerors, and had led them to neglect the works of their ancestors which they could not imitate.

Raffles clearly criticized the Dutch colonial administration (alongside the local population) for neglecting the region’s antiquities, but acknowledged the fact that Prambanan was ‘discovered’ by the Dutch.19 As I witnessed on various occasions, tourists visiting the temples occasionally hear guiding narratives about the colonial neglect (not the indigenous one), but guides clearly prefer to associate the discovery of the complex with the positively valued Sir Raffles rather than with the oppressive Dutch colonizers (and not all guides seem familiar with the historically correct version). Ironically, in this particular case of contested history, the older textual sources seem to come closer to the truth than newer (postcolonial) interpretations. What is at stake here is not so much the referential validity of the guiding narrative and its degree of ‘accuracy’, but rather the wider politics of representation in which it is embedded and in which both

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guides and tourists (with their expectations and imaginaries) inevitably intercede (Salazar and Graburn 2014). Prambanan has received much less international attention than Borobudur, both before and after its nomination. Maybe because it is less of a ‘global icon’, the World Heritage designation is more important (at least for some actors). It is remarkable that the official World Heritage sign at the entrance of the main temple complex is much larger than the one at Borobudur. However, like at Borobudur, locals do not always understand what World Heritage designation entails and how this affects the property. As the above fragment from a guided tour around Prambanan illustrates, local guides make use of explicit comparisons with more renowned properties such as Angkor, Cambodia, without necessarily denoting them as ‘world heritage’, to put ‘their’ site on an equal level of global importance. The management and maintenance problems Prambanan faces are remarkably similar to those in Borobudur: increasing visitor pressure (especially during the Indonesian school holiday season), resulting in wear of stone and vandalism. Like in Borobudur, the distribution of authority, funding and conservation duties between the PT Taman Wisata, the provincial and regional government and other institutions is unbalanced. Finally, the participation of the local community in cultural and environmental preservation could be much increased. In preparation for Prambanan’s World Heritage status, the Indonesian authorities removed the market that had sprung up near the temple and transformed the surrounding hamlet and rice paddies into an archaeological park. Villagers, however, benefit economically from the souvenirs stalls at the entry of the park, by their work inside the archaeological park (as guides, watchmen, cleaning personnel, etc.) and by participating in the Ramayana Ballet, a dance drama that is performed at the open-air and indoor stages on the west side of the complex.20 While Borobudur is recognized as the world’s largest Buddhist temple, Prambanan has its Guinness World Record, too. In 2012, the Ramayana Ballet was recognized as the most continuously staged performance in the world as well as involving the most performers. This points to the importance of the intangible aspects of material heritage, something that is receiving much more attention internationally since the adoption of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (Smith and Akagawa 2009). The 2003 State of Conservation Report of Prambanan warned for potential natural disasters such as earthquakes (either tectonic or volcanic).21 And, indeed, on 27 May 2006, a major earthquake (6.2 on the Richter magnitude scale) in Central Java killed almost six thousand

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people and left another one and a half million homeless. The quake structurally damaged Prambanan’s main temples. Although UNESCO rapidly sent experts to assess the damage, I witnessed that it took a long time before the people working at the park were informed about the recovery plans.22 After the assessment, a newly built viewing platform (very similar to the ones erected after 11 September 2001 around Ground Zero in New York) allowed tourists to see the main temples from a safe distance, without being allowed to enter them. PT Taman Wisata decided not to lower the entrance fees (ten US dollars for foreigners). Anticipating possible tourist complaints, many local travel agencies decided to suspend tours to Prambanan. Some of the security guards in charge of protecting the archaeological park offered foreign tourists the opportunity to enter the damaged main complex anyway, in exchange for sizable amounts of cash. The adversity precipitated a spontaneous revitalization of old Javanese myths and mystical beliefs. In fact, there is an ongoing conflict with the local community regarding the name of the complex. While it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as ‘Prambanan Temple Compounds’, the people of Prambanan village have always referred to the main structure as Candi Rara (or Loro) Jonggrang (Javanese for ‘temple of the slender virgin’). According to local beliefs, the statue in the north chamber of the central Shiva shrine does not represent the Hindu goddess Durga, but rather Loro Jonggrang.23 Legend has it that she was a Javanese princess who agreed to marry a man she did not love (because he had killed her father) if he could build her a temple ornamented with thousand statues between the setting and rising of the sun. When the man was about to fulfil her demand, helped by demonic spirits, she tried to trick him by setting a fire, attempting to make the prince believe that the sun was about to rise. He was so furious that, in revenge, he petrified her and she became the last (and most beautiful) of the ‘thousand statues’. As the tour guide in the guided tour fragment above confirms, most domestic visitors come to visit Loro Jonggrang as they believe that touching specific parts of the statue will bring them good fortune (e.g. touching the face in order to become pretty). The dissonance between the names of ‘Prambanan Temple’ and ‘Loro Jonggrang Temple’ illustrates how the practise of naming cultural heritage functions both as a hegemonic form of control and as a strategy of resistance (Alderman 2008). Different heritage stakeholders at Prambanan use naming in different ways and for different purposes. In their recommendation of the site for inscription on the World Heritage List, ICOMOS experts acknowledged the existence

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of a local interpretation of the main temple, but did not give it much weight: ‘Tjandi (temple) Prambanan is actually a grandiose complex of Siva temples. The natives called it Loro Jo[n]ggrang (or Slender Maiden) after an impressive statue representing the wife of Siva. Built during the first half of the tenth century, this religious complex is the largest Siva ensemble in Indonesia.’24 In the 2003 Periodic Reporting Exercise, the Indonesian central authorities hardly paid any attention to Loro Jonggrang.25 On Prambanan’s official World Heritage website, the reference to Loro Jonggrang is omitted from the short description and the name is not explained in the long description.26 The tensions around the name recently intensified when, in accordance with Article 268 of UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2008: 69), the text ‘Candi Rara Jonggrang’ on a newly placed signboard was replaced by ‘Candi Prambanan’. Such practises are reminiscent of colonialism, whereby (re)naming is ‘part of the colonial process of claiming territory and subordinating indigenous histories’ (Alderman 2008: 196). The 2006 episode of adversity was framed very differently by UNESCO. At its 2011 meeting in Paris,27 the World Heritage Committee thanked the director-general of UNESCO for having launched the emergency safeguarding operation immediately after the volcanic eruption of Mount Merapi of Central Java in Indonesia, with the primary objective of rehabilitating the surrounding areas of the property and of enhancing and promoting the livelihoods of affected local communities, via their involvement in the rehabilitation of the cultural tourism and creative industry sector in the region. Through initiatives such as the 2008, 2009 and 2011 Prambanan Patrimonito Workcamps for World Heritage Volunteers, the negative perception of UNESCO among locals in Prambanan was somewhat readjusted. These projects, in collaboration with the Archaeology Department and Provincial Tourism Office of Central Java, enabled international volunteers to assist the experts with the restoration of the temple and to increase the heritage awareness of local youth.28 Conclusion Over time, there have been remarkable shifts in the value and meaning attached to Indonesia’s cultural heritage (Salazar 2012). The postcolonial government has successfully managed to use the most iconic historical monuments within the country for tourism development,

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while at the same time trying to intervene in their management in the name of their preservation as part of the nation’s patrimony. These processes do not take a single course, but, rather, proceed in parallel, mutually influencing each other. The promotion of the development of national culture has been one of the most crucial tasks of the Indonesian government since independence, as is clearly stated in Article 32 of the Constitution: ‘The Government shall develop the National Culture of Indonesia.’ However, the ongoing process of political decentralization (started in 2001) is adding to the number of political actors involved and, consequently, making the management of ‘world’ heritage sites even more complex than it was before (Salazar 2010b). Initiatives such as UNESCO’s Community Empowerment through Heritage Education programme at Indonesia’s cultural World Heritage sites try to involve local communities more actively as stakeholders. Increased scholarly attention is needed to address the fact that World Heritage sites, despite their proclaimed universal value, have different meanings for different groups of actors (Salazar 2012). Traditionally, values were articulated by expert analyses of heritage as a work of art or a record of the past. Only recently has the heritage field begun to embrace such factors as economics, cultural change, public policy and social issues. The advantage of an ethnographic approach in this aperture is that it can focus on the way values function in everyday life and in particular on the deliberations in which they are formed and expressed. Despite their proclaimed universal value, my findings clearly illustrate that World Heritage sites, even neighbouring ones, have different values and meanings for different groups of actors at local, national and global levels. This is only partly based on the nature of the sites and points to the importance of historical contingency. An in-depth analysis of the empirical findings leads to a broader reflection on the dynamic interplay between the externally imaged (represented) and locally imagined value and management of World Heritage in Indonesia and beyond. It shows how heritage is always enmeshed in complex webs of meaning, variously cherished and expressed by actors at different levels. The case study presented in this chapter confirms the importance of in-depth research in disentangling the complex dynamics of ‘world heritage’. The study of Central Java’s cultural history shows how outsiders have set the agenda since the time heritage became an issue of importance: Dutch and British colonials, the central government in Jakarta and UNESCO, ICOMOS and other international organizations. Such growing translocal interdependence is irreversible but

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variously received. We should be wary of attaching too much agency to the designation of World Heritage. The example of Prambanan teaches us how, in times of change, the local meaning of heritage can change too. The global recognition by UNESCO, for instance, is used strategically when guiding foreign tourists, but local tour guides clearly sensed and criticized the organization’s ‘distance’ in the period after the earthquake – not recognizing that, often, national authorities were to blame rather than international ones. The Javanese case reminds us that the instrumental value of heritage is susceptible to rapid change, while the cultural meaning it has seems to change much slower. Noel B. Salazar is research professor in anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is the author of Envisioning Eden (2010) and the editor of Regimes of Mobility (2014, with Nina Glick Schiller) and Tourism Imaginaries (2014, with Nelson Graburn). He is a member of the Young Academy of Belgium, vice president of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and past president of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

Notes This chapter is based on research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0514129 and BCS-0608991), the European Commission Directorate General Research (PIRG03-GA-2008-230892) and the Research Foundation - Flanders (1.2.210.09.N and 1.2.210.12.N). Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta kindly acted as the local institutional sponsor, while the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Permit No. 8093/SU/KS/2005) gave me the necessary research clearance. I am grateful to my research assistant, Erlis Saputra, for all his help. I want to thank Celia Martínez Yáñez for facilitating access to certain archival materials and Lucile Smirnov from the ICOMOS Documentation Centre in Paris for sending me the Borobudur and Prambanan World Heritage nomination files. 1. In 2012, the World Heritage Committee added the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province (World Heritage List entry no. 1194rev). Another nineteen cultural sites, more spread across the main islands, are on Indonesia’s Tentative List. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/id. 2. See http://whc.unesco.org/document/616 and http://whc.unesco.org/ document/624. 3. Few have represented Java as primitive or tribal, recognizing the early

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cultural influences from India, a ‘high’ civilization because it was complex and literate (Antlöv and Hellman 2005). The civilized image of Java is also due to a concerted effort by Indonesian authorities in the 1980s and early 1990s to promote its intangible heritage by sending gamelan orchestras and traditional dance troupes around the world. During that time, Javanese cultural expressions received wide coverage in foreign documentaries and in performances and museum exhibitions abroad. 4. The case of the Tana Toraja settlements in the highlands of Sulawesi, on Indonesia’s Tentative List, painfully illustrates that cultural heritage properties are often not the newly threatened landscapes of tradition they are imagined to be (Adams 2003). An even more problematic example is that of Pura Besakih, Bali’s most celebrated temple complex, which underwent three failed attempts for nomination as World Heritage, mainly due to strong local protests (Hitchcock and Darma Putra 2007). The Balinese did not want Besakih to be treated like Borobudur, where religious activities had originally been banned. 5. I first visited Borobudur and Prambanan in 2000, as a tourist, and returned, as an ethnographer, in 2003, 2005–6 and 2011. The focus of most of my earlier research was on the discourses and practises of local tour guides (Salazar 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010a). 6. In order to accommodate the religious needs of the many Muslims working at and visiting the monuments, a musholla (small building where Muslims perform their religious duties) was built right next to the Borobudur and Prambanan entry gates. To some visitors it is odd that, while visiting either monument around prayer time, one can hear the Islamic call to prayer far into the park. 7. While most Javanese officially profess Islam as their religion, many are followers of Javanese mysticism, a metaphysical search for harmony within one’s inner self, connection with the universe and with a supreme being (Mulder 2005). Borobudur and Prambanan play a significant role in the local mystic order, as they flank the magical axis between Mount Merapi and the South Sea (Koentjaraningrat 1985). 8. See http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/3000/largestbuddhist-temple. 9. Interestingly, UNESCO’s Advisory Body ICOMOS had recommended inscription based on criteria (i) Borobudur is a principal monument of the Buddhist patrimony, and (iv) the complex forms a characteristic ensemble of Buddhist art in Java. In the nomination file, the Indonesian government had proposed criterion (i) and (iii) Borobudur bears a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a civilization which has disappeared. Clearly, various stakeholders value Borobudur for different reasons. 10. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/592. 11. Borobudur’s architectural design clearly reflects Indian influences, yet experts agree that there are enough indigenous elements incorporated to make it uniquely Indonesian. 12. Before Borobudur, UNESCO had already launched international

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campaigns to safeguard Abu Simbel, Egypt (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979) and Venice, Italy (inscribed in 1987). See http:// whc.unesco.org/en/107. 13. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/592/documents. 14. See http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2006/mis592-2006.pdf. 15. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/463. 16. The Magelang pool of tour guides is much smaller than the one in Yogyakarta. Few on-site guides at Borobudur speak languages other than English, French and German. When other languages are needed, Yogyakarta-based guides are still allowed to operate inside the complex boundaries (Salazar 2010a). 17. Here again, the Indonesian government had proposed criterion (iii) Prambanan bears a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a civilization which has disappeared. This criterion was not retained, for one because Hinduism has not at all disappeared in Indonesia: it is most visible on Bali but also among the Tenggerese people in East Java (Hefner 1985). 18. The text was changed in 2011 (coincidentally also the year in which I first published about this inconsistency). See http://www.borobudurpark. com/temple/aboutPrambanan. 19. Without explicitly naming him, Raffles was referring to the Dutchman Hermann Cornelius, who made detailed drawings of the Prambanan temple ruins in 1797 (and who, during the short-lived British occupation, became the supervisor and superintendent of historical monuments in the Semarang district). 20. Inspired by European ballet, the Ramayana Ballet was created in 1961 by the then Ministry of Post, Telecommunication and Tourism as a cultural performance for people unfamiliar with both the language and the dramaturgic codes of Javanese court theatre. Initially, the colossal production (which occurs during nights of the full moon in the dry season) was held at a huge open stage south of the Prambanan Temple. In 1989 (right before nomination), President Suharto ordered a smaller amphitheatre to be built at a strategic location where the Prambanan temple complex becomes the backdrop of the stage. Borobudur, too, is used as a scenic backdrop for a ballet performance. Mahakarya Borobudur is a dance performance held three or four times a year. It takes place on the open stage right on the foot of the main structure. 21. See http://whc.unesco.org/archive/periodicreporting/APA/cycle01/section 2/642-summary.pdf. 22. Although local people perceived it differently, UNESCO’s Emergency Assessment Mission in June 2006 consisted of only one international expert (an Italian professor in the field of structural engineering), while the other participants were Indonesian experts and representatives from the UNESCO office in Jakarta. An international meeting was organized in March 2007, bringing together Indian, Indonesian, Italian and Japanese experts from various fields (including archaeology, architecture, civil

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engineering, geodetic engineering, geology and history), representatives from UNESCO, ICOMOS Australia and the Global Heritage Fund, and government representatives from China, India, Italy, Japan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/events/379. 23. This legend probably arose at the time the temple complex lay in ruins and local people used their imagination to explain its origin. 24. See http://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/642.pdf. 25. Rather than this pointing to the diminished power of the Javanese in the central government, it indicates a distancing from Javanese mythology and folklore in favour of scientific reasoning. See http://whc.unesco.org/ archive/periodicreporting/APA/cycle01/section2/642.pdf. 26. This illustrates that the local community has little say in how ‘their’ World Heritage is (re)presented to the wider world. See http://whc. unesco.org/en/list/642. 27. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/4477. 28. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/518 and http://whc.unesco.org/ en/activities/519.

Bibliography Adams, K. M. 2003. ‘The Politics of Heritage in Southeast Asia: Interplaying the Local and the Global’, Indonesia and the Malay World 31(89): 91–107. Alderman, D. H. 2008. ‘Place, Naming and the Interpretation of Cultural Landscapes’, in B. J. Graham and P. Howard (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Burlington: Ashgate, pp. 195–213. Antlöv, H., and J. Hellman (eds.). 2005. The Java That Never Was: Academic Theories and Political Practices. Berlin: LIT Verlag. Barthel-Bouchier, D., and M. M. Hui. 2007. ‘Places of Cosmopolitan Memory’, Globality Studies Journal 5: 1–16. Black, H., and G. Wall. 2001. ‘Global-Local Inter-Relationships in UNESCO World Heritage Sites’ in P. Teo, T. C. Chang and K. C. Ho (eds.), Interconnected Worlds: Tourism in Southeast Asia. Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 121–36. Brown, M. W. 1983. ‘Indonesia Rescues Ancient Borobudur’, National Geographic 163(1): 126–42. Choay, F. 1996. L’Allégorie du patrimoine. Paris: Seuil. Cochrane, J. 2009. ‘Spirits, Nature and Pilgrimage: The “Other” Dimension in Javanese Domestic Tourism’, Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion 6(2): 107–19. Dahles, H. 2001. Tourism, Heritage and National Culture in Java: Dilemmas of a Local Community. Richmond: Curzon Press. Di Giovine, M.A. 2010. ‘World Heritage Tourism: UNESCO’s Vehicle for Peace’, Anthropology News 51(8): 8–9.

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Dumarçay, J. 1986. The Temples of Java (trans. M. Smithies). Singapore: Oxford University Press. Errington, S. 1993. ‘Making Progress on Borobudur: An Old Monument in New Order’, Visual Anthropology Review 9(2): 32–59. Hampton, M. P. 2005. ‘Heritage, Local Communities and Economic Development’, Annals of Tourism Research 32(3): 735–59. Hefner, R. W. 1985. Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hitchcock, M., and I Nyoman Darma Putra. 2007. Tourism, Development and Terrorism in Bali. Aldershot: Ashgate. Jokilehto, J. 2008. What Is OUV? Defining the Outstanding Universal Value of Cultural World Heritage Properties. Paris: ICOMOS. Jordaan, R. E. 1996. In Praise of Prambanan: Dutch Essays on the Loro Jonggrang Temple Complex. Leiden: KITLV Press. Kagami, H. 1997. ‘Tourism and National Culture: Indonesian Policies on Cultural Heritage and Its Utilization in Tourism’, in S. Yamashita, K. H. Din and J. S. Eades (eds.), Tourism and Cultural Development in Asia and Oceania. Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, pp. 61–82. Kausar, D. R., and Y. Nishikawa. 2010. ‘Heritage Tourism in Rural Areas: Challenges for Improving Socio-Economic Impacts’, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 15(2): 195–213. Kim, B.-K. 2007. ‘Indefinite Boundaries: Reconsidering the Relationship between Borobudur and Loro Jonggrong in Central Java’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Koentjaraningrat, R. M. 1985. Javanese Culture. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Lombard, D. 1990. Le carrefour javanais: Essai d’histoire globale. 3 vols. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Ministry of Culture and Tourism. 2003. Compilation of Law and Regulation of the Republic of Indonesia Concerning Items of Cultural Property. Jakarta. Mulder, N. 2005. Mysticism in Java: Ideology in Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Kanisius. Raffles, Sir T. S. 1830. The History of Java. London: John Murray. Ray, H. P. 2008. ‘Archaeology and Empire: Buddhist Monuments in Monsoon Asia’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 45(3): 417–49. Salazar, N. B. 2005. ‘Tourism and Glocalization: “Local” Tour Guiding’, Annals of Tourism Research 32(3): 628–46.    . 2006. ‘Building a “Culture of Peace” through Tourism: Reflexive and Analytical Notes and Queries’, Universitas Humanística 62(2): 319–33.    . 2007. ‘Towards a Global Culture of Heritage Interpretation? Evidence from Indonesia and Tanzania’, Tourism Recreation Research 32(3): 23–30.    . 2008. ‘“Enough Stories!” Asian Tourism Redefining the Roles of Asian Tour Guides’, Civilizations 57(1/2): 207–22.

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   . 2010a. Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing Imaginaries in Tourism and Beyond. Oxford: Berghahn.    . 2010b. ‘The Glocalization of Heritage through Tourism: Balancing Standardization and Differentiation’, in S. Labadi and C. Long (eds.), Heritage and Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 130–47.    . 2011. ‘Imagineering Cultural Heritage for Local-to-Global Audiences’, in A. van Stipriaan, P. van Ulzen and M. Halbertsma (eds.), The Heritage Theatre. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 49–72.    . 2012. ‘Shifting Values and Meanings of Heritage: From Cultural Appropriation to Tourism Interpretation and Back’, in S. M. Lyon and C. E. Wells (eds.), Global Tourism: Cultural Heritage and Economic Encounters. Lanham, MD: Altamira, pp. 21–41. Salazar, N. B., and N. H. H. Graburn (eds.). 2014. Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches. Oxford: Berghahn. Shepherd, R. 2006. ‘UNESCO and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Tibet’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 36(2): 243–57. Silver, C. 2007. ‘Tourism, Cultural Heritage, and Human Rights in Indonesia: The Challenges of an Emerging Democratic Society’, in H. Silverman and D. F. Ruggles (eds.), Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. New York: Springer, pp. 78–91. Smith, L., and N. Akagawa (eds.). 2009. Intangible Heritage. London: Routledge. Soekmono. 1976. Chandi Borobudur: A Monument of Mankind. Paris: The UNESCO Press. Subarno. 2006. Guide to the Prambanan Temple. Prambanan: HPI DIY Prambanan. Suntoro, N. 2002. Conversations on Tourism Objects. Jakarta: Kesaint Blanc. Taylor, J. G. 2003. Indonesia: Peoples and Histories. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.    . 2012. Global Indonesia. Milton Park: Routledge. Taylor, K. 2003. ‘Cultural Landscape as Open Air Museum: Borobudur World Heritage Site and Its Setting’, Humanities Research 10(2): 51–62. UNESCO. 1972. Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO.    . 2008. The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Chapter 7 Civilization and the Transformation of Xiaotun Village at Yin Xu Archaeological Site, China Shu-Li Wang

Xiaotun Village achieved notoriety following the discovery of Shangperiod oracle bone inscriptions there in the late nineteenth century. This contributed to the decision taken by local authorities to retain the village as part of the development of Yin Xu National Archaeological Park (Yinxu guojia kaoguyizhi gongyuan). The official aim was to project a civilized image to the outside world; however, the juxtaposition of competing sources of memory and identity made this difficult, since the state’s official narrative contradicted local perceptions and popular memory. The aim of state-led nationalism in China has been to bring ‘civilization’ and progress, but local villagers who have been displaced or who are fighting to remain in their homes view the project negatively. Part of the reason for the villagers’ dismay is the failure of tourism to bring economic prosperity. This account is the first to document the rapid changes in local village life near the Anyang Yin Xu archaeological site following its elevation to World Heritage status in 2006. This chapter describes how the official desire to project an idealized image of civilization has played out in the everyday lives of Xiaotun villagers within the Yin Xu protection zone. This is done through analysis of ethnographic data about how the state project has contributed to the transformation of people’s everyday lives. Between 2009 and 2011, I spent a total of eight months at Anyang Field Station, Henan Province, documenting various processes

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involved in the making of Yin Xu National Archaeological Park. On my way to and from the station each day, I took Xiaotun West Road and passed Xiaotun and Huayuanzhuang, the two villages next to Yin Xu Museum. Most scholars who come to Yin Xu are focused on the area’s rich archaeological resources; I visited frequently, with the intention of investigating everyday life in Xiaotun since Yin Xu became a World Heritage site. I paid special attention to the social impact of the state’s heritage-branding project and to the narration of local memory. I found that the villagers have complex feelings towards the museum, site and place. In this chapter, I intend to share elements of cultural memory among the villagers, as well as to explore the top-down imposition of nationalism juxtaposed with local modes of resistance, interactions with national history and understandings of the UNESCO concept of a World Heritage site. Wherever possible, I will use my ethnographic informants’ own words to describe their views. Staging a Civilized China Economic reform since the late 1990s has accelerated China’s development, with political decentralization and urbanization advancing everywhere. Heritage and the past, which in Mao’s era were considered impediments to modernization, have been reinterpreted as sources of national glory. With the rise of the tourism in response to Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door Policy, numerous museums and parks have been constructed. In the Central Plains Region, traditionally considered the cradle of Chinese civilization, six provinces have proposed to ‘use culture to strengthen their provinces’ (wenhua qiangsheng); in particular, Henan Province has proposed using its ‘Central Plains culture’ as a marketing brand for ancient cities such as Anyang, Kaifeng and Luoyang. This heritage-making movement raises the question of what cultural heritage means in contemporary China. How do the Chinese internalize the idea of ‘World Heritage’ in their own local practices, and in what ways does this challenge current World Heritage practices? How do the local inhabitants understand Yin Xu as a global, national and local heritage site? Wenming, the term for ‘civilization’ in Chinese, is a concept that was introduced to China by the Japanese but that is now deeply rooted in contemporary Communist political ideology and widely used in everyday discourse (Wang 1984: 21). Deriving from the Latin civitas, the word ‘civilization’ first appeared in French in the eighteenth

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century; meanwhile, the Germans preferred ‘culture’ and the British have historically used both more or less interchangeably (Wang 1984). In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, however, the terms became differentiated in English-language usage, with the former coming to emphasize historical progress – implying advancement through an evolutionary hierarchy of human culture – especially if understood more broadly, alongside terms such as ‘civility’, ‘civilizing’ and ‘civilized’. This mindset was particularly evident in European colonial ideologies, as well as in the context of the Confucian civilizing process of Imperial China (Friedman 2004: 688). The Japanese coined the word bunmei for ‘civilization’ and bunka for ‘culture’, which became wenhua in Chinese. Both wenming and wenhua find their referents in Confucian thought, and both carry implications of literacy and of Sinocentric cultural and moral advancement. When wenming was introduced in the nineteenth century (late Qing era), many Chinese intellectuals were influenced by the success of the Meiji reforms in Japan; later, in the twentieth century, they were also influenced by the Marxist theory of historical stages. The term has thus become associated with Westernization and modernization (Boutonnet 2011). Since 1949, as part of communist ideology, through the Maoist era and into the post-Mao period, the state has formulated and reformulated its civilizing discourse variously, which may be best exemplified by the socialist ‘spiritual civilization’ campaigns of the 1990s (Dynon 2008). Various ideological projects relating to wenming were launched after Mao and acted as means by which reform-era leaders bridged Mao’s centralism and Deng’s Open Door Policy (Friedman 2004, Dynon 2008). These played a role in shaping a utopian vision for post-Maoist China over the course of its economic liberalization process. At the ground level, people are educated to conduct themselves in a ‘civilized’ manner; for example, this has taken the form of a prohibition on spitting and an encouragement of specific forms of etiquette. Today, to be ‘civilized’ not only means to be a moral person but also implies proper ‘acting, doing and being’ (Friedman 2004: 109); that is, civility has a bodily dimension. As Sara Friedman (2004) pointed out, in reform-era China, an ideal socialist citizen is one who demonstrates civility, progress and productivity. Since China signed the World Heritage Convention in 1985, it has fervently endeavoured to participate, staging its past in the international competitions for World Heritage designation. While UNESCO is primarily interested in how sites can be seen as contributing to universal value, China is more concerned with showcasing itself as the country with the longest continuous civilization in the world. I argue that China has assimilated World

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Heritage discourse into its own practices, and that the staging of World Heritage sites plays a major role in the political campaigns of wenming (civilization) projects in China. In many heritage spaces in China, both an idealized vision of historical China and a utopian image of the future nation have been produced, making for a civilized Chineseness that will gain admiration from the rest of the world (see Anagnost 1997 for the concept of looking towards the past to face the future). In most cases, in the processes of transforming the everyday living places into heritage spaces, the original inhabitants are either asked to move out or are taught civilizing behaviours. Specific standards are set by the state for the construction of a civilized space, but behind these, the broader notion of ‘spiritual civilization’ – the task of forging disciplined, productive citizens – is the guiding concern. Since 1997, the Chinese government has established a kind of rating system. Households, work units, localities, museums and heritage sites, as well as individuals, have been evaluated on how ‘civilized’ they are on a scale of one to five stars (Dynon 2008: 109). This rating system, which authorities intend to apply at various levels, links the Chinese usage of the term ‘civilization’ to the hierarchical usage contained in Marxist and evolutionist notions of progress, advancement and modernity. Though the meaning of wenming is changing, debates originating in late Qing China about how to relate Chinese culture to the civilization of the West so as to be competitive in a globalized milieu remain. As suggested by Friedman, the Chinese understanding of wenming is both ‘hierarchical and attainable’ (Friedman 2008: 689). The History of Yin Xu Archaeological Site The Yin Xu archaeological site is located on the border between the rural and urban areas of Anyang City, in the north of Henan Province. Anyang is one of China’s eight ancient cities. According to one saying, if one wants to understand China’s 3,000-year history, one should look at Anyang; to understand the past 2,000 years, one should look at Xi’an; and to understand its past 1,000 years, one should look at Beijing. Under excavation since 1928, the site has been identified as the capital city during the Late Shang Period (ca. 1400 to 1050 bc), also known as the Chinese Bronze Age. It contains several royal tombs and palaces. The excavation has been headed by the state academic institute, the Academia Sinica, during the Republican era; since the 1950s, the excavation has been undertaken by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

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Yin Xu is the first capital recorded in Chinese historical sources to have its existence confirmed by archaeological excavations as well as by oracle bone inscriptions. As such, it is considered the most important ancient cultural site ever discovered in China and the birthplace of Chinese archaeology conducted by Chinese archaeologists (Loewe and Shaughnessy 1999, Chen Xingcan 2009). Yin Xu was listed as a Nationally Important Cultural Unit in 1961, as the oldest of the seven historical capitals of China in 1988 and was voted the most valuable out of one hundred archaeological sites found in China in the twentieth century in 2001 (jointly with the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian). As early as 1997, the Chinese government listed Yin Xu as one of the ‘100 demonstration bases for education in patriotism’ and included conservation and management of the site in local plans for the development of cultural relics and tourism. In 2006, Yin Xu was inscribed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites (UNESCO 2006). Anyang City has changed significantly since 2001, when it initiated the bidding process for World Heritage listing, and several city planning projects are now underway. According to the development plan, East Anyang will be a new commercial, governmental and residential centre, and West Anyang will be an archaeological park with cultural and tourist industries; the completion of both projects is expected by 2015. Yin Xu archaeological site is located in the northwest suburbs of Anyang City, where strict construction laws are enforced. It is estimated that the completed Yin Xu National Archaeological Park will cover 36 square kilometres, an area larger than the existing World Heritage property (11.34 square kilometres). However, according to the Yindu District administration, the site is set to be expanded to 50 square kilometres for tourism development and real estate investment. The conservation plan, which was put together by Xibei University and funded by the Anyang City administration, was rejected by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and state archaeologists due to disputes over the size of the protection zone, methods of restoration and site interpretation. Even the archaeological park seems to have come about as a resolution to incorporate the protected archaeological sites within the urban development; still, there is no consensus about what a park should be. The archaeologists prioritize conservation and expect a pure presentation of archaeological data; the local authorities prioritize economic development and expect more reconstructions and tourist facilities. In both of their visions, a ‘clean’ World Heritage site is a goal.

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Within the Yin Xu protection zone, two villages next to the current Yin Xu Museum have experienced sudden change. Land in Huayuanzhuang Village was reallocated in order to build the site park, while Xiaotun remains intact as part of a state plan to develop a village modelled on its civilizational ideals. Further excavations were due to be carried out in the Tonglebeiqu area, but an ongoing disagreement between archaeologists and local city and district administrators regarding the extent of the work, its costs and the archaeological team to be assigned are holding up progress. Making a Civilized Xiaotun Village Located in the Core Protection Zone (Zhongdian baohuqu)1 of Yin Xu on the southern bank of the Huanhe River, with Mount Taihang on its western side, Xiaotun has become famous for the Shang palace foundations, sacrificial pits, countless oracle bones and hundreds of thousands of bronzes and jades that have been unearthed there since the identification of an inscribed oracle bone by Chinese scholar Wang Yirong in the nineteenth century. The discovery assured Xiaotun’s inclusion in China’s primary and middle school textbooks, and as a result, this tiny village actually has greater name recognition than Anyang City (China Daily, 3 August 2006). Xiaotun is a twenty-minute drive from Anyang City train station. The east side of the village has been transformed into the current Yin Xu Museum but the west side remains intact. Walking into Xiaotun, it is obvious that, just like everywhere else in China, there are a lot of posters and slogans encouraging behaviour, such as ‘Be a civilized person’, ‘Clean your hands before eating’, ‘It is better to have just one child’, ‘It is better to marry late’, etc. I noticed that one of these slogans announces that Xiaotun is going to make itself into a ‘civilized village’. Badges have been posted on the doors of some of the houses certifying their civility and providing a model for other villagers. The unification of space and the emphasis on hygiene in the village conjures Foucauldian (e.g. 1994) ideas of surveillance through spatial control, as well as Herzfeld’s (2006) notion of spatial cleansing. In fact, after the imposition of regulations in 2003, the Anyang City government began demolition on illegal buildings in six villages (Anyang City Government 2003). It then established guidelines for architectural uniformity regarding building colours and heights. In 2010, the local city government began to educate Xiaotun villagers on hygienic practices such as hand washing and general cleanliness.

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Figure 7.1.  Xiaotun village, 2010 (photo: Shu-Li Wang).

The Post–World Heritage Situation at Anyang Yin Xu Archaeological Site: Living Conditions in Villages within Yin Xu Protection Zone Unlike the situation around other World Heritage sites, the living standards in villages around Yin Xu have not improved since the site was listed. Although the number of visitors to Yin Xu Museum has increased, it has not met local government expectations. All the profits go to daily maintenance of the site. During the period of my research, around sixteen thousand people lived in more than ten villages within the Core Protection Zone, with an official average annual income of 2,570 RMB (1 euro ~ 8.65 RMB at the time of writing) (Du Jouming 2007: 7), compared with 5,075 RMB in neighbouring Fanjiazhuang and 5,400 RMB in Kuhechun (Li Nanchen 2008). In Xiaotun, the average income is only about 2,000 RMB. The collective income had been around 400,000 RMB, but since preparations for World Heritage nomination began in 2001, it has shrunk to 120,000 RMB (Du Jouming 2007: 7). In Huayuanzhuang, the collective income has dropped from 1.5 million RMB to only a few tens of thousands. Xiaotun as a collective unit used to own more than 600 mu (1 mu = 10 fen ~ 0.00067 square kilometres; 600 mu ~ 0.4 square kilometres)

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of land but sold 104 mu for the construction of the Yin Xu Museum in 1987, and 300 mu to the Yin Xu Museum during the World Heritage preparation period of 2001–2006. Each person used to have 8 fen of land, but much of this was confiscated by the government for the construction of Yin Xu Museum in 2001, and now on average each person only has 3–3.5 fen of private land (the notions of ownership and ‘private land’ in this sense mean that the produce belongs to the individual farmers and does not have to be given to the collective [dadui]). One of the villagers, Mr Du,2 claimed that because the dadui made a bad investment they did not get any compensation. The income from one mu of land per year is around 1–2,000 RMB. There are four members in Mr Ren’s family, and 1.4 mu of land. Mr Ren said, ‘Take this year [2010] for example; if we have 600 jin (1 jin = 0.5 kg) of wheat, and sell it at the price of 0.9 RMB per jin, and 1,000 jin of rice and sell it at a price of 1 RMB per jin, the yearly income for the whole family is around 1,540 RMB, and the average income per person per day is 1.055 RMB.’ From 2001 to 2006, during the World Heritage bid preparations, seventy-six Xiaotun households were resettled to Liujiazhuang village one kilometre away. Villagers must now ride their bicycles for twenty minutes to farm their land in Xiaotun. Mr Ren used to have a house with a total floor area of 320 square metres in Xiaotun, but when he was relocated to Liujiazhuang, he was given three flats with a total area of 360 square metres, so he had to pay 160,000 RMB to account for the 40 square metre difference. I learnt from other villagers that they believed the land price would increase after the World Heritage listing, and most of them took out loans in order to resettle to the new place. Villagers’ disappointments over their relocation are not limited to economics. When I asked if life in Liujiazhuang had improved since the construction of the new apartments, one of my informants expressed a sentiment common to most villagers, ‘We are farmers! Farmers live more comfortably in open spaces.’ Villagers used to be able to dry grain in front of their bungalows, but in apartments, the spaces are too narrow and neighbours are too close to each other. Some also pointed out that unlike in apartments, they had not needed to pay for water, electricity and management before. Members of the seventy-six resettled households still hold farms in Xiaotun and frequently ride their bicycles back to Xiaotun to tend their land. When I asked Mr Ren if this was tiring, he replied, ‘Of course, it is annoying. However, I am a Xiaotun villager, so even if I moved to Beijing, I am still one of the Xiaotun people.’ Villagers’

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concerns were not simply over compensation; they also reflected an unwillingness to let go of the life experience and memories attached to the place. The Chinese idiom antuzhongqian refers to a notion within traditional Chinese society wherein, as a result of the society’s agricultural foundation, people’s attachment to land, which is analogous to their kinship attachments, becomes the basis for identity formation such that they are unwilling or unable to detach themselves from their native places. This idea was coined by the Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, who described Chinese social structure as ‘bound to earth’ (1948). The meaning attached to the notion of ‘hometown’ is not measured by land price, location or modern features, but is made meaningful through the Chinese fengshui concept of location, by the social network in a village or simply through cultural memory. For these villagers, what distinguishes spaces and places is that places such as villages are socially constructed with collective or individual life memories, while spaces such as national archaeological parks are neutral, cold concepts drawn on a map. Xiaotun Villagers’ Attempts to Engage in the Tourism Business The Xiaotun people are just like beggars sitting on a goldmine. (A Xiaotun villager)

One day I took a taxi from the museum to the city centre, and during the ride the driver and I had an interesting talk. Thinking I was a tourist, he asked if I had enjoyed visiting the museum. I answered, then asked him what other visitors’ opinions of Yin Xu Museum were. He said, ‘If you enjoy the museum, you are well-educated [chengdu hao, lit. ‘good quality’]. If you do not enjoy the museum, you are from the general public.’ I was quite surprised by his statement, which from my point of view was indeed accurate. Most of the tourists I met at the Yin Xu Museum did not enjoy the visit because they did not know what to see (too little was displayed) or how to understand it (not enough explanation). Although the local archaeologists working on the site suggest moderate reconstruction, the state archaeologists working in Beijing insist that conventional conservation methods are applied; this means findings are generally presented in situ, historical reconstructions are avoided and the village and land surrounding the site are strictly regulated, especially with regard to construction. As a result, the museum has had few visitors, even after it achieved World Heritage listing. There were actually 150,000 visitors in the first

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month after Yin Xu was inscribed as a World Heritage site, whereas before 2006 there had been an average of 200,000 visitors per year. One villager recalled earning 200 RMB per day simply selling water. However, after that first month, during which museum entry was free, the number of visitors started to drop, and it became difficult to sustain business there. There were seven shops in the vicinity of the museum, but only two of these were owned by Xiaotun villagers. Visitors seldom stopped in the shops outside Yin Xu Museum. Mr Chang, who made the remark quoted at the beginning of this section, became interested in art collecting after retiring; he had moved to Xiaotun in the 1970s and started his business in 2005. When this was successful, some of his relatives from Shandong also moved to Xiaotun to open shops after 2006 but none of these took off. Instead of Yin Xu Museum visitors, who would only buy one or two pieces as souvenirs, Mr Chang targeted governors and businessmen, who would spend a lot of money and would order multiple units of more valuable pieces, such as the four-legged bronze cauldrons known as simuwuding quadripods. As he explained, ‘In order to maintain relationships, giving gifts is important. Chinese people used to send cigarettes and wine as gifts, but now people prefer to send “culture” suggesting that the giver has a good artistic appreciation.’ When I asked his impression of Xiaotun and business strategy, he commented that Anyang’s branding strategy was bad and that local people hadn’t realized yet how important the culture of Yin Xu is. He then gave some examples: in Kaifeng, another historic city in Henan Province, visitors could experience daily life during the Song dynasty in the Qingming Shangheyuan theme park; there were also many touristic streets. In comparison, Yin Xu had developed too slowly since its World Heritage nomination; over the course of the bid period, only the streets had been renovated. ‘Even the products have to be renewed frequently, not to mention museums!’ Mr Tian, who established his business in 2006, has also experienced first hand this attitude about the capacity of local villagers to comprehend the cultural magnitude of Yin Xu and to take advantage of the opportunities it presented them. He told me about one occasion on which he found himself seated next to Mr Jin, party secretary of the Anyang City government. According to his story, Mr Jin said that in all of Xiaotun there was no one with the talent to operate a business based on Yin Xu culture. Mr Tian’s rented shop, located around the corner from the museum, does slow business, and he goes there only a few times per week. Other villagers, in addition to being farmers or temporary workers, also sell archaeological artefacts. According

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to one of the shop owners, they sold oracle bones to art dealers for 5 RMB or 10 RMB per word twenty years ago, and for probably 30 RMB per word as of 2010, even though they fetch 45,000 RMB per word on the art market. In 2006, upon Yin Xu’s inscription as a World Heritage site, villagers believed their lives were going to be transformed. One of the new businesses to open during this period was a small noodle restaurant. But most of its client base ended up being comprised of local villagers, while visitors usually dined in Anyang City. Though the owner, Mr Pan, wanted to shut down, the Yindu district government wanted to keep the restaurant open since it was the only place serving hot food near the museum. As incentive, the government reduced its business tax, but the restaurant closed anyway in 2010. Xiaotun villagers were told by the government that the place would be famous for a hundred years for its significance to Chinese history. But they are disappointed with the current economic situation in the area, which they blame on construction controls and environmental cleansing related to heritage planning. Some villagers shared that they sometimes thought life was better under Mao because society was more egalitarian then (a model case of structural nostalgia; Herzfeld 1997). Since the reform, a big gap has opened between the rich and the poor, and ‘the worst thing is that the rich even want what little the poor have’, as one Xiaotun villager commented. As most villagers have trouble surviving on farming alone, they usually also take up positions as temporary labourers in the city, since industries that used to bring some profit to the villages, like bicycle and chemical factories, have been ordered closed (see below). As one villager put it, ‘Yin Xu [lit. “the Yin Ruins”] are just like real ruins in the sense that over the past century – from the Qing dynasty and the nationalist party to the communist party – how have we benefitted?’ Villagers seem to associate the discovery of this national archaeological site with four generations of economic stagnation. Villagers and Cultural Tourism: Stories of Xiaotun Dancers After Yin Xu became a World Heritage site, local governments needed to come up with ideas to promote it. One idea was to establish a theatre troupe that would perform scenes from Shang culture. Mr Tian had lost his job after the Xiaotun bicycle factory was razed due to its location within the protection zone, so was one of those who considered joining the troupe upon hearing about it from the

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leader of the collective (dadui). In March 2007, at the suggestion of the Yindu District government, fourteen Xiaotun villagers collected 260,000 RMB to set up the Anyangdayishang wenhuachuanbo gongsi (Anyang Cultural Enterprise), which in turn founded the Xiaotun yishutuan (Xiaotun Performance Group). Around forty-five villagers from Xiaotun and Huayuanzhuang joined, most of them unemployed youths. The Yindu District Office of Arts assisted with planning performances, and the troupe staged five performances in total. Mr Liu, of the Yindu District government, wrote the scripts and asked for 25 per cent of the box office in return. In 2007, the villagers began performing two two-hour shows per day at the Yin Xu Museum. Although the show garnered a lot of praise from visitors, after thirty-six days the performers suspended their participation, claiming they had been paid only for three days’ work corresponding to the anniversary celebration of Yin Xu’s World Heritage listing. Although the Yindu District government helped the group negotiate with museum administrators – the city mayor even signed a document of support – the museum still withheld payment. The troupe had also represented the Anyang City government at art festivals in Zhengzhou and Luoyang, but the amount of compensation they received did not even cover their travelling expenses, so they declined subsequent invitations. Although the Xiaotun Performance Group had been featured in news reports and received several awards, it failed to draw financial support and finally disbanded in 2008. ‘Many people said that Yin Xu becoming a World Heritage site was big news, and that we would definitely make a fortune doing business here, so we waited and waited’, said Mr Tian. As the Xiaotun Performance Group’s work was fictionalized historical drama based on scenes from the Shang dynasty, and as the group did not feature professional players, it would have been difficult for them to perform outside Yin Xu. It seems the city’s two Yu Opera teams had no work either. Some former group members complained to me that they had prepared the story, the music, the costumes, the carpets, etc. by themselves and that everything had cost money. They claimed they had collectively already lost more than 500,000 RMB, though I am unsure how this amount was calculated, and I suppose it included foregone salaries. ‘Now we do not beg for a chance to perform; we just hope that we can get back the money [200,000 RMB] we spent on the costumes’, one group member told me. They also expected the government to provide them with jobs since it was government officials who had proposed the idea. They were also warned not to complain to the media. I asked if the government could do anything because I

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knew the Yindu District government had just invited a famous performance group from Taiwan to develop two other shows based on the Yin culture, spending two million RMB on one and ten million RMB on the other. But this sort of thing was exactly why the Xiaotun performers felt abandoned by the government. They had set up the troupe on the advice of the government, and then found themselves excluded from the Yin Xu development plan. Villagers and the Tourism Business: Ongoing Endeavours In 2010, I asked many Xiaotun residents about their aspirations for the village and the future. Most seemed to have no idea what their future held, or whether they would be relocated or not. With the failure of the Xiaotun Performance Group and the poor business done by the souvenir shops, few were interested in operating businesses in the area surrounding Yin Xu. Ironically, while the state’s intention with the development project was to elevate Xiaotun village life by transforming the area into a clean and architecturally ordered space, I had the feeling that many villagers could no longer imagine a future in this place. However, Mr Tian was one of very few who still thought about trying to make money by exploiting the rich legacy of Yin culture. He invited Mr Wei and Mr Wang from Anyang City to form a small company: Mr Wei, a young graduate of Tongji University, was recommended by Mr Wang, a middle-aged man, as a ‘cultured person’ (you wenhua). They told me they planned to seek funding to make a movie about Yin Xu and Xiaotun. They also hoped to write a history of Xiaotun. Their first project would have been the Yin Shang Cultural Festival in 2010, but their funding bid failed. By the time I returned to Anyang in 2011, I could not find their small office any longer and I do not know if they are still developing their ideas. Local authorities had no overarching plan for helping local residents develop cultural tourism in the area. As the above vignettes seem to indicate, this shortcoming can be seen to be a weakness of their broader development plan for the area. Wei-ping Lin (2009: 3) uses the idiomatic expression suku (lit. ‘speaking bitterness’) to describe the narrative practice by which people craft alternative histories; this characterization resonates with the resentful terms used by the villagers when discussing their views about the national project. One thing common to villagers from both Huayuanzhuang (who were relocated) and Xiaotun (who remained) is a sense of desperation.

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Xiaotun Village as a Site of Memory: Shang Ancestors and the Xiaotun Ancestral Temple The idiomatic expression ‘the Yin Xu Ruins are ruined’, which was commonly used by the villagers, shocked me. When I talked to them about Yin Xu, many just complained that the museum was taking over their farmland and that the protection zone limited village development. The lack of any trace of monumental architecture on the ground hinders local residents from establishing a connection with this archaeological past. I sometimes had the impression that villagers had only negative associations with Yin Xu, but my understanding changed after I overheard some villagers talking about how Xiaotun Village had good fengshui. One of them cited as evidence a big flood that had devastated the region twenty years prior; Xiaotun was the only area not affected. The reason given for this was that Xiaotun had been the capital of the Shang dynasty, and the Shang ancestors had been watching over them. In a similar vein, many villagers knew their families had lived in Xiaotun for ages but in the absence of genealogical records, they had no knowledge of when their ancestors had moved there. Nevertheless, some found it strange that I would ask them how many generations of their families had been there. I even received the response ‘Don’t you know that we have lived here for three thousand years?’ I interpreted this to mean that most villagers consider their ancestors to have lived here at the time of the Shang dynasty (although most likely outside Xiaotun itself). Although most villagers knew no details about the archaeological findings or what was going on at the archaeological sites, all of them knew that three thousand years ago the Shang dynasty had been centred here, and that this marked the birth of Chinese civilization. Local gazetteers, however, say that the villages of Xiaotun and Huayuanzhuang were settled only two hundred years ago. In this sense, villagers have their own memories and interpretations of the past and of local history, both of which differ from the official history established by archaeologists. Within Xiaotun, there is a small temple called Wushengmiao (Temple of the Five Deities, also known as Mawangmiao), which is dedicated to the worship of Mawangye (Horse Deity), Niuwangye (Cow Deity), Wudaoye (Wu Deity), Tudiye (Earth Deity) and Caishenye (Fortune Deity). These spirits were also worshipped in many other traditional Taoist temples. Mawangye and Niuwangye are figures in the popular novel Fengshenyanyi (also known as Fengshenbang, ‘The Creation of the Gods’). It is about the decline of the Shang dynasty

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and the rise of the Zhou dynasty. Mawangye was supposed to have been the child of the last Shang king; however, the story was written only during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) by unknown authors, and was first published in book form around the 1550s. Villagers go to Wushengmiao for incense offerings on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month. There are also two big annual ceremonies, one on 15 March on Mawangye’s birthday and the other on the 23 June on Niuwangye’s birthday. It is written on a tablet in the temple that in 1847, many people died of the plague. The small temple was built to commemorate them and to worship their deities. It was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but reconstructed in 1989, and in the late 1990s, the ancestral ceremonies were revived. I attended the five-day celebration of Mawangye’s birthday in 2010, during which Chinese operas were performed in front of the small temple. The opera group was from Handan, another city in Henan Province. An informant told me that before 1998, such performances had been held only occasionally. The audience came from Xiaotun and Huayuanzhuang and some also from Dasikong and Wangyukou Villages. One seventy-year-old woman wept after watching the show and said, ‘I am happy to see everybody is here, and I do not want to

Figure 7.2.  Wushengmiao shrine, 2011 (photo: Shu-Li Wang).

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leave Xiaotun.’ She had been relocated to Liujiazhuang during the World Heritage nomination preparations. Xiaotun villagers were more interested in their personal histories, community worship at Wushengmiao Temple and economic development than they were in the formal history, or in the honour of being a national and World Heritage site, which is what attracted archaeologists and government bureaucrats. Many villagers had no interest in the ambitions to make Yin Xu into an archaeological park; their concerns were for their life and work. Many refer to the relocation of Huayuanzhuang villagers. As one informant put it, ‘Thinking about Huayuanzhuang, one cannot be well compensated for moving out, and one cannot be assured that life is better staying here.’ For local villagers, Yin Xu is just a name that is important to archaeologists and a place that has been buried for thousands of years. For them, Wushengmiao and tradition are nearer to their lives than the heritage site or the museum. Villagers understand that the history of Xiaotun implicitly contradicts official history. Indeed, this also happens in many other places in the world where individual memory or local history do not necessarily correspond to national history. For example, Herzfeld (1991) describes how in the Greek town of Rethemnos, local memory was considered as an embarrassment by officials, who attempted instead to use conservation and rebuilding projects to package the place with a European identity. He argues that official discourse centres on ‘the ownership of monuments and physical proxies for a collective past’, while social discourse centres on ‘the ownership of homes, physical embodiments of a multiplicity of individual and family pasts’ (ibid.: 54). Foucault (1977) also introduced the concept of ‘counter-memory’, wherein an individual’s particular type of narrative can contrast official history. Accordingly, villagers’ understandings of the history of Xiaotun are drawn more from the above-mentioned novel Fengshenyanyi than they are from the archaeological record. Villagers had a negative view of Yin Xu and often made jokes and sarcastic remarks about this nationally important archaeological site. This negative perception challenges the political hegemony that intends to stage Yin Xu as a national patriotic site as well as a World Heritage site. Conclusion: Contested Space, Place and Heritage This chapter has highlighted clashes that have arisen in the process of remaking Yin Xu National Archaeological Park out of an idealized

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vision of national space. This clash is evident in the open conflict between local villagers’ lack of interest in the national project and the failure of this particular facet of the project to deliver sustainable economic growth. The Clash of Heritage Values Since the start of ‘World Heritage’ in the 1970s, nation states have been eager to participate in global heritage competitions by staging their own past to the world through recognition by UNESCO, and these efforts have often resulted in large-scale gentrification of local areas. In China, the state has appropriated the World Heritage making into its own civilizing discourse, considering both space and persons as requiring management in these heritage spaces. As put by Michael Rowlands (2002: 105), ‘We live in an era of unprecedented concern with preserving and restoring the past.’ He cites Verena Stolcke (1995, in ibid.), who links the ‘politics of identity with a need to belong’, in making this point. This prompts the question of how, in the process of globalization and nationalization, local populations and the state each develop a sense of belonging with reference to the same physical space? How does the state project of cultivating a sense of national belonging encounter and transform popular memory? The state project is limited to deliver a sustainable heritage development due to its top-down approach. The state project of civilization has appeared in various disciplinary regulations (e.g. the architectonics of unified space, the fetishization of culture, hygiene education and standardization of the concept of ‘civility’). In a recent paper, Stephan Feuchtwang (2012) discusses the top-down statecraft of sage rule, self-cultivation and moral education in China on the one hand, and the chaotic nature of everyday streetscapes in contemporary Chinese society on the other. The Chinese state intends to create a civilized image of China, Henan Province and Anyang Yin Xu, but is limited by its top-down approach, which fits the Central Plains Region uncomfortably into the matrix of official state historiography coming out of Beijing. Contested Heritage This chapter argues that both the state and local people understand what ‘heritage’ stands for from different perspectives. While the state prioritizes physical remains such as archaeological materials and monumental structures as important national heritage to protect,

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local people are more concerned about the everyday living experience – eating well and living well – as well as their own memory of Xiaotun that make the archaeological space a meaningful place. I argue that what is defined as heritage is always contested among interest groups. Lynn Meskell (2002) used the term ‘negative heritage’ to describe the iconoclasm of destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, considered worthy of protection by Westerners. She describes negative heritage as ‘a conflictual site that becomes the repository of negative memory in the collective imaginary’ (ibid.: 558). In these sense, different interest groups consider what constitutes heritage differently. One the one hand, Anyang Yinxu, the 2006 World Heritage site, is a nationally important symbol in making Chinese history. On the other hand, Xiaotun villagers feel abandoned by the government and are excluded from conservation policy. What has happened to the villages around Anyang Yin Xu more generally calls attention to the complexity inherent in heritage and conservation projects. Although UNESCO introduced the category of ‘intangible heritage’ in 2003, the new category still emphasizes the material aspect of ‘intangible’ heritage. UNESCO heritage policies and China’s Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage have focused on the materiality of buildings, sites and other tangible material forms without much consideration for the invisible and intangible forms of memory, identity and social history that are attached to sites. Yet in the neighbourhood of Anyang Yin Xu, one of China’s most important archaeological sites, local people are not just excluded from the process of heritage making but are also struggling to reconcile an imposed sense of the national past with local cultural memory and their beloved places in the present (see also Herzfeld 2006, Byrne 2011). For them, Yin Xu is a place where they have been settled for generations; a place that confers a sense of belonging, safety and memory. It is also worshipped as a place of ancestors, a place with good fengshui and a place with glory. Christopher Tilley reminds us that ‘locales are places created and known through common experiences, symbols and meanings’, and that ‘place is fundamental to the establishment of personal and group identities and the formation of biographies. Place is both “internal” and “external” to the human subject, a personally embedded centre of meanings and physical locus for action’ (1994: 18). It is life experiences, rather than the national project, which make the place meaningful to local inhabitants. Indeed, official narratives and popular memory attached to place are often in contrast. Rowlands and Ferdinand de Jong (2007: 13) state that ‘in postcolonial Africa, memory is full of contradictions between

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the grandiosity of state ceremonialism and popular memory’, and that ‘popular memory is genuine, whereas state ceremony and monuments are mere spectacles of the State.’ Similarly, citing Andrew Waldron’s (1993) analysis of the Great Wall as a material symbol of national identity, Ann Anagnost (1993: 71) argues that the Wall only matters to elites, while peasants find other symbols, such as ‘the five emperors’, that are more meaningfully connected to their own future aspirations. At Anyang Yin Xu, several contrasting versions of identity and place-based temporality co-exist: heritage makers and visitors expect a permanent heritage past, while local people connect to meanings of the place in the present. While visitors are expected to see the place as ‘the Yin Ruins’ (i.e. a fully excavated archaeological site) or as the capital of Shang dynasty (i.e. a reconstructed heritage site), local inhabitants living in the present connect to the place through their everyday experiences. In China, as the state is the dominant political power and possesses property rights over land, it has the right to simply erase a place and to insert new architectural forms in an existing place, whether that takes the form of vacating Huayuanzhuang or reimagining Xiaotun. For the local villagers, the ancestral temple that has stood for centuries carries more meaning than the recent state interventions. The lack of any physical archaeological traces on the ground hinders local residents from connecting with this archaeological past. The projects of making Yin Xu into a museum (1987), a World Heritage site (2006) and a future archaeological park (2015), all of which are part of the staging of Yin Xu’s archaeological past in the present, qualify as impositions by the state of ‘monumental time’ (Herzfeld 1991). Local understandings of the place have had hardly any role in putting its 3,000-year-old history to service towards the project of nation building in modern China. In the midst of these competing agendas, the difficult living situation of local inhabitants goes largely unnoticed. As such, the archaeological site ‘Yin Ruins’ is truly a source of ruin for local villagers, who consider themselves beggars sitting on a goldmine; instead, it is Wushengmiao Temple through which local communities connect, make memories and make sense of place and belonging (cf., e.g. Feuchtwang 1998, 2004). Feuchtwang defines place making as ‘the centring and marking of a place by the actions and constructions of people tracing salient parts of their daily lives as a homing point in their trajectories. Places and their features are in turn triggers of memories of their lives, reminders of whatever longer senses of time they have’ (2004: 10). Thus, the ‘sentience’ of place – feelings and meanings associated with a place – is essential in place making.

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This heritage identity generated by local villagers may not be similar to the historical narratives nor the monothematic heritage site. Villagers’ perceptions of the world are generated in a continuous process, and are structured by both the state’s continuous writing of official narratives and the state’s continuous work of spatial reconstruction. For them, their identities are inseparable from their everyday experiences and identifications with home, neighbourhood and village. But this continual formation and reformation of places will link localities to the wider world at different levels through time. It is actually the official narratives, historical awareness, memories of place and everyday practices in the present that reinforce people’s place identity. Shu-Li Wang is postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University and at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Netherlands, and obtained her PhD in anthropology from University College London. She is the author of ‘Exhibiting the Nation: Cultural Flows, Transnational Exchanges and the Development of Museums in Japan and China, 1900–1950’ (in C. Stolte and Y. Kikuchi, eds., Eurasian Encounters: Museums, Missions, Modernities) and ‘Making, Collecting and Negotiating Heritage Values in China’ (in H. Geismar and J. Anderson, eds., The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property). The research leading to the results in this chapter forms part of the project ‘Time in Intercultural Context’ directed by Prof. Dr. Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen (Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University) and has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement number 295434.

Notes I appreciate the helpful comments received on earlier versions of this chapter by Christoph Brumann, Mike Rowlands, Stephan Feuchtwang and Michael Herzfeld. 1. In China, designated heritage sites are categorized as Core Protection Zones (Zhongdian baohuqu), General Protection Zones (Yiban baohuqu) and Buffer Zones (Huancongqu). 2. I use pseudonyms for all informants.

Bibliography Anagnost, A. 1993. ‘Cultural Nationalism and Chinese Modernity’, in H. Befu (ed.), Cultural Nationalism in East Asia: Representation and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 61–74.

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Anyang City Government. 2003. Anyang Yinxu yizhi baohu zenggui (Overall Programme on the Protection of Yinxu in Anyang). Anyang: Anyang City Government Appadurai, A. 1990. ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory, Culture & Society 7: 295–310.    . 2008. ‘The Globalization of Archaeology as Heritage: A Discussion with Arjun Appadurai’, in G. Fairclough et al. (eds.), The Heritage Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 209–18. Boutonnet, T. 2011. ‘From Local Control to Globalised Citizenship: The Civilizing Concept of Wenming in Official Chinese Rhetoric’, in C. Neri and F. Villard (eds.), Global Fences: Literatures Limits Borders. Lyon: Institut des études transtextuelles et transculturelles, Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3, pp. 79–103. Byrne, D. 2011. ‘Archaeological Heritage and Cultural Intimacy: An interview with Michael Herzfeld’, Journal of Social Archaeology 11: 144–57. Casey, E. 1996. ‘How to Get from Space to Place in A Fairly Short Stretch of Time’, in S. Feld and K. H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, pp. 13–52. Du, J. 2007. Anyang yinxu yizhi baohu zhanshi de xianzhuang chengxiao wenti yu duice (Issues of Conserving and Presenting Anyang Yinxu Heritage Site). Anyang: Yin Xu Museum. Dynon, N. 2008. ‘“Four Civilizations” and the Evolution of Post-Mao Chinese Socialist Ideology’, The China Journal 60: 83–109. Fei, X. 1948. Xiangtu Zhongguo (From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society). Shanghai: Guancha. Feuchtwang, S. (ed.). 2004. Making Place: State Projects, Globalization and Local Responses in China. London: UCL Press.    . 2012. ‘Civilization and Its Discontents in Contemporary China’, The Asia-Pacific Journal 30(2), retrieved 1 September 2014 from http:// www.japanfocus.org/-Stephan-Feuchtwang/3801. Foucault, M. 1977. Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.    . 1994. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage Books. Friedman, S. L. 2004. ‘Embodying Civility: Civilizing Processes and Symbolic citizenship in Southeastern China’, Journal of Asian Studies 63: 687–718. Herzfeld, M. 1991. A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.    . 2006. ‘Spatial Cleansing: Monumental Vacuity and the Idea of the West’, Journal of Material Culture 11: 127–49. Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Li, N. 2008. ‘Liangzhong Guannian liangzhong qiantu: shijie wenhua yichan women ruhe baohu (Two Methods and Two Futures: How to Conserve World Heritage Sites)’, Anyang Development 10: 30.

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Meskell, L. 2002. ‘Negative Heritage and Past Mastering in Archaeology’, Anthropological Quarterly 75: 557–74. Rowlands, M. 1994. ‘The Politics of Identity in Archaeology’, in G. C. Bond and A. Gilliam (eds.), Social Construction of the Past: Representation as Power. London: Routledge, pp. 129–43.    . 2002. ‘Cultural Heritage and Cultural Property’, in V. Buchli (ed.), The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, pp. 105–34. Rowlands, M., and F. de Jong (eds.). 2007. Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Tilley, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.    . 2006. ‘Introduction: Identity, Place, Landscape and Heritage’, Journal of Material Culture 11: 7–32. UNESCO. 2006. Yin Xu (China) No 1114. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, retrieved 1 May 2009 from http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1114. Wang, G. 1984. ‘The Chinese Urge to Civilize: Reflections on Change’, Journal of Asian History 18: 1–34.    . 1991. The Chineseness of China: Selected Essays. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Waldron, A. 1993. ‘Representing China: The Great Wall and Cultural Nationalism in the Twentieth Century’ in Harumi Beju (ed.), Cultural nationalism in East Asia. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, pp. 40. Wei-Ping, L. 2009. ‘Local History through Popular Religion: Place, People and Their Narratives in Taiwan’, Asian Anthropology 8: 1–30.

Chapter 8 The Business of Wonder Public Meets Private at a World Heritage Site Lisa Breglia

Sometimes the deepest mysteries of ancient heritage are revealed under the most tawdry of circumstances. This turned out to be the fortuitous case with the declaration of Chichén Itzá as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World on 7 July 2007. Rather than a surprise announcement, the spectacular (perhaps over-the-top) declaration marked the culmination of seven years of promotion on the part of Swiss filmmaker and entrepreneur Bernard Weber’s New 7 Wonders Foundation to orchestrate a ‘global internet vote’ to elect a modern version of the ancient list of world wonders. I first learned of the New 7 Wonders project at Chichén while I was conducting ethnographic fieldwork at the site from 2000 to 2002. One day after my rounds of the site talking and hanging out with the site’s guards and ticket takers – federal employees of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) – I stopped by the director’s office to say hello. The workers (known as custodios) assembled in the cramped, poorly appointed facility were all abuzz with some big news. ‘Hey, Lisy’, one of the custodians said, ‘You have access to the internet, now you can vote for Chichén to be one of the 7 Wonders of the World!’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. Of course, a decade ago there was no internet connection at Chichén, so I had to wait to log on to the New 7 Wonders website to satisfy my curiosity. The INAH guys – already familiar with the New 7 Wonders virtual global

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promotion – were amused and a bit bemused by the whole thing. Watching thousands of visitors a day stream through the gates of this popular tourist destination, the workers at Chichén Itzá were well aware that their daily stomping grounds situated in their community’s own backyard was internationally famous. From their own point of view garnered from both living and working at the site, INAH custodians knew that Chichén was securely in the global regime of identifying and promoting and preserving monumental heritage – the ‘global heritage apparatus’ (Askew 2010: 32–33, Turtinen 2000). Confirming this was not only Chichén’s special status granted by presidential decree in 1976, but also its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. An obscure, unobtrusive and somewhat faded plaque marked the latter prestigious inscription, adding the pre-Hispanic city to Mexico’s three-dozen UNESCO World Heritage sites. Already granted status as constitutionally protected national patrimony (along with all of Mexico’s archaeological sites and monuments) and UNESCO World Heritage, what would it mean for Chichén Itzá to also become a New 7 Wonder? In this chapter I explore both the continuities and ruptures of Chichén Itzá becoming a New 7 Wonder of the World. My point of departure is the assertion that becoming a New 7 Wonder has a logic and series of implications that mark this 2007 inscription as fundamentally distinct from the 1988 UNESCO listing. Perhaps becoming World Heritage is the single-most important status-conferring event in the life of a heritage site. But this is hardly true in the case of Chichén Itzá. I learned this not only from my own analysis, but from the observations and opinions of local residents who live and work in and around Chichén, Maya people deeply involved in the everyday operations of the site as tour guides, craftsmen, vendors and other formal and informal tourism industry workers who make the site available to thousands of international visitors every day. They agree on a relative insignificance of World Heritage at Chichén. One site worker from a family long affiliated with Chichén (who even lived at the site until the 1980s) went so far as to say, ‘UNESCO no vale nada’ – UNESCO is worthless. The UNESCO World Heritage purports to recognize and promote a site’s ‘outstanding universal value’. Yet the micropolitics of Chichén Itzá belie the universal nature of what constitutes ‘value’ at this World Heritage site. Under increasing pressures of tourism development, an ever-greater participation by the private sector and a demand on the part of local communities for a greater take in the site’s benefit stream, ‘value’ at Chichén Itzá has taken on a starkly

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market-oriented definition. While measuring value accordingly may be business as usual at other World Heritage sites around the world, it clashes with the Mexican nationalist imaginary that archaeological heritage should not, and even cannot, be owned. What is more, the ‘value’ that World Heritage seeks to promote, as well as risks and threats that World Heritage attempts to mitigate, do not intersect with the quotidian realities on the ground at Chichén Itzá. More than a quarter century since Chichén’s inscription on the World Heritage List, multiple meanings of ‘value’ (though perhaps long latent) have risen into bold relief alongside, and in some cases against, the notion of value promoted by UNESCO’s vision and mission. These include the property value of the land constituting the heritage site itself, the value of the site as both a workplace and as a commercial centre within the local and regional political economy and the value of the site as a stage for confronting and contesting neoliberal encroachment into the cultural sector. These multiple articulations of value within and around the site itself constitute terms for debate and negotiation over ownership, custodianship and even access to the site – amongst the INAH, the state of Yucatán, private sector entrepreneurs and local residents. The articulation of this host of alternative values over and against the UNESCO notion of ‘cultural value’ clarified and intensified only after the site was named a New 7 Wonder of the World. The publicity and attention surrounding the naming disrupted and exploded the site’s long-held secret: Chichén Itzá is privately owned. This reinscription on the world stage publicly exposed the World Heritage site as a scandalous and fraudulent member of the global heritage commons. At the same time, the naming of the site as a New 7 Wonder spurred the emergence of alternative expressions and contestations of value consistent with addressing the challenges of managing cultural patrimony under conditions of neoliberal globalization. Vote for Chichén Upon leaving Chichén the day I found out about the mysterious New 7 Wonders project promoting a new elevation of Chichén on the global stage, I searched out the New 7 Wonders project online. Far from remaining a neutral observer of the virtual spectacle, I voted for Chichén. And getting a little caught up in the whole thing, I urged my friends to vote, too. Garnering thousands of votes, Chichén Itzá was an early favourite on the New 7 Wonders site, securing a pole

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position well before Bernard Weber even called on a team of ‘renowned heritage experts’ to narrow down the list of candidates from seventy-seven to twenty top candidates. The Castillo at Chichén Itzá consistently polled at the top of the list, for years holding out in the top three or five. When it was decided that the online election of the New Wonders would draw to a conclusion on 7 July 2007, Weber, a self-proclaimed ‘adventurer and amphibious aircraft aviator’, went on an around-theworld trip to promote each of the finalist sites to up the momentum for voting. He visited Chichén Itzá in February 2007 and presented an official certificate of candidacy to then Governor Patricio Patrón Laviada. The presentation was made during an all-day Yucatec-style song and dance festival, punctuated by a New 7 Wonder hot air balloon launch. In the heady promotional blitz that followed, 100 million votes were cast by people around the world over the internet and by cell phone text messages by the 7 July 2007 deadline. The iconic meeting of Weber and Mexican politicians in front of the Pyramid of Kulkulkan (otherwise known as El Castillo, with the New 7 Wonder hot air balloon floating in the background) perfectly presents the present-day linkages between nationalist pride and private entrepreneurship on the global stage. To those cognizant of the New 7 Wonders private status and probable profit motive, the scene would likely confirm a state government in bed with a private promoter. Indeed, the New 7 Wonders was already feeling heat from various national governments and especially UNESCO. Bernard Weber’s organization was very negatively received by Egypt, for example, whose heritage officials pulled the Pyramids of Giza from competition. The private New 7 Wonders foundation stressed the ‘civil society’ nature of their endeavour, decrying the involvement of the governmental sector. Meanwhile, state and even federal entities in Mexico were throwing their support to the scheme from every which way. The government of Mexico and the private Mexican Tourist Promotion Council (CPTM) put more than a half-million US dollars behind the campaign to make sure Chichén would win. In addition, the council launched a global campaign promoting Mexico and Chichén in which nearly a million more dollars of advertisements were seen around the world, once again carrying the slogan, ‘vote for Chichén.’ Some disquiet began to brew as both experts and the lay public took aim at the project, accused in a newspaper editorial as being ‘frivolous’ and ‘mercantilist’ (Noguez 2007) and by UNESCO as ‘unscientific.’ Nevertheless, the contest was too tempting to keep the

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state government of Yucatán at bay for long. Their jewel in the crown of tourism was poised to gleam even brighter. The Yucatan state government ministry of tourism set up a website dedicated to promoting the heritage site and directing users to vote for Chichén Itzá (votoporchichen.com.mx). In the weeks leading up to the final announcement, flyers and posters, even billboards were ubiquitous across Yucatán. Television, especially the heavily government-influenced Televisa channel repeatedly showed Vote for Chichén commercials. Coca-Cola’s Mexico division distributed twenty-five million cans of soft drinks emblazoned with the slogan, ‘Vota por Chichén Itzá.’ Key figures of Mexico’s corporate elite jumped on board. Carlos Slim (more than once Forbes richest person in the world) threw the weight and reach of his enterprises into the campaign. His quasitelephone monopoly Telmex (sold to Slim during a major wave of neoliberal divestiture of state-owned enterprises) produced countless phonecards saying ‘Vote for Chichén.’ Slim’s 189 Sanborns restaurants enticed and reminded voters to support Chichén by serving Yucatec dishes on their menus (Mateos Vega 2007). Blurring private with public support, state-owned Pemex gas stations put up thousands of posters at their pumps promoting El Castillo as a New 7 Wonder. President Felipe Calderón, too, registered his plea to the nation. The weekly email press bulletin issued by the office of president on 21 June 2007 appealed: ‘Vote for Chichén. With your help this pride of Mexico will be one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.’ The presidential bulletin went on to give precise instructions as to how to navigate Weber’s foundation’s website, including exactly where to ‘hacer su click’, and vote for Chichén. The collusion between public and private sectors paid off, and paid well. After months of heavy campaigning especially urging voters to use a pay-per-call number and SMS text to register their vote, Chichén (specifically the Castillo) won a spot in the New 7 Wonders of the World.1 The announcement was made at Lisbon’s Stadium of Light in a ceremony featuring celebrities perhaps not known for their support of cultural heritage preservation, conservation and promotion, including actors Ben Kingsley and Hilary Swank and Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. Yucatán State Governor Patricio Patrón sent his wife to receive the award on behalf of Chichén. Meanwhile, a parallel celebration was held at the archaeological zone itself. Attendees were granted free admission to the event hosted by the governor-elect, Ivonne Ortega Pacheco. But the bright light of fame quickly cast an ugly shadow over the popular archaeological zone. The naming of Chichén as a New 7

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Wonder raised concerns of those critical of Weber’s very lucrative initiative, especially regarding the complicity of the Mexican government (and Yucatan’s state tourism enterprise, the Patronato CULTUR) in its promotion of the for-profit endeavour. A publicity crisis over the literal ‘publicity’ or publicness of the archaeological zone ensued. Critics of Weber’s initiative asked questions of the commercial endeavour’s role in taking advantage of this national Mexican treasure. This lead to a larger question of the meaning of the heritage site not only for the Mexican public in terms of the site’s status as Mexican national patrimony, but also its place in the national imaginary, its accessibility, its preservation status and, of course, its significance as a New 7 Wonder. From among these issues, two key points of debate emerged, framing a fraught politics between private sector entrepreneurs, competing governmental agencies and local communities bordering on and spilling over into the archaeological zone. On the one hand, the New 7 Wonders naming tapped into the question of the value of Chichén as property, per se. On the other hand, the election of Chichén to the status of New 7 Wonder highlighted the everlurking question of who had the right to benefit from site revenues. The overall effect of the naming was to exacerbate tensions between the state and federal agencies governing the site as well as between these governmental entities and the local communities over not only who merited the right to archaeological patrimony, but who had the duty to protect the same. Chichén’s newfound glory through the New 7 Wonders project sought by the state and local government aided and abetted by a contingent of local entrepreneurs did not set the archaeological site free from its very complex and very troubling everyday realities. As the Mexican newspaper El Universal reported: ‘Excessive and uncontrolled tourism, damage to existing structures, souvenir vendors, new infrastructure, conflict with local landowners, research at the mercy of budgetary whimsy, and growing economic inequality are the seven nightmares suffered by the newest of the seven wonders’ (2007). But, to be fair, could the backstage of any famous monument really stand up to scrutiny? Soon a scandal of monumental proportions broke across the Mexican media: the discovery that Chichén Itzá, one of Mexico’s crown jewels of heritage sites is actually privately owned and has been for centuries. Outrage surged across the nation and beyond. The notion of the private ownership was at first shocking. And, once contemplated, it ‘unleashed a national polemic’, according to one federal lawmaker. He immediately issued a call for the expropriation of the site. He

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asked what everyone wanted to know, ‘How can a Wonder of the World have owners?’ (Miller Llana 2007). Or, put another way, in a nation where all historical and archaeological heritage is constitutionally protected as the property of the nation, aren’t the ‘owners’ of Chichén Itzá (and, for that matter, all of Mexico’s heritage sites) the nation, even the world? I could hardly share this shock or outrage because I, along with those with a more intimate knowledge of the site, have long known of Chichén’s private ownership. And scandalous as it may be, the truth is that the site is perfectly legitimately private. In the late 1990s, I began tracing the history of ownership of Chichén Itzá in order to make a point about a series of protests that erupted in the last decade against the privatization of Chichén Itzá and other historical and archaeological heritage sites across Mexico. By demonstrating how Chichén was a heritage space already under multiple influences of the private sector, we could better assess what ‘privatization’, such as in the form of a constitutional amendment, perhaps, or new kinds of public-private partnerships (all as part and parcel of the ever-broadening scope of Mexico’s neoliberal agenda), might mean for the field of cultural heritage. My interest then and since is in the different regimes of what I call ‘heritage tenure’ in archaeological and historic sites, monumental zones and other spaces of claiming and contesting not only cultural but natural resources as well. Whereas ‘value’ in UNESCO discourse looks towards cultural significance in a historic sense, I would argue that the kinds of value articulated through a detailed understanding of a site’s heritage tenure regime are just as important to consider in nominating and inscribing a site to the World Heritage List, assessing a site-management plan and determining the local benefit streams from a site. I was more than happy to bring the intriguing circumstances of how Chichén came to be privately owned to light when newspaper reporters began to call me after ‘Wondergate’ broke. Finally, I was an expert source on something relevant to the public interest. My research on more than a century of strategic privatizations of Chichén Itzá was coinciding with the public’s need to understand how a World Heritage site and Wonder of the World could be privately owned. I collaborated with the Christian Science Monitor and CBC among others in order to explain the circumstances surrounding the site’s ownership. Chichén is a federally declared archaeological zone whose monuments are protected by the Constitution and legislated by the 1972 Law on Monuments, Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Zones. While the zone itself has been controlled since the 1940s

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by the National Institute of Anthropology and History and appears to be a national space, it is in fact the case that only the monuments themselves are federal properties and part of the nation’s patrimony. The land upon which they sit is a commodity like any other, available for sale, purchase and private possession. Chichén Itzá, along with nearby site, Uxmal (declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996), is owned by members of a wealthy family descendant of Don Fernando Barbachano Peon, the patriarch of Yucatan’s first family in tourism. Barbachano originally bought the property, piece by piece beginning in the 1930s, from an American diplomat and amateur archaeologist named Edward H. Thompson. Barbachano, a white elite Yucatec, seemed to be facing an impossible task in acquiring a large landholding in the postrevolutionary era of land reform in Mexico. Haciendas like Chichén were being dismantled and redistributed to peasants and indigenous people. Barbachano manipulated the land redistribution system to garner a larger than normally allowable landholding at Chichén. For example, he grazed cattle in front of the Castillo to get a special dispensation that extended his property claims, as cattle-grazing properties were permitted to be larger. Also, he put property parcels under different family member’s names to ensure they would not together be considered a single large landholding. Through these methods, he made sure that Chichén was not subject to state redistribution to local indigenous Maya corn farmers. Edward Thompson’s private ownership of Chichén Itzá, too, had involved a strategic manipulation of Chichén’s heritage tenure regime.2 In 1894, Thompson purchased the dilapidated Hacienda Chichén Itzá where he revelled in amateur explorations of the site, most famous among these involving diving and dredging excavations of the Sacred Cenote. Many of his finds were illegally exported to American museums, including Harvard’s Peabody and Chicago’s Field Museums. Thompson left Mexico in shame after his looting scheme was discovered and the hacienda was seized by the Mexican government – pending a court case against the American. Before his death, Thompson began selling off pieces of the property, and his heirs sold the hacienda along with the rest of the property. Piece by piece, the Barbachano family acquired Chichén, adding the site to their portfolio – a touristic empire across the Peninsula that they still control today. Just before Chichén Itzá was named a New 7 Wonder, the son of the original patriarch, Fernando Barbachano Gomez Rul, passed away, leaving several heirs to Chichén. When he died in December 2006, just months before the Wondergate scandal broke across Mexico, he left the ownership of the property fractured in a multiplicity of

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parcels, owned by six individual family members. How would these descendants and heirs respond to the scandal of private ownership that outraged the nation? Would a newer generation respond to a climate shaped by notions of ‘common heritage of humankind?’ Would their hand be forced by a state being pushed towards expropriation by a nationalistic citizenry?3 On the one hand, the fallout of the Wondergate scandal seemed to present an opportune time for the Barbachano descendants and the federal government to transfer the title of Chichén Itzá to the nation – to the people – and to make Chichén public. It was an opportunity to bring Chichén in line with the constitutional call for the patrimonial possession of the archaeological subsoil. But Chichén’s de jure inheritors, its five legitimate heirs, were of three minds: maintain ownership, sell or donate. At the same time, under public pressure and scrutiny, the INAH decreed the acquisition of Chichén Itzá a priority.4 Alfonso de Maria y Campos, then INAH director-general, weighed in, saying expropriation was only one possibility among others, including a land exchange or an outright purchase by the federal government. In 2006, an offer was extended but not received by the property owners. Even though the federal agency made this gesture to purchase the site, they did not make an all-out effort to acquire the property. Some time ago, at the height of a protracted debate between INAH officials and a local farming community over the destiny of agricultural land containing ruins in rural Yucatán, an INAH legal representative explained to me that the agency was ‘not in the real estate business’. Actual federal ownership of all lands containing monuments would clarify the complicated, confusing and often contentious situations caused by baroque property rights regimes in Mexico’s archaeological zones. Yet the federal agency is not normally in the practise of purchasing land, nor do they necessarily have the means to do so. Since the establishment of the INAH in 1939, the federal agency has acquired sixty-one properties. Only a single entire site (Tula, in the state of Hidalgo, a UNESCO World Heritage site) is a federal property out of approximately forty thousand archaeological sites across the national territory. The rest (amongst which only 1 per cent are open to the public) represent a multiplicity of land tenure regimes including state, municipal, ejido (communal land) or private land.5 The INAH finds itself embroiled in countless land disputes, many of which are protracted, legally and even ethically complicated, and certainly interfere in the activities of archaeology, historic preservation and even tourism.

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With the Chichén case looming large in the background, in December 2007 the Mexican Congress established an annual fund of 1.5 million US dollars for INAH to purchase properties containing archaeological ruins. This would wrest the property back into the nation’s coffers.6 According to representative José Alfonso Suárez del Real, member of the left-of-centre Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and proponent of the congressional measure, Chichén represented a ‘paradigmatic case of an archaeological zone which is patrimony of the nation and the world in the hands of an individual’ (cited in Miller 2007). Whereas expropriation would (perhaps) elide the issue of the site’s – or at least the land’s – market value, considerations of the purchase of Chichén Itzá would necessitate pulling the heritage site into the real estate market. For the INAH to purchase Chichén and regularize heritage tenure in the zone, the agency would have to negotiate with Hans Thies Barbachano, a majority property owner grandson of patriarch Don Fernando. In a television interview, Hans Thies Barbachano expressed his willingness to negotiate a mutually acceptable agreement with the federal government and his openness to selling at a ‘fair price’ (ibid.). Various reports have surfaced indicating Hans’s notion of Chichén’s real estate value: including one that cited his expectation of 750 million pesos (68 million US dollars) for the property. When asked if he would consider selling for the much more modest sum of 750,000 US dollars derived by a state auditor, he replied, ‘My family was vested in these properties long before anyone else. . . . I will defend it because it’s family heritage for me, as well as cultural heritage for the rest of the world’ (ibid.). The younger Barbachano tries to distance himself from Chichén’s monetary value and from the profit motive, while at the same time standing to profit enormously his landholdings. Ironically, the same rhetoric used to justify his 68 million dollar price tag is used by critics, especially from the left, to justify the expropriation of Chichén Itzá – also, the defence of patrimony (in this case, from incursion by the private sector). Other family members – also inheritors of parcels of the Chichén Itzá property – claim not to share Hans’s profit-seeking behaviour, especially those among the older generation. Fernando Barbachano Herrero, his uncle, did not want to sell the land. The owner of the Mayaland Hotel within Chichén Itzá wanted the property donated to the federal government. In fact, he stated that his grandfather already made this effort and he produced a 1944 letter from the INAH thanking the family for its donation. He believes the government failed to register the property because they did not care about the site. ‘For

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three generations we have honored and promoted this land, and we have never considered it to be our own’ (ibid.). The arguments made by both Hans and his uncle have the same effect: they both render the state impotent as proper custodian of Chichén in the face of a robust entrepreneurial private initiative. Should the younger Barbachano fail to make a profit (hardly possible), even better according to the logic this scenario. Hans Barbachano issued a personal invitation to New 7 Wonder project founder Bernard Weber to Mayaland and Chichén, luring him to the World Heritage sites by emphasizing his family’s ownership. According to Weber’s ‘Founder’s Blog’ on the New 7 Wonders website, February 2007: Over four years ago, the younger son of the Mayaland’s owner had written me in an email that he loved the New7Wonders project and that he would like to help and assist wherever he could and that his family owns Chichén Itzá . . . owns Chichén Itzá, in his dreams, I thought . . . but history and discovery is still very tangible here at Chichén Itzá and in fact I was amazed to confirm the story right now. His great-grandfather had purchased the land and grounds, including the pyramid lovingly called ‘El Castillo’ by the locals, when nobody was interested in a pile of old rocks on top of each other!

After Weber received this invitation from the younger Barbachano, Chichén made the cut, from a list of nearly one hundred possible sites to the final list of twenty-one candidates eligible for the 7 July 2007 vote. While voting for Chichén had been strong since the earliest days of the website in 2001 (it was in the top three for years), such empirical evidence of popularity was not enough not carry a site through to the final candidacy. In Chichén Itzá – where the rhetoric of world heritage meets the logic of private sector heritage tenure blended into the appearance of public space – the New 7 Wonders project found a perfect affinity. Developing Wonder The New 7 Wonders indeed arrived at an opportune time, as national development plans shone a spotlight on cultural attractions across Mexico – and on World Heritage sites in particular. The National Culture Plan of the administration of President Felipe Calderón (2006–12) envisioned archaeological sites as ‘bases for transnational

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tourism projects’ and stages and backdrops for other kinds of performances. The administration’s plan for archaeological sites was not unprecedented. Certainly Mexican historic sites and monuments, especially archaeological zones such as Teotihuacan and Chichén Itzá, had been used before to promote private sector events such as concerts (from symphonies to pop music) and for attracting private capital in various other ways. Even after thirty years of intensive divesture of state assets through neoliberal privatization, the Mexican state retains de jure control of cultural patrimony. Thus archaeological zones remain in the state’s portfolio as potentially highly lucrative opportunities for development. Since the 1980s, the Mexican state (and Mexican people) have lost hundreds of state-owned assets in the telecommunications, banking and transportation sectors. Deep in debt and under pressure from the policies of international economic institutions, Mexico sold hundreds of businesses, large and small, to political elites and administration cronies rather than to the highest bidders. Mexico was a test case for intense and widespread privatization. The neoliberal logic soon caught fire across the globe. Of course, not everyone across the political spectrum sees eye to eye regarding the success of the privatization programs. On the right, you’ll find support for the model, based on rationalization, of slimming down and reducing bureaucracy. On the left, criticism for selling off national patrimony runs strong. The accusation of vendepatrias (being a traitor, or sell-out) in Mexico is a serious slur. Recent moves to privatize (even partially) key remaining assets of the national patrimony are consistently met with huge protests. No national patrimony is more contested, or defended by the nationalist Mexican citizenry, than subsoil patrimony – including archaeological heritage and oil (Breglia 2006, 2013). But the impassioned defence of national sovereignty over national patrimony, belies the curious, contradictory and, quite frankly, mysterious nature of heritage tenure at archaeological sites across Mexico. Battles to protect cultural heritage from privatization, the struggle to keep archaeological heritage from blatant commodification conveniently elided the complicated – yet completely legal – counterlogic of ownership in Mexico’s monumental spaces. Even after receiving national (not to mention international) attention as well as funds to instigate the move to bring Chichén under the territorial control of the nation, the INAH chose not to buy Chichén Itzá. Those pushing for the purchase, if not outright expropriation, accused the INAH of violating popular sovereignty by failing to use their congressionally apportioned funds to secure the monuments.

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But INAH, like its parent Mexican state, appears comfortable with the contradictory tensions between public and private in the territory of heritage. After all, for centuries, Mexico has sustained a legal regime which allows for the obviously uncomfortable and, in practise, tense and even contradictory situation whereby land can be private while monuments remain public. Yet a de jure legal system does not necessarily guarantee the appropriate practice of legislating heritage tenure will follow. Increasingly, public-private boundaries in the management of heritage sites have become blurred. For centuries, the subsoil was regarded as first sovereign, then national patrimony. More recently, archaeological materials have become distinguished as part of this ‘secularly sacred’ subsoil heritage. According to the 1972 law governing archaeological sites and monuments, INAH has de facto jurisdiction over all archaeological patrimony. And the Institute is increasingly working with commercial interests in the everyday operations of archaeological zones. At Chichén, this is certainly the case. Over the past few years, the site has become a popular concert venue, beginning with a legendary Luciano Pavarotti concert in 1997 before an audience of seventeen thousand people (a special bungalow was built for him at the Mayaland hotel), followed by a Placido Domingo concert in 2008, as well as a 31 October 2009 Sarah Brightman show and an Elton John spectacular on 3 April 2010. A muchanticipated Paul McCartney concert scheduled for spring 2012 was cancelled with rumours of McCartney’s commitment to rescheduling the show. Concerts and other extracurricular uses of the zone have generated a significant amount of controversy over the commercial use of a space of national cultural heritage. The clash over competing ideologies of site use reached a tipping point in 2006 when Chichén was under the directorship of Federica Sodi Miranda. Sodi Miranda is the sister of the wildly popular Mexican pop star Thalía. During Sodi’s directorship of Chichén, photos emerged in the magazine TV y Novelas-México of Thalía visiting several restricted areas of the zone, including the Chac Mool statue, parts of the Castillo and the Sacred Cenote. An investigation by the INAH workers’ union revealed that the singer visited Chichén on 29 June 2006 outside normal visiting hours. She even traversed the site in an automobile – a prohibited activity. Alfredo Barrera Rubio, former director of the INAH Yucatán state office, stated, ‘We do not agree with this discretional use of our archaeological sites, especially in the case of Chichén.’ In her own defence, Federica Sodi Miranda claimed never to have allowed her sister (or her mother accompanying her) special treatment inside the zone.

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In the face of the compromising evidence of the published photos, Sodi Miranda agreed that her sister would have to face the charges (with the penalty of a fine) for taking the photos – not, however, for special access to restricted areas. In the case of big concerts, such as the Elton John show, state tourism officials that had the most control over the events claimed success, backing this with evidence that the concerts were a monetary boon to supporting the site during tight financial times. In all, the Elton John event cleared US$220,000. But site workers I spoke to were angered by the reports of the great financial success of the concert and the support it would supposedly bring to Chichén. Site workers and local residents perceive that the income generated by such events does not directly support everyday operations at the site. Although it is difficult to obtain data tracing the revenue stream, observations would lead one to believe that Chichén is not receiving large financial benefits – either from its status as the second-most-visited archaeological site in Mexico or from hosting large events. Instead, Chichén seems to constantly be in financial dire straits. For example, just following the Elton John concert, major INAH-led excavation and restoration projects, such as that on the Chichanchob, or Casa Colorada, involving some one hundred people, shut down due to lack of funds. This far-from-isolated example shows that income generated at Chichén Itzá does not stay at Chichén Itzá; not only do local communities suffer greatly from this but so too does INAH, in a sense. When INAH bureaucrats (the upper-level appointees as opposed to the site-level, unionized workers) cosy up to the commercial interests, all manner of criticism streams forth, even from within the agency’s own ranks. This is what happened when INAH supported the New 7 Wonders. The INAH was publicly accused by the Mexican Left and other critics of the New 7 Wonders project of complicity in the private commercial scheme. The INAH bureaucracy flatly denied the charge, even when confronted with photos of INAH officials and Bernard Weber standing with his team atop the Castillo (normally closed to the public) holding a huge banner that read ‘Vote for Me!’ This is apart from the fact that INAH officials licensed the image of Chichén (held under copyright protection) to Coca-Cola to be used on twenty-five million soda cans for the voting promotion. As a private sector venture, the New 7 Wonders appears to have made a killing in Mexico. More than 5.5 million Mexican votes were cast for Chichén Itzá by way of the internet and mobile phone. An estimated 3.8 million Mexicans did not cast free internet votes, they instead spent money on their votes, using credit and debit cards, totalling 82,688,000

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pesos. How did they spend so much money? For fifteen pesos (just over one US dollar), one could vote by text message to international toll numbers, locations such as Estonia and Lichtenstein which few would have in their calling plans. Even if one voted for free on the internet, the voter was encouraged to make a donation to support the conservation of their favourite site. Mexicans, quite enthusiastic nationalists, did indeed take the time to donate, in the amount of 22.5 million pesos. Weber promised to provide the winners with funding for conservation projects. But this never happened. In total, ten million US dollars worldwide were purportedly donated to aid the conservation of Castillo (Boffil Gomez 2007). Yet, according to the current INAH site director and workers, Chichén has not received any benefits from the New 7 Wonders foundation. Not only has promised funding never arrived, Chichén never even received a ‘New 7 Wonders’ title plaque. A New Landlord at Chichén Itzá Amongst the unionized INAH wardens and custodians (the primary informants I have long worked with gauging heritage site politics at Chichén), displeasure about the naming of Chichén as a New 7 Wonder lingered long after the actual election results were announced. Emotions were also running high over a perceived loss of INAH control of the archaeological zone, not only to the private owners, but also to the state of Yucatán through their state tourism enterprise, the Patronato CULTUR. Yucatán is unique for having a parastatal agency such as CULTUR, developed specifically as a mechanism through which to garner resources from archaeological heritage, especially Chichén Itzá. CULTUR sets up a parallel infrastructure shell over the federal INAH territory at the archaeological site and creates a system by which they charge a second admission price, vend refreshments, offer guide services and sell souvenirs.7 CULTUR and the Barbachanos combined forces to render INAH ineffective inside the federal archaeological zone. The latest incident to arouse the ire of the INAH custodians was the vending of beer inside the zone. Site guards found the consumption of alcohol a marked ‘lack of respect’ – not only for the site itself, but for the numerous instances that they themselves, on the frontlines of maintaining order and security amongst thousands of daily visitors, experienced first-hand. Even though CULTUR set up an income-generating infrastructure around the federal archaeological zone, it was not until after the naming of the site as a New 7 Wonder and breaking of the

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Wondergate scandal that the state of Yucatán took the opportunity to wrest its own bit of territorial control inside the gates of the zone. On 28 March 2010, Hans Thies Barbachano completed a deal with state officials to sell eighty-three hectares of Chichén’s site centre (the main part of the site open to public access) – including the Castillo, the Temple of the Warriors, the Sacred Cenote, the Observatory (also known as the Caracol) and the Ball Court – to the state of Yucatan for more than eighteen million US dollars. More than 1,600 acres remain under the private ownership of the Barbachano family. While this purchase would seem to give the site to the people, to make Chichén a truly public space, it seems that this is not really the case after all. Many of the problems that have arisen at Chichén in the past several years have their roots in the presence and action in the public-private collusion of the Barbachano owners and CULTUR. This is but one of the reasons archaeologists, including a former director of the INAH’s Yucatan state office, have widely criticized the move. Many were against the sale and alternatively supported expropriation. When I was at Chichén just days before the sale, the INAH custodians expressed that their firm belief that their union could still push for an expropriation even though the legitimacy of the Barbachano ownership had been verified in state and federal courts. The sale of course curtailed another go at expropriation, but also made INAH’s earlier attempt at their own purchase pale in comparison to the state of Yucatán’s much bolder gesture. Had INAH been able to purchase the site, perhaps the federal agency and its employees might have been able to maintain their own extralegal activities inside the archaeological zone. For years, INAH custodians have used their position of privileged territorial control to operate ticket reselling scams. Since my original fieldwork at Chichén (2000–2002), I have known certain groups of INAH custodians to work in conjunction with guides and tour operators in large-scale ticket scams in which tickets are sold and collected at the gate, but not punched as evidence of their sale. The tickets are then resold as new tickets and proceeds pocketed – to the tune of thousands of tickets per week. The private interests of INAH workers extended to the operation of vending stations inside the zone. Through contracts with Barbachano property owners, INAH custodians established cooperatives through which they shared profits from selling food, drinks and souvenirs at two locations on the Barbachano property inside the federal archaeological zone (Breglia 2006). Under the pressures of the changing heritage tenure regime at Chichén, the cooperatives have collapsed and other extralegal activities are compromised as well.

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Noticing that income did not seem to match the increase in tourism flows to the site after the New 7 Wonder naming, the state office of the Hacienda installed a surveillance system which includes not only cameras but a ticket-counting machine at the site entrance. Blurring the Public and Private Heritage management involves a constant and confusing blur of public and private. But it is still important that we try and sort out the critical boundaries between efforts at maintaining a truly public heritage commons, on the one hand, and profit-driven heritage enterprises, on the other hand. By failing to do so, we risk losing a critical understanding of how benefit streams from popular tourist destinations are orchestrated. Since the 1930s, the private owners of Chichén have played a role in the custodianship, stewardship and development of key heritage assets in Yucatán that I call ‘state mimicry’. In this role, the private, commercial, for-profit sector (owners of what appear to be public spaces) acts as a patrimonial custodian of the monuments. Looking and acting like the state, private owners of the land upon which national monuments sit exert control over functions and operations in and around the site. By eliding the distinction between two kinds of property – land and cultural heritage – private owners are able to orchestrate the benefit stream issuing forth from the archaeological site. The state has helped rather than hindered the process of its own mimicry by failing to maintain the distinction. As Ivan Franco emphasizes in his book, Quiénes lucran el patrimonio de Mexico? (2011), ‘the state only encourages the commodification of heritage in all its dimensions’. The most obvious root for the unfolding of this phenomenon in Yucatán is the creation of the Mundo Maya project – an initiative originally launched by the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and picked up in 2011 with a renewed vigour by the administration of Felipe Calderón. Franco (ibid.) calls the state-sponsored Mundo Maya development plan a work of ‘savage neoliberalism’, as it incorporates the whole southeast of Mexico (Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán) and its natural and cultural patrimony – beaches, coastlines and countryside – into readily convertible assets. Given the strategic timing of the reinvigoration of the Mundo Maya project (the eve of the 2012 fervour for ‘The Year of Maya Culture’), heritage sites are also key nodes in this development, acting as both catalyst and raison d’etre for private sector capital investments in infrastructure, highways and airports.

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Specific components of the project, using Chichén Itzá as a focal point, include museums and cultural centres, hotels and a highspeed train planned to cut across the Peninsula. As is the case with all mega-projects, the state contracts with the private sector to realize the tourism-development projects. The high-speed train is a 50/50 public-private plan to connect Mérida to the Riviera Maya. According to the plan, a thirty-kilometre loop will swing down from the main route to link up with Chichén.8 The high-speed train, which to many local residents sounds very far fetched, has not been realized. However, the museum part of the ‘Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá’ is nearly completed.9 The Museo Maya de Mérida, located on the outskirts of Yucatán’s capital city, is under the custodianship of CULTUR. The museum holds some 750,000 archaeological pieces obtained through direct acquisition, loans and donations. The museum will function under a scheme known as a PPS (Proyectos de Prestación de Servicios). Essentially, a PPS is a public-private participation model in which the private sector provides support services to the government so that it, in turn, provides a public service.10 Most commonly used for roads and other public works infrastructure, health and education, the PPS purports to overcome budgetary restrictions faced by government entities and take advantage of the experience, efficiency, financing design and infrastructural development held by the private sector. According to the logic of the PPS, by leaving the provision of basic services to the private sector, public money is freed up for public benefits. The Maya Culture Museum was the first PPS project undertaken by the state of Yucatán, estimated to cost 411 million pesos and last fifteen months. In 2011, the companies bid on a 21-year contract for the private company to provide construction services for the museum and for the investors and the state to share the risk in financing the operation. The winning bidder was Promotura Cultural Yaxché, an affiliate enterprise of Grupo Hermes – part of the financial empire of Mexican billionaire Carlos Hank Rhon. Hank, who finally made it onto the Forbes billionaire list in 2012, is part of Mexico’s corporate elite who grew their wealth out of the wave of privatizations in the early 1990s. The Hank family made their early fortune in infrastructure development, and recently began concentrating on luxury tourism on the coast of Yucatán. Hank’s Grupo Hermes was a controversial choice for museum construction. In the 1990s, it was widely alleged that the Hank family was involved in billions of dollars of money-laundering deals involving narcotraffickers based in Tijuana and Juarez and high-level Mexican politicians (Schapiro 2001).11 Finally opened in late September 2012, the Gran Museo Maya project

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exceeded its estimated construction time by many months and cost nearly 800 million pesos. Another project is a second new museum, the Palacio de la Civilización Maya. The Palacio is located between the ‘two poles along the axis of tourism development’ in the ‘Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá’ (the archaeological site itself and the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya de Mérida), according to the state’s promotional literature for investors. The Palacio is located only fifteen kilometres from Chichén Itzá. The 72,000 square meter facility will open with a collection of only two hundred archaeological pieces. Though technically not far from the World Heritage site of Chichén, the Palacio is located off the beaten track, in a rural hinterland. Even though some reports stress the expediency of the location for a convenient land deal made between the state, private developers and local Maya agriculturalists, Governor Ivonne Ortega Pacheco, in the groundbreaking ceremony stressed the idyllic nature of the location for its mimetic intimacy to actually existing Maya people and culture: ‘This is a space to breath, to live, to feel the same thing as the Maya: we have to preserve the Maya culture that has given so much to the world . . . the Maya aren’t gone, they are here’ (El Universal 2010). Indeed, the Maya are still present. And this presence must be accounted for when developers – whether the state or private sector – want to launch a new project. The state originally sought to build the museum inside the archaeological zone, or at least much closer to it. Yet sanitizing Chichén of the contemporary Maya who live and work in and around the site and substituting a vision of a more ‘authentic’, closer-to-nature Maya was too problematic to initiate the development of the Palacio project on-site at the archaeological zone. The relocation of the project to an alternative site, however, turned into a strategic advantage for co-development opportunities. Adjacent to the Palacio, Mexican developer and banking magnate Roberto Hernandez is also constructing a luxury tourism property: a pyramid-shaped resort hotel topped off with a swimming pool. Hernandez, business associate of Carlos Hank Rohn, is another of Mexico’s billionaires. Also a beneficiary of the Salinas privatizations, he bought Mexico’s national bank at a bargain price in 1991. Over the past dozen years, Hernandez has been purchasing and developing properties for the luxury tourism market under the nonprofit guise of a cultural foundation (which, operating through the mechanism of state mimicry, practises both archaeological conservation and cultural preservation). Hernandez, too, has long survived under harsh accusations in the press of having intimate ties to drug trafficking. Specific allegations, not only in the press, but amongst local residents as well,

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include the use of touristic properties across the Yucatán Peninsula as strategic nodes in the Gulf drug trade (see Breglia 2009). These joint public-private development projects demonstrate the phenomenon of state mimicry, in which the state acts in collusion with the private sector to sell out its patrimonial assets on the open market and the private sector uses the resources, personnel and ideology of the patrimonial state to promote national heritage. The grey area of the ‘marketization’ of national patrimony is often legitimated through ‘partnerships’, in the form of private-state partnerships or private-private associations. Different social actors and institutions play specific roles in enabling a helpful blurring of boundaries between public and private. While the new regional tourism development projects under the auspices of the Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá outline a strategy for public-private investment, neither the investments, nor the balance of power, nor the rewards are ever equal, and tipping ever more into the hands of the private sector. A Pandora’s Box In the aftermath of the New 7 Wonders listing, two divergent visions of Chichén’s future have emerged. On the one hand, Chichén can serve as a hinge for future development in a region highly dependent on tourism incomes. Should this vision of Chichén’s future predominate, Wondergate will have opened an unprecedented reign of tourism development in Yucatán. On the other hand, increasing the attractiveness of Chichén Itzá not only to international visitors but to Mexican nationals as well points to an underlying dystopic vision for the site’s future. The influx of visitors for the 2012 Maya apocalypse year alarmed rather than satisfied some. The increase in popularity points towards the need to control, rather than draw, tourist visits to Chichén. Elisabeth Flores (Chichén’s site director from March 2008 to July 2012) supports an alternative vision of the heritage site’s future. In her opinion, the naming of Chichén as a New 7 Wonder was part of a disastrous plan to draw more visitors. As she expressed to me, the site would be better off with no visitors at all. Citing the accumulation of trash, damage to monuments and continual wear and tear on the grounds, she sees tourism as an infringement on site conservation. Referencing a dubious interpretation of the site’s preHispanic origins, she expressed to me, ‘It was originally a ceremonial centre. It was never meant for so many people all of the time.’ Archaeologist Peter Schmidt, long-time director of excavations at the

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site, has worried about the pressures of mass tourism on the site since the 1990s. He lamented the closing of the Castillo to visitors (in 2006, following a couple of tourist deaths from falls and lightning strikes) and balked at the notion of increased visitorship following the sites naming to the New 7 Wonders list (El Universal 2007). Left out of both visions for Chichén’s future is a much older debate concerning the local significance of the site to its neighbouring communities. The unrest stirred and exacerbated by Wondergate added fuel to a long-simmering debate over the contemporary implications of the deep legacies of heritage tenure at Chichén. In the shadow of Wondergate, a years-old social movement of artisans and handicraft vendors vying for space to sell their merchandise inside the archaeological zone is gaining new life. Led by a former site director (and lawyer by profession), a group of local indigenous Maya formed the Association of Merchants and Artisans. Over the past several years, the association of some 600 to 800 members has taken their cause beyond Yucatán as far as Mexico City and drawn the interest of Mexico’s leftist leaders, ranging from Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Subcomandante Marcos. Part of their plea is based on the extreme local inequality in economic benefits produced by the site. Only 5 per cent of the income generated by Chichén Itzá stays within the municipality where it is located. This includes the incomes of all of the local men, women and, yes, children, who work day and night to make the site a tourist destination. The current heritage tenure regime, which positions most local residents as underpaid, casual and itinerant labour, tells an instructive story for the site’s destiny: that the redistribution of resources, not the increase of tourism flow, are perhaps key to the preservation of a future in ruins. Yet perhaps Chichén Itzá’s future has long been foretold. Lisa Breglia is associate professor of global affairs and director of the Global Affairs Program and Global Interdisciplinary Programs, George Mason University. She is the author of Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage (2006) and Living with Oil: Promises, Peaks, and Declines on Mexico’s Gulf Coast (2013).

Notes 1. The other winners included the Great Wall of China, the monument of Petra in Jordan, the Christ Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Colosseum in Rome, Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal.

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2. Thompson purchased Chichén while working as the American consul at Progreso, a port city on Yucatan’s coast. He received his position not because of any political experience, but instead because of a background in antiquities. In fact, his appointment to Yucatan was suggested to the president of the United States by the president of the American Antiquarian society. 3. A 2004 Mexican Supreme Court case affirmed the legitimacy of the private ownership of the land. 4. This is in keeping with UNESCO standards. According to the Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of Cultural Property Endangered by Public or Private Works (1968), ‘Archaeological reserves should be zoned or scheduled and, if necessary, immovable property purchased, to permit thorough excavation or the preservation of the ruins found at the site.’ 5. Only 173 of the some 40,000 registered archaeological sites are open to the public. Of these, only a third are officially declared archaeological zones or monuments. The official declaration places the zone or monument the custodianship of the National Institute of Anthropology and History and their legislation, as spelled out in chapter 4 of the Federal Law Concerning Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Monuments and Zones and articles 5, 9, 14, 17, 18 and 37 and its reglamento, which lay out the requirements for declaring and registering zones and monuments. 6. Approved by Mexico’s Cámara de Diputados, the Fondo Arqueológico was placed in the federal budget for the fiscal year 2008, as published by the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 13 December 2007. The congressionally approved ‘Fondo Arqueológico’ was the subject of some debate when, in 2009, the INAH transferred the funds from the federal budget to a fideicomiso (another kind of trust) to be managed by the institute itself. By transferring the funds from the federal budget (the Fondo Arqueológico) to a fideicomiso, the INAH avoided the legally proscribed federal budgetary control over expenditures. According to the INAH spokesperson Julio Castrejón, the objective to the fideicomiso is to grant resources to projects of great significance that require financing over multiple years as well as land purchases. Priorities are protection, cataloging and registration of properties. He assured that resources would be put to these uses. 7. Establishment of the Parador Turístico. 8. In the billion-dollar high-speed train project – still in the planning stages – the state of Yucatán contracted a private firm (Ad-Hoc), owned by two former employees of the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT). 9. The Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá has four components: (1) acquisition of the public touristic space inside the archaeological zone, in coordination with INAH; (2) the purchase of the Chichén Itzá International Airport, (3) an upgrade of the road system, the installation of an international Port for cruise ships in Progreso, a regional airlines, and upgrades

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and new constructions of tourist centres and exposition and convention centre (Centro de Convenciones y Exposiciones Yucatán Siglo XXI) ; (4) international concerts held in the archaeological sites of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal in addition to light and sound shows. 10. The Mexican PPS has its roots in the British investment scheme known as the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), implemented beginning in the early 1990s, which is currently in use around the world. In a PFI project, the government contracts with a private company to design, finance, build and sell goods or services, such as schools, hospitals, roads and prisons, among others, to provide a service to the population. Based on the PFI model, from 2002, the Mexican government began to evaluate the potential of the PPS scheme and design its regulatory and operational framework. 11. Allegations made in the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2001 ‘White Tiger’ report state that brothers Carlos and Jorge Hank Rohn used their businesses as a means to launder money through the Laredo National Bank of Texas, in which they had purchased a controlling interest. See Schapiro 2001.

Bibliography Amador Tello, J. 2011. ‘El proyecto Mundo Maya, “salvajemente neoliberal”’, Proceso, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www. proceso.com.mx/?p=277485. Askew, M. 2010. ‘The Magic List of Global Status: UNESCO, World Heritage and the Agendas of States’, in S. Labadi and C. Long (eds.), Heritage and Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 19–44. Breglia, L. 2006. Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage. Austin: University of Texas Press.    . 2009. ‘“Walking Around Like they Own the Place”: Quotidian Cosmopolitanism at a Maya/World Heritage Site’, in L. Meskell (ed.), Cosmopolitan Archaeologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 205–27. El Universal. 2007a. ‘Chichén y sus pesadillas’, El Universal, 30 July, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/ cultura/53170.html.    . 2010. ‘El museo de la Civilización Maya ya está en marcha’, El Universal, 22 December, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www. eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/64438.html. Franco, I. 2011. Quiénes lucran con el patrimonio cultural en México? Mérida, Mexico: Unas Letras Industria Editorial. Harrison, D. 2004. ‘Contested Narratives in the Domain of World Heritage’, Current Issues in Tourism 7(4–5): 281–90.

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Labadi, S., and C. Long (eds.). 2010. Heritage and Globalization. London: Routledge. Logan, W. S. 2001. ‘Globalizing Heritage: World Heritage as a Manifestation of Modernism and Challenges from the Periphery’, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30004820/loganglobalizingheritageworld-2001.pdf. Mendoza, E. 2011. ‘En riesgo, el Patrimonio Arqueológico de Mexico’, Contralínea, 19 July, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://contralinea. info/archivo-revista/index.php/2011/07/19/en-riesgo-patrimonioarqueologico-de-mexico.    . 2011a. ‘Mundo Maya, SA de CV’, Contralínea, 16 August, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://contralinea.info/archivo-revista/index. php/2011/08/16/mundo-maya-sa-de-cv. Miller Llana, S. 2007. ‘Ownership Fight Erupts over Maya Ruins’, Christian Science Monitor, 17 October. Noguez, A. 2007. ‘Premio o castigo para Chichén Itzá?’ BBC Mundo Online, 6 July, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/ hi/spanish/misc/newsid_6274000/6274746.stm. Notimex. 2006. ‘Piden investigar a Thalía’, Es mas, 22 September, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.esmas.com/espectaculos/ farandula/568433.html. Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá. N.d. Plan Maestro de Chichén Itzá, retrieved 1 February 2014 from http://culturyucatan.com/plan%20maestro.pdf. Rabasa Gamboa, R. 2010. ‘Aspectos Constitucionales y otras cuestiones jurídicas de la propiedad ubicada en la zona arqueolólogica de Chichén Itzá’, Instituto de Investigaciones Juridicas de UNAM’, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx/libros/6/2834/17. pdf. Rodríguez, A. M. 2007. ‘La adquisición de predios es el máximo escollo para el INAH’, La Jornada, 1 August. Schapiro, M. 2001. ‘Drug War on Trial’, The Nation, 17 September. Turtinen, J. 2000. ‘Globalizing Heritage: On UNESCO and the Transnational Construction of a World Heritage’, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.score.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.26651.1320939806!/200012.pdf. UNESCO (ed.). 2003. Globalization with a Human Face: Benefitting All, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0013/001355/135505e.pdf. Usborne, D. 2007. ‘Mexican Standoff: the Battle of Chichén Itzá’, The Independent, 7 November, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www. independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mexican-standoff-the-battleof-chichen-itza-399310.html.

Part III Cultural Landscapes

Chapter 9 Decolonizing the Site The Problems and Pragmatics of World Heritage in Italy, Libya and Tanzania Jasper Chalcraft

In central Tanzania, Alpine Italy and southwestern Libya, locals are ‘decolonizing’ World Heritage sites. Or rather, they are destroying the very stuff that UNESCO celebrates as being of ‘outstanding universal value’. This chapter considers what these occasional iconoclastic outbursts tell us about World Heritage on the ground. Why do locals sometimes destroy sites and what does it mean when this happens in such diverse national, environmental and social contexts? If these are political acts, does this frame local experiences of World Heritage as a kind of colonial imposition, and if so, how can archaeologists and heritage professionals whose primary interest is in the conservation of the ‘protected’ heritage address this, helping to ensure a ‘culture of conservation’ without simply imposing Western museological values? The chapter expands on the theme of decolonization and the colonial nature of the World Heritage project before looking at the local uses and meanings within two of the three sites: the Kondoa-Irangi Rock Art Sites (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006) and the Tadrart Acacus (inscribed 1985). These local uses and meanings are the core of the problem, for UNESCO’s World Heritage practises – the pragmatics of actually nominating and administering sites through national bodies with agendas often different from those of

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UNESCO – have tended to ignore them in the past. The situation is slightly different in the Tadrart Acacus, the only one of the sites that attracts significant numbers of tourists (or at least, up until 2011), and we see here how Kel Tadrart chose to disengage from tourism, focusing instead on ‘traditional’ pastoral activities.1 The next section explores how this has occurred. It aims not only to contrast local uses with the nomination procedures and management plans, but also to show how using these bureaucratic tools appropriates local uses of these spaces. The section also briefly covers the international networks that animate the category of ‘rock art’ within World Heritage, providing expertise, setting regional and thematic agendas and yet failing to implement their own recommendations. The next section brings in a third case study, the Rock Drawings of Valcamonica (inscribed 1979), and demonstrates how locals act in the face of the bureaucratic and epistemological intrusion of World Heritage. Iconoclasm can be found at different scales, enacted in diverse ways and with often unclear objectives: from banal individual acts to management authorities directly destroying archaeological contexts; indeed, we are reminded that heritagization itself is a kind of iconoclasm. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the conflictual nature of World Heritage and the contradictions inherent to heritage. There are two other big questions which underlie this chapter: one about what ‘decolonizing’ actually means,2 and the other about the nature of World Heritage as a global heritage project. So, whilst local acts of iconoclasm might be attempts at ‘decolonization’, is such an endpoint ever realistically possible? Is decolonizing the site simply the same as delisting it, as happened for the cultural landscape of the Dresden Elbe Valley in 2009? As Rodney Harrison (2012: 583) points out, delisting is most unlikely (and is extraordinarily rare even for sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger), and sites are likely to be left with a World Heritage hangover: this could include management of the site in outside hands, high levels of rich international tourists, overexploitation of limited resources, and excluded locals. So, decolonization would require further memory work, the negotiation of World Heritage universalism through local representational practises. The second big question is why global society is so anxious to pursue World Heritage status in the first place. It makes sense if the primary interest is in tourist promotion – as was evidenced, for example, when World Heritage forged a strategic partnership with TripAdvisor in 2010 (with TripAdvisor comments supposedly acting as a kind of conservation monitoring system) – just as it does for nations trying to forge national identities from iconic sites.3 However,

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if the key goal is the conservation of the raw ‘heritage’ material itself, World Heritage designation seems a solution which carries significant risks: as we shall see, in the Valcamonica, the Tadrart Acacus and Kondoa-Irangi these have included the alienation of local populations, overexploitation by tourism and continued and compounded impoverishment of local livelihoods. Most significantly though, as I will show through these three cases, World Heritage has meant the loss not only of some of the heritage it purports to conserve, but also of connected local meanings and significances whose ethno-archaeological value has been poorly recognized. In many ways, my work on these three sites has been characterized by disappointment and disenchantment.4 There are two key reasons for this. The first is that I hoped that the realities, on the ground, would reveal the thrilling hybridity and cunning cultural brokerage of locals subjected to UNESCO’s universalizing World Heritage gaze. Recently, other scholars have been finding heritage and memorialization to be vibrantly practised and negotiated by locals, ‘open[ing] up spaces for reflective engagement’ (Rowlands and de Jong 2007: 26–27, Fontein 2011: 662). However, the realities I encountered suggest that whatever impact World Heritage has had on these three places, it is best characterized as colonial. This is not to deny local agency altogether, or to totally refute the intentions of UNESCO’s broader transnational programme regarding culture and education, but it seems to be the lived experience of those I have spoken to and worked with. Local fingers have not been pointing directly at Paris, but national agents and implementers of World Heritage as well as international consultants working for UNESCO’s three Advisory Bodies (ICOMOS, ICCROM and IUCN) are identified as the culprits. That the administered landscape of global heritage practise is recognized as external, and as problematic, means that locals do not locate themselves within these heritagization processes. In fact, as we will see, they are repeatedly excluded and they compound this by maintaining distance. My second disappointment lies with the actual heritage: I still believe that the rock art (and archaeology) of these three places is intrinsically valuable, and that the world needs to know more about these (pre)historical life-worlds, as well as how contemporary societies relate to and inform our understandings of them. Anthropology tends to favour living societies, but surely the worldviews of previous societies are equally deserving of having their stories told? Archaeology remains the best tool we have for trying to excavate these stories, and more engagement from anthropology should help ensure that

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these worldviews are represented in ways which are also useful to living local communities. In other words, we need to find ways to work through the apparent contradiction of a subaltern-orientated archaeological conservationism. This brings up the question of how to conserve and study past material culture, whilst involving and benefiting local communities. And the fact that World Heritage has not benefitted these locals, that it has messed with their pasts, trodden on their epistemologies and been implemented with the arrogance of a colonial power certain of the necessity of its civilizing mission, means that future heritage happiness may best be pursued free of the World Heritage brand. Compared to other kinds of contemporary heritagization World Heritage is rather top-down, a heritage imaginary administered (and consumed) by global and national elites. That contrast is clearest against the growth of grassroots memorials in the West, which are effectively ‘a form of individualized political participation and social action’ (Margry and Sánchez-Carretero 2011: 28), makeshift memory projects borne of personal and social trauma whose ritualized and sometimes mass-mediated nature (ibid.: 36) makes them clear examples of bottom-up heritagization. Heritagization of the World Heritage variety rarely looks like this. The locals in these three case studies are used to top-down impositions: the Valcamonica’s local inhabitants – the Camuni – were administered as part of Napoleonic Europe, their local religious shrines known as santelle were whitewashed, agriculture was devastated and the Code Napoleon stripped them of earlier legal control over their own territory;5 Libya was an Italian colony whose concentration camps may have killed as many as half of the Bedouin population; and Tanzania was a German, then British colony with significant repression and resistance.6 The impact of the World Heritage listing on rock art sites shows continuity with previous colonialisms: the exclusion of locals from real decision making and policy, the reconfiguring of their landscapes and livelihoods, as well as the imposition of new narratives of value and progress. Similarly, World Heritage also represents a continuity with the external imaginings of these places. The colonial era saw powerful ideological and representational imaginaries take hold: for example, Tanzania’s natural riches were first annexed from local use and managed by colonial authorities and then played a powerful and lasting role in shaping the global image of the entire African continent (Salazar 2006: 839–40). Similarly, the European fascination with the desert as a space of mystical truth and extreme harshness became a popular trope in Western culture, as well as in the administrative strategies of the colonial powers. Those colonial representational practises

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and the tropes that grew from them were also literally represented in the colonial exhibitions of the nineteenth century, and it is instructive to consider how similar the World Heritage project is to those totalizing visions of the world. Of course, those representations of colonies and their inhabitants actually helped the metropoles shape the future development of their dominions (Apter 2007: 142), and the explicit goal of UNESCO’s heritage project to create a culture of peace ‘in the minds of men’ is no less proscriptive. Places and practises are to be reimagined, repurposed for UNESCO’s universalistic utopia. I believe we need to talk about World Heritage as colonialist, because it presents itself as something rather different. For example, much of UNESCO’s own materials – its documents, management plans and policy briefings – manage to pass as nuanced and sensitive attempts to engage with and make sense of the vestiges of the world’s human (and natural) pasts. UNESCO has carefully and gradually absorbed the relativism of anthropology and attempted to address the long-standing critique of its Eurocentricism. But on the ground, the three World Heritage sites where I have worked still look and feel different: colonized. That old colonial powers exert disproportionate power within the organization and in the global heritage sector – as seen in France’s continued resistance against the World Heritage nomination of its former penal colonies at Saint-Laurent du Maroni, Cayenne and Kourou in French Guiana (Cherubini 2015) – fits a pattern of cultural and territorial appropriation recognized by many locals. Local Uses and Local Meanings The central problem which runs through these three sites is that local practises in and around the rock art sites, as well as the meanings and significances they have, are ignored by UNESCO. We will see how this has happened in the next section, but here we will look at these uses and meanings in one site through the ongoing ritual practises in Kondoa-Irangi. Local uses of sites and their meanings are of course different in the Tadrart Acacus and Valcamonica, but it is clear that all three of these places have histories and significances far richer than just the rock art that their World Heritage designations celebrate. Kondoa-Irangi My material on Kondoa-Irangi is based on fieldwork from 2001 to 2002 when the site’s nomination file for World Heritage was being

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prepared by the Tanzanian Department of Antiquities. Significantly, the situation described here and in the next sections was still the same in 2012, six years after the site became World Heritage. In KondoaIrangi, locals claim no authorship of or descent from the creators of the area’s rock art, yet they regularly use rock art sites for ritual practises. This includes the more recent paintings known as ‘Late Whites’ dating back from 400 years bp to a period when the Rangi first moved into this part of central Tanzania,7 as well as the ‘Early Reds’ which date to hunter-gatherer societies in Tanzania’s Middle to Late Stone Age (approx. 4,000 years bp). Instead, the vast majority of locals name the creators of the rock art as wareno (the Portuguese), and a ritual specialist from the village of Potea (interviewed in December 2001) also described the creators of the paintings as wareno, but emphasized that during the colonial period, the colonials were painting them: Germans and the English. Even the rock art itself is seen as a colonial imposition, and the paintings themselves are said to be of no ritual significance. This state of affairs is more confusing when we consider that one of the most visible rock shelters containing rock paintings is regularly used for various traditional practises ranging from rainmaking to initiation and healing rites. In fact, this shelter, Mungumi wa Kolo, was the ‘flagship’ site for the World Heritage nomination. Interviews with fifty local ritual specialists – mweneese/hapaloe, vaanga and ‘djinn musicians’ – revealed that not only was Mungumi wa Kolo a key node in an extensive ritual landscape, but some of the Late Whites might well relate to past variants of these propitiatory and initiatory rites, or possibly even to those of living memory. Recent advances in rock art research now recognize this as a rock art tradition linked to fertility which extends across East and parts of southern Africa. So, the locals in and around the rock art sites hold these spaces as sacred, but claim no descent from the painters, yet they actively spit and splatter pombe (local beer) onto the paintings in Mungumi wa Kolo to propitiate ancestral clan spirits (varimu). How these rituals are practised varies significantly, suggesting a syncretic belief system driven by the area’s linguistic and ethnic heterogeneity.8 As forms of memory-work themselves, these ritual practises reference the diverse local histories within the landscape (specifically Rangi settlement and rationalization of the area), as well as possibly being able to tell us about the recent forms of the rock art, the Late Whites. The hereditary land rights ideology known as mawunda wa sakame (‘fields of blood’), which delineates family territory and depends on propitiatory offerings to clan ancestors in Mungumi wa Kolo, is of immense local significance. As we will see

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in the next section, the World Heritage nomination recognized this, and even though it made it an explicit value of the site, it has failed to actually engage with these locals, the very people who hold most value in the rock art places which are now World Heritage. Tadrart Acacus The Tadrart Acacus is a 150-kilometres-long mountain massif in the central Sahara with an extraordinary ensemble of rock art, visually demonstrating the area’s massive climate change from 14,000 years bp to the present. This posed significant challenges for both the pastoralist groups that characterized its long Neolithic, and also later for state-level societies like the Garamantes (Mattingly 2007). These changes are depicted in the rock art, but also, perhaps, in the pragmatic lifeways of the Kel Tadrart, the local Tuareg lineage living in the World Heritage site itself. World Heritage does not totally ignore these lifeways, but – through the massive impact of the tourism the inscription attracted – it mythologizes and romanticizes them through the trope of the mystical ‘blue men’ of the desert. As with the Rangi, the reality of the Kel Tadrart is that they only permanently settled here recently: in fact, within the last two generations. Of course, this contrasts the nomadic pastoralism which is supposed to characterize the Tuareg, and does not make them obvious ‘indigenes’. As in Irangi, these locals are problematic ‘stakeholders’, they are only recent users of these heritage spaces, and where World Heritage is privileging the prehistoric elements of the area, they do not fit the narrative. In marked contrast to Kondoa-Irangi, there was heavy tourist use of this space before the Libyan Civil War in 2011. Unlike neighbouring Tassili N’Ajjer in Algeria (a World Heritage site since 1982), tourism was low-key until the end of the embargo in the late 1990s, but the boom years of Libyan desert tourism saw 120,000 tourist visits to the Acacus mountains between September and May every year, roughly 440 people a day. However, despite the flow of money and opportunities, very few Kel Tadrart got involved in the industry. The families we interviewed have remained in the mountains because they prefer a harder existence in ‘the wild’ (essuf)9 to what was a comfortable Qaddafi-subsidized one in a local town. It is worth noting, however, that this is a recent resettlement; throughout the 1980s, there was only one Kel Tadrart family left living in the mountains, so this nostalgic return to the ‘traditional’ semi-nomadic lifestyle is a reaffirmation of identity and their right to use this space.

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Because of the general lack of interest in tourism from the fifty-four Kel Tadrart actually living within the World Heritage site,10 many of the guides, drivers and cooks in the industry were transnational Tuareg, and indeed these trans-Saharan flows characterized the Libyan labour market more generally. Kel Tadrart involvement was limited to occasional visits, and enterprizing kids selling Neolithic arrowheads to passing tourists. Even though Kel Tadrart do not have a lengthy permanent claim to this mountain massif (the first evidence of a clan with this name in this area dates to Italian colonialism; see Gigliarelli 1932 and Scarin 1937), their knowledge of it is extensive, including, for example, not only the distribution of pastures and permanent water in mountain gueltas (natural reservoirs), but also medicinal plants, hunting grounds for Barbary sheep (uaddan), old trade routes (akbas which transect the massif east to west) and the rock art and lithic remains which are found throughout the mountains and wadis. That such knowledge is the result of deep associations with this place is evidenced not only in the Tifinagh script inscribed on rock walls (as well as more recent Arabic), but also in the scattered and often almost invisible archaeological remains of temporary pastoralist settlements which our team recorded in 2007.11 These included goat pens, animal enclosures, huts, food caches, place markers (regem) and deposits for camel saddles and hunting equipment. The latter is particularly interesting, given that the hunting traps are depicted in petroglyphs on the adjacent Messak Settafet showing the trapping of elephant and giraffe which date back to approximately 7,000 years bp, suggesting surprising continuity with prehistoric hunting techniques. From Kel Tadrart rangelands to a Rangi ritual landscape, these different local uses and meanings attached to sites complicate the dominant World Heritage narratives of the prehistorical aspects of the rock art. In these cases, and in the Valcamonica too, lived realities are linked to multiple heritages, ones that the World Heritage process excludes. The next section considers the roles that bureaucratic tools like management plans, as well as the realities of tourism, play in this process of exclusion. Tentative Colonizations: Nominations, Management Plans and Visitors In an unsubtle play on the ‘Tentative Lists’ that each state party draws up for possible World Heritage site nominations, this part of the chapter covers how the nominations and management of one of these

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three different sites took place. It focuses on Kondoa-Irangi, not least because I was undertaking my fieldwork at the same time that Tanzania’s Antiquities Department was putting together the site’s nomination file and UNESCO consultants (contracted by ICCROM) were conducting site surveys and stakeholder meetings. Kondoa-Irangi: Nominations and Exclusions As in many sub-Saharan African states, Tanzania’s antiquities legislation is itself an inheritance from the colonial era, with the 1964 (amended in 1979) Antiquities Act of Tanzania based on the Colonial Monuments Preservation Ordinance of 1937. Therefore, as Joost Fontein (2006) has noted for Zimbabwe, protecting sites has historically rarely gone hand in hand with valorizing local traditions and uses of ancient places, and has instead been focused on physical artefacts, effectively silencing other values. With regards to local users of Mungumi wa Kolo, this legislation12 recognizes value only in material culture created before 1863. Thus the bias of colonially derived antiquities legislation fails to recognize local uses, and finds itself echoed throughout the practise of preparing a site for nomination to the List and in its actual administration. In fairness to the Tanzanian authorities, the declaration of the potential site as a Conservation Area in 2004 promised a number of improvements, though these have yet to materialize. The Tanzanian nomination itself has a long history, and one that demonstrates that in under-resourced states World Heritage is only achieved with the aid of foreign assistance: beyond the site survey of 1980, Kondoa had two tranches of preparatory funding from UNESCO’s World Heritage Fund in 1999 and 2000, financial assistance from Great Britain with the nomination and extensive practical support from SARAP and ICCROM’s Africa 2009 programme.13 These coordinated actions drove the nomination and show that World Heritage is experienced on the ground as a miscellany of external actors, acting both in concert with, and in contrast to, the national authority, but united in their belief that the World Heritage status is worth pursuing. The idea of conserving Kondoa’s rock art as World Heritage dates back to the UNESCO General Conference of 1976, when it was agreed that a safeguarding campaign was needed for Tanzania’s heritage and the rock art in particular (Mturi 1996: 185). Professor Emmanuel Anati, the man who ‘discovered’ the petroglyphs of the Valcamonica, and successfully campaigned for their inscription on the World Heritage List in 1979, undertook a mission to Kondoa-Irangi

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and Singida as a UNESCO consultant in 1980. This mission visited 102 sites with over 200 decorated surfaces (Anati 1986, Mturi 1996:182), and his recommendation was that the area become a World Heritage site. However, the area he proposed did not include all the visited sites, and the site map he prepared then effectively defined what ended up becoming designated as World Heritage. Anati’s interest was exclusively in the rock paintings, and he made no mention of the importance of particular sites to locals, or to ongoing practises. Thus, even at this first stage of UNESCO involvement, the relationship between locals and the landscape in which they made their own history was ignored. This followed a rift that had already developed between locals and the Department of Antiquities over the protective cages built around key sites. The Tanzanian archaeologist Amini Mturi (who had trained at the University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology) had held meetings with locals back in 1968 to discuss these problems, as he was convinced that ritual practise in Mungumi was damaging the paintings, but locals continued to tear down the protective structures the Department of Antiquities built and continued using the shelters. The Antiquities Annual Report 1970–71 (cited in Bwasisi 2009: 29) details how at least one local spent a year in prison as a result of such actions, which cannot have improved local attitudes towards the Department of Antiquities, or towards the archaeological values it was trying to promote. Despite Anati’s positive recommendation, the Tanzanian state effectively ignored Kondoa’s World Heritage potential until 1995 when the Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP) took an interest in aiding a Tanzanian nomination, in synergy, it was hoped, with nine other states in ‘southern’ Africa. SARAP itself was set up after a meeting in Harare in 1995, and from 1998 onward – through a series of workshops – it aimed to coordinate a serial nomination to the World Heritage List of rock art sites from Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho and South Africa. Linked to this, but an objective in its own right, was a desire to develop the management and conservation expertise of heritage professionals across the region. To this end, a number of courses (‘COMRASA: Conservation and Management of Rock Art Sites in Southern Africa’), were run in different countries at the sites earmarked for World Heritage status.14 Despite the shared training, some national bodies were much swifter at preparing their nomination dossiers and creating management plans which would meet the approval of ICOMOS and consequently the World Heritage Committee. This proved to be

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the case for South Africa with uKhahlamba Drakensberg in 2000, and then Botswana’s Tsodilo in 2001. Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of SARAP was that its internationalism served a genuine academic (and conservation) need: even when it failed in practise, the very idea of a serial nomination attenuated the nationalist appropriations of these sites. A workshop on the nomination of the Kondoa-Irangi Rock Paintings of Tanzania took place in July 2000. It served as a stakeholder meeting with thirty locals visiting the rock art sites with delegates and discussing a number of questions. Villagers maintained that they did not consider the paintings as their heritage and admitted that vandalism (graffiti and fires) did occasionally occur. They felt that the small number of visitors provided little in the way of money, but that the nomination was a potential source of employment and local development, and similar hopes for improvements in local infrastructure, health care and jobs were expressed by the local elite. Villagers also acknowledged that the sites of Cholincholi and Mungumi wa Kolo had traditional uses. The workshop also established six goals to which its objectives and strategies were directed in the proto-management plan, one of which was to ‘ensure ongoing traditional use’. However, people that actually used these sites for rituals were not present at this workshop, nor at the one run by two UNESCO consultants I observed some months later. In the July workshop, one of the key aims within five years of the meeting was to upgrade the Kolo Antiquities Office to a specialist rock art unit. This was seen to be crucial in creating a different and more effective coordination of roles between local government and the Department of Antiquities. Involvement of locals through community education programmes was intended to not only inform them about the heritage value of the rock art, but also to involve them within the management process. However, despite identifying ongoing traditional use as a goal, it was not made clear how this was to be approached. The stakeholder meeting showed that locals expect something in exchange for conceding the heritage of their area to the global imaginary: they see their ‘cultural heritage’ as key to attracting development. Pragmatically, the ‘outstanding universal value’ they recognize in the rock art is not that of unique material culture, but of a route to accomplishing the human right to clean water, adequate healthcare and a sustainable livelihood. Of course, the ritual specialists are also engaged in trying to address many of these issues through their practises at the sites, and their ideas about what is best for the rock art

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sites (continued ritual use of Mungumi wa Kolo to ensure rain and well-being) clash with those of Tanzanian ‘modernists’ (promotion of Mungumi wa Kolo and other shelters as a tourist destination with expected economic and social benefits for the region). Meanwhile, at the workshop I observed and just like the SARAP team, the UNESCO consultants were highly sensitive to local ritual use of sites, recognizing that ritual specialists needed to be involved if the site’s management was to be successful. As temporarily hired experts on rock art and indigenous archaeology (one American, one Zimbabwean), their sensitivities fed into the management plan. Nevertheless, and despite the explicit wording of the management plan successfully submitted to the World Heritage Committee in 2005, ritual specialists have not been consulted. Today, the situation remains the same. As a Tanzanian researcher put it, ‘The Director of Antiquities and the Kondoa site manager are the primary main decision makers on all issues relating to Mungomi wa Kolo and other sites. This authoritarian management style makes people very angry’ (Bwasiri 2009: 75). The Tanzanian Antiquities Department has now banned traditional practises in Mungumi, thus perpetuating a colonial-era fixation with physical remains, against local understandings of those spaces focused on the living heritage values. The key problem though is that there is no local consensus, in part because those who use shelters for ritual practises have their own ways of doing things (the syncretic ritual procedures mentioned above), and in part because their work is often secretive, not least because official national policy is antagonistic towards them, as is Christian and Islamic proselytizing. The situation looks precarious, both in terms of the conservation of the actual rock art, and the potential loss of any knowledge of what these practises might mean in ethno-archaeological terms (e.g. Rangi settlement of the area, ethno-linguistic hybridity leading to syncretic ritual strategies). Complaining about their exclusion from the management of Mungumi, one of the healers interviewed by Emmanuel Bwasiri (2007: 52) said that if the current situation continues, their ‘ancestor spirit will rub out all of the paintings’. Significantly, the management of the site might have been improved, had Tanzania decided to nominate Kondoa-Irangi as a ‘cultural landscape’. One reason why this did not happen may be the poor record of Rangi use of this landscape, and the Tanzanian elite’s antipathy towards ‘traditional’ practises may also play a role.15 Rangi settlement of this landscape dates to about 150 years ago (Lyaruu 2010: 19) and is seen to have kicked off a process of environmental degradation, thus dissolving any romantic images of indigenes

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living in harmony with their landscape. It is worth noting that despite appearing to be poor custodians of these spaces, the Rangi and Alagwa are not solely responsible for the appalling human-made degradation of their environment.16 In fact, a large part of local animosity to external intervention in Kondoa-Irangi stems from British colonial policy and a soil conservation programme (HADO, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency) which from 1973 to 1993 continued the colonial-era limitations on how locals used this landscape, most keenly resented in the destocking of previous grazing lands. Such actions have made locals wary of any outside intervention. Nevertheless, one of the expected benefits of the World Heritage designation in this impoverished region of Tanzania was international tourism, but a poorly maintained access road had guaranteed its relative isolation and ensured that Kondoa remained stuck between the lucrative ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ circuits of safari tourism. In the early stages, there was considerable interest from the Netherlands Development Agency (SNV) in developing community tourism projects, something they had facilitated elsewhere in Tanzania. However, other than through the recent initiatives by a Finnish paper maker based 250 kilometres away in Arusha,17 tourism is much as it has always been. Official figures show that visitors are as infrequent as they were in the 1960s: an average of about five hundred a year, more than half of whom are local visitors, with most being schoolchildren visiting for free. The costs of administering a heritage area of 2,336 square kilometres are clearly unlikely to be covered by entrance fees (where international visitors pay 1500 TZ shillings, approximately 1.5 US dollars), and such small numbers (e.g. 123 and 122 foreign visitors in 2001 and 2002 when I was there) generate little income within the local community. In Kondoa-Irangi then, the economic benefits of World Heritage that were much touted during the stakeholder meetings have yet to materialize. As we will see in the next section, locals find other ways to seek out elusive riches, but they have done so to the detriment of the rock art itself. Rock Art as World Heritage As mentioned above, rock art is a particular kind of heritage, one located within landscapes, one that appears to be particularly rich with meaning through directly displaying aspects of the symbolic worlds of previous human societies, and yet one that is also enigmatic, for those artistic traditions often lack other archaeological remains. Nevertheless, rock art is recognized as a distinct category within World

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Heritage and is presented and managed through UNESCO as prehistory. Given the contemporary local significances and uses discussed above and the importance of petroglyphs and paintings from recent historic periods, this broad-sweep classification alerts us to the simplifications of UNESCO’s memory work. Despite this, and echoing the general anthropologizing trend of World Heritage, the ‘Action Plan of the World Heritage Thematic Programme on Prehistory’ places a new emphasis on developing communities around prehistoric World Heritage sites. Its first Action is to develop a ‘core interdisciplinary Working Group of experts’ (UNESCO 2010: 11). Second to this, its ‘Action 4.2 Local Communities’ delineates a number of steps to engage and integrate local communities through participatory strategies, including ‘explor[ing] the relationship with a wider range of heritage values’. These goals seem reasonable and they are not that different from how the Kondoa management plan deals with the local community on paper, nor from many other rock art sites, or indeed of academic advice since the 1990s (e.g. Pearson and Sullivan 1995, Pwiti and Ndoro 2001). And yet, none of the above goals have been achieved in any meaningful sense. Twelve years on from bringing the necessity of similar objectives to the attention of Tanzania’s Antiquities Department (Chalcraft 2001), they have yet to be applied.18 Meanwhile, at present the thematic interest of World Heritage actors concerned with rock art appears focused on generating a World Archive of Rock Art, something which has been attempted in different guises before. The difference this time is the involvement of the University of Witwatersrand’s Rock Art Research Institute which already manages ARADA (The African Rock Art Digital Archive)19 and has teamed up with some of the most active advocates of rock art research within Europe. Following the 2011 meeting of the International Rock Art Archives Working Group in Tanum (Sweden), and by sidestepping critiques of World Heritage in favour of pragmatic action, this initiative appeared genuinely capable of tackling issues of archaeological urgency concerning rock art, yet at the time of writing it appears to have stalled. Consequently, rock art sites seem to still be stuck in a World Heritage paradigm that narrates them as prehistory. Furthermore, it is not clear whether these rock art professionals genuinely believe that World Heritage designation is a good strategy for resolving the conservation and community woes of rock art sites, or whether a convenient perk of the World Heritage process is the increased consultancy work and positive publicity for their own institutions and careers. What is clear is that it is the international

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networks forged and maintained by heritage professionals, a few academic institutions and enthusiast-run organizations like TARA, who continue to set the agenda: they share expertise, campaign against threats to rock art and, perhaps most significantly, are involved in running workshops which train new cadres of national heritage professionals and site managers. A recent example was the preparatory workshop ‘First steps towards a management plan for TchitunduHulu Rock Art’ in Angola, with RARI and TARA providing much of the expert training for the more than fifty participants from six African states, with funding from the African World Heritage Fund and the Spanish Funds-in-Trust. The thematic programmes coordinated by the World Heritage Centre in Paris can thus perhaps be seen as shop windows for the international networks coalescing around typologies of heritage. It is salutary to remember that networks are not always free. For example, the fees required for membership of one network tied to a type of World Heritage, the Organization of World Heritage Cities, were too expensive even for some cities in northern Italy (Chalcraft and Sassatelli 2004). We therefore have to ask who these networks serve and why they continue to promote World Heritage nomination. Despite years of prioritizing local concerns within finely worded international policy documents, these networks within World Heritage processes have not in practise been able to ensure the inclusion of the ritual specialists and rainmakers of Kondoa-Irangi, the semi-nomadic pastoralists of the Tadrart Acacus or the Camuni in Valcamonica. And this brings us to local reactions to World Heritage, their particularly visible ‘decolonizations’ of it: graffiti. Inscribing Iconoclasm It is easy to get seduced by UNESCO’s work on heritage. Its gradual anthropologization – seen in a renewed attention to indigenous perspectives, to the possible revival of the World Heritage Indigenous People’s Council of Experts (see te Heuheu, Kawharu and Ariihau Tuheiava 2012: 14, and also Meskell 2013), and in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – promises the inclusion of less Eurocentric kinds of heritage. However, these are minority voices which have been ignored or marginalized from the very beginning of the World Heritage project; for example, in the 1970s Bolivia spoke of its concern that its intangible folk traditions would not be represented, and Australia that its Aboriginal rock art sites could not be protected from vandalism by the new World

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Heritage Convention. Moreover, they are minority voices which tend to emerge from the political contexts of settler societies like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Despite the international agendas and solidarities created over the last decades through the work of INGOs involved with indigenous communities, there may be dangers in following such a path, not least because the very category of indigeneity is potentially explosive in many African and Asian countries (and indeed, in its Dutch, Canadian and Italian rephrasing as autochthony; see Geschiere 2009: 19–20). Nevertheless, some groups have been able to manipulate it to their advantage, carefully adapting the label so as not to further alienate themselves from states which prefer to downplay ethnicity, whilst maintaining external funding focused on ‘indigenous’ peoples, as Dorothy Hodgson (2011) describes for Tanzanian Maasai.20 In truth then, even a World Heritage attuned to the claims of indigeneities based in rich settler societies does not address the fundamental issues for locals on the ground in Tanzania and Libya, or even Italy, where acts of iconoclasm demonstrate that whatever the rhetoric, some locals can only find their voice through acts which deliberately destroy the stuff UNESCO is interested in preserving and promoting. Valcamonica Here is where we encounter the other site, Italy’s Rock Drawings of Valcamonica, which provides a long-term view of World Heritage and one that shows that, despite the wealth (and expertise) of the nominating country, World Heritage can still be experienced as an external incursion into the local landscape. I make this point because the imagined dichotomy of traditionalists versus moderns that underlies Tanzania’s idea of national progress and poverty alleviation is one reason locals are excluded from the rock art sites, but a similar dichotomy is also the case in the Valcamonica. Meanwhile, the Tadrart Acacus demonstrates something different, but again linked to the advent of World Heritage status: poorly regulated tourism breaks down the relationship between locals, their livelihoods and the landscape, whilst site management strategies which simply exclude locals through ‘massive intervention’21 create the conditions through which disenfranchised locals take out their frustrations on the very material culture World Heritage is supposed to conserve. The Valcamonica was Italy’s very first World Heritage site. As an early nomination, we might expect its management to have been relatively poor in the early years, and to have improved with the

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subsequent professionalization of Cultural Resource Management (CRM). Nevertheless, the level of legal, bureaucratic and ideological confusion which has characterized its management throughout the 1980s and 1990s is surprising, even more so given that in the field of cultural heritage, Italy is one of the world’s major players (Italy is the most successful state in getting sites onto the World Heritage List: forty-nine sites as of 2014). Local antipathy to the World Heritage site, and to rock art in general, has been long-running. In part, this is due to there being seven different managed areas, with one area – Naquane, a national park since the 1950s – being the one most locals identify as actual ‘World Heritage’. The net effect has been inconsistency in the way the rock art is researched, protected, interpreted through signboards on site, and in local attitudes towards it. The situation has improved in recent years, especially since the Archaeological Superintendency for Lombardy (the responsible regional body, acting on behalf of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities) implemented a coordinated plan which has harmonized signage at sites, and finally, thirty-one years after the site’s original inscription, provided an actual map of the World Heritage areas, as well as the much-needed buffer zones. New Italian legislation, like the 2004 Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code, may finally start to make sense of the tangle of national, regional, provincial and civic and other laws which have hampered serious and coordinated archaeological research over the years and the development of much-needed infrastructure in the valley. Despite these recent measures, World Heritage status has not prevented serious destruction of the valley’s rock art and archaeological contexts. These include damaging atmospheric pollution at the Parco Comunale delle Incisioni Rupestri di Luine (whose Epipaleothic to Iron Age petroglyphs – roughly from 8000 bc to 16 bc – have deteriorated almost beyond recognition since their excavation), two of the different management bodies implementing damaging conservation measures and infrastructure and locals destroying areas of rock art and site interpretation. A more lasting damage has been the loss of local knowledge about the landscape, including links to rock art areas which were open and visible to the valley’s inhabitants within living memory for the present generation and might have been linked to popular traditions (like the village of Andrista’s winter masquerade / public denouncement, the ‘Badalisc’). I will describe just two instances of institutional iconoclasm. Firstly, in the summer of 2002, the management of the Riserva Regionale di Ceto-Cimbergo-Paspardo, the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, decided to drill into an engraved rock and glue in steel pins to mount

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a wooden walkway to improve the viewing angle for visitors. The work was started and finally completed a year later without consultation with the national authority and contravened one of the most basic tenets of conservationism, the reversibility of any action. Of even greater impact was the temporary suspension of national legislation by the regional authority, in order to build a new road past the Massi di Cemmo, one of the valley’s first rock art sites known to archaeologists. Whilst a fruitful archaeological excavation was undertaken, the message it sent to locals, who elsewhere in the valley had had a muchneeded road blocked for half a century because of a less significant assemblage of rock art, was that antiquities legislation serves only the interests of archaeologists and can be modified for their convenience. In the meantime, locals from the village of Nadro, which abutted the Riserva mentioned above – largely excluded from any economic benefits from the rock art – scratched over one of the rock art panels and burnt down an archaeological reconstruction that was a key part of the Parco’s site interpretation. Locals were blasé about these acts, and no prosecutions were brought against the perpetrators, even though they were well known locally, even talking about it in the bar temporarily located within the Riserva’s own museum. Mungumi wa Kolo Local understandings of foreign interest in the Mungumi wa Kolo area’s rock art have been partial at best. In part this is because foreign archaeologists – unlike Tanzanian ones – have not taken the time to explain their activities. This background of conservation measures and archaeological activity is what has formed local attitudes to the rock art of the area; even to the extent that groups have masked and/ or forgotten their links to the paintings of the area. The heritagization process of World Heritage does not parachute into a vacuum, but builds on prior external meddling in local life. In Tanzania, this has meant literally excluding locals from the rock shelters, and excluding locals from knowledge of what archaeologists are doing. The result has been the destruction of conservation measures and the illegal excavation of rock shelters. Firstly though, one of the ways rock art has been destroyed has been through local ritual use of the shelters, in particular by spitting pombe (beer) or flicking it with gindai leaves onto the actual paintings in Mungumi wa Kolo. Again, this is largely the result of a lack of communication between management authorities and an incommensurability between local understandings of the power of

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these places and those promulgated by archaeologists in the past and now enshrined in the new World Heritage site. The pombe spitting and flicking was ongoing when I studied the site in 2001–02, even though it had already been addressed through sensitive discussion between antiquities officials and ritual specialists. Recent reports that the Antiquities Department has now excluded ritual specialists from Mungumi wa Kolo are unlikely to help matters, not least because the belief expressed by a local healer to Bwasiri in 2007 (and mentioned above) – that the spirits are now so angry that they may destroy the paintings – may be a more literal threat. The lack of explanations from archaeologists for their actions has led to some interesting interpretations by locals of what their agendas really are. Among locals and even people from the distant Tanzanian coast, stories of ‘German treasure’ buried in the rock shelters have circulated for decades. In the past and today, occasional attempts to dig up these treasures (supposedly left by Germans fleeing Tanganyika during the war) have led to the destruction of archaeological contexts within rock shelters, as well as to damage to the paintings themselves. The reason locals destroy what is genuinely valuable in search of non-existent treasure derives from the colonial-era arrogance of the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory and Quaternary Studies and its visit to Kondoa in 1948. Numerous distinguished professors could be seen scampering around the area, earnestly and tirelessly searching amongst the boulders and rock shelters (Mturi 1996: 184), whilst studiously ignoring the locals. This first appearance of Kondoa-Irangi’s rock art on the world archaeological stage was misread by locals, causing a boom in property prices, as they thought the wazungu (white men) must have been looking for good housing plots, whilst others assumed they were hunting for the ‘German treasure’ – that is, minerals within the rock shelters. A further local embellishment interpreted the ‘treasure’ not as German, but as Portuguese, hence the above-mentioned link of the paintings to wareno in local eyes. Locals are possibly being given a hand in destroying the rock art. The lack of any sustained programme of community education or sensitization to the conservation needs of the paintings means that others are free to come in and do as they see best. A recent potentially problematic example are the activities of the self-styled Rock Art Research Tanzania (RART) group. The Finnish paper maker who manages it staged a one-day workshop with a Canadian photographer in a school within the World Heritage site in February 2012. After discussing the meanings of the rock art, they got students to

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paint images onto rocks which they then photographed and printed on machinery donated by Epson.22 Given existing issues with graffiti at sites, this seems a risky way to encourage local understandings of and appreciation for the rock art. A further issue – at least from the perspective of intellectual property and copyright – is what happens to the rock art imagery reproduced by RART on handmade paper and offered for sale for one hundred US dollars. Their website claims that sales will help their community projects in Kondoa, but as the community projects are also marketed within the volunteering programmes they run and ‘voluntourism’ is not without its critics (see Palacios 2010), how useful this will be for locals or for promoting a ‘culture of conservation’ is difficult to evaluate. The relative weakness of Tanzania’s Department of Antiquities (due mostly to lack of funds) means that the ideas, best practises and community engagement of even the most brilliant management plan simply don’t happen on the ground. From one perspective, the freedom for other actors to be involved in the interpretation and conservation activities of the World Heritage site is positive, as it ought to promote the diverse understandings of those heritages on the ground. However, in reality there are two issues: firstly, these other actors need some kind of control; they may not be aware of either the actual conservation needs of rock art as archaeological material or of the most effective strategies for engaging locals.23 Secondly, the heterogeneous management of areas may further the exclusion of locals, as well as diminish the accountability of heritage professionals, with negative results, much like in Valcamonica where the management bodies themselves have destroyed rock art contexts and fomented local antipathy to it. Tadrart Acacus The rock art of the Tadrart Acacus has survived the climatic change of the last few millennia pretty well. However, in April 2009, a single act of extensive vandalism by a Tuareg employed in tourism destroyed ten major rock art sites: given that the two clusters of sites were forty kilometres apart and that many of the scenes destroyed were those specifically celebrated when presenting the sites to tourists, this was clearly an iconoclastic act. The damage was permanent, not least because it took the Libyan authorities months to allow a proper site assessment. Part of the motivation for this act lies with the perpetrator’s failed relationship with his previous employer (an Italian tour operator), but the reality of tourism at that time, as well as the way the authorities managed the area, might have been contributing factors. For

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example, on the recommendation of foreign archaeologists that many Acacus rock art sites were threatened by uncontrolled tourism and that a few well-placed protective fences with clear information panels be built, the Libyan authorities instead went on a spree of exclusion, erecting fences across numerous sites and with no panels, as well as actually blocking vehicle access to some wadis. This disrupted the routes used by established guides and affected the visual encounter with the rock art, provoking negative feedback from tourists who felt that their experience of the Acacus as wild and uncontrolled desert had been diminished. Once again, we see that national authorities create antagonism between locals and local users of heritage spaces. As far as I know, there was no community consultation and no conversation with tour guides about ways how they might best use this space. Whilst it would be stretching things to blame this act of iconoclasm on the World Heritage designation itself, it seems to be that on the ground, the World Heritage label itself does nothing to guarantee the protection of sites. Certainly, the fame of the List helped contribute to the tourism boom in southwestern Libya, and therefore to the pressures put upon the sites. Significantly, the iconoclast not only targeted the prehistoric paintings, but also inscriptions in the Tuareg script, Tifinagh. Given the work of the Archaeological Mission of ‘La Sapienza’ to valorize this more recent rock art heritage (as part of the British Library’s Endangered Archives project) and to record and study it to help understand the historic Tuareg use of this landscape (see Biagetti et al. 2012), this is surprising. In principle, this is just the kind of research that should bridge the gap between locals and heritage professionals. In practise, it seems that World Heritage status fails to protect sites, and its simplistic presentation of what gets designated as heritage (and what gets left out) can accentuate conflicts within heritage spaces. Whether these are conflicts that global modernities would have catalysed anyway is a further question.24 Conclusion World Heritage status is no guarantee of sanctity for the heritage being conserved. Despite World Heritage’s carefully worded policy documents and recommendations, management bodies continue to make poor decisions on the ground, resulting in the destruction of rock art and of (ethno-)archaeological contexts and generally provoking the antagonism of locals. In some ways, this ought to be the

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expected result of any heritagization process which favours aspects of the deep past over the present and sanctifies through its official narrative (and those which then enter tourist interpretations and marketing literature) an orientation towards the past which excludes local epistemologies. In other words, World Heritage itself is sometimes an agent of destruction, not just by creating conditions of alienation, but because it can destroy local understandings, narratives and epistemologies, those local ways of being in the world that might also advance our understandings of the rock art itself. Alienating locals occurs through external management agencies and bureaucratic structures whose behaviour on the ground rarely lives up to the promise of their management plans. It probably cannot avoid doing so, for as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2004) theorized, the ‘second-life’ of the heritage object is radically transformed from the embodied lived reality to a performance of itself. After repeated attempts to render itself more accountable, inclusive and representative, World Heritage and its universalist ideals still fail to enfranchise locals in the Tadrart Acacus, Kondoa-Irangi and Valcamonica. Instead, they sometimes destroy the stuff World Heritage celebrates and occasionally sabotage the work of heritage professionals. Reconciling these local acts of iconoclasm – acts encouraged (or at the least, not prevented) by the World Heritage paradigm – with the utopian idea that a global public can recognize, identify with and safeguard diverse cultural practises and places, needs more than just the recognition that heritage everywhere is multiple and polyvalent. Could such multiplicity ever be managed; can sectional interests and the aftershocks of the commoditization of heritage be administered and directed towards UNESCO’s global ideals? The examples from the ground in Italy, Tanzania and Libya suggest not. The agents of World Heritage – from regional management bodies and national antiquities authorities to foreign consultants – may sometimes try to honour this multiplicity, but the paradigm of a universal heritage results in even the obvious ritual practises and traditional livelihoods of locals being ignored. In this way, and despite better intentions, World Heritage often discounts the ways in which local people already manage memory, making the past relevant within their dwelt-in presents. And in ignoring these heritages, World Heritage reveals its essential Eurocentrism, where the heritages of others are only of interest as far as they fit the universal narrative. This is reinforced by a central contradiction within World Heritage: relativism is recognized, but becoming World Heritage means that a group’s view of its ‘heritage’ is to be radically transformed through sharing it with an imagined global public. In order to

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pursue its objective of creating peace ‘in the minds of men’, UNESCO is compelled to dislodge local epistemologies. There is a further issue at the heart of the universalist narrative, too. As Harrison (2012) has recently argued, we are forgetting how to forget. Our current obsession with memory, monumentalization and memorialization (Riegl 1903, Nora 1989 and many others) has no precedent in human history. Pierre Nora’s often quoted characterization remains insightful: [Our] consciousness of a break with the past is bound up with the sense that memory has been torn – but torn in such a way as to pose the problem of the embodiment of memory in certain sites where a sense of historical continuity persists. There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory. (1989: 7)

The argument goes that we ‘moderns’ are forgetful and must organize our pasts through memorializing ‘historical traces’. Our three examples show how it is through such memorializing that World Heritage colonizes real environments of memory. Despite all the recent ‘anthropologization’ of heritage within UNESCO, it is hard to defend World Heritage against the label of cultural imperialism. It is hard because thirty-six years since the Valcamonica’s inscription, World Heritage continues to ignore the other heritages of these areas; it seems that the positive inclusive rhetoric so easily drafted into policy recommendations is difficult to translate on the ground. There are many reasons why this is the case, some of which have been covered here (nationalism; the pragmatics of site management; international tourism), but perhaps the central one is simply that World Heritage and UNESCO’s utopian imaginary is not a legitimate project. However, there is at least one way in which UNESCO is indeed creating a global community on the basis of heritage, through the shared global experience of locals who have found their places colonized by the heritage industry and its assorted experts, nationalist and tourist narratives and UNESCO imaginary. This shared experience is helping locals recognize that their past is the foreign country that the West still wants to colonize and that it still can. Jasper Chalcraft is a research fellow on the project ‘Cultural Base: Social Platform on Cultural Heritage and European Identities’ at the University of Sussex (sociology) and continues to manage the Cultural Heritage and Peacebuilding project at the University of Leicester

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(archaeology and ancient history). He is the co-editor of The Making of Heritage: Seduction and Disenchantment (2014, with Camila del Marmol and Marc Morell).

Notes 1. As this volume goes to press, Libya has spiralled further into a protracted civil war, one that has seen deliberate destruction of the country’s cultural heritage. Whilst much of this has been uncontrolled development (especially at Cyrene), the first postrevolution case of deliberate destruction was of Sufi shrines in Zlitan and Tripoli in August 2012, followed in 2014 by unconfirmed attacks on the rock art sites discussed here, with threats of more to come as Libyan society itself breaks down. 2. My influences here range from Ngugi through Fanon, to the more recent ‘de-linking’ from imperial/modern knowledge that help constitute Mignolo’s (2009) processes of ‘de-colonisation’. 3. From 2004, the World Heritage Centre also started exhibiting at the International Tourism Exchange in Berlin, the industry’s biggest trade fair. 4. The work on Kondoa-Irangi and the Valcamonica was undertaken as part of the same project investigating what World Heritage looked like in two different contexts, the chief difference being not Europe/Africa, but rather seeing how World Heritage has changed over time, and the impact it has on local practises and worldviews. The work on Libya was undertaken in two different capacities: as a member of a small team undertaking an ethno-archaeological investigation on the Tadrart Acacus (with the Joint Italian-Libyan Archaeological Mission) and as a desert tour guide working for a joint Libyan-Italian company with mostly Tuareg staff. 5. Ordinary Camuni had enjoyed representing and administering local interests (against those of the church, nobility and later the Venetian Republic) since at least 1018 in early democratic organizations known as vicinie. Other such forms of collective organization existed in Lombardy and beyond, and challenge the stereotypical view of a powerless medieval peasantry. 6. For example, the Maji Maji Rebellion against forced cotton cultivation by the Germans between 1905 and 1907; and more locally, British forced labour to eradicate the tsetse fly in Kondoa District. 7. Oral histories and linguistic analysis by Stegen (2003: 12) suggest Rangi settlement of the area could have begun sometime in the 1700s, though others believe this to have been about 150 years ago (Lyaruu 2010: 19). 8. This is also the only place on the African continent where four of the

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continent’s major language groups coalesce, and there is a high degree of absorption into the majority Rangi ethnicity. More crucially, in local eyes all of the clan ancestors are actually said to be of Alagwa ethnicity, people renowned locally for their rainmaking prowess. Differences are reflected in the common elements of ritual practise, including the use of both the stomach contents of sheep (a ‘Cushitic’ practise) as well as python droppings (from the Sukuma), and the use of gindai leaves (castor oil), a plant whose cultivation was encouraged in the colonial era, and significantly was a key ingredient in the magic ‘water’ given to the fighters during the 1905–07 anti-colonial Maji Maji Rebellion. 9. On this nostalgic concept of solitude, see Rasmussen 2008. 10. Most Kel Tadrart live outside of the site. However, it is significant that even those who live in the (relatively) nearby small town of Al Awenat have created their own enclave on its southern fringe known as Ta Barakat. Here they keep a few goats and entertain guests and visiting family in neotraditional shelters similar to those built by their relatives living in the Acacus mountains. 11. The Tifinagh inscriptions are currently being studied by Italian archaeologists from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ with a grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archives programme. 12. See Kamamba 2005: 14 (cited in Bwasiri 2009: 34) for details. 13. The Southern African Rock Art Project and the International Centre for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments. 14. These were funded by ICCROM (and later its Africa 2009 programme), the Getty Grant Programme, NORAD and the World Heritage Fund. 15. In 2002, Tanzania passed its Witchcraft Act which further revised a piece of colonial legislation (Ordinance 39 of 1922; see Mesaki 2009). The advent of the new legislation, which was proceeded by years of media coverage linking ‘witchcraft’ to poverty, meant that local ritual specialists were anticipating something like a witch-hunt by special antiwitchcraft enforcement officers who were apparently already arresting people on ‘the coast’. Locals claimed that initiation rituals had also been banned. This national context meant that they were extremely reluctant to promote their ‘traditional’ ritual interests as part of the World Heritage nomination procedure. Consequently, they did not take part in the stakeholder meetings organized by the Department of Antiquities. 16. Kondoa-Irangi was the most eroded area in sub-Saharan Africa through the 1980s. This was partly a result of British colonial policy which used forced labour of locals to clear-fell the miombo forest and scrub on the rift valley slopes as part of a tsetse fly eradication programme (1927–49). Post-independence soil conservation (tied to Nyerere’s ujamaa experiment in African socialism) was experienced locally as similar to colonial resettlement and livestock control programmes. Similarly to the World Heritage process, there was no genuine community involvement in the planning or implementation of HADO. 17. See the Rock Art Project Tanzania at http://racctz.org.

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18. In reality, other institutions seem to engage where UNESCO leaves off: for example, TARA (Trust For African Rock Art) recently ran a ‘community sensitization exercise’ in Malawi around the Chongoni Rock Art Area (World Heritage since 2006) designed to ‘strengthen dialogue with the local communities on the management and conservation of the rock art sites’ in collaboration with the Malawian Department of Antiquities and funded by the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. 19. http://www.sarada.co.za. 20. See also Igoe 2006. Most interesting is that Geschiere (2009: 22–23) notes how the growing importance of indigeneity/autochthony in contemporary African identity politics is directly a result of its colonial antecedents. This is not a return to the traditional ways of organizing African societies, which have tended to be very inclusive. The crucial point is that the colonial period was paradoxical: in theory it favoured those groups it identified as ‘autochthonous’, but in practise it often brought in migrants. 21. On the failings of ‘massive interventions’, see Bahn et al. 1995. 22. See the photographer’s blog (http://tanzaniaworkshops2012.blogspot. co.uk) for details. 23. In fact, archaeologists too have been responsible for practises which have destroyed the rock art, in particular the practise of spraying paintings with water to make them more visible for photography. This is the case for Kondoa and the Tadrart Acacus. 24. In fact, the condition of the rock paintings of the Tadrart Acacus is currently unclear. In 2014, there were reports of extensive and targeted destruction of many rock art panels by Salafists (e.g. Bourget 2014). Unfortunately, given that Libya’s southwest is now particularly dangerous, no one has yet officially documented the damage on the ground. Libya’s heritage was considered threatened enough to merit a statement in November 2014 from UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova (UNESCO 2014). It is unlikely to be the last outcry: in early 2015, there was genuine fear amongst the archaeological community that Libyan ISIS-affiliated groups were already planning to enact the kind of annihilation of Libyan sites that has been witnessed already in Mosul, Hatra, Nimrud and Nineveh (Kingsley 2015).

Bibliography Apter, A. 2007. Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bahn, P., et al. 1995. ‘The Peterborough Petroglyph Site: Reflections on Massive Intervention in Rock Art’, Rock Art Research 12: 29–41. Biagetti, S., et al. 2012. ‘Writing the Desert: The ‘Tifinagh’ Rock Inscriptions of the Tadrart Acacus (Southwestern Libya)’, Azania 37(2): 153–74.

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Bourget, J. M. 2014. ‘Libye, 12000 ans effacés au white spirit’, MondAfrique, 20 April, retrieved 28 April 2014 from http://mondafrique.com/lire/ decryptages/2014/04/20/libye-12-000-ans-effaces-au-white-spirit. Butler, B. 2007. ‘“Taking on a Tradition”: African Heritage and the Testimony of Memory’, in F. de Jong and M. Rowlands (eds.), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp. 31–69. Bwasiri, E. J. 2009. ‘The Management of Indigenous Living Heritage in Archaeological World Heritage Sites: A Case Study of Mongomi wa Kolo Rock Painting Site, Central Tanzania’, MA dissertation, Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Chalcraft, J. 2001. ‘Continuing Traditional Practices in Kondoa-Irangi: A Report for the Department of Antiquities (United Republic of Tanzania) and ICCROM’, unpublished manuscript. Chalcraft, J., and M. Sassatelli. 2004. ‘Identità locale e processi di internalizzazione degli interventi di politica culturale: Il posto di EmiliaRomagna’, Il Mulino 2: 217–20. Cherubini, B. 2015. ‘Convict Heritage in French Guiana: Papillon and Friends in a Touristic Perspective’, in C. del Mármol, M. Morell and J. Chalcraft (eds.), The Making of Heritage: Seduction and Disenchantment. New York: Routledge, pp. 79–98. Dawdy, S. L. 2010. ‘Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity’, Current Anthropology 51(6): 761–93. Fontein, J. 2006. The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Gable, E. 1995. ‘The Decolonization of Consciousness: Local Skeptics and the “Will to be Modern” in a West African Village’, American Ethnologist 22(2): 242–57. Geschiere, P. 2009. The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gigliarelli, U. 1932. Il Fezzan. Tripoli: Tipo-litografia del R.C.T.C. della Tripolitania. Harrison, R. 2012. ‘Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: Late Modern Heritage Practices, Sustainability and the “Crisis” of Accumulation of the Past’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 19(6): 579–95. Hauser-Schäublin, B. 2011. ‘Preah Vihear: From Object of Colonial Desire to a Contested World Heritage Site’, in B. Hauser-Schäublin (ed.), World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, pp. 33–56. Hodgson, D. L. 2011. Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous: Postcolonial Politics in a Neoliberal World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Igoe, J. 2006. ‘Becoming Indigenous Peoples: Difference, Inequality, and the Globalization of East African Identity Politics’, African Affairs 105(420): 399–420.

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Inuoe, S. 2006. ‘Embodied Habitus’, Theory, Culture & Society 23: 229–31. Kamamba, D. 2005. ‘Cultural Heritage Legislation in Tanzania’, in W. Ndoro and G. Pwiti (eds.), Legal Frameworks for the Protection of Immovable Cultural Heritage in Africa. Rome: ICCROM, pp. 13–17. Kingsley, P. 2015. ‘Isis vandalism has Libya fearing for its cultural treasures’, Guardian, 7 March. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. 2004. ‘Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production’, Museum International 56(1–2): 52–65. Le Sueur, J. 2001. ‘Decolonizing “French Universalism”: Reconsidering the Impact of the Algerian War on French Intellectuals’, in J. ClancySmith (ed.), North Africa, Islam and the Mediterranean World: From the Almoravids to the Algerian War. London: Frank Cass, pp. 167–86. Lyaruu, H. V. M. 2010. ‘Effects of Mulching, Fertilizer, Seeding and Seedling Treatments on Plant Species Recovery in Kondoa-Irangi Hills, Tanzania’, Tanzania Journal of Science 36: 19–30. Margry, P. J., and C. Sánchez-Carretero. 2011. ‘Rethinking Memorialization: The Concept of Grassroots Memorials’, in P. J. Margry, and C. SánchezCarretero (eds.), Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–48. Mattingly, D. J., et al. 2007. ‘Desert Migrations: People, Environment and Culture in the Libyan Sahara’, Libyan Studies 38: 115–56. Mesaki, S. 2009. ‘Witchcraft and the Law in Tanzania’, International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1(8): 132–38. Meskell, L. 2010. ‘Human Rights and Heritage Ethics’, Anthropological Quarterly 83(4): 839–59.    . 2013. ‘UNESCO and the Fate of the World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE)’, International Journal of Cultural Property 20(2): 155–74. Mignolo, W. 2009. ‘Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and DeColonial Freedom’, Theory, Culture & Society 26(7–8): 1–23. Ngugi, W. T. 1993. Moving the Centre: The struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Oxford: James Currey. Nora, P. 1989. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations 26: 7–24. Olwig, K. 2001. ‘“Time Out of Mind” – “Mind Out of Time”: Custom versus Tradition in Environmental Heritage Research and Interpretation’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 7(4): 339–54. Palacios, C. M. 2010. ‘Volunteer Tourism, Development and Education in a Postcolonial World: Conceiving Global Connections beyond Aid’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 18(7): 861–78. Pearson, M., and S. Sullivan. 1995. Looking After Heritage Place: The Basics of Heritage Planning for Manager, Landowners and Administrators. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Pwiti, G., and W. Ndoro. 2001. ‘Heritage Management in Southern Africa: Local, National and International Discourse’, Public Archaeology 2(1): 21–34.

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Rasmussen, S. J. 2008. ‘The People of Solitude: Recalling and Reinventing essuf (the Wild) in Traditional and Emergent Tuareg Cultural Spaces’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(3): 609–27. Riegl, A. 1984 [1903]. Le culte moderne des monuments: Son essence et sa genèse. Paris: Seuil. Salazar, N. 2006. ‘Touristifying Tanzania: Local Guides, Global Discourse’, Annals of Tourism Research 33(3): 833–52.    . 2009. ‘Imaged or Imagined? Cultural Representations and the “Tourismification” of Peoples and Places’, Cahiers d’Etudes africaines 49(1–2): 49–71. Scarin, E. 1937. ‘Nomadi e seminomadi del Fezzan’, in Reale Società Geografica Italiana (ed.), Il Sahara Italiano: Fezzan e oasi di Ghat. Roma: Parte Prima, pp. 518–90. Stegen, O. 2003. ‘First Steps in Reconstructing Rangi Language History’, paper presented at the 33rd Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, 25–27 August 2013, Leiden, Netherlands. te Heuheu, T., M. Kawharu and R. Ariihau Tuheiava. 2012. ‘World Heritage and Indigeneity’, World Heritage Review 62: 6–17. UNESCO. 2010. ‘Action Plan of the World Heritage Thematic Programme on Prehistory (WHC-10/34.COM/INF.5F2)’, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://whc.unesco.org/document/104575.    . 2014. ‘UNESCO Director-General calls on all parties to protect Libya’s unique cultural heritage’, retrieved 25 March 2015 from http:// whc.unesco.org/en/news/1201/.

Chapter 10 Prickly Prestations Living with (World) Heritage in Osogbo, Nigeria Peter Probst

In July 2005, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in the Nigerian city of Osogbo onto its World Heritage List. This chapter is an ethnographic exploration of the ‘Osun grove’, as the site is commonly known. It focuses on the question of how the sense of value and moral obligation invoked by the notion ‘World Heritage’ corresponds, contrasts and/or conflicts with heritage practises ‘on the ground’. Before I introduce Osogbo, let me begin with a detour to Saint Petersburg in Russia. In 2012, the city hosted the thirty-sixth annual session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. Several anthropological reports (Brumann 2012 and this volume, Meskell 2012) allow us to understand what happened there. Like all sessions of the World Heritage Committee, this was a massive gathering. Close to 1,000 participants from 150 states got together for eleven days to discuss and decide on matters of World Heritage. First and foremost, this included discussion and votes on proposals the individual Member States had submitted for inscription onto UNESCOS’s prestigious World Heritage List. The agenda was packed. Each item was accompanied with numerous files and documents. Since none of the delegates had the time to read through the thousands of pages justifying the ‘outstanding value’, ‘integrity’ and ‘authenticity’ of the proposed sites, a lot of information was gathered and exchanged in informal settings: over meals, in the lobby or at evening receptions.

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Thus, what actually informed the final vote was a mixture of different forms of decision making and informal negotiations which made the results difficult to predict. What seemed to be a promising proposal sometimes turned out to be a flop, and vice versa. Perhaps that is just how decisions at big supranational conventions happen. And perhaps the belief in the rationality of these events is just naïve, and barter-like negotiations are a quite suitable model to agree on things and move forward. And yet there is a feeling of indignation. After all, the public relations campaign of the World Heritage Centre invites us to understand the notion of World Heritage as a precious ‘legacy’ that we received from our forefathers and that we need to pass on to those coming after us.1 Heritage then, so the argument goes, is a moral obligation and responsibility and not a matter of ordinary haggling, let alone a commodity. In other words, we expect some sense of respect towards the collective values and aesthetics of belonging that are materialized in heritage, values that cannot and should not be reduced to utilitarian ends. The impulse of moral protest against the workings of the World Heritage Committee echoes the long debate about gifts and commodities that Marcel Mauss’s seminal essay The Gift has triggered in the humanities and social sciences (1966).2 Gifts, so the widely shared argument holds, are distinctly different from commodities. The two belong to mutually exclusive cultural worlds in which gifts stand for reciprocity, inalienability, community and sociality while commodities are associated with individualism, alienation and the profit logic of market capitalism. Seen from this binary perspective, heritage clearly falls into the category of gifts. The longer the chain of transmission and intergenerational exchanges, the more time has elapsed, the more valuable is the gift. Clearly, the binary structure of the argument is a romanticization of the gift, a projection full of desires, nostalgias and longings that have only little to do with Mauss’s original ideas and that have hence been sufficiently exposed and criticized (cf. Sigaud 2002).3 To engage in another round of critique would be futile then. Instead, what I want to capitalize on here is the political context of The Gift in terms of its close entanglement with the League of Nations that preceded the founding of UNESCO and the emergence of the notion of World Heritage. It is this context, so I maintain, which lends Mauss’s essay a promising analytical potential for the questions this volume seeks to address. First published in 1925, The Gift was both a political and a personal statement. As a political statement, the essay aimed to outline an

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ethnographically and historically grounded path for moving forward after World War I. For Mauss, the direction was clear. Already in 1919 he explained that the ‘most renowned moral and political act of peace, however shaky it may be, is the recognition of the principle of arbitration established by the League of Nations pact’ (cited in Fournier 2005: 190). As a socialist and combat veteran, Mauss believed in the League’s agenda of exchange and internationalism, to which The Gift sought to give a proper scientific basis.4 Accordingly, his interest was not in the occasional exchange of gifts between friends or individuals, but in what he called ‘total prestations’ in which ‘corporate personalities’ such as families, clans or tribes meet in a formalized and ceremonial fashion to exchange goods, persons or services deemed necessary to preserve the social fabric. Understanding the logic of these prestations, so he argued, provided an insight into the nature of society and a way to prevent war: Societies have progressed in the measure in which they, their sub-groups and their members, have been able to stabilize their contracts and to give, receive and repay. In order to trade, man must first lay down his spear. When that is done he can succeed in exchanging goods and persons not only between clan and clan but between tribe and tribe and nation and nation, and above all between individuals. It is only then that people can create, can satisfy their interests mutually and define them without recourse to arms. (1966: 80).

On a personal level, The Gift was also an act of remembrance for Mauss’s uncle, Émile Durkheim, who had passed away during the war. The essay formed the centrepiece of the first number of the new series of L’Année Sociologique, the flagship publication of the sociology movement Durkheim had founded. Since Durkheim’s death in 1917, the journal had ceased to appear. Using the essay to revitalize the L’Année marked the importance Mauss himself lent to it. Subscribing to Durkheim’s tenet that the most basic categories of human thought have their origin in social experience, Mauss situated the value of the gift not in the object or the service rendered to the receiver, but in the social relationship they establish. The triad of giving, accepting and reciprocating gifts constitute sociality; they make or form persons and – resulting here from – social and moral values. That is why Mauss considered gift exchanges ‘total social facts’ or ‘total prestations’ in that they involve and comprise all spheres of society – from economy, kinship and politics to religion, art and aesthetics.

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Against the background of this original context of The Gift, the analytical potential of Mauss’s essay for the understanding of heritage is both promising and problematic. Promising because it allows us to conceive heritage as a form of ‘total prestation’ in which the complexity of society is condensed in one single fact or phenomenon. The ample literature on heritage is a case in point. Ranging from aspects of politics and religion to aesthetics and economics, the multitude of studies not only mark the totality of heritage, they also show the limitations of approaches that try to narrow the complexity of heritage to issues of hegemony, power and commodification/gentrification.5 Moreover, the notion of (gift) exchange comes closest to the UNESCO wording that speaks of heritage as a ‘legacy’ and portrays sites as ‘properties’. The language is telling, for it recalls Mauss’s insight that properties/gifts are less about things but more about relations that things initiate and enable. Within the UNESCO framework, these relationships work both vertically, that is, as an (imagined) exchange and dialogue between generations, and horizontally, that is, as an exchange and form of mutual recognition between states and UNESCO. Accordingly, special terms and concepts like ‘authenticity’ or ‘integrity’ used to assess the quality of the preservation work are less about the value of the work/object but more about the sincerity of the exchange partner offering the object to UNESCO and the willingness to honour the contract. Indeed, it is this basic moral and contractual notion of ‘heritage’ that justifies and drives current transnational preservation campaigns as a way to foster cooperation and development, overcome conflicts and imagine a future that is worth aspiring to (De Jong and Rowlands 2008, Basu and Modest 2015). But who are the exchange partners? What interests do they pursue? In whose names do they speak? It is here where the gift analogy becomes problematic, if not to say deceptive, for it risks concealing the internal dynamics of the transactions in favour of an idealized and generic picture of society. Pursuing the gift and exchange argument further thus requires complicating the argument from within. Among the multitude of options available for such an exercise, I want to focus on three questions. First, if heritage is an inheritance that is passed on to the next generations, then what about the argument that gifts can change their status, i.e. that inalienable gifts can become alienable commodities, just as commodities can become gifts? Second, if heritage can be seen as a mode of exchange generating social and moral values, then how does this idea of heritage translate into and correlate with the local modes of exchange and value? And third, if the conceptualization of heritage as exchange holds true, then we need

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to ask who has or claims to have control over the means of exchange enabling the creation of value. In the following, I intend to discuss these issues on the basis of my own research on a World Heritage site in Nigeria. Preserving the Home of the Goddess Let me come back then to the Nigerian city of Osogbo and its World Heritage site, the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove.6 Listed as a ‘cultural landscape’ and situated at the outskirts of the city, the grove consists of seventy-five hectares of forestland along the banks of the Osun river. Inside the grove, hunting, farming and fishing are forbidden. No permanent settlements are allowed. Instead, the area is covered with a large number of sculptures and temples of various sizes and materials. Both the structures and the restrictions echo the religious character of the site. Osun is not only a river, but also Osogbo’s guardian deity who is credited for providing wealth, fertility and protection. Every year in August, the Osun grove forms the stage of a big festival by which the people of Osogbo honour the deity. Over the

Figure 10.1.  Inside the Osun grove; sculpture of Adebisi Akanji and Susanne Wenger depicting the deity of Iya Mapo (photo: Peter Probst).

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course of twelve days – from Monday through Friday of the following week – numerous small events take place all leading up to the climax of the festival: covered with a cloth and thus kept invisible for the eyes of the thousands of spectators, a ritual maiden carries sacred objects in a calabash from the palace into the Osun grove where Osun officials make a sacrifice to the deity at the river bank below the main Osun temple. The offering is said to go back to the founding of the city. According to oral tradition, the arrival of Osogbo’s first king caused tensions with Osun, who felt disturbed by the newcomers. Eventually, the two parties were able to resolve the conflict by making a pact of mutual exchange and protection. Just as Osun promised to provide prosperity and protection to the king and his people, the king promised to protect Osun’s homestead. The annual sacrifice not only remembers this pact, but also renews the relationship between the people and the goddess. Over the decades, the festival has become bigger and bigger. Today visitors come from as far as Japan, Australia and Brazil, thus making the event not only important on religious grounds, but also economically. Given Osun’s association with wealth, many people in Osogbo attribute this development to the deity. The local view differs from other, primarily Euro-American stories according to which Osogbo’s rise to fame and influence is very much a result of activities that started in the late 1950s. Following these stories, the entangled forces of colonialism, Christianity and commerce had started to erode the relationship between the city and the goddess. The cohesive force of the Osun grove declined. People began to ignore the local restrictions of hunting, fishing and farming. The grove was at risk of abandonment. In 1959, one year before Nigeria gained independence, a group of Osun ritual officials therefore approached the Austrian artist (and convert to Yoruba religion) Susanne Wenger and asked for help. Wenger agreed, and with permission of the king of Osogbo, she started to reshape the grove. What previously was a mostly uniconic space turned into a kind of open-air gallery filled with new sculptures and architectures. Designed and built by Wenger and her collaborators, the works were meant to be visual gestures of evidence for the presence of the deities residing in the grove. In terms of media and style, the structures radically departed from conventional Yoruba aesthetics. The difference was programmatic. Wenger’s vision aimed at reflecting the ruptures intrinsic to the experience of colonial modernity (1977). The general conviction was that ‘things fall apart’ as Chinua Achebe (1958) put it in his classic novel

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about the effects of colonialism among Igbo villagers in Southeast Nigeria. Therefore, any return to traditional aesthetics was seen as principally and categorically void. In order to survive, the old deities had to be updated with modern aesthetics. Thus, the new shapes and forms were thought to express the fluid, open and still undetermined phase society and religion were believed to go through.7 Hardly surprising, Wenger’s artistic intervention did not proceed without vehement critique and resistance. Members of the local Christian and Muslim communities alike were furious and tried to destroy the structures on the grounds that they promoted paganism and hindered progress. Opposition came also from the local famers and businessmen. As a commercial centre with lots of immigrants, Osogbo was short of land. The Osun grove seemed to offer a solution to the problems. Besides, the revenue potential also lived up to Osun’s promise to provide wealth and prosperity – at least for some members of the palace. As it turned out, members of the royal family had started to sell portions of the grove, arguing that the grove belonged to the palace. The new owners of the land brought the matter to the court where it rested for years without decision, in this way increasing local grievances. Last but not least, critique came also from Euro-American anthropologists and the international art scene. The positions varied. While some complained that Wenger’s activities distorted and disturbed the study of urban/social change, others lamented about the uneasy mix of modernism, neocolonialism and egocentrism in Wenger’s ‘metaphysical adventure’.8 Nevertheless, Wenger’s agenda proved to be successful. The revitalization project not only attracted new visitors to the city, it also protected the grove. In 1960, the grove became a national monument, and in the 1970s, a local heritage committee was formed. The 1990s saw the building of a national museum, thus turning the grove into both a public gallery and an active ritual space. The most momentous boost came in 2005 when UNESCO added the Osun grove to its prestigious list of World Heritage sites. Today the Osun grove and festival are one of Nigeria’s biggest tourist attractions and, as such, an important source for the local and regional government to generate revenue. From Vertical to Horizontal Politics The modernist rescue narrative of what happened in Nigeria corresponds with the formulation of the UNESCO campaigns to safeguard heritage and preserve cultural diversity. In fact, the reshaping

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of the Osun grove and the drafting of UNESCO conventions happened at the same time. Both shared the same sentiment of fear and concern. But what about the idea of exchange and contract, which allegedly serves as the hidden charter of UNESCO’s heritage politics? A closer look at the developments reveals that the principle of exchange and contract worked more along a horizontal/spatial/national axis than on a vertical/temporal/generational one.9 What mattered was the demand for recognition and inclusion. After all, the postcolonial insistence on recognition did not only imply eligibility in the possession of and right to nominate a ‘World Heritage’ site. It also implied acceptance as a valid partner in the social contract that the idea of ‘World Heritage’ signifies. Let me explain. In 1972, when the General Conference of UNESCO discussed and eventually signed the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, delegates quarrelled over the question of how to define ‘World Heritage’. The proposed text submitted to a committee of government experts charged with preparing a draft convention explained the matter as ‘heritage of universal interest’. The Nigerian delegation rejected the phrase and wanted to delete the word ‘universal’ from the text. However, the British delegation insisted on it and instead proposed to replace the phrase ‘universal interest’ with the term ‘outstanding universal value’, or ‘OUV’ (Jukilehto 2011). So-called operational guidelines justified OUV of cultural heritage by seven specific criteria: (i) masterpiece, (ii) values/influences, (iii) testimony, (iv) typology, (v) land/sea-use, (vi) beliefs / living traditions, (vii) aesthetic importance.10 The term ‘OUV’ and the justifying criteria clearly echoed the prominence of Euro-American interpretations of heritage within UNESCO. As a ‘legacy’ of the past, (cultural) heritage was conceived in the Western tradition of historic preservation – that is, in the form of buildings, churches and palaces. Accordingly, key concepts of historic preservation like ‘authenticity’ and ‘integrity’ were solely defined in relation to the authenticity of material, design and workmanship. A distinct shift from this ‘imperial’ and ‘monumentalist’ stance to other conceptions of heritage happened only in the early and mid-1990s. With more and more states signing the World Heritage Convention though, the criteria of definition changed and became more encompassing.11 The more Member States signed however, the louder the critique of the World Heritage List became. The clustering of UNESCO ‘properties’ in Europe, so the argument went, mirrored the hegemonic and postimperial character of UNESCO’s World Heritage policy, which failed to give the cultural heritage of non-Western

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countries the same recognition as Western states. In 1994, UNESCO therefore adopted a ‘Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List’.12 A direct consequence of this strategy was the Africa 2009 program. Launched by UNESCO in 1998, the aim was to provide African nation states with the necessary technical and administrative support to protect and successfully nominate sites on the African continent as World Heritage.13 Up to then, only a few African states had succeeded in inscribing a site on the list. One of them was Nigeria.14 The new program coincided with the country’s end of the military regime and the return to democracy. Moreover, Nigeria’s new president was a familiar figure. Already in 1977 he had presided over the legendary FESTAC festival, which celebrated black heritage (Apter 2005). Back in the government, Olusegun Obasanjo was eager to revive the theme of heritage as an important part of his symbolic politics. In 2000, he appointed the Yoruba priest and archaeologist Omotoso Eluyemi as new director-general of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Michael Omolewa, a professor of adult education at the University of Ibadan, as Nigeria’s ambassador and permanent delegate to UNESCO. Later joined by Wande Abimbola, a prominent Ifa priest and ‘special advisor on cultural affairs and traditional matters’ to Obasanjo, the three pushed to enlist important features of Yoruba culture in the UNESCO program. One of the projects was the Osun grove. Work on the nomination file had started in 1999. Four years later, in December 2003, a French UNESCO consultant met with a delegation from the National Commission of Museums and Monuments and local officials to inspect the site. The latter expressed their willingness to address the critical issues listed by the consultant, but pointed to economic constraints. The consultant responded by stressing that selection as a World Heritage site would trigger economic growth in the host community by attracting tourists, therefore leading to the establishment of a viable tourist infrastructure. Among the representatives of the Osogbo palace and city council, the message was well received. A few months earlier, the Osogbo Progressive Union had launched a city website on which, under the rubric ‘investment opportunities’, it noted: Given the right push, Osogbo has the natural and precedent tendency of becoming a true African ‘Disney World’ with her God-endowed landscape, thick rain forest and above all abundance of natural artistically inclined talents. In Osogbo, notable among the many places of cultural entrancing interests are the Obafemi Awolowo University Museum at

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Popo Street, Nike Art Gallery, Susan Wenger’s studio at Ibokun Road, the Osun grove, the Ataoja’s [the king’s] old and new palaces, bustling trading activities at Oja Oba or Orisunbare markets, etc. Osogbo also plays host to thousands of visitors who come from all across the globe to see and appreciate authentic African arts and also participate in the annual Osun-Osogbo Festival.15

Providing the ‘right push’ was left to the new governor of Osun state, Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Oyinlola felt close to Osogbo; in the 1950s and 1960s, his father had collaborated with Wenger and her former husband, the German cultural broker Ulli Beier. The personal connection with Osogbo paid off. Shortly after Oyinlola assumed office in 2003, he gave orders to rectify the critical issues listed by the UNESCO consultant. In August 2004, the UNESCO inspection team paid a second visit to Osogbo, during which local authorities assured the team that everything possible was being done to meet their demands. Satisfied by what they saw on the ground, the team recommended that the nomination be put on the agenda for the next meeting of the World Heritage Committee in July 2005. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s President Obasanjo had been elected chairman of the Organization of the African Union, from which position he effectively pushed for Nigeria’s cultural and political supremacy. The July meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Durban, South Africa, provided the forum for these demands. It was the first time the committee had met south of the Sahara and Nigeria’s ambassador and permanent delegate to UNESCO, and at that time also president of the General Conference of UNESCO, Michael Abiola Omolewa in his address linked the nomination of the Osun grove to this unprecedented venue. Using the grove as an example, he stressed the uniqueness of African culture and heritage and reminded the delegates to be aware of the Western bias in UNESCO’s ‘monumental approach’ when it comes to the question of what merits preservation and what does not. The time had come, he argued, to break with the imperial structure implicit in the global heritage landscape: You have in your hands the very delicate task to ensure the implementation of the global strategy for a more representative, balanced and credible world heritage list. While taking your decisions, I trust you will always keep in mind the uniqueness of the African heritage, which goes beyond the ‘monumental’ approach of heritage in associating both tangible and intangible aspects, as two sides of the same coin – the forest of Osun in my country is a magnificent illustration of the combination of

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the tangible and intangible in one cultural manifestation. There are many other examples from different parts of our universe. It is the multiplicity of these many coins, put together that make up the diversity and the richness of humanity which we must acknowledge and justly reflect in our work and in our decisions. This is our aim. And this must be the finality of our deliberations here in the next ten days.16

In the end, the delegates followed Omolewa’s arguments and approved Nigeria’s nomination of the Osun grove on the basis of the following three features: (influence) The development of the movement of New Sacred Artists and the absorption of Suzanne Wenger, an Austrian artist, into the Yoruba community have proved to be a fertile exchange of ideas that revived the sacred Osun Grove. (testimony) The Osun Sacred Grove is the largest and perhaps the only remaining example of a once widespread phenomenon that used to characterize every Yoruba settlement. It now represents Yoruba sacred groves and their reflection of Yoruba cosmology. (living tradition) The Osun Sacred Grove is a tangible expression of Yoruba divinatory and cosmological systems; its annual festival is a living, thriving and evolving response to Yoruba beliefs in the bond between people, their ruler and the Osun goddess.17

In Osogbo, news of the UNESCO designation was met with joy and pride. Officials of the Osogbo Heritage Council quickly responded that Osun had expanded her kingdom across the globe. Osun devotees performed songs praising Osun not only for her elegance and sense of beauty, but also for her wealth. Describing her as a woman with long arms and a long neck full of yellowish brass bangles, necklaces and fanciful beads, wearing precious, ornamented brass fans and a coral comb, the songs lauded Osun as a source of both fertility and prosperity; the latter alluding to the economic benefits the UNESCO award was expected to generate. Exchange as Mediation Let me shift the discussion and come back to the model of heritage as an imagined exchange that I introduced at the beginning of this essay. As I have argued, what lurks through the UNESCO documents regulating and safeguarding heritage is the idea of a generational transfer

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that resonates with Mauss’s concept of gift exchange. Since preservation is seen as a moral obligation the living have vis-à-vis the dead and the unborn, that is future generations, heritage comes down to an imagined, intergenerational exchange in terms of property versus remembrance/preservation. The primary purpose of cherished preservation concepts like ‘authenticity’ and ‘integrity’ is thus to verify the sincerity of this exchange. But if ‘World Heritage’ can really be understood as a mode of symbolic exchange generating social and moral value, then how does the idea of value and exchange work on the local level – that is, on the level of the heritage site itself? In Osogbo, the most prominent example is the annual Osun festival. As I have noted above, the festival is conceived as a performance and re-enactment of the primordial act of exchange between the goddess Osun and the first king of Osogbo. In return for the goddess’s promise to provide prosperity and protection, the king promised to respect and preserve the goddess’s homestead. The pact was sealed by a sacrifice made by the king of Osogbo to the goddess, an act annually renewed during the festival.18 So far the picture correlates with the UNESCO model. The analogy becomes difficult, however, when one realizes that in Yoruba religious practise the exchange is not between the living and the dead but between actors of different – and often contested – ontological status. That is to say, Yoruba divinities can either be deified humans who had once achieved fame and prestige, or they can represent an independent and autonomous principle of spiritual force and power. The answer to this question is not an ontological, but a pragmatic issue. Both perspectives hold, but the question of when to opt for what depends on the context and is very often decided along political lines. After all, political legitimacy of a Yoruba kingdom requires a direct link with the divinities Olodumare, the supreme instance, is said to have sent from heaven to populate the earth. The same goes for Osun. Different genres of knowledge tell different stories and present different images of her.19 In the ifa divination corpus, Osun is introduced as belonging to the original divinities that populated the earth. In the oriki praise songs, she is characterized as a rich merchant hailing from the Ekiti region who travelled to Osogbo where she turned into a river. Finally, in the itan local histories, she is portrayed as a powerful woman who was helped Osogbo to resist the Fulani raids. Again, what aspect or status of Osun is invoked is very much context dependent. To understand the dynamics and motives involved in such decisions, it is helpful to go back to the 1980s, when the city was engulfed in serious social conflicts concerning the status of the Osun

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Osogbo festival. Muslim and Christian critics opposed the festival as a shameful demonstration of paganism. Others supported it. In an effort to alleviate tensions, the then ruling king of Osogbo, Matanmi III, officially depreciated the religious meaning of the grove and festival and characterized both instead as sites of commemoration and remembrance. In August 1990, in a speech delivered at the finale of the Osun Osogbo festival, he addressed the audience with the following words: At this point in time, it is incumbent on me to explain and educate the generality of people on the significance of Osun Osogbo festival. It has been said times without number that this festival has no religious connotations as such. The celebration of Osun does not mean the worship of it. It should be observed that the majority of the celebrants including myself, as chief celebrant, are either Muslims or Christians. As a matter of our cultural base, Osun festival stands for commemoration of founding of Osogbo as a settlement. It also stands for the remembrance of all the past monarchs, various warriors and patriots who had done a lot to make Osogbo a famous city of international repute. For example this Osun grove is the first place of settlement of my ancestors – Oba Larooye and Olutimehin who founded this ancient town about four hundred years ago. . . . The Osun festival is a purely cultural affair of Osogbo indigenes and the celebration of which is not the sole making of the reigning Ataoja, but that of the totality of its people. (Osogbo Cultural Heritage Council 1990: 6)

When first announced, the bluntness of the statement caused an outcry in Osogbo. Members of the various religious cults were furious and insisted that the Osun festival did indeed express core religious values and beliefs. For them, the festival was not merely a matter of remembrance; homage to the goddess was central. They insisted that the reality of the powers of Osun was beyond doubt, and warned that any attempt to deny that reality would provoke the anger of the goddess and could potentially disrupt her protection of the town. As heated and passionate as the debate was, at the heart of the matter was not the question of the ontological status of Osun, but rather the specific forms or media people favoured to invoke her. Let me explain. As I have pointed out, a characteristic feature of Yoruba society is the malleability and potential interchangeability of remembrance and religious communication. Since both options hold, the focus of interest shifts to the role of the media used to

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ensure and maintain an effective remembrance/communication.20 What media qualify as effective and who owns them? The answer to that question goes right to the heart of Yoruba notions of power and authority. In the case of Osogbo, it actually defines kingship. Since Osun is considered to be the city’s source of prosperity, and since prosperity can be ensured by communication with the deity, what defines authority is the control over media through which the deity can be contacted (and/or remembered). Given the close connection with kingship, quarrels over media and religion are far from new. In fact, they are an integral part of Osogbo history. Over the last hundred years, Osogbo rulers have continuously changed religious media. Seen from this angle, the permission of the Osogbo king in the early 1960s to let Wenger reshape the Osun was part of an old and established practise. Over the last five decades, however, things have become difficult. Property Issues Tellingly, UNESCO refers to the entries on its World Heritage List as ‘properties’. The respective documents are rather vague as to what the term ‘property’ actually means. Still, what unifies the different conventions and treaties is the belief in the ‘thingliness’ of property.21 This tangible dimension of property, however, stands in contrast to the anthropological understanding of the term. Informed not the least by Mauss’s seminal gift essay, anthropologists have long argued that property is not about things, but rather about relationships things enable and/or initiate (Hann 1998, Hirsch 2010). In other words, property signifies a network of relations between actors (human and nonhuman) in which socially relevant notions of ownership, wealth, authority or identity are collectively performed and negotiated. Admittedly, the distinction is not as clear-cut as it seems. In actual fact, both concepts go together. Not only has Osun certain properties that allow her to provide wealth and prosperity to the king and his people, the deity herself is a property in the sense that she enacts and mobilizes a network of relations that constitute the notion of Osogbo identity as a whole. At the same time, though, Osun is also a clear case for the thingliness of property and the validity of ownership. After all, Osun only exists in the material forms, for example in the media, through which she can be experienced, contacted and communicated with. That is why the media/forms are considered to be inalienable, they cannot be sold and given away, and that is why

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control and ownership over the media, which allow for tapping into the riches of the deity, constitute the basis for the authority of the king. The most precious media are the sacred objects the ritual maiden carries on her head to the Osun grove at the climax of the festival. As mentioned above, the objects are in a calabash covered with a cloth and thus invisible to the public, a feature which correlates with the invisibility of heritage as an abstract value. Inside the calabash are a number of brass emblems (re)presenting Osun and Ogboni, a secret society controlling the power of the king. In view of the above comment on the constant historical change of media in Yoruba religious politics, the argument of inalienability may surprise. A closer look at the media changes, though, reveals that old media were not discarded, but incorporated and embedded into new media, thus creating layers of media, meaning and mediation around Osun. With every new layer, however, came new tensions and conflicts. The recent introduction of ‘new media’ in the Osun grove and

Figure 10.2.  Votary maid with sacred calabash, Osun Osogbo festival, 2003 (photo: Peter Probst).

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the subsequent inscription of the Osun grove onto the UNESCO World Heritage List are a case in point. Much of the uneasiness revolves around questions of efficacy, ownership and value. As I have noted, with the reshaping of the Osun grove, it first became a national monument, then a public museum and finally a World Heritage Site. This means that the grove and all its structures are now in the possession of the palace, the Nigerian state and UNESCO. The complex scenario entails numerous frictions that very much result from the ambiguous processes of exchange underlying the concept of heritage. By presenting the Osun grove to the World Heritage Committee to be nominated and accepted as ‘World Heritage’, the Nigerian state has taken the local festival and turned it into a national ‘gift’, as it were, to the World Heritage Committee, which reciprocated by lending the festival and the nation state recognition. As much as members of the Osun cult appreciate the global recognition, they also express concern over the effects of this development. Issues of secrecy and loss of control over access to the structures are important. Not all parts of the Osun grove are open to the public. Certain ritual places are off limits and taking pictures is not allowed. With more and more people coming, it has become difficult to restrict access to the temples and ensure the sense of secrecy and privacy that characterizes communication with the divine. Concern about access goes together with the difficulties of remaining in control of the meaning of images that emerge in the communication with the divine. This issue is especially pertinent with regard to the flood of images generated by the rise of the Osun grove into the international heritage world. People lament that Osun does not show herself anymore; that the spirituality of the festival is decreasing as a result of uncontrolled commercialization and media coverage. In the past, so a popular argument goes, people were able to see Osun after the public sacrifice to her had been made. A catfish, one of Osun’s avatars, used to jump out of the water right into the arms of the Osun priest. Nowadays, events like this don’t happen anymore. Surely, complaints like this are not new.22 But with companies like CNN and the BBC reporting on the festival, and the erection of huge LCD television screens at strategic points in the town for those who could not make it to the sacred grove, the situation seems to have reached a new crisis level. While it is tempting to understand these worries about Osun’s retreat as a case of ‘disenchantment’, to use the Weberian formulation, the real problem is not the loss and/or secularization of meaning, but its diminished controllability. A third lament concerns the economic effects the revitalization of the Osun grove has triggered. Since Osun is a public property, as it

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were, there is a sense of entitlement to the benefits of exchanges and interactions taking place in and around the Osun grove. The exchanges follow Bourdieu’s (1986) classic analysis of the circuit and convertibility of different forms of capital: cultural, social and economic. Thus, the attention and prestige of the Osun grove and festival have fostered relationships between Osogbo and other cities in the Yoruba diaspora. This relationship has not only increased the number of visitors and the amount of money they spent in the city; the influx of visitors has also changed the religious market – something members of the Osun cult do complain about. Those who are looking for answers and help from Osun now have the chance to select from a wide range of religious service providers: those who have settled in Osogbo permanently as well as others who have come in just for the duration of the annual festival. The changes fit into the franchise model the UNESCO World Heritage Centre uses to propagate ‘World Heritage’. That is to say, what UNESCO grants is basically a licensed outlet to produce and/ or market highly valued and internationally recognized local culture, which can be converted into global presence and recognition, which in turn – potentially at least – can be converted into economic capital, that is, money. In contrast to the Member States, which are obliged to preserve the property, the model costs UNESCO only a little, while at the same time providing the organization with the reputation it needs to be seen as an attractive business partner. Left open are questions concerning who profits from these processes of value creation and capital conversion. If Osun is a public property, should the wealth the deity is providing not be shared among all?23 In Osogbo, the question has aggravated old rifts and differences that recently resulted in a partial paralysis of the city’s political and religious life. In 2010, the old king had died and his successor was installed. Soon after, the legitimacy of the chosen candidate was questioned. The allegations of foul play brought the matter to court, which ruled that the selection of the new king had indeed been invalid and that the incumbent of the office had to step down. The king refused to do so, however. This, in turn, enraged some high-ranking priests of the Osun cult who refused to conduct an important divination ritual at the palace. Since the ritual was/is key to the success of the festival, the priests’ refusal alarmed the government, which put pressure on the players involved. In December 2011, the high court adjourned the case indefinitely pending the determination of the appeal filed by the deposed king of Osogbo. The ruling has put a preliminary end to a dispute that is much more than a struggle over rightful succession. It is also about power, money

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and the control of resources/media generating wealth and power. Prior to the 2000s, the financial commitment of the government to the Osun grove and festival had been minimal. With the UNESCO nomination, this changed. Not only did the financial input of the government increase, the signs of support also encouraged the Osogbo Palace and Heritage Council to join a public/private partnership with Infogem Nigeria Limited, a Lagos-based marketing firm and event organizer. Infogem’s involvement turned out to be highly effective. Contracts with high-calibre sponsors like MTN, Nigeria’s leading telecommunications company, turned the annual festival into a multimillion dollar event. Given these circumstances, the Osun grove and festival are no longer in the hands of Osogbo. Instead, they have become a marketable brand, actively pushed by the neoliberal government eager to generate revenue from cultural properties.24 As appalling as the blatant invocation of profit, is, one needs to be careful not to fall into the trap of a Euro-American modernist separation between culture and commerce, art and craft, meaningful substance and trashy kitsch. That is to say, the critique is based upon a sharp value-driven compartmentalization of objects and activities with distinctly different audiences, curatorial practises and visual ideologies. It was and still is, however, precisely the basic interconnectedness of commerce, art and festivity in Yoruba culture that enabled Osogbo to invent itself as a heritage site.25 Surely, the meaning and consequences of this move are far from clear. Though heritage moves between the market and the nonmarket sphere, people realize that the osmosis has limits. Restrictions apply. Secrecy matters. Certain things cannot and should not be seen. Despite entering the global stage of heritage, the objects in the sacred calabash a ritual maiden carries to the Osun grove have been kept hidden. The visibility and global attention of the festival thus rests on the invisibility – and inalienability – of the festival’s most valuable objects. Hardly astonishingly though, the very people who guard the cultural value of the festival feel excluded from the possibility of profiting from it. Conclusion Asked for a proper Yoruba translation of the English word ‘heritage’, people in Osogbo sometimes referred to ogun, a term with a wide range of meanings from property and inheritance to problems and war. Personally, I found the term quite fitting. After all, if not a war, then at least a dispute characterizes also the debate about heritage

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in academia. Over the past two decades, scholars have argued over questions of its meaning: Does heritage signify valuable remnants of the past that require safeguarding and protection, as the preservation camp argues? Or is heritage not first and foremost a contemporary practise or discourse by which the past comes to matter in the present, as (most) anthropologists claim? This chapter aimed to link and negotiate between these two positions by taking heritage seriously and accepting the notion of death and absence, which – willingly or unwillingly, explicitly or implicitly – informs practises and notions of heritage. Seen in this way, heritage needs to be understood as a relationship embedded in spheres of symbolic exchange that generate both social and material forms of value. As I have shown, international preservation politics recognized and used this argument early on. Heritage worked not only as an instrument of nation building, but increasingly also as a vehicle of world making. Conventions formalized the moral obligation of exchange and turned it into treaties and contracts with the hope of generating a global consciousness and solidarity. As a result, the idea of a vertical intergenerational exchange got expanded and replaced by a horizontal politics of recognition. The necessary consequence was a proliferation of heritage sites that – in conjunction with the wave of neoliberalism and the prospect of making money with the past – led in turn to an erosion of the belief in the value of exchange/heritage. Surely, there are good reasons to maintain a critical stance vis-à-vis the official praises of heritage. Yet, viewing heritage solely as a discourse and/or construct risks the danger of failing to understand the fascination that emanates from the past. Just as property is more than ownership, value is more than a matter of money and profit. In the neoliberal age of ‘Ethnicity, Inc.’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009), Mauss’s reflections on gift exchange provide a useful reminder of these insights. What makes the case of the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove telling is the way that it allows us to comprehend the complex entanglement of different values resulting from different modes and uses of exchange. Thus, the value of exchange can be understood as a way to establish and perpetuate social relationships in terms of sociality, as a means of achieving fame as an end in itself or as a form of recognition in terms of acceptance as a worthy partner of exchange. Accordingly, the spectrum of exchange partners varies, ranging from exchange between states, between individuals or between human and non-/semihuman actors, like the goddess Osun and her liquid body, the Osun river. Taken together, heritage does indeed qualify as a ‘total social fact’, to invoke Mauss one more time. It is both a medium and a symbol

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of sociality, albeit not for all. As such, heritage is also a prominent target for all those who reject the model of sociality that the exchange processes of heritage constitute – or rather are thought to constitute. Iconoclastic attacks on World Heritage sites, such as the destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan or the demolition of the tombs of Islamic saints in Timbuktu (see the chapters by Joy, Chalfcraft and Brumann in this volume), are powerful political demonstrations of disinterest and rejection of the models of sociality upon which these sites are built. To understand this message not only means to take the values of heritage seriously and to recognize the entangled processes of exchange that generate them. It also means to realize the struggle people engage in to remain in control of the means of exchange. Peter Probst is chair of the Department of Art History and professor of art history and anthropology at Tufts University in Boston. His most recent books and edited volumes include Iconoclash in the Age of Heritage (2012) and Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Money and Deities (2011), which won awards from the Nigerian Studies Association and the Arts Council of the African Studies Association. He is a member of the MIT-based and Mellon-funded Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC).

Notes I would like to acknowledge the constructive comments and critique I got when I first presented this chapter at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle and later at the African Studies Workshop at Harvard. In particular, I would like to thank Chris Hann, Michael Rowlands, Christoph Brumann, David Berliner, Jeyifo Biodun and Achille Mbembe, as well as Jean and John Comaroff. 1 Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration’ (retrieved 8 October 2012 from http://whc.unesco.org/en/about). 2. One of the most recent examples of this continuous interest in Mauss’s essay is Sansi 2014. 3. In fact, Mauss repeatedly maintained that modern economies are not different from primitive economies, that gift exchanges did not become obsolete with the progress of history, that there is no real boundary between gifts, barter and commerce. Still, a nostalgic tone is clearly recognizable: ‘Much of our everyday morality is concerned with the

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question of obligation and spontaneity in the gift. It is our good fortune that all is not yet couched in terms of purchase and sale. Things have values which are emotional as well as material; indeed in some cases the values are entirely emotional. Our morality is not solely commercial. We still have people and classes who uphold past customs and we bow to them on special occasions and at certain periods of the year’ (1966: 63). 4. Internationalism did not mean anticolonialism. Mauss’s socialist ideals did not prevent him from questioning colonialism, just as he did not question the imperialist agenda of the League (Mazower 2009). For works illuminating the context of Mauss’s essay, see Godelier 2002, Fournier 2005 and Hart 2007. 5. For a similar argument, see Brumann 2014. 6. The following ethnographic description is based on Probst 2011. 7. The reshaping of the Osun grove was actually part of a wider project that aimed to revitalize the local arts as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. Parallel to Wenger’s activities in the grove, her husband Ulli Beier collaborated with the school teacher Duro Ladipo and the British artist Georgina Beier. Sacred and profane visual and performance art all went together, resulting in the so-called Osogbo Art Movement. For a history of the events, see Beier 1968 and my own study (Probst 2011, 2013). 8. For a more detailed account of the critique, see Probst 2011. 9. Obviously, the argument is informed by Hardt and Negri’s (2000) analysis of a shift from modern to postmodern forms of power. According to their argument, vertical sovereignties that structured the political world in terms of nation states have become more and more replaced by horizontal networks that are allegedly better suited to dealing with the political and economic complexities of today. While UNESCO and its World Heritage Centre and Committee are certainly networks, it is debatable to what extent they can be seen as a regime (Bendix et al. 2012), let alone an “empire.” 10. On the debate about OUV, see also Labadi 2011 and the ICOMOS study compiled by Jokilehto (2008). 11. In 1992, the World Heritage Committee introduced the term ‘cultural landscape’, which stressed the idea of ‘interactions between humans and their environment’ and pushed the notion of ‘intangible heritage’ as a necessary complement to tangible heritage. Another frequently mentioned milestone in the development is the so-called Nara Document on Authenticity from 1994 (http://whc.unesco.org/archive/nara94.htm). The declaration was pushed by the Japanese delegation, whose members rejected the ICCROM definition of authenticity in terms of authenticity of material, design, workmanship and setting as defined in the Venice convention on the grounds that it did not fit local religious architecture. The intervention illustrates that UNESCO is not a monolithic block, but rather an ‘arena’, as Brumann (2012) suggests, in which multiple actors with often competing agenda operate and struggle over issues that often come down to matters of cultural translations. For instance,

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in its foundational text, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted in 1972, UNESCO translated the term patrimoine naturel as ‘natural heritage’. From then on, ‘heritage’ has been used in all its official texts. Its common usage explains why we have adopted it in this volume. It goes without saying, however, that the terms used in specific countries and cultures are not always equivalent to ‘heritage’ and that their meaning varies according to different actors and historical and geographical contexts. 12. http://whc.unesco.org/en/globalstrategy, retrieved 2 November 2010. 13. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2010/whc10-34com-10De.pdf, retrieved 10 October 2010. 14. In 1999, the terraced hills of Sukur in central Nigeria became the first Nigerian site inscribed onto the list on the basis of the newly introduced category of ‘cultural landscape’. 15. http://www.osogbocity.com/id25.htm, retrieved 7 October 2010. 16. http://www.unesco.org/delegates/nigeria/OmolewaWHCDurban Speech.html, retrieved 12 October 2010. 17. For a full description, see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1118/documents, retrieved 12 December 2014. 18. What applies for the public festival holds true also for the private sacrifices. They too are thought of as mediation and exchange. In fact, the annual Osun festival entails a host of smaller festivities during which devotees gather in the grove to pay tribute to and communicate with their own individual deities, whose presence in the grove is marked by statues and/or a certain evergreen plant. The actual sacrificial items are called ohun-ebo, with ebo standing for sacrifice and ohun signifying sound or voice. Driven and empowered by the vital force ase, sound acts as a medium or apparatus enabling the mediation with the deity (Abiodun 1994). Other media can be added as well, from food over wood to money. Practically anything can go together with ohun. The mediation itself is understood as a form of dialogue or visual exchange akin to Walter Benjamin’s famous notion of aura and gaze: ‘Inherent in the gaze is the expectation that it will be returned by that on which it is bestowed’ (2006: 204). Hence his legendary dictum: ‘To experience the aura of an object is to invest it with the ability to look back at us’ (ibid.). 19. I should add that the gender of Yoruba deities is very much a subject of debate and that associations of Osun with notions of femininity and womanhood do not necessarily identify Osun as female; see Matory 2008. 20. For a general debate on religion and mediation, see Belting 2005 and Morgan 2011. For a discussion of the approach in the context of Osogbo heritage politics, see Probst 2010, 2011: 137ff). 21. Even ‘intangible heritage’ does have a tangible expression. It is this thingliness or tangibility of property which not only allows for disputes over ownership, but also allows for the settlement of these disputes by employing a legal code and following an organized judicial procedure.

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The UNESCO website explains the matter as follows: ‘The terms cultural “property”, “heritage”, “goods” and “objects” are often considered as interchangeable in common parlance. Their exact definition and legal regime (alienability, exportability, etc.) are to be sought in national legislation, or in international conventions. Therefore such definitions and legal regimes vary from State legislation to State legislation, or from treaty (international convention) to treaty. Generally, the word “property” has a legal background (linked to “ownership”), while “heritage” stresses conservation and transfer from generation to generation’ (retrieved 2 September 2012 from http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ ID=36292&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). 22. See Farotimi 1990: 23, who cites a complaint about photography from the 1940s. 23. The question is highlighted by the Ogboni emblem inside the calabash the ritual maiden carries to Osun grove at the climax of the Osun festival. Ogboni controls the king to ensure that he/she works for the public good and not for special interests. 24. The popularity has created its problems in terms of maintaining control of the ‘original’. Thus in July 2014, just a few weeks before the opening of the festival, the Nigerian press cited the ruler of Osogbo commenting on his tours through the African diaspora: ‘Some people even showed me a river they intend to refer to as their own Osun river but I was frank enough to let them know that Osun cannot have a duplicate anywhere in the world as only the Ataoja and top chiefs know what the festival entails each year and the spiritual process that goes with it which can only happen in Osun’ (retrieved 15 November 2014 from http://dailyindependentnig. com/2014/07/organisers-unveil-plans-osun-osogbo-festival-2014/). 25. For a similar argument with respect to the celebration of heritage in India, see Appadurai and Breckenridge 2002.

Bibliography Abiodun, R. 1994. ‘Understanding Yoruba Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Ase’, African Arts 27(3): 78–91. Achebe, C. 1958. Things fall apart. London: Heinemann. Appadurai, A., and C. Breckenridge. 2002. ‘Museums are Good to Think. Heritage on View in India’, in D. Boswell and J. Evans (eds.), Representing the Nation. London: Routledge, pp. 404–20. Apter, A. 2005. The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Basu, P and W. Modest (eds.). 2015. Museums, Heritage and International Development. London: Routledge. Beier, U. 1968. Contemporary Art in Africa. London: Praeger.

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Belting, Hans. 2005. Das echte Bild: Bilderfragen als Glaubensfragen. Munich: CH Beck. Benjamin, W. 2006. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bendix, R., A. Eggert and A. Peselmann (eds.). 2012. Heritage Regimes and the State. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1986. ‘The Forms of Capital’, in J. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood, pp. 241–58. Brumann, C. 2012. ‘Multilateral Ethnography: Entering the World Heritage Arena’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers 136, retrieved 2 September 2012 from http://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/ publications/working_papers/pdf/mpi-eth-working-paper-0136.pdf.    . 2014. ‘Heritage Agnosticism: A Third Path for the Study of Heritage,’ Social Anthropology 22(2): 173–88. Comaroff, J., and J. Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De Jong, F., and M. Rowlands (eds). 2008. Special Issue on ‘Postconflict Heritage’, Journal of Material Culture 13(2). Farotimi, D. 1990. The Osun Festival in the History of Osogbo. Lagos: Facelift. Fournier, M. 2005 [1994]. Marcel Mauss: A Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Godelier, M. 2002. ‘Some Things You Give, Some Things You Sell, but Some Things You Must Keep for Yourselves: What Mauss Did Not Say about Sacred Objects’, in E. Wyschogrod, J. J. Goux and E. Boyton (eds.), The Enigma of Gift and Sacrifice. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 19–35. Hann, C. M. 1998. ‘Introduction: The Embeddedness of Property’, in C. M. Hann (ed.), Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–47. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hart, K. 2011. ‘In Pursuit of the Whole’, Comparative Studies in History and Society 49(2): 473–85. Hirsch, E. 2010. ‘Property and Persons: New Forms and Contests in the Era of Neo-Liberalism’, Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 347–60. Jokilehto, J. 2008. What is OUV? Defining the Outstanding Cultural Value of Cultural World Heritage Properties. Paris: ICOMOS. Labadi, S. 2012. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding Universal Values. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Matory, L. 2008. ‘Is there Gender in Yoruba Culture?’ in J. Olupona and T. Rey (eds.), Orisa Devotion as World Religion. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 513–58. Mauss, M. 1966 [1925]. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen & West.

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Mazower, M. 2009. No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Meskell, L. 2012. ‘The Rush to Inscribe: Reflections on the 35th Session of the World Heritage Committee, UNESCO Paris, 2011’, Journal of Field Archaeology 37: 145–51. Morgan, D. 2011. ‘Mediation or Mediatization: The History of Media in the Study of Religion’, Culture and Religion 12(2): 137–52. Osogbo Cultural Heritage Council. 1990. Annual Festival Program. Osogbo: Government Printer. Probst, P. 2009. ‘Modernism against Modernity: A Tribute to Susanne Wenger’, Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 3–4: 245–55.    . 2010. ‘Revisiting Osogbo: Religion, Media, and Control in a Nigerian World Heritage Site’, Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 7: 65–83.    . 2011. Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Deities, and Money. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.    . 2012. ‘Iconoclash in the Age of Heritage’, African Arts 45(3): 10–13.    . 2013. ‘From Iconoclasm to Heritage: The Osogbo Art Movement and the Dynamics of Modernism in Nigeria’, in G. Salami and M. B.Visona (eds.), A Companion to Modern African Art. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 294–310. Sansi, R. 2014. Art, Anthropology and the Gift. London: Bloomsbury. Sigaud, L. 2002. ‘The Vicissitudes of the Gift’, Social Anthropology 10(3): 335–38. Wenger, S. 1977. The Timeless Mind of the Sacred: Its New Manifestation in the Osun Grove. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.

Chapter 11 Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape Extractive Economies and Endangerment on South Africa’s Borders Lynn Meskell

Mapungubwe was inscribed a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003 on the basis of its archaeological remains, despite being recommended for deferral. Experts from ICOMOS identified major problems with the property that continue to plague South Africa more than a decade later. Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape was one of several sites listed in quick succession after South Africa ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1997. Such international and specifically cultural acknowledgement came directly after the fall of apartheid and the first democratic elections that installed Nelson Mandela as president. Today the more lucrative nexus of mineral exploitation and nature-based safari tourism is replacing the archaeological landscape of Mapungubwe. My ethnographic work in the park between 2003 and 20111 has shown that Mapungubwe has developed far from the stated goals of the nomination dossier and is increasingly embroiled in state agendas, mining and private enterprise, illegal immigration and agrobusiness, international border politics and violence. At the same time there is still talk of a UNESCO transboundary inscription, a so-called Peace Park, with Zimbabwe and Botswana. A parallel ethnographic and documentary study of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and its deliberations (Meskell 2011a, 2012, 2013) has allowed me to trace the aftermath of Mapungubwe’s

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inscription and South Africa’s political machinations to stave off World Heritage in Danger listing. I argue that universal heritage goals are frustrated and impeded by the interests of nations that cannot be called to account, since UNESCO is underpinned by the desire for consensual and diplomatic solutions within the wider UN structure, thus by the organization’s very definition and mandate. In this chapter, the distant aspirations of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and international heritage experts are distinguished from the political alliances being forged amongst World Heritage Committee members, and contrasted with the infrastructural realities of South African National Parks (SANParks) and the sociopolitics of Mapungubwe’s remote and impoverished setting. Excavating Mapungubwe The area comprising Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (MCL) has a long, diverse and contested history. While the focus of this chapter is contemporary heritage, it is important to outline briefly the site’s historical position and some of the reasons behind its World Heritage inscription. Mapungubwe is often described as the first indigenous or precolonial kingdom in southern Africa (900 to 1300 ad). The site’s core area covers nearly thirty thousand hectares, and within that there are three major sites (Schroda, Leopard’s Kopje, Mapungubwe Hill) and their satellite settlements. The MCL also includes the adjacent lands around the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers. At its height, archaeologists have suggested that a population of approximately five thousand people inhabited Mapungubwe Hill and its immediate environs. There is substantial evidence for accumulation of wealth as well as the spatial separation of elites and nonelites. Mapungubwe’s position at the crossroads of the north–south and east–west routes in southern Africa enabled it to control trade, through the East African ports to India and China and throughout southern Africa. Its inhabitants traded gold, ivory, rhino horn, skins and iron to the Arab port of Sofala and supported artisans who skilfully crafted gold, ivory and textiles (Bonner and Carruthers 2003: 10). Mapungubwe was abandoned around 1290 supposedly due to climatic changes. During the last two millennia, periods of warmer and wetter conditions suitable for agriculture in the Limpopo/Shashe valley were interspersed with cooler and drier phases. When rainfall decreased after 1300, traditional farming methods could no longer sustain the population at Mapungubwe. The power centres then

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shifted north to the site of Great Zimbabwe and, later, Khami (also in Zimbabwe). Both are UNESCO World Heritage sites. According to the dossier put forward by South Africa and inscribed by UNESCO in 2003: ‘What survives are the almost untouched remains of the palace sites and also the entire settlement area dependent upon them, as well as two earlier capital sites, the whole presenting an unrivalled picture of the development of social and political structures over some 400 years.’ Anyone visiting Mapungubwe Hill would see this as a vast exaggeration. Today what survives for visitors is perhaps better described as the ‘destruction’ of a palace site and settlement through early and unsystematic archaeological excavations and treasure seeking. That this narrative of integrity and grandeur was included, in fact, says more about the process of competing for World Heritage listing in an international arena. Archaeological accounts of the site revolve around various grand but disembodied objects, rather than the contexts in which they were found that might prove more instructive. The discovery of gold artefacts has overshadowed the more contextual historical findings about ancient people’s lives. But perhaps this is to be expected. A more contextual history can be found in the machinations surrounding Mapungubwe as a reserve, a national park and, lately, a UNESCO Cultural Landscape. More of a political project influenced by a nationalist agenda than one of conservation, the park’s fate has waxed and waned depending on state leadership and ideology. National parks, in terms of their historical inscription as well as their contemporary incarnations, have been typically framed by colonialist, nationalist, military and juridical desires for control and policing (Brockington 2004, Igoe 2004, Meskell 2011b, West 2006, West, Igoe and Brockington 2006). In 1918, General Jan Smuts set aside a block of nine farms in this area as a preserve for wildlife and natural vegetation that would later become known as the Dongola Botanical Reserve. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dr I. B. Pole Evans, a leading botanist charged with setting up botanical research stations, began lobbying for the protection of Dongola. The aim was to create a national park similar to Kruger National Park (Carruthers 1995). By 1944, through the acquisition of twenty-seven farms, the Dongola Botanical Reserve had expanded to sixty thousand hectares (Bonner and Carruthers 2003: 7). However, Afrikaner nationalists on the National Parks Board opposed further consolidation of white farms and, when the National Party came to power in 1948, the reserve itself was abolished.

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Mapungubwe was a major site for deploying apartheid doctrine but one that was to ultimately confound a racist program through material evidence of black achievement and identity. One senior archaeologist active throughout South Africa’s apartheid struggles explained that, as a result of a political pact, Afrikaner archaeologists at the University of Pretoria were bestowed exclusive rights to excavate in Mapungubwe. Pretoria was an Afrikaans university with strong associations with Afrikaner ideology and many anthropologists and archaeologists bolstered and perpetuated apartheid ideology. Pretoria developed into a ‘Volksuniversity’ defined by one early proponent as a place to express the Afrikaner soul and to lead the volk to selfrealization through the ‘indestructible love for one’s own race and country’ (cited in Gordon 1988: 539). Scholars there, according to one senior archaeologist, were desperately attempting to prove that communities like the Venda and Shona historically inhabited particular ‘homelands’ that were mapped onto segregated apartheid geographies. Such assertions were untenable since the ‘homelands’ were arbitrarily imposed divisions (see also Pwiti and Ndoro 1999). Bitter struggles linger today over the wealth of Mapungubwe, repatriation and display of artefacts, continued excavation, reburial of human remains, institutional monopoly and efforts to constitute an ethical stakeholding process continue to plague the University of Pretoria and SANParks (Meskell and Masuku Van Damme 2007). Other broad attempts at consolidation and conservation of Mapungubwe continued into the 1960s. In 1967, a new proposal was submitted to the National Parks Board with the support of Pretoria University and the South African Archaeological Society to again set up a reserve. Three farms were proclaimed as Vhembe Nature Reserve. In 1986, the Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs proposed upgrading the Reserve to the status of a National Park (Bonner and Carruthers 2003). The Transvaal Department of Nature Conservation surprisingly opposed the move, as did the South African Defence Force for rather more covert reasons. It took a private corporation, the diamond mining giant De Beers, to establish not only the larger Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve in 1990 but to also be the driving force behind the establishment of the current national park. Internal De Beers documents reveal their negotiations with the National Parks Board, and that the company was not only sensitive to conservation and extending protected areas, but to the whole idea of a transnational conservation area that might also have the potential for a transboundary Peace Park. This is very much the vision that has been developed in the 2000s and one that has been embraced by UNESCO and other

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international bodies (Draper, Spierenburg and Wels 2004). Yet such initiatives are themselves reliant upon, and produced by, the constraints of the nation state and their circumscribed interests. Many scholars have cogently documented how desires to cross borders, whether in the service of Peace Parks or heritage conservation, has been less than successful (Duffy 2002, Ramutsindela 2004, van Amerom and Büscher 2005, West, Igoe and Brockington 2006). Inscribing Mapungubwe In 2003, Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape was inscribed on the World Heritage List.2 The original recommendation from ICOMOS was that site inscription be deferred until issues concerning the boundaries of the site, including the buffer zone, were rectified. However, the World Heritage Committee overturned that recommendation. That decision to inscribe has had disastrous ramifications, creating a loophole that later enabled construction of the Vele colliery immediately adjacent to the park (Esterhuysen 2009, Meskell 2011a, Swanepoel and Schoeman 2010). Such conflicting land-use strategies might seem anathema to the mission of heritage and conservation. However, the entire recent history of Mapungubwe (and perhaps South Africa more broadly) has itself been a mélange of diamond mines, private game farms, nature reserves and citrus and tomato farms worked by exploited Zimbabwean labourers. But whereas the diamond mining has helped to establish the park, coal mining threatens to destroy it. MCL comprises a series of Iron Age sites and rock art that also extend into Botswana and Zimbabwe. What such a landscape requires is an integrated management plan and combined suite of stakeholders, particularly those indigenous groups with historical connections to the land. Pertinent examples of this kind of heritage work have been conducted in Australia and the United States (see for example Byrne, Brayshaw and Ireland 2001, Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2010, ColwellChanthaphonh and Ferguson 2007, Stoffle, Zedeno and Halmo 2001). The lack of support from other nations, especially regarding the slow development of the transboundary conservation area and its potential UNESCO inscription, is a testament to these constraints. The fact that heritage sites can only be nominated by individual nation states, and only those recognized by UNESCO causes other sorts of constraints. Yet there is also an increasing desire within the organization to inscribe serial nominations that demonstrate cultural heritage transcending national borders.

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Even after democratic transition and almost two decades of black leadership, South Africa still struggles with exactly what constitutes cultural heritage and the role of archaeology in contemporary society (see Hall 1984, 1988, 2001, Meskell 2005, 2007, Shepherd 2003, 2005). Despite Mandela and Thabo Mbeki’s nationally promoted concept of the ‘African Renaissance’ (Bongmba 2004, Lazarus 2004), drawing upon and celebrating pan-African historical achievement and connection, the status of the black past in South Africa continues to be undermined. SANParks, as an organization, epitomizes the uncertain position of archaeology and heritage and at many junctures reflects disinterest, even disdain for the indigenous past (Masuku Van Damme and Meskell 2009). While such a stance was pervasive during the apartheid years in South Africa, it is less understandable or excusable in the postdemocratic era. As I have argued elsewhere (Meskell 2009, 2011b), SANParks has put a very low premium on the archaeological sites within its parks, the anthropogenic nature and contribution to their parks and the presentation of heritage to the public. Mapungubwe’s nomination, inscription and its subsequent decade, provide a perfect example of the structural separation of nature and culture, despite UNESCO’s best attempts to forge an integrated category, namely the ‘cultural landscape’ (Rössler 2003). This relatively new category was designed to recognize the many landscapes that are the ‘combined works of nature and humankind’ and that ‘express a long and intimate relationship between peoples and their natural environment’.3 While the Cultural Landscapes category may offer an increasingly popular venue for site inscription, it can present problems concerning the balance and maintenance of both cultural and natural dimensions. For a country like South Africa, long steeped in safari and nature-based tourism (Adams and Mulligan 2003, Cock 2007, Hughes 2005, Neumann 1998), natural values are easily privileged and cultural ones elided. Indeed, national nature has been positioned in South Africa as explicitly nonracial or supraracial, existing and entreating protection beyond race (Meskell 2009). Since at least the nineteenth century, nature has been a successful driver for South African wealth and international profile, whereas cultural and ethnic difference was manipulated during apartheid, resulting in segregation and violence, and continues in various ways to plague the new nation (Meskell 2011b). It is instructive to review the documents and recommendations for MCL prepared by the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Committee, presented at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.4 Indeed, three of their four recommendations specifically involved the park’s

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management of cultural heritage. This is worth stressing because, as I will go on to describe, SANParks has explicitly focused on the natural aspects of the property like other parks in their portfolio, sidelining the very cultural assets of Mapungubwe that won them inscription in the first place. ICOMOS advised the State Party to reconstitute the Archaeological Task Group as an integral part of the management scheme; commission experienced consultants to formulate an integrated interpretation plan, involving the Interpretation Centre and the presentation of individual sites; and expand the permanent staff to include a full-time professional archaeologist with heritagemanagement training. What is often missing from ethnographic heritage work is the long-term perspective, something that archaeologists are deeply familiar with, the practice of returning repeatedly to work at a site and track related political developments. It is therefore instructive to retain some historical memory of the MCL, State Party decision making, the successive UNESCO interventions and the resultant attrition and erosion of international influence. Since the Committee’s recommendations in 2003, the first requirement for archaeological oversight has not been fulfilled. The second, an integrated interpretation plan, has been extremely slow and unsatisfactory (SANParks 2012). While there are numerous sites outlined in the dossier, only Mapungubwe Hill is open to the public, albeit with a deeply outdated site presentation. The Interpretive Centre was scheduled to open in 2008, but only did so in late 2012. The third recommendation, the appointment of a full-time professional archaeologist, finally happened in mid-2011, some eight years after the initial request. Disconcertingly, he was the only qualified archaeologist employed in all nineteen SANParks, most of which contain cultural and archaeological materials (Meskell 2011b). The ‘cultural’ aspects of the MCL have been sidelined from the outset. One senior researcher who worked on Mapungubwe in the 1990s and then in the UNESCO nomination process, explained that ‘the nature side should be down played completely’ and that heritage should be foregrounded. ‘Heritage and people are what matter, not animals’, he said. Significantly, the World Heritage listing was based on Mapungubwe’s rock art and Iron Age archaeology, not its fauna, which are neither plentiful nor outstanding. However, as a key player in the Archaeological Task Group recalled, as soon as the park was inscribed, rhino were relocated into the park and fences were taken down so that elephants could cross from Botswana. The park now boasts lions and leopards. ‘This was totally against what was agreed at

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the Task Group’, he lamented, ‘because it’s too dangerous and you’ve got to go with an armed ranger, and you cannot enjoy the archaeology on foot. Now you have to be in a parks board vehicle with the roof and the ranger in the front with a gun.’ The Task Group had explicitly recommended that ‘walking tours’ were the only way that visitors could enjoy the ‘landscape’. So inscribing the park as a landscape also diminished the experience of that landscape and, given the abiding authority of the State Party, the World Heritage Centre may well have cause for concern yet no effective means of redress. Monitoring Mapungubwe The idea of Mapungubwe as a National Park, and even more so as a World Heritage site, was always a contradiction in terms. The park exists as a hybrid space, run by SANParks, itself a parastatal organization, as a kind of private-public partnership comprised from a mosaic of citrus farms, De Beers mining land, community land and a conservation area. These irregularities were not lost on those preparing the initial management plan for archaeological sites and conservation (Deacon and Norton 2003), nor the ICOMOS assessment (Draft Decision 27 COM 8C.47). ICOMOS was concerned that South Africa had not provided a clear buffer zone on the submitted maps. No specific evidence was put forward in the nomination document for the state of conservation of the excavated remains, nor was there generic information on the state of records. ICOMOS identified potential threats from agriculture, mining, environmental pressure, natural disasters and even tourism itself. They noted with concern that ‘intensive agriculture is being practiced on irrigation lands along the Limpopo River and in the south of the site. The main impact is likely to be the ploughing of cultural sites’ (ICOMOS 2003: 96). The then Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) made assurances that South Africa would transfer commercial operations to SANParks and rehabilitate the landscape. A clear timetable was requested by ICOMOS, but was never supplied by the State Party. The situation remains largely unchanged and the acrimonious relationship between private landowners and the parastatal persist. The original ICOMOS report identified two extant mining operations with a potential impact on the MCL: the small Riedel diamond mine and the major Venetia mine. De Beers is directly responsible for the creation of Mapungubwe as a national park; they continue to own

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land within the park and have a pumping station and reservoir lake situated on the land parcel known as Schroda. ICOMOS observed: ‘[The] area is a fairly rich mining area, and there is a possibility that deposits of other valuable minerals may be found. The exact ownership of most of the mining rights in the Park has not yet been resolved, apart from the above two mines. However, the new Minerals and Energy Act returns all mining rights to the State, and the government will therefore be in a far better position than it has been for over a century to make an informed decision on whether any new deposits should be mined or not.’ (2003: 93)

Whereas the Mbeki government in 2003 was favourably disposed to valuing cultural assets and weighing the benefits of increased capital and job creation against environmental degradation, cultural loss and even potential delisting of a World Heritage site, the government under Jacob Zuma is less inclined. Instead, the South African government issued licenses to Coal of Africa (CoAL), the processing plant was constructed and pilot extraction has begun, all without the slightest whiff of the African Renaissance. While the original decision to defer Mapungubwe’s inscription was overturned, the issue of mineral extraction and South Africa’s dubious dealings has kept resurfacing. Director of the World Heritage Centre Francesco Bandarin wrote to the State Party on 9 March 2010 requesting them to provide, as a matter of urgency, a report on the state of conservation of the property in regard to mining. The World Heritage Centre reiterated that no formal map was submitted as part of the nomination for either the buffer zone or the Transfrontier Conservation Area. Lack of a proper buffer zone and an adequate management plan, plus the mining activities, all remained unresolved. Matters came to a head at the 34th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Brazil in July 2010 when a Draft Decision was issued spelling out the problems: the missing report, the issued mining licences, the incomplete buffer zone, the outcry from archaeologists and NGOs and the status of the subsequent legal appeal. The Centre requested that South Africa formally ‘invite’ a mission to assess the mining impact and in November 2010 a representative from ICOMOS, Dawson Munjeri, accompanied Lazare Eloundou, chief of the Africa Unit at the World Heritage Centre, to investigate Mapungubwe and the mine. Their findings underlined the abnegation of responsibility by the State Party and what I would call deceptive measures to ensure that

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the lucrative mining scheme could continue. First, there was the unresolved problem of the buffer zone. The current delimitation still does not surround the entire World Heritage site showing that South Africa had failed to finalize negotiations with the landowners concerned. Without an adequate buffer, the mining area will likely be extended (Munjeri and Eloundou 2010: 19–20). The mission stressed that the ‘cultural heritage dimension’ required attention, reiterating that the MCL was inscribed on the basis of cultural criteria. Moreover, traditional knowledge expertise and community stakeholders had been sidelined from the process. Archaeologists have done the most to actively and publicly address this imbalance (Esterhuysen 2009, Swanepoel and Schoeman 2010). CoAL, on the other hand, has cleverly seized upon this downplaying of cultural heritage and emphasis on the environment to push home their advantage. Their glossy brochures ‘draw attention to the fact that the criteria chosen for the nomination of Mapungubwe as a World Heritage Site (in the UNESCO document), were based on four cultural heritage aspects. In fact, it states that consideration was given at one time to exclude “natural” areas; they were included for practical and administrative reasons’ (Coal of Africa LTD 2010). By playing heritages against each other, CoAL can claim that their activities are not impacting the MCL itself and that the environmental lobby stands outside the interests and international remit of Mapungubwe as a UNESCO World Heritage site. But can we entirely blame CoAL, or is it in fact a wider set of decisions, and indecisions, taken at the highest level of government over the best part of a decade? Given the power structures that underwrite the World Heritage process and the strong consensual and diplomatic principles, the organization has no mechanism by which to force the State Party to comply with their directives (Bertacchini and Saccone 2011). South Africa responded to the 2010 report, claiming it was trapped in a kind of ‘legal vacuum’ (cited in Munjeri and Eloundou 2010: 25). They impute that ‘the country’s natural and cultural resources cannot survive without its [sic] Siamese twin – sustainable development’. Indeed, throughout the 36th UNESCO sessions in St Petersburg, the concept of sustainable development was brandished with great alacrity and the South African delegation used it primarily as a metaphor for growth and industry. The words ‘sustainable development’ and ‘mining’ were, at times, used almost interchangeably. This ploy was echoed in South Africa’s Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) report commissioned by CoAL: ‘mining, if done within a compliance framework represents an opportunity to document some of the

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World Heritage’s OUV. Mines have resources which make it possible to sustain and manage sites’ (cited in Eloundou and Avango 2012: 37). South Africa enjoys significant status and support within the World Heritage Committee. It plays a central role in the formidable geopolitical alliance known as BRICS: a politico-economic alliance formed between Brazil, Russia, India, China and, most recently, South Africa (see also Hoggart 2011). Over the past several years, four of the five have served on the World Heritage Committee. The acronym BRICS was coined at Goldman Sachs (O’Neill 2001) for those nations at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development and the subsequent shift in global economic power away from the older-styled developed G8 countries (Meskell 2011a, 2012). Such international alliances can be cemented prior to properties being brought up for debate through the spurious practice of circulating signature sheets. Complaints about this process have been highlighted in UNESCO’s own internal audits and this is a practice the World Heritage Secretariat, the Advisory Bodies and many States Parties would like to see discontinued. Political pacting not only serves to ensure inscription for Committee members own national sites (Bertacchini and Saccone 2011), but prevents threatened sites from being transferred to the List of World Heritage in Danger.5 During the Reflection on the Trends of the State of Conservation session (Item 7C) in Paris in 2011, South Africa moved swiftly to pre-empt and challenge UNESCO’s power to declare a property ‘in danger’ without the consent of the State Party. This was patently a reference to the MCL, South Africa’s reluctance to comply with ICOMOS requests and their resultant indefensible position. China and Egypt backed South Africa. Australia and Switzerland referred to Paragraph 183 of the Operational Guidelines, where it notes ‘consultation as far as possible with state parties’. Not satisfied, UNESCO’s legal advisor was called upon to confirm that the State Party’s agreement is not required for a site to be placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Deliberations over Mapungubwe had taken more time than discussion of any other World Heritage Property. The following day, the Committee attempted to reach consensus (34 COM 7B.52). After much consternation and significant rewriting by an appointed Working Group, many of the major concerns were dumbed down: the onus was ostensibly put back on ICOMOS and UNESCO to help South Africa, but there was no statement on stopping the colliery. More heated debate ensued between Estonia and Switzerland representing the oft-called neutral countries and other African nations, including

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Ethiopia and Nigeria. Australia, commonly aligned with the ‘neutral’ nations, offered a compromise – national interests trumping principles because CoAL is an Australian-owned company. ICOMOS reiterated that mining licenses had officially been granted. Heated debate continued until the WHC chairperson intervened: she suggested that the wording be changed from ‘halt’ to ‘suspend’. The draft decision was finally adopted after hours of international diplomacy. Outside, a member of the South African delegation confessed that Vele mine would go ahead regardless, in fact it already had, because ‘we need the jobs, it’s a very poor part of the country’. South Africa had been duplicitous, rallied its supporters and counted upon the weak authority of the Advisory Bodies and the Secretariat. Mining Mapungubwe While powerless to put MCL on the List of World Heritage in Danger or to effectively curtail the State Party’s push for mining, the Committee requested a further reactive monitoring mission (Decision 35 COM 7B). The Mission included Lazare Eloundou from the WHC and Dag Avango, an expert on large-scale mineral extraction, from ICOMOS. Unsurprisingly, they met with numerous instances of obstruction during the visit to Vele colliery. Innocent Pikiyari, an archaeology professor and expert on the southern African Iron Age, was employed by CoAL to conduct the HIA and justify the mine’s construction. He showed the team various archaeological sites within the mining concession, explaining that destruction through excavation would be the only solution. The mission disagreed. Similar to experimental nature conservation, patches of fenced land, or exclosures, were installed to ring-fence individual archaeological sites rather than protect the landscape and the connected ensemble of sites. Archaeological sites were sectioned off and presented in isolation, thereby minimizing both their significance and the mine’s impact. The HIA lacked a holistic approach, according to the Mission, and only listed sites within the colliery area rather than relating them to the wider landscape. Archaeological data clearly demonstrate that during Mapungubwe’s apogee its surrounding landscape incorporated the area that is now the colliery. Despite South Africa’s public international assurances that mining had been suspended, the team saw incontrovertible evidence of recent activity and observed hundreds of workers on their way to numerous sites. The company expected to be working at full capacity by 1 March 2012 (Eloundou and Avango 2012: 39). Although much of

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the mining could have been conducted underground, mining executives confirmed the plan for the more profitable open-cast mining to continue in the southeast. This decision put pay to the notion that the company would protect both the natural and cultural landscape. Additional harmful factors include the effects of dust, chemicals, noise, smell and light on local health and well-being; further unauthorized bush clearance; and pumping water from the Limpopo River, potentially lowering the water table. Additional construction includes an airstrip and new access roads to handle escalating traffic with a projected truck every 1.75 minutes day and night (Eloundou and Avango 2012: 31). Furthermore, the HIA attempted to divert attention from Vele by pointing out pre-existing mines, agriculture and infrastructural activities beyond the scope of their report. In offering a justification of their activities, CoAL inadvertently revealed that the South African government had already issued another twenty mining licenses within the current MCL buffer zone. The State Party and now CoAL have repeatedly attempted to modify and reduce the buffer zone that was originally proposed in the 2003 dossier and subsequently inscribed. South Africa did this by substituting a revised buffer zone in 2009 (see below for Committee reactions to ‘different maps’). This sleight of hand has enabled South Africa to claim UNESCO compliance, while challenging any criticism of infringement and still allowing extractive economies to flourish. The industrialization of the MCL has angered many NGOs, environmental groups, the Association of South African Archaeologists and local indigenous stakeholders (Groenewald 2010, 2011, Keepile 2010, Macleod 2011). Indigenous communities including the Tshivhula, the Vhangona and the Machete have all spoken against the mine, claiming they had not been consulted and had been effectively shut out of any decision making. Over the years, I have spoken with all these groups and others such as the Lemba who feel a strong affiliation with Mapungubwe. Many have been involved in historic reburials and some have launched land claims: all are seeking various forms of state restitution. The World Heritage Secretariat and the Advisory Bodies face an impossible situation. Trapped by diplomacy and the principles of cooperation and mutual understanding, they cannot accuse the State Party of being dishonest or disreputable in the matter of mining. They too are engaged in the business of UN peacekeeping. States Parties, on the other hand, pursue their own national interest, maximize power, push their economic self-interest and minimize transaction costs (Pavone 2008: 7). These national influences and economic necessities are more binding than any ethical norms. Instead, these meetings are

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more like marketplaces where the nations of the world address ‘each other at great length, but by procedures that ensure genuine dialogue is ruled out’ (Hoggart 2011: 99). This was evidenced in St Petersburg at the 36th session of the World Heritage Committee, where the matter of mining at Mapungubwe returned like the proverbial hydra. South Africa moved swiftly on the very first day of the meeting to put forward their case in a specially organized side meeting. The South African Ambassador to UNESCO, the deputy director-general of the Department of Environmental Affairs and a representative from the Peace Parks Foundation all spoke in support of South Africa’s handling of the colliery. Ambassador Dolana Msimang made their political position palpable: ‘We Africans are all intertwined in those issues and we have to find a solution and support each other.’ On Thursday, 28 June 2012, ICOMOS presented its findings from the January Mission. It recapitulated that open-cast mining posed a direct threat to the MCL and advised that CoAL should pursue the underground option. It regretted that an open pit some fifty hectares was actively being mined. ICOMOS reiterated that mining operations are proceeding in the declared 2003 buffer zone and that the 2009 amended version had not been submitted for approval. ICOMOS confirmed that recording sites before mining is not the same as protection. Throughout the intense deliberations and occasional attacks, ICOMOS and the World Heritage Center remained resolute: the 2003 map upon which inscription was based must outline the property and the buffer zone; that underground mining was a preferable and possible alternative; and that there was significant threat to the site’s OUV. In the ensuing discussion, the delegate from India aggressively lashed out at the secretariat and ICOMOS. He advocated a complete rewriting of the resolution, arguing that there was no impact on the OUV, the mine was at a distance and, moreover, that there was a complete lack of understanding between ICOMOS and the State Party. Leave the technology of mining to those countries, he argued, and later again, ‘We cannot comment on technical issues, we are not expert.’ India pursued a clear tactic throughout, an attack on ICOMOS, a reinforcement of state sovereignty and a constant calling for ‘clarity’ even after the World Heritage Centre had repeatedly answered questions, shown maps of the inscribed buffer demarcation and images of ongoing mining operations. Russia voiced its support of India, pre-empting the controversy over its own property, the poorly named Virgin Komi Forests, also endangered due to state-sponsored gold mining (see 35 COM 7B.25). With the BRICS alliance in force, we would see the debt repaid when Komi was discussed later that

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day. The ideal of Committee members being neutral civil servants disinterested in representing state interests, but rather endowed with a commitment to objectivity, are two of the fine fictions upon which UNESCO rests (see Hoggart 2011). Other States Parties like Mali, Switzerland, Germany and Senegal asked for clarification from South Africa and ICOMOS about the maps, the property demarcations and buffer zone, the distance from the mine, the likelihood of underground mining and impacts on the OUV. Serbia warned that ‘doubts’ such as these signal a deeper problem. Germany expressed its grave concern. Switzerland wanted to include a strong statement calling for the cessation of open-cast mining. Mexico called for further documentation from South Africa, and Estonia, while firmly challenging India’s position, resigned itself to waiting yet another year for a resolution. The United Arab Emirates then criticized the World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS for information that was neither clear nor accurate. ICOMOS reiterated that they were raising the same concerns that led to nomination being recommended for deferral a decade earlier: crucial information from South Africa was lacking, so too was a complete boundary at the time of inscription and South Africa still had not submitted it. Clearly and concisely, they emphasized that coal mining was ongoing within the planned buffer zone. After diluting the concern and criticism and deleting any offending paragraphs, the Swiss delegate read the statement, only including the Estonian plea to ensure that the mining has no impact on the OUV (36 COM 7B.48). Conclusion Both mining and archaeology are extractive processes with negative historical legacies in South Africa. And while it is easier to criticize the extractive and polluting practices of the former apartheid regime (Cock 2007, Cock and Fig 2001), it may be more fraught to challenge the ANC’s policies for growth in the face of poverty and unemployment. With the end of apartheid, the ANC inherited an economy that had suffered two decades of stagflation, sanctions, divestment and public debt of 230 billion rand (approximately 2.5 billion US dollars) (Terreblanche 2008). While new economic opportunities have benefitted a new black middle class, between 45 and 50 per cent of the population now live in poverty, and the plight of the black poor has notably worsened under the ANC’s neoliberal policies (Meskell 2011b: 38). Capitalizing culture and nature has taken place within this neoliberal

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restructuring, requiring new forms of reregulation that in turn lead to reterritorialization and commodification (Igoe and Brockington 2007: 432). Mapungubwe serves as a perfect example: in reality, the World Heritage property is a mosaic of private conservation reserves, agrobusiness, mining, tourism and human settlement. Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape also serves as a reminder of the imperfect, modernist construction of nature and culture, their implicit separation, the current privileging of nature conservation and tourism and the subsequent downplaying of cultural heritage and indigenous values. In this chapter, I have tried to trace how the original intent of the nomination of Mapungubwe, showcasing an archaeological landscape, was consistently elided and undermined from the outset by the South African National Parks and other government agencies. Within a decade of World Heritage inscription, that same heritage is now endangered by another form of mining, and the long-term indigenous, cultural and living aspects of the landscape are being sold out from under, for short-term profits (see also Swanepoel and Schoeman 2010). The lack of compliance over the initially promised buffer zone after 2003 may have always been an intended omission. Numerous experts involved with the nomination and the subsequent legal case against CoAL claimed in interviews that the government knew future mining rights would be granted in that specific location. Whether true or not, South Africa has maneuvered through the last few sessions of the World Heritage Committee with a palpable degree of duplicity. Undaunted by the barrage of outrage in the media (Carnie 2012), the government has played ministries off each other, with the powerful Department of Mineral Resources trumping any concerns raised from those portfolios dealing with culture or conservation. Established through the private wealth of diamonds, the irony is that the park may be destroyed through nation’s greed for coal. The World Heritage Centre and its secretariat have been powerless to call South Africa to account, even though the List of World Heritage in Danger has been invoked now at two sessions. Committee consensus has still inclined in favour of the State Party. South Africa’s new political alliances are resilient and are themselves products of international industrial partnerships, the ANC’s historical affiliations, its pan-Africanism and its underlying antipathy to the West. While mobilizing recognition of a newly democratic South Africa may have garnered a suite of new UNESCO World Heritage sites in quick succession, the challenge will now be to keep them, safeguarding them from extractive industries and at the same time fully recognizing the remarkable cultural and indigenous expressions that bestowed inscription in the first place.

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Lynn Meskell is professor of anthropology and director of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. She is honorary professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is founding editor of the Journal of Social Archaeology. Her recent books and edited collections include Cosmopolitan Archaeologies (2009), The Nature of Culture: The New South Africa (2011) and Global Heritage: A Reader (2015).

Notes 1. As with my related research in Kruger National Park (Meskell 2011b), I spent significant amounts of time on the ground in Mapungubwe, interviewing a diverse array of people, and often working in tandem with the People and Conservation unit of South African National Parks. I had sustained interactions and interviews with park managers, research scientists and technicians, ecologists, service workers, rangers, archaeologists, local stakeholders and descendant communities both inside and outside of Mapungubwe. Because of Mapungubwe’s World Heritage status, I also engaged with many South African experts from field archaeology, heritage agencies, the tourism sector, museums and conservation agencies, as well as the World Heritage Centre in Paris. My work also includes observations from several World Heritage Committee sessions and from the UNESCO archives. 2. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/documents. 3. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/477/. 4. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/documents. 5. In the evaluation of UNESCO’s Global Strategy (WHC-11/18.GA/8), a correlation was noted between the countries represented on the Committee and the location of properties nominated. From 1977 to 2005, in 314 inscriptions, 42 per cent benefitted those countries that had representatives on the Committee. The proportion decreased to 16.7 per cent in 2006 (Vilnius) and increased to 25 per cent in 2008 (Quebec), and increased again to 42.9 per cent in 2010 (Brasilia).

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Bongmba, E. K. 2004. ‘Reflections of Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance’, Journal of Southern African Studies 30(2): 291–316. Bonner, P., and J. Carruthers. 2003. ‘The Recent History of the Mapungubwe Area’, unpublished document. NORAD and DEAT. Brockington, D. 2004. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Byrne, D., H. Brayshaw and T. Ireland. 2001. Social Significance: A Discussion Paper. Sydney: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Serivce. Carnie, T. 2012. ‘SA Slammed for Mining in Heritage Site’, Independent Online, 28 June, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.iol.co.za/ news/politics/sa-slammed-for-mining-in-heritage-site-1.1329700. Carruthers, J. 1995. The Kruger National Park: A Social and Political History. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Coal of Africa LTD. 2010. ‘Investing in Our Communities’, retrieved 26 March 2013 from http://www.coalofafrica.com. Cock, J. 2007. The War against Ourselves: Nature, Power and Justice. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Cock, J., and D. Fig. 2001. ‘The Impact of Globalization on Environmental Politics in South Africa, 1990–2002’, African Sociological Review 5(2): 15–35. Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C. 2010. Living Histories: Native Americans and Southwestern Archaeology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C., and T. J. Ferguson (eds.). 2007. The Collaborative Continuum: Archaeological Engagements with Descendent Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Altamira Press. Draper, M., M. Spierenburg and H. Wels. 2004. ‘African Dreams of Cohesion: Elite Pacting and Community Development in Transfrontier Conservation Areas in Southern Africa’, Culture and Organization 10(4): 341–53. Duffy, R. 2002. A Trip Too Far: Ecotourism, Politics and Exploitation. London: Earthscan. Eloundou, L. A., and D. Avango. 2012. ‘Reactive Monitoring Mission to Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (South Africa) 15–20 January 2012’, mission report for UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris. Esterhuysen, A. 2009. ‘Undermining Heritage’, South African Archaeological Bulletin 64(189): 1–3. Gordon, R. 1988. ‘Apartheid’s Anthropologists: The Genealogy of Afrikaner Anthropology’, American Ethnologist 15(3): 535–53. Groenewald, Y. 2010. ‘Heritage Versus Mining’, Mail and Guardian Online, 19 February.    . 2011. ‘Mapungubwe Mining Go-Ahead’, Mail and Guardian Online, 2 September. Hall, M. 1984. ‘The Burden of Tribalism: The Social Context of Southern African Iron Age Studies’, American Antiquity 49(3): 455–67.    . 1988. ‘Archaeology under Apartheid’, Archaeology 41(6): 62–64.

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   . 2001. ‘Social Archaeology and the Theaters of Memory’, Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1): 50–61. Hoggart, R. 2011. An Idea and Its Servants: UNESCO from Within. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction. Hughes, D. M. 2005. ‘Third Nature: Making Space and Time in the Great Limpopo Conservation Area’, Cultural Anthropology 20(2): 157–84. ICOMOS. 2003. Evaluations of Nominations of Cultural and Mixed Properties to the World Heritage List. ICOMOS Report for the World Heritage Committee, 27th Ordinary Session. Paris: ICOMOS. Igoe, J. 2004. Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson. Igoe, J., and D. Brockington. 2007. ‘Neoliberal Conservation: A Brief Introduction’, Conservation and Society 5(4): 432–449. Keepile, K. 2010. ‘Unesco Team to Probe Mining at Mapungubwe’, Mail and Guardian Online, 18 November, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-11-18-unesco-team-to-probemining-at-mapungubwe. Labadi, S. 2013. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage and Outstanding Universal Value. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Lazarus, N. 2004. ‘The South African Ideology: The Myth of Exceptionalism, the Idea of Renaissance’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, Special Issue, After the Thrill is Gone: A Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa 103(4): 606–28. Lockyer, A. 2008. ‘National Museums and Other Cultures in Modern Japan’, in D. J. Sherman (ed.), Museums and Difference. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Macleod, F. 2011. ‘Tampering with the Past’, Mail and Guardian Online, 22 January. Masuku Van Damme, L. S., and L. M. Meskell. 2009. ‘Producing Conservation and Community’, Ethics, Place & Environment 12(1): 69–89. Meskell, L. M. 2005. ‘Recognition, Restitution and the Potentials of Postcolonial Liberalism for South African Heritage’, South African Archaeological Bulletin 60(182): 72–78.    . 2007. ‘Living in the Past: Historic Futures in Double Time’, in N. Murray, M. Hall and N. Shepherd (eds.), Desire Lines: Space Memory and Identity in the Postapartheid City. London: Routledge, pp. 165–79.    . 2009. ‘The Nature of Culture in Kruger National Park’, in L. M. Meskell (ed.), Cosmopolitan Archaeologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 89–112.    . 2011a. ‘From Paris to Pontdrift: UNESCO Meetings, Mapungubwe and Mining’, South African Archaeological Bulletin 66(194): 149–56.    . 2011b. The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa. Oxford: Blackwell.    . 2012. ‘The Rush to Inscribe: Reflections on the 35th Session of the

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Conclusion Imagining the Ground from Afar Why the Sites Are so Remote in World Heritage Committee Sessions Christoph Brumann

The chapters in this volume cover the ground of World Heritage properties extensively. Of course, ‘ground’ is a metaphor here; what they engage in is not geographical exploration, but the analysis of present-day social situations, as revealed through long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the people living in, around and from these sites. I myself have never done such a World Heritage site study. I did extensive fieldwork in Kyoto, of whose temples, shrines, palaces and gardens, seventeen have been inscribed as a single ‘serial’ property on the World Heritage List. In a city replete with historic vestiges, however, my fieldwork focused on inner-city vernacular architecture and an old festival rather than on these elite sites, most of which are in the suburbs and pose far fewer conservation problems and contradictions than the downtown nonelite heritage (Brumann 2009, 2012b). My main engagement with the World Heritage system has rather been with the transnational decision-making procedures of the World Heritage Committee and its secretariat and Advisory Bodies (Brumann 2011, 2012a, 2013, 2014). Fieldwork has centred on participant observation of the accessible meetings, mainly the World Heritage Committee sessions and General Assemblies and interviews with key figures in this social arena, all conducted in a multisited and intermittent way since 2009.1 I would therefore like to reflect on a puzzle that the other

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chapters might provoke in a casual observer who, having read this volume, attends one of the World Heritage Committee sessions: why are so few of the social situations at World Heritage sites discussed during the meetings and considered in many of the decisions, particularly when it seems that the erudite Committee should in fact be the first to be aware of these situations and, in the worrying cases, intervene? Is this mere lack of information, studied ignorance, malicious intent or something else? I aim to illuminate the riddles and inconsistencies in World Heritage decision making, which will hopefully also cast light on some general dilemmas of transnational governance. Structural Constraints As a first reason for the invisibility of the ground in World Heritage proceedings, there is time pressure. About two-thirds of the annual eleven- or twelve-day session of the World Heritage Committee are usually dedicated to the discussion of individual World Heritage sites and candidates, and this is also the part of the session where attendance is best and attention highest. General matters such as basic policies, procedural questions or the budget are given much less time, and for these, much is being outsourced to the string of working groups and expert meetings that meet outside plenary session time or throughout the year around the globe. The one thing that is not being sidelined, however, is the consideration of sites; each case is usually taken up as a separate agenda item or subitem and ordered only very generally by broad types – cultural, natural and mixed sites – and world regions. This is consistent with the general conceptual evolution of World Heritage, which is also driven by the discussion of individual sites – particularly candidate sites – to a large degree. The secretariat of the World Heritage Convention, that is the World Heritage Centre, and the Advisory Bodies ICOMOS, IUCN and ICCROM try to steer this process, and some innovation has clearly originated with them, such as the very popular category of cultural landscapes (Gfeller 2013). But unless the treaty states to the convention – the States Parties – take up such programmatic input by nominating candidates, all the preparatory thematic studies on, for example, the suitability of astronomic sites for the World Heritage List will bear no fruit. Also, many important debates that touch on the fundamentals of heritage conceptualization in World Heritage are kicked off by nominations that challenge the established categories. The nomination of the

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wooden structures of the Hôryûji temple complex in Japan (listed in 1993), which have been renovated and partly replaced several times in their long history, contributed significantly to an intense debate and to the adoption of widened authenticity criteria in the 1994 ‘Nara Document on Authenticity’. The nomination of Brasilia (listed in 1987) led to the decision that modern heritage is generally acceptable. The nominations of Charles Darwin’s house in Downe (withdrawn before the session in 2007 and then deferred in 2010) and of a collection of buildings in six countries designed by architect Le Corbusier (deferred in 2009 and again in 2011) ended up reconfirming an older consensus that the association with famous people alone is insufficient for a World Heritage listing (although these two candidates have only been postponed, not finally rejected). The nomination of the Baha’i Sacred Places in Haifa, Israel, led ICOMOS to the claim that it is ill-equipped to assess religious faiths, although when the nomination came back as a global pilgrimage centre, it was accepted and inscribed (in 2008). The debate about the bridge of Mostar in Bosnia (listed in 2005) confirmed that reconstructions are permissible if their symbolic value is paramount. And so on and so forth so that it is no exaggeration to say that the nominated sites and the precedents set by the (often surprisingly improvised and contingent) ways of dealing with them move World Heritage forward in conceptual terms. All the more justification for the World Heritage Committee to stay focused on sites, one would expect. But there are more than one thousand properties on the World Heritage List now, with a further fifteen to thirty added every year. Of these, at the Saint Petersburg session in 2012, for example, the World Heritage Committee considered the 35 sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger and another 107 sites with conservation issues; in addition, it examined 49 nominations or extensions of World Heritage properties. This makes for a total of 191 sites, some of them conglomerates with multiple components (such as the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto mentioned above) on which a decision had to be taken. Such a task would be unmanageable were it not for the fact that a majority of these cases are not discussed. Nominations are always discussed (except those withdrawn at the last minute because of unfavourable recommendations), and so have been dangerlisted sites until recently, but for many sites with conservation issues, the preformulated draft decisions published before the sessions are simply adopted as a package when none of the twenty-one member states of the Committee, the World Heritage Centre or the Advisory Bodies request a debate. Acutely aware of the time pressure, as the

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latter bodies are, the Centre and the Advisory Bodies are very selective here, and as they write the draft decisions that lean to the strict side, they are happy to see them untouched. For example, when the world was reading about the Roman structures of Pompei collapsing because of neglect in 2011, the inattentive participant to that year’s session might have come away with the impression that the Committee was paying no attention at all to this famous site. In actual fact, it issued a rather stern warning, threatening the site with Danger Listing, but as Italy never lobbies against draft decisions concerning its sites, Pompei was mentioned only once during the session, when its name was read out as one of the World Heritage properties where draft decisions were adopted without debate. Not discussing a site during the session may therefore be a strategy to defer unwanted attention (by the State Party) or defend a strict line (by the Centre and Advisory Bodies), not a sign of neglect. But even so, discussing close to two hundred sites means that many are not given more than a few minutes, and cannot possibly be discussed further without greatly expanding the duration of the session. The second constraint is cost pressure. The World Heritage Centre claims to lack sufficient personnel and relies on temps and interns to an extent that regular staff sees as problematic. The situation has been exacerbated through the withdrawal of US dues to UNESCO in 2011 – 22 per cent of the total – after a majority of UNESCO member states voted to accept Palestine as a full member. The Advisory Bodies too receive only limited resources for their World Heritage

Figure 12.1.  World Heritage Committee in session, Saint Petersburg, 2012 (photo: Christoph Brumann).

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work, which have likewise suffered from the US pullout, and ICOMOS in particular cannot pay competitive wages to their specialists and must rely on whatever intellectual, moral or status rewards these draw from what is in effect a sideline activity. Centre and Advisory Bodies are fully occupied with reacting to what is dropped on their desks, given the relative ease of whistleblowing in the times of the internet. They thus have very few resources to spare for the unprovoked collection of information, so that for quite a few sites, all that reaches the World Heritage institutions is the (unexamined) entries in a questionnaire form that the nation states submit every few years in the course of the so-called Periodic Reporting Exercise. As a third constraint, the mandate of the World Heritage institutions is limited. The convention is supposed to protect material heritage and, in the case of natural heritage, also the wildlife and flora within the site. Past human communities are important for the justification of why specific material heritage items have ‘outstanding universal value’ (OUV), the elusive precondition for a World Heritage listing. But conservation does not extend to present-day human communities and their activities. These rather come in as the agents of damages and disturbances – neglect and new construction such as high-rises, tunnels, bridges or container ports within or near the cultural sites; mining, poaching, logging, fishing, agricultural encroachments and highway and pipeline construction in the nature reserves; tourism development and overuse in both cases. Such developments are duly problematized, but usually without clear pronouncements as to whether the people living at the site are the perpetrators or rather themselves the victims of such activities. There is the occasional demand in the decisions for the provision of sustainable tourism and other alternative livelihoods, which shows some understanding for local plights, but overall, conservation is the first priority of the convention and of the Centre and Advisory Bodies (state delegations are a different matter, as will be discussed). On a principal level, too, the World Heritage Convention does not privilege the local or the national level to begin with; it is rather founded on the idea that some sites are so important that they rightfully belong to all humanity, not just the people who live there. In sum, it is conservation from, at least as much as for, the locals that drives Centre and Advisory Body considerations. There is the important exception of cultural landscapes where it is explicitly the interaction between human populations and the landscape that stands in the foreground. If these are ongoing interactions that leave physical traces, such as in rice terraces in the Philippines

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or China or European wine regions, the local population is back in the picture at least indirectly, as it must be relied on for keeping the landscape as it is. The importance of local communities is duly acknowledged in the guidelines for (Fowler 2003, Mitchell, Rössler and Tricaud 2009) and evaluations of cultural landscapes, and ICOMOS and the Committee are often rather soft when a nomination claims that a specific site is supremely important in myth or oral history (largely for the lack of anthropological expertise, I think). But overall, present-day local communities are primarily seen as a tool for conservation rather than a privileged beneficiary, and the unquestioned assumption remains that external experts know the sites best, and that while local communities should be involved, they do not naturally sit in the driving chair or have veto rights. The fourth and most important constraint, however, is that the convention is an international treaty ratified by nation states, which makes them the main points of address. Only they may propose candidates for listing, and, for all matters concerning World Heritage sites, their governments and the focal points named by them are the first to be consulted by the Centre and the Advisory Bodies. The state’s version of the physical condition of the sites and – if addressed at all – the social situation around them is therefore the default version, and to call it into question requires a conscious challenge. The World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies are prepared to make such challenges when they see conservation threats, but time constraints and cost pressure urge them to focus their attention on the most threatened sites and serious issues. And even for these, their version may remain at odds with the State Party’s version. If a state is unyielding in the session discussion, the dominant tendency for all others is self-restraint. Other than in the 1990s, when heritage experts were mainly among themselves, delegations today are mostly led by career diplomats, reflecting the growing importance of and demand for World Heritage listings. Often, these are the Permanent Delegates, that is the ambassadors of the States Parties to the quasi-state of UNESCO, who meet each other all the time in Parisian headquarters and engage in cheek kissing and first name socializing (Brumann 2014). World Heritage is also a friendly international forum with an uplifting subject matter, different from the genocides, trade barriers and epidemic diseases discussed elsewhere, and here for once everyone can join in a round of applause for Iran when they bring a new site on the World Heritage List, as one diplomat told me. Lobbying and deal making to achieve desired ends is intensely practised, and a majority of Committee states – in

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particular those with their own sites and nominations up for inspection – are susceptible. All this means that, in most cases, the State Party version of what is happening on the ground is not being challenged to the degree one might expect, particularly since 2010, when nation states have turned to serving their own interests in unprecedented ways (Brumann 2011, 2014, Meskell 2013b). How far the state version diverges from the local version or the multiple local versions is a function of democratic rights, the role of the critical public and centre-periphery power imbalances in the respective nation state much more than of World Heritage process. Texts and Testimonials Aside from these structural constraints, there are further reasons for the limited visibility of the ground, and I see these in the way in which the World Heritage institutions generate and disseminate their knowledge about the sites. This requires some elaboration. The most comprehensive gathering of information about sites occurs during the nomination process of new candidates for the list. The files submitted by the nation states for this purpose have grown from one or two typed sheets of paper into big tomes and PDF files of sometimes thousands of pages, often lavishly illustrated and accompanied by audiovisual documentation, which take years to prepare. The candidate sites are then evaluated by the respective Advisory Body (ICOMOS for cultural sites, IUCN for natural sites) for their OUV. For this purpose, up to several dozen desk reviewers are consulted, somewhat similar to academic peer review, and similarly unpaid. Whether these experts have themselves visited the site or base their opinions on the nomination file and specialized literature is not a criterion, but there is additionally an on-site examination by one expert (ICOMOS) or two (IUCN). The narrow purpose of this mission is to check whether conservation, management and protection conditions are sufficient to allow inscription, not to independently evaluate the merits of the site or establish good relations with all stakeholders. Yet as the mission experts are the only persons with whom the nominating state representatives and site communities ever interact during the nomination process, the tendency for the visited is to see this as a decisive encounter. No matter how often the limited role of the mission is emphasized, the red carpet is still being rolled out, and if the outcome of the evaluation is disappointing, the nominating side tends to blame the mission experts and failed communication with them.

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Importantly, however, both the desk reviews and the mission experts’ reports are not published; they only feature indirectly in the final evaluation report by the Advisory Bodies that contains the latters’ recommendation of one of the four options of inscription, referral, deferral or noninscription of the property. This report usually has less than twenty pages, significantly fewer illustrations than the nomination files and no audiovisual documentation. It follows a fixed structure with a number of subheadings being ticked off, and the style is sober and technical, all I think in order to dispel all doubts that something like OUV can be grasped and measured objectively. In contrast to the nomination files, which are usually accessible to just the Committee states and put online only after inscription, these evaluations are now published on the internet a few weeks prior to the session. When discussed in the meeting, the candidate is introduced by an Advisory Body expert through an oral presentation of no more than seven minutes, usually accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation with a few maps and photos, but without videos. The nominating state has no special role and does not give a presentation. Then, the Committee debate begins and a decision is made. Similar procedures are followed for those World Heritage sites where problems and threats have been brought to the attention of the Centre and the Advisory Bodies. The usual Committee decision then is to ask the State Party to submit a ‘state of conservation report’ in time for either next year’s session or the one in two years. In particularly worrying cases or when the report does not dispel the concerns, the Committee urges the state to invite a ‘reactive monitoring mission’, usually of one Centre official and one Advisory Body expert, to inspect the situation on the ground. This mission again is focused on conservation and not the wider social context, and it is not expected to liaise with stakeholders for its own sake. The mission experts will then write a report, most often with at least some photos. The state reports are not published, and while most mission reports are put on the internet prior to the session, some are not. What is invariably published in all cases is again only an indirect product of these reports, namely a decision text drafted jointly by the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies, in which the paragraphs of the decision proper are preceded by a summary description of the issues at the site. While the decision is often substantially amended during the session, the summary description usually remains as it is. (There are also ‘reinforced monitoring missions’ and ‘emergency missions’ that, however, follow similar reporting procedures.)

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As mentioned above, if nobody requires otherwise, draft decisions on the state of conservation of the already inscribed sites will be adopted collectively with all other unopened ones. And even if debate is opened, there is again no presentation by the respective state, and the Centre and Advisory Bodies usually restrict their introductory remarks to any information they have received in addition to the documents or one or two points of special emphasis, often taking not more than a minute or two to do so. One or two PowerPoint slides may be used to illustrate actual damages or simulate the effect of planned construction at the site, but whether these are illuminating or not differs widely, suggesting that they are only auxiliary to the text documents in their drafters’ eyes. As with the nominations, the presentation is followed by the debate and the decision. What all this boils down to is that one learns little about the World Heritage sites and candidates if one only follows the Committee session proper, and what one does learn comes with relatively few mnemonic devices such as telling images, let alone videos. A vivid evocation of sites simply does not take place, and this is surprising, giving that just outside in the foyer, one usually finds big TV screens where the Japanese TV station TBS shows their beautiful documentary series on the World Heritage sites, now also in 3D, and desks are filled with promotional brochures about current and future World Heritage candidates that present the sites at their finest. This means that if one wants to stay abreast of site conditions beyond this celebratory material, one has to read the documents, minimally the evaluation reports on the candidates and the draft decisions on the problematic sites, but ideally also the nomination files and mission reports. The minimal load alone amounts to several hundred pages, however, and reading all site-specific information for a single session would mean going through more than ten thousand pages. Predictably, this is manageable only for the more committed and resourceful Committee states, which can divide the load among several people on the delegation. My estimate from session behaviour and the content of interventions is that for every site, at least half the committee delegations have not read the documents, and if delegations have read them, it is usually not more than one person and not necessarily the speaker for the delegation. To a surprising degree, Committee delegates are ignorant about what they are dicussing and deciding, and this goes well beyond the usual division of labour in teamwork. To some degree, this is because delegates can always count on others. To begin with, they can simply agree with the draft decision of the Centre and the Advisory Bodies. If advance lobbying instead obliges

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delegates to do a favour to a state unhappy with the recommended decision, they can rely on what its delegates ask them to say or even write down for them. (This can become fairly obvious through the sudden improvement of a delegate’s English or French formulation skills.) As consensus is the preferred decision mode in UNESCO boards and as what is already a long session would easily double if all twenty-one Committee delegations expressed their opinion on every item, it is also entirely acceptable for a delegation to stay silent most of the time or to come in only briefly to indicate agreement once a consensus is in sight. Yet while individual ignorance can thus be hidden, the combined ignorance in the Committee makes it susceptible to a specific kind of influence, that of personal testimony. One kind of testimony is from delegates of the respective state, who often include experts and managers closely involved with the discussed site. A State Party not currently on the Committee can be given the floor if a Committee member asks for this, a favour that is easily negotiated behind the scene. And then, one often hears that the evaluation of the candidate or the summary of the site issues has overlooked or misinterpreted important aspects, that the identified problems have been addressed in the meantime, that the long-demanded protection law will be passed any day now, that the management plan – whose paper copy the delegate may even be waving in the air – has been finalized this past week and that the nation’s commitment to heritage conservation is absolute. Another kind of personal testimony is provided by delegates from other Committee states who claim, for example, that when they happened to visit the site only very recently (a surprisingly frequent coincidence), none of the alleged problems were evident, and the site struck them as so impressive that it should be listed right away, no matter what the Advisory Bodies say. A case in point in 2012 was the German ambassador to UNESCO, a lawyer by training, who claimed that she probably was the only person in the room to have visited all three Russian kremlins submitted as a serial nomination – clearly overlooking at least the Russian experts present – and appealed to us all to believe her as to how exceptional they were. This is a strange encounter: on one hand, we have an increasingly sophisticated and rationalized evaluation process in which dozens of experts contribute to fact-finding about and comparatively assessing the sites. Not least because the charge of subjectivity is always in the air, however, the product of this process is presented in a rather indirect and invariably dry and textual way that contributes little to suppress the tendency of many delegates to simply not bother to read it.

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On the other hand, we have the authority of the eyewitness, familiar to us anthropologists, a flesh-and-blood human being and maybe a cherished colleague who makes fervent assertions, often imploring others explicitly to believe him or her. Many of these statements are indeed presented with such sincerity that one must fight down the urge to simply take them as the truth. I am not claiming that delegates are naive, but I still think that such statements make it psychologically easier for them to set aside their doubts and to feel less bad about supporting what their delegation’s deals require them to support. Also, in a diplomatic environment such as this, it is extremely rare to openly accuse someone of lying, and delegates quite regularly remind one another to work on the basis of trust. Even skeptical delegations in the Committee, such as Switzerland, Sweden and Estonia in the observed sessions, will often avoid a direct challenge and instead insist on proper procedure, recalling that fact-finding and evaluation are the job of the Advisory Bodies and the Centre, that unverified information submitted after the statutory deadlines cannot be considered and that the rules prohibit state delegates to engage in advocacy for their own sites. The Advisory Bodies and the Centre will also insist that they have different information, but they too do so in measured terms and without too openly stating the obvious, that either they or the state delegations must be lying. This is astonishing since the controversial issues are not only ones of interpretation, but of easily verifiable facts. At the Saint Petersburg session in 2012, the Centre and Advisory Bodies reported a huge, unapproved and problematic-looking reconstruction project going on at the archaeological site of Abu Mena. Yet in the discussion, the Egyptian delegation simply did not comment on this claim, and the other delegates did not insist on finding out the true state of affairs. In the global age, it should not be impossible to establish whether there is indeed construction activity going on at Abu Mena, such as by installing webcams or by arranging a live broadcast with someone on site holding a camera. One could also think of paying back in kind and calling the experts to the witness stand in case there has been a mission, but this is never done, even when they are in the room. And one could think of putting visual evidence such as satellite images of illicit construction on the screens, but while IUCN and the Centre refer to such evidence in the case of natural sites, they stop short of presenting it in the session. What we have as a consequence is a bottleneck between the way the World Heritage institutions prospect the ground and the decision making of the Committee. A huge wealth of data is produced by the State Party’s submissions and by the evaluation and monitoring

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machinery of the Advisory Bodies and the World Heritage Centre. But this is presented in a form that is not particularly arresting and does not reach many delegates, with other information conduits not being considered. Thus, this body of knowledge is vulnerable to onthe-ground information produced spontaneously by the respective state and sympathetic Committee members, particularly that of selfdeclared eyewitnesses. I do not want to exaggerate this economy of knowledge aspect, as the tacit diplomatic deals are clearly more decisive for what goes on, but I am convinced that this aspect adds its independent weight and helps to lend an air of respectability to interactions that in most participants’ awareness are clearly not the way they should be on paper. Participants from the Ground How can people living with and from the sites get into the picture in the not-so-rare event that their nation state leaves them out of it? First of all, they can do so by establishing direct contact with the Advisory Bodies and in particular the World Heritage Centre. As mentioned, these are responsive to whistleblowing, so if the challenge of using email or the telephone and a language understood by the personnel of these organizations – and this is indeed a challenge in some cases – is met, grievances can be transmitted. But these will then join all the other input and reach the Committee only in the processed form of the written evaluation or draft decision and without giving the source, not directly as a live voice. (Depending on the circumstances, this may be for the whistleblower’s own good.) People from the ground can also attend the World Heritage Committee sessions. State delegations both on and off the Committee are free to bring whomever they want, and there is also the possibility of participation as an independent observer, again fraught with logistical problems and procedural uncertainties, but not insurmountable. The most common and heart-warming way for people from the ground to become visible is when the decision to inscribe a site on the World Heritage List is adopted. An inscription is always honoured with a big round of applause, and invariably there is a group of people rising somewhere in the hall who wave their hands, cheer, hug each other or even break into tears upon seeing their year-long efforts rewarded and receive the congratulations of a stream of well-wishers from the other delegations coming over to shake their hands. In addition to delegation officials, this sudden emotional outburst in otherwise rather formal

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proceedings may also include ordinary people living at the site, usually identifiable by the fact that they do not wear the Western business clothing of the diplomats and experts, but instead something more local and colourful. Once the first outburst has somewhat subsided, the State Party is given the floor for a short acceptance speech and here again it is quite common for the UNESCO ambassador, government minister or other official who begins the address to then pass to some local representative or at least mention their presence in the room. When giving thanks for the inscription of a group of seven farmhouses of Hälsingland in Sweden in 2012, for example, a Swedish delegate said that the owners and residents of these houses were sitting next to him. There are also clearly strategic deployments of locals, such as after the inscription of the Western Ghats, a huge collection of nature reserves in India, also in 2012. Contrary to the usual practise and his own tendency to speak extensively, the Indian ambassador to UNESCO passed the word right away to someone he introduced as a local representative, with that person emphasizing how happy everyone at home was. Clearly, this was in response to accusations that indigenous rights had been ignored with that nomination (see below). Obviously, these instances of local voices becoming audible are at the mercy of the respective nation states, which usually will not have anything that spoils the desired display of joyful unity. For dissenting local voices, it is much more difficult to get heard at Committee meetings. NGOs with an interest in World Heritage sites may ask for the floor both on general matters and on specific sites, and in the four meetings I observed, I did not have the feeling that this was actively suppressed. Yet in addition to the challenges of travel, visas and observer registration and the long waits required by the usual delays and rearrangements of the agenda that can make one’s site come up several days later than planned, the main problem is the lack of guidance for such participants on what to do and whom to approach, and I saw some of them fairly confused about how to proceed. If they finally manage to be given the floor, it is usually only once for two minutes, whereas the state delegation may do so several times, and of course, the latter is much more accustomed to the forum and the expected discourse. As a consequence, such interventions occur rather rarely and have only limited effect. The Indigenous Ground Things should be different since the convention text holds every State Party responsible to ‘adopt a general policy which aims to give the

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cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community’. The most sustained claim for honouring this obligation has been raised by indigenous activists. This goes back to the long conflict about Kakadu National Park in Australia, on the World Heritage List since 1981. It took the company owning uranium-mining rights in the property – unfairly acquired, as aboriginal groups claimed – many years and an extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee in 1999 to finally renounce its licences. During this process, things came to a head at the 2000 Committee session in Cairns, Queensland, when indigenous representatives in the hall and outside accused the Committee of systematically ignoring their rights. They demanded the establishment of an additional Advisory Body called the World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE). Committee members Australia, Canada and New Zealand supported the idea, and a working group was formed in order to look into the feasibility of such a body. In the 2001 meeting in Helsinki, however, that group’s report was shred to pieces by other Committee members, in particular India and China who, ever wary of separatisms, reiterated their usual argument that the concept of indigeneity does not apply to Asia, where everyone is autochthonous. No budget was allotted to the continuation of deliberations, and with that, WHIPCOE was effectively aborted (Logan 2013, Meskell 2013a). Yet the debate has been rekindled through activities in the framework of another UN body, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). In both 2011 and 2012, this body and also UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee received a joint statement by more than seventy NGOs for indigenous rights, which deplored an insufficient implementation of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in the context of the World Heritage Convention.2 In particular, the two statements emphasized that the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous inhabitants of a World Heritage candidate is not sought, and three 2011 nominations – the Western Ghats in India, the Kenyan Lake System in the Rift Valley (in particular Lake Bogoria) and the Sangha Trinational nature reserve straddling Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Congo – were singled out as cases in point. In addition, the statements demanded regular consultations with UNPFII, the resumption of the earlier WHIPCOE idea and public access to nomination files. The World Heritage Committee has never made free, prior and informed consent a prerequisite for inscription, but UN special agencies such as UNESCO are held to ‘mainstream’ (i.e. abide by) UN-level declarations such as UNDRIP so that such

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claims cannot simply be shrugged off. UNPFII representatives attended the most recent World Heritage Committee session and both in 2011 and 2012, a German anthropologist representing one of the NGOs read a critical statement, as did the representative of a Russian indigenous group in Saint Petersburg in 2012. Issue no. 62 of the official periodical World Heritage Review from the same year, published on behalf of the World Heritage Centre, is on ‘World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples’.3 It carries an interview with the UNPFII chairperson who voices (moderately formulated) criticism (pp. 52–55), and on the following pages, has ICOMOS champion a rights-based approach to cultural heritage under the headline, ‘Our common dignity’ (pp. 56–59). Committee members and other States Parties too feel compelled to react: the Indian ambassador’s giving voice to a jubilant local was already mentioned, and the Kenyan ambassador too made an intervention in 2012, denying all charges and encouraging a direct dialogue between the NGOs and her government. In the same year, the Australian delegation, although not targeted, took the occasion of a small extension to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage site, an area where mining has just been successfully halted, to let an Aboriginal representative speak, first in his native tongue and then in (probably equally native) English. The Russian chairperson expressed delight and declared us all humbled by this extraordinary gift to the World Heritage Convention. And on the final day of the 2011 Committee session, a decision that ‘the World Heritage Committee . . . encourages States Parties to: ‘(e) Involve indigenous peoples and local communities in decision making, monitoring, and evaluation of the state of conservation of the properties and their Outstanding Universal Value and link the direct community benefits to protection outcomes, (f) Respect the rights of indigenous peoples when nominating, managing and reporting on World Heritage sites in indigenous peoples’ territories’ (35 COM 12E, §154) was adopted, in a half-empty room by exhausted delegates, some of whom may not have fully realized what they were approving, hidden as these sentences were in a very large decision package. China was present on the Committee, however, and did not object this time. So in post-UNDRIP times and into the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, there is some readiness to acknowledge indigenous concerns as a special kind of call from the ground. Many state delegations are sympathetic in principle or have learned to at least give that impression. The IUCN evaluation of the Western Ghats in 2012 mentioned allegations that indigenous

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rights had been passed over, calling for respecting UNDRIP (36 COM INF.8B2, English version, pp. 53–59), and the IUCN evaluation of Sangha Trinational in 2011 underlined the compatibility of indigenous use of a nature reserve with World Heritage status, expressing concern that two of the three nominating countries did not acknowledge such use and wondering why the possibility of a mixed natural and cultural nomination had not been considered (35 COM INF.8B2, English version, pp. 5–12). In both cases, IUCN recommended a deferral. Yet when IUCN assessed the revised nomination of Trinational Sangha in the following year 2012, finding that cultural heritage was still missing in the new nomination and that consultation processes with indigenous inhabitants had been found inadequate by some of them, it nonetheless recommend inscription (36 COM INF.8B2, English version, pp. 40–49), that is, the one option invariably sustained by the Committee. Evidently, IUCN considered getting its hands on this large park the higher good, and the evaluation suggests that the large buffer zone around the park may provide an alternative basis for indigenous livelihoods. And so the site went on the list, just like the Western Ghats and, a year earlier in 2011, the Kenyan Lake System, with the nominating States Parties and their lobbying skills prevailing. This means that even the most grounded of ground dwellers, the indigenous populations living in World Heritage sites, have difficulty challenging nation state supremacy in the World Heritage process, and it is obvious that the call for a statutory representation of and chartered rights for indigenous peoples will continue to be raised. Timbuktu in the 2012 Committee Session What happens, however, when events on the ground force themselves onto the World Heritage Committee not in the usual indirect and delayed manner, but in real time and in an unprecedented call-andresponse dynamic with Committee moves? Here, the 2012 session witnessed the dramatic case of Timbuktu (see also Joy, this volume). In April 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), with support from the Islamist groups Ansar Dine and Al Qu’aida in Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), had conquered the north of Mali and effectively removed it from state control, declaring it independent. The partners then fell out, and Ansar Dine took exclusive control of the cities in which they then strove to implement sharia rule and a host of anti-modernist measures. Timbuktu and Gao, which are

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both home to World Heritage sites, are located in Azawad territory and in Timbuktu, the World Heritage property includes mausoleums of famous Sufi saints that were the objects of veneration and pilgrimages. Such veneration as also the practise of erecting mausoleums as such, however, is condemned by fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic scriptures. Accordingly, Ansar Dine rebels damaged the Cheick Sidi Mahmoud Tomb in May, with further destructions also occurring in Gao. The other parts of the Timbuktu World Heritage property and other cultural treasures such as the famous collection of documents in the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research clearly appeared threatened too. As is customary in such emergency situations, the UNESCO Director-General publicly expressed her concern, and an emergency mission was sent to Mali, although it was confined to the capital Bamako, not the threatened sites. Responding to a request of the Malinese government, the World Heritage Center and the Advisory Bodies prepared a draft decision to inscribe both Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, and on the fifth day of the Saint Petersburg session, 28 June, this was discussed by the Committee and adopted unanimously. Yet Timbuktu came up again two days later, when the Committee was already engrossed in the discussion of new candidates to the World Heritage List, the most fraught and eagerly anticipated part of its business. The Russian chairperson interrupted the proceedings to say that she had been informed of further damages inflicted upon the Cheick Sidi Mahmud Tomb this very morning, expressing her grief to the Malinese delegation and appealing to all conflict parties to support conservation. The UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture said that the Director-General would make a statement and he would inform us of further developments; then, the session returned to examining the candidates. The next morning, 1 July, the destructions were all over global news, as also was the fact that the Ansar Dine rebels had justified them as a reaction to the Danger Listing two days earlier, saying that the tombs were none of UNESCO’s business (‘UNESCO Is What?’). Never before has a Committee decision provoked such an adverse reaction on the ground, and rarely before has there been, in its twisted way, a more dramatic confirmation of the World Heritage List’s global importance. One might expect this to be a good occasion to give such a global body pause. Yet the usual proceedings continued, with one and a half hours of discussion on the castle of Schwetzingen, a problematic nomination where the German delegation on the

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Committee was determined to challenge the ICOMOS recommendation for outright rejection. The debate became rather sharp and confused, largely because advance lobbying had not managed to bring everyone onto the German side; curiously, it touched on Islam too, since German delegates complained that a mosque in the castle park, one of the earliest in northern Europe, had been ignored in the evaluation, provoking the anger of several delegates from Islamic countries who could not see more than a princely plaything of a rather ornamental and Orientalist character here. Only after that decision was taken with a slight concession – the site was deferred – was the minister for culture of Mali given the floor. She read an emotional statement in which she deplored the destructions in Timbuktu, denounced them as running counter to the spirit of Islam, urged everyone to support her country, given that such tragedies could happen everywhere, and closed with ‘God help Mali!’ After a long applause, the chairperson, without saying anything herself at first, gave the floor to the ambassador of Senegal to UNESCO who, as the chair of the Group of Islamic Cooperation within UNESCO, expressed his solidarity. Only then did the chairperson come in, suggesting that she express the grief we all felt in our stead rather than having more interventions, given that ‘we have a lot of work ahead’. It was obvious that her mind, just like that of many other delegates, was focused on the nominations where a contentious Russian case was still on the agenda. The German ambassador did ask for the floor, however, and said (somewhat mysteriously) that this Committee had lost one of its children and one of its parents and called for a moment of silence, insisting that ‘we have to interrupt our work for this one minute’. Given that material destructions had been reported, but no casualties, this was a somewhat unusual proposal, but the chairperson obliged and everyone rose. Then, the session moved on to the next candidate. Only in the evening, and after almost all nominations had been dealt with, did the chairperson return to the Timbuktu issue, saying that the Malinese minister of culture had just informed her of three more destroyed mausoleums, and now at long last there was a protracted debate in which Committee members and also the UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture condemned the destructions and justifying them with Islam, emphasized the special importance of Timbuktu, drew parallels to the destruction of the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan a decade earlier, discussed countermeasures such as an emergency fund, reminded themselves that they did not have the physical means to step in (the French-led military

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intervention of early 2013 was nowhere on the horizon at that point) and agreed to formulate an appeal to be read to the international press, entrusting in common Committee practise a small group of Committee states with drafting it. On the next morning, 2 July, the session opened with the announcement that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had already reacted with an appeal to stop the destructions. Again, the Committee went back to the one remaining nomination, the problematic Russian one, and then continued with other agenda items. Shortly before lunch, the draft text for the appeal coordinated by South Africa was put on the screen, and the Committee debate soon zoomed in on fine points of formulation, interrupted again by the chairperson who entrusted a small drafting group with editing the text over lunch. It came back in late afternoon, and as is rather common when decision text is put on the screens during UNESCO sessions, the discussion moved in circles around fine points of wording such as whether sending a mission ‘at the earliest time possible’ meant that it would really have to leave the next day. Lack of reliable ground contact made itself felt when delegates wondered whether ‘damage’ or ‘destruction’ would be the more appropriate term. In the middle of it, the German ambassador announced that she had received news of further destruction at one mosque. After about forty-five minutes, the appeal, including all the desired points such as the emergency fund to be established and a rejection of the link the rebels drew between the destructions and the Danger Listing, was adopted. The Malinese cultural minister, in tears, then thanked everyone and the Russian chairperson finally had the wisdom to switch to her native language, interpreted to us all over our headphones, saying that losing heritage is like losing a close relative, that we all felt awkward as we had computers, pen and paper but no weapons and that there may have been loss of life that we had not even considered yet. She closed with expressing our greatest respect and deepest sympathy. She gave a much more considerate impression now, but still could not help using the ‘we’ve got work to do’ argument again when moving on to the next agenda item. The final act of the Committee’s engagement with the Timbuktu ground then happened on 3 July when during lunch time – that is, outside the session slots so that these and the carefully planned social events could proceed without delay – one representative from each Committee delegation and a couple of other UNESCO ambassadors were driven by bus to the Bronze Horseman, the statue of Peter the Great on the Senate Square. This iconic site, part of the local World Heritage property, had been chosen to present the ‘Appeal of Saint

Conclusion  ◆  313

Petersburg’ to the assembled international media and TV crews. The chairperson read the Russian and English versions and native speakers in the party followed up with the French, Arabic and Spanish versions, thus using all official UN languages for which interpretation was available at the session. The Malinese minister of culture, standing next to the chairperson in the centre of the group, briefly thanked everyone and then addressed Timbuktu as if the city were a person, saying that she – Timbuktu – was crying today, but that the international community had decided to hold her hand and that she would rise and shine again. The applause and bravos from the diplomats again brought her to tears, and the group then returned to the busses. After that, there were only very few further mentions of Timbuktu during the session, even in the traditional homilies to the chairperson and host nation on the last day, which are sometimes used for reflective remarks. More dramatic manifestations – reading the appeal with all the one thousand participants lining up in support, rather than just a small group of ambassadors; dedicating one of the evening events to the Timbuktu challenge, rather than to cultural performances and good food and drinks; or other possibilities – were not suggested. Needless to say, the symbolic action of the World Heritage Committee had no immediate effect, and in a vast and impoverished country with a weak government to whose support nobody was ready to dispatch armed forces at the time, one could not have seriously expected this to begin with. The important point for my argument,

Figure 12.2.  Evening reception for the World Heritage Committee at Peterhof Palace, Saint Petersburg, 2012 (photo: Christoph Brumann).

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however, is that even when confronted with such an exceptional challenge, the World Heritage Committee had the greatest of difficulties in stepping out of its procedural routines and refocusing on the ground. After all, the very opposite of heritage conservation was happening while the Committee was in session, in a declared act of defiance to its decisions and under the TV-enhanced gaze of the world. But the Committee still needed no less than three days to make an official statement. If one of the more influential figures, such as a UNESCO ambassador of a Committee state, would have insisted on interrupting the usual routine and reflecting on the significance of the events, this might have happened. Yet such a step occurred to none of them, and also to none of their home ministries that were watching the live-streamed session on the internet, texting detailed instructions to at least some of the delegations, as session rumour had it. There is simply no space for the ground at World Heritage Committee sessions it seems, even when it is quite literally burning. A Ground unto Itself All this is not for want of good intentions. I mentioned that the convention text already considers local communities, however briefly. To the strategic objectives proclaimed at the 30th anniversary in 2002, the so-called Four Cs of credibility, conservation, capacity building and communication, the 2007 Committee session added a Fifth C for community at the initiative of the host, New Zealand. It was clearly local communities at the sites that were meant, and these also figured in the motto of the 40th anniversary celebrations in 2012, ‘World Heritage and Sustainable Development: The Role of Local Communities’. One of the side events of the Saint Petersburg session too explored ‘World Heritage Involving Communities: Concepts and Actions’, and an ICOMOS vice president – not accidentally an Australian – insisted that all World Heritage sites are first and forever local places and we should work for involving ourselves rather than, as the title of the side event suggested, the communities whose active engagement with the sites often leaves nothing to be desired. The revised manual for the preparation of World Heritage nominations urges States Parties to ensure that ‘proceeding with World Heritage nominations . . . is worthwhile for both the conservation of the property and the well-being of local communities and other local stakeholders’ (UNESCO 2011: 6). Although the word ‘consent’ never appears in the text, participation of local people and other stakeholders in the process is described as essential.

Conclusion  ◆  315

Yet however much such thinking has spread in the programmatic texts and the participants’ minds, the actual practise of the World Heritage institutions continues to be shaped by different forces and interests. The World Heritage Committee session has become a ground unto itself, its own local world, since even though it takes place every year in a different location, the spatial arrangements, established procedures, expected behavior and accepted discourses in the meeting hall are simply shifted around. Partly, this is due to the set conventions of all international conferences, but much more so to continuity of personnel and habituation to the increasingly complex procedures. I think that the breathless ticking off of state of conservation reports and nominations, under considerable time pressure and based on rather dry texts that nobody can possibly have fully read, together with the fact that many key players are so tied down to their national interests and to the swapping of favours these require, naturalizes the way a Committee session is run, to the point where it is difficult to imagine it differently any longer, even when such extraordinary incidents such as those in those in Timbuktu occur. Tied down by its own institutional and procedural inertia, the World Heritage Committee simply does not have much space for the ground and is, in my assessment, unlikely to create much more of it very soon. Christoph Brumann is Head of Research Group (‘The Global Political Economy of Cultural Heritage’ and ‘Buddhist Temple Economies in Urban Asia’) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His books include Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto (2012) and the collections Making Japanese Heritage (2010, with Rupert A. Cox) and Urban Spaces in Japan (2012, with Evelyn Schulz). He is a past president of the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan (VSJF) and a member of the Academia Europaea.

Notes 1. For a similar approach to the sessions, see Meskell 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b; for other studies of the World Heritage arena that involve some ethnography, see Rudolff 2010, Schmitt 2009, 2011; for ethnographic studies of other UNESCO meetings and activities, see Bortolotto 2010, Hafstein 2007, 2009, Kuutma 2007; and for those of other international organizations, see the introduction to this volume.

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2. Retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.iwgia.org/iwgia_files_ news_files/0314_UNPFII_2011_Joint_Statement_on_FPIC_and_orld_ Heritage.pdf [sic] and from http://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/ files/publication/2012/05/joint-submission-unpfii.pdf. 3. Retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://whc.unesco.org/en/review/62. 4. WH Committee materials can easily be found online by searching for their official document code, although not necessarily under stable URLs, so I do not give the latter.

Bibliography Bortolotto, C. 2010. ‘Globalising Intangible Cultural Heritage? Between International Arenas and Local Appropriations’, in S. Labadi and C. Long (eds.), Heritage and Globalisation. London: Routledge, pp. 97–114. Brumann, C. 2009. ‘Outside the Glass Case: The Social Life of Urban Heritage in Kyoto’, American Ethnologist 36(2): 276–99.    . 2011. ‘Unser aller Kulturgut: Eine ethnologische Annäherung an das UNESCO-Welterbe’, Sociologus 61(1): 19–43.    . 2012a. ‘Multilateral Ethnography: Entering the World Heritage Arena’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers 136, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/ publications/working_papers/pdf/mpi-eth-working-paper-0136.pdf.    . 2012b. Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto: Claiming a Right to the Past. London: Routledge.    . 2013. ‘Comment le patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco devient immatériel’, Gradhiva 18: 22–49.    . 2014. ‘Shifting Tides of World-Making in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention: Cosmopolitanisms Colliding’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(12): 2176–92. Fowler, P. J. 2003. World Heritage Cultural Landscapes, 1992–2002. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Gfeller, A. E. 2013. ‘Negotiating the Meaning of Global Heritage: “Cultural Landscapes” in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, 1972–1992’, Journal of Global History 8(3): 483–503. Hafstein, V. T. 2007. ‘Claiming Culture: Intangible Heritage Inc., Folklore©, Traditional Knowledge™’, in D. Hemme, M. Tauschek and R. Bendix (eds.), Prädikat “Heritage”: Wertschöpfungen aus kulturellen Ressourcen. Berlin: Lit, pp. 75–100.    . 2009. ‘Intangible Heritage as a List: From Masterpieces to Representation’, in L. Smith and N. Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage. London: Routledge, pp. 93–111. Kuutma, K. 2007. ‘The Politics of Contested Representation: UNESCO and the Masterpieces of Intangible Cultural Heritage’, in D. Hemme, M.

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Tauschek and R. Bendix (eds.), Prädikat “Heritage”: Wertschöpfungen aus kulturellen Ressourcen. Berlin: Lit, pp. 177–96. Logan, W. 2013. ‘Australia, Indigenous Peoples and World Heritage from Kakadu to Cape York: State Party Behaviour under the World Heritage Convention’, Journal of Social Archaeology 13(2): 153–76. Meskell, L. 2011. ‘From Paris to Pontdrift: UNESCO Meetings, Mapungubwe and Mining’, South African Archaeological Bulletin 66: 149–56.    . 2012. ‘The Rush to Inscribe: Reflections on the 35th Session of the World Heritage Committee, UNESCO Paris, 2011’, Journal of Field Archaeology 37(2): 145–51.    . 2013a. ‘UNESCO and the Fate of the World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE)’, International Journal of Cultural Property 20(2): 155–74.    . 2013b. ‘UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention at 40: Challenging the Economic and Political Order of International Heritage Conservation’, Current Anthropology 54(4): 483–94. Mitchell, N., M. Rössler and P.-M. Tricaud (eds.). 2009. World Heritage Cultural Landscapes: A Handbook for Conservation and Management. Paris: UNESCO. Nielsen, B. 2011. ‘UNESCO and the “Right” Kind of Culture: Bureaucratic Production and Articulation’, Critique of Anthropology 31(4): 273–92. Rudolff, B. 2010. ‘Intangible’ and ‘Tangible’ Heritage: A Topology of Culture in Contexts of Faith. Bonn: Scientia Bonnensis. Schmitt, T. M. 2009. ‘Global Cultural Governance: Decision Making Concerning World Heritage between Politics and Science’, Erdkunde 63(2): 103–21.    . 2011. Cultural Governance: Zur Kulturgeographie des UNESCOWelterberegimes. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. UNESCO. 2011. Preparing World Heritage Nominations. 2nd edition. Paris: UNESCO, retrieved 1 September 2014 from http://whc.unesco. org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-643-1.pdf.

Index

Abimbola, Wande, 256 Abu Mena, 304 Abu Simbel safeguarding campaign, 8 Achebe, Chinua, 253–54 affects, 37–39, 45–46, 49–51, 53–55. See also senses, heritage: and emotions Afghanistan, 25, 126, 188, 267, 311 ‘African Renaissance’, 278, 281 African Rock Art Digital Archive (ARADA), 232 African World Heritage Fund, 233 Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), 71 Agence Française du Développement, 101 Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, 62, 310 Al Qu’aida in Islamic Maghreb (AQMI). See Timbuktu Anati, Emmanuel, 227–28 Angkor, 2, 14, 23–24, 27, 125–46, 153, 155, 158, 161 Angkor Conservation Office (ACO), 130 Angkor Zoning and Environmental Management Plan (ZEMP), 129, 133 Angola, 228, 233 Ansar Dine. See Timbuktu Antarctica, 8–9

anthropology and anthropologists, 6, 11, 45, 97–98, 127, 142, 221–22, 223 and nostalgia, 118n1 and UNESCO, 63–64, 118n5 Anyang Yinxu. See Yin Xu Appadurai, Arjun, 3, 27 APSARA, 17, 24, 129–41 archaeological sites, 14, 23, 70, 125–247, 273–93 Archaeological Superintendency for Lombardy, 235 archaeology and archaeologists, 11, 26–27, 60, 127, 156, 167n22, 174–76, 179, 184, 186, 200, 201, 212, 221–22, 228, 235, 236, 237–38, 244n23, 256, 274, 276, 278–82, 284, 287 architecture and architects, 37–59, 100–111, 153–57, 296 Arendt, Hannah, 69 Arnaud, Robert, 61 art and artists 4, 54, 159, 164, 166n9, 180–81, 182, 252, 253–54, 257, 258, 261, 268n7 art history and art historians, 11, 46, 48, 153 Asian Bank for Development, 101 attachment, 45–46, 53–54, 98–99, 110, 115, 179 Augé, Marc, 2 Australia, 248, 307, 308, 314

320  ◆  Index

authenticity, 11, 44, 51, 80–81, 88, 93, 98, 102, 109, 135, 211, 248, 251, 255–59, 268n11, 296, 298 authorized heritage discourse (AHD), 28 Avango, Dag, 284 Baha’i religion, 296 Bamako, 62, 66, 310 Bamiyan, 25, 126, 188, 267, 311 Bandarin, Francesco, 281 Barbachano family, 200–203, 207, 208 Barrera Rubio, Alfredo, 205 Beier, Ulli, 257, 268n7 Belgium, 11 Berliner, David, 53 Bikini nuclear test site, 11 Bokova, Irina, 69, 244n24. See also UNESCO: Director-General Bordeaux, 14 Borobudur, 2, 8, 24, 147–70 Borobudur Ship Expedition and Museum, 157 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25, 126, 296 Botswana, 228 Bourdieu, Pierre, 264 Brasilia, 13, 281, 289n5, 296 Brazil, 13, 213n1, 253, 281, 283, 289n5, 296 BRICS, 283, 286–87 Brighton, Sarah, 205 Brumann, Christoph, 26, 39, 268–69n11 Buddhism, 16, 18, 99–100, 103, 109, 111, 116, 133, 135, 147–70. See also tak baad Calderón, Felipe, 197, 203, 209 Cambodia, 2, 14, 23–24, 27, 125–46, 153, 155, 158, 161 Cameroon, 307–9 Canada, 11, 19, 234, 307 Central African Republic, 307–9

Centre International pour la Promotion de l’Artisanat (CIPA), 42 Chichén Itzá, 2, 23, 24, 26, 193–216 China, 10, 78–96, 107, 171–92, 299, 307, 308 Ministry of Construction, 80 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), 174 Cholincholi, 229 cities, 37–122 ‘civilization’, 172–74 Coal of Africa (CoAL), 281–88 Cologne, 14 colonialism, 4, 61–63, 102–3, 107, 109–14, 117, 127, 142, 149, 155, 160, 163–64, 173, 188, 219–47, 253–55, 268n4, 275 Committee for Archaeological Research on Java and Madura, 149 Congo, 307–9 Conservation and Management of Rock Art Sites in Southern Africa (COMRASA), 228 conservation officials and agencies, 24, 79 conservation techniques, architectural, 37, 44, 61, 67, 102, 104, 107 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. See World Heritage Convention Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 8 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2, 5–6, 7, 11–12, 161 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 12, 90 Cornelius, Herman, 155 corruption, 136–37

Index  ◆  321

creolization, 2 Croatia, 25 CULTUR, 19, 24, 198, 207, 208, 210 cultural industries, 78, 80, 90–93 cultural landscapes. See World Heritage: cultural landscapes Cultural Missions, in Mali, 70–71 culture concept, 6–7 and heritage, 7 Danger List. See World Heritage in Danger Darwin, Charles, 296 De Beers, 276, 280 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), 307–9 Demeulenaere, Élise, 34 Denmark 118n2 Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), 280 Development and Rehabilitation Agency (ADER), 42–43 Devji, Faisal, 68–69 Di Giovine, Michael, 27 Djenné, 23, 24, 60–77 Dogon country, 60 Domingo, Placido, 205 Dongola Botanical Reserve, 275 Downe, 296 Dresden, 14, 220 Dubrovnik, 25 Duras, Marguerite, 109, 118–19n7 Durkheim, Émile, 250 Egypt, 8, 304 Eloundou, Lazare, 281 Eluyemi, Omotoso, 256 Estonia, 207, 283, 287, 304 ethnographies of encounter, 4 Eubelen, David 34 European Union, 5, 101 Evans, Pole, 275 Fa Ngum, 100

Faier, Lieba, 4, 5 FESTAC festival, 256 Fez, 23, 26, 37–59 Finland, 307 Flores, Elisabeth, 212 Foucault, Michel, 12, 45, 176, 186 France, 9, 10, 11, 14, 23, 38, 55, 101, 103, 104, 107, 108, 115, 118n8, 135, 163, 221, 223, 278, 299, 311 France-UNESCO Convention, 101 Gao, 62, 309–10 geography and geographers, 11, 99, 294 geology and geologists, 6 Germany, 7–8, 12, 14, 220, 303, 310–11 Ghana empire, 65 gift exchange, 109, 180, 249–72 Giraudo, Rachel, 34 global ecumene, 27 Global Heritage Fund (GHF), 85, 95n7, 167–68n22 Global South, 12, 13 Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List, 2–3, 4–6, 11, 256 global systems of common difference, 27 globalization, anthropology of, 2–3, 4–6 Gorée, Island of, 68 governmentality, 12 Greece, 23 ‘ground’ and place, 3–4, 294 guest houses, 37–59, 101, 103, 109 Hague Convention, 8 Haifa, 296 Hälsingland, farmhouses of, 306 Han Chinese, 82, 87, 94 Hank Rhon, Carlos, 210–11, 215n11 Hannerz, Ulf, 4, 27, 28, 34 Harvey, David, 3, 99–100

322  ◆  Index

Hatra, 25 Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta, 34 Heng Samrin, Samdech, 127 heritage and culture, 7 ‘belief’, 26 destruction of, 25, 311. See also iconoclasm, Timbuktu and emotions, 45–47 (see also affects, senses) expert and lay notions of, 38, 53–54 impact assessments (HIA), 282, 284–85 as living, 11, 81, 131–32 regimes, 24 ‘-scape’, 27 studies, 12 victims of, 23 Hernandez, Roberto, 211 Herzfeld, Michael, 23, 99, 176, 186 High, Holly, 118n1 High Islamic Council, 66 Hinduism, 149, 152, 167 historical analysis, 4 history and historians, 127 Hôryûji temple, 296 houses, 37–59, 78–96, 101–5, 111–14, 135–40, 306 Huddleston, Vicki, 62 iconicity, 153 iconoclasm, 74, 188, 219, 220, 223–24, 238–39, 267 identity, 188, 189, 225 national, 60, 78, 147, 188 Islamic, 61, 76 India, 10, 149, 153, 154, 158, 213n1, 274, 283, 286, 287, 306, 307–9 indigenous peoples, 5, 118n1, 200, 213, 233–34, 277, 285, 288, 306–9 Indonesia, 147–70 Infogem Nigeria, 24, 265 Inspection of Historical Monuments, 42, 51

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), 19, 24, 193–95, 201–8, 214n6 intangible cultural heritage, 2, 5–6, 7, 11–12, 16, 161, 188, 233 International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), 67, 221, 227, 243n14, 268n11, 295. See also World Heritage: advisory bodies International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC-Angkor), 128, 129–31, 137 International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), 8, 9, 10, 42, 67, 82, 88–89, 102, 142, 149, 152, 156, 157, 164, 166, 168, 221, 228, 273, 277, 279, 295, 296, 299, 300, 308, 311. See also World Heritage: advisory bodies International Criminal Court (ICC), 63, 74 international organizations, anthropology of, 5–6, 28 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 8, 9, 10, 21, 42, 67, 82, 88, 89, 102, 142, 149, 152, 156, 157, 162–63, 164, 166n9, 221, 228, 273–93, 295, 296, 298, 299, 300, 308–9. See also World Heritage: advisory bodies Iran, 299 Iraq, 25 Islam and Islamism, 25, 60–77, 149, 152, 166n6, 309–14. See also Sufis and Sufism Israel, 296 Istanbul, 14 Italy, 8, 10, 11, 25–27, 42, 25–27, 213n1, 219–47, 297

Index  ◆  323

Japan, 7, 11, 12, 100, 126, 130, 150, 173, 294, 296, 302 Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), 150 John, Elton, 205, 206 Jordan, 213n1 Kakadu National Park, 307 Keïta, Ibrahim Boubacar, 62 Keïta, Mobido, 66 Kenya, 11, 307–9 Kingsley, Ben, 197 Konaré, Alpha Oumar, 66, 71–72 Kondoa-Irangi, 23, 25, 26–27, 219–47 Kruger National Park, 14, 275 Kundera, Milan, 118n3 Kunming, 81 Kyoto, 7, 294, 296 Lake Bogoria, 307–9 Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, 101 Laos, 7, 23, 26, 97–122 Latvia, 14 League of Nations, 249–50 Le Corbusier, 296 Lesotho, 228 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 63–64, 98, 118n5 Libya, 26–27, 219–47 Lijiang, 23, 24, 78–96 Lijiang Old Town Conservation and Management Bureau (LCMB), 24, 78–96 London, 14 Lons, Cornelis, 159 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 213 Loro Jonggrang, 162–63 Luang Prabang, 7, 23, 26, 97–122 Machu Picchu, 213n1 Magelang Regency, 158 Maison du Patrimoine, 101, 107, 111, 112, 113

Malawi, 228 Mali, 23, 24, 60–77, 309–10 Mandela, Nelson, 273, 278 Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, 24, 26, 273–93, 287 Archaelogical Task Group, 279–80 Mauritania, 65 Mauritius, 11 Mauss, Marcel, 249–51, 259, 261, 266, 267–68n3–4 Mawangmiao, 184–85 Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Germany), 7–8 McCartney, Paul, 205 medina, of Fez, 45–59 Mexican Tourist Promotion Council (CPTM), 196 Mexico, 2, 23, 24, 26, 193–216 Millennium Corporation project, 42 Moenjodaro, 8 Morocco, 37–59 Mostar, 25, 126, 296 Mosuo. See Naxi Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), 61–62, 309 Mozambique, 228 Msimang, Dolana, 286 Mturi, Amini, 228 Mungumi wa Kolo, 224–25 Munjeri, Dawson, 281 Museo Maya de Mérida, 210 museums, national, 79, 149, 254 Namibia, 228 Nara Document on Authenticity, 11, 268n11, 296 National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). See Timbuktu National Museum of Indonesia, 149 National Park Service (United States), 8

324  ◆  Index

nationalism. See World Heritage: and national interests Naxi, 23, 78–96 Naxi Cultural Industry company, 90–91 Netherlands Development Agency (SNV), 231 New 7 Wonders, 193–216 New Zealand, 140, 234, 307, 314 Nigeria, 23, 24, 25, 248–72 non-places, 2 Norway, 11 nostalgia, 26, 51, 53, 54, 97–122 endo- and exo-, 114–17 Obasanjo, Olusegun, 256 Omolewa, Michael, 256, 257 Orientalism, 26, 57, 103 Ortega Pacheco, Ivonne, 197, 211 Osogbo, 23, 24, 25, 248–72 Osun, shrine of. See Osogbo outstanding universal value. See World Heritage: outstanding universal value Oyinlola, Olagunsoye, 257 Pakistan, 8 Palacio de la Civilización Maya, 211 Palestine, 297 parastatal organizations, 24, 207, 280. See also public-private partnerships Paris, 9, 10, 23, 103, 104, 108, 115, 163, 221, 233, 278, 299 Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), 202 Patrón Laviada, Patricio, 196, 197 Pavarotti, Luciano, 205 Peace Parks, 276–77 Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), 6, 307–8 Peru, 213n1 Philippines, 298 Pikiyari, Innocent, 284 place attachment to, 178–79

and ‘ground’, 3–4, 294 Pol Pot regime, 127, 137 Pompei, 297 Prambanan, 147–70 Pretoria University, 276 Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, 11–12 public-private partnerships, 24, 27, 209–12. See also parastatal organizations Qatar, 1 Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford, 155, 160 resettlement, 23, 139, 151, 178, 225, 243n16 Rethymnos, 23 Riga, 14 Robben Island, 68 Rock Art Research Tanzania (RART), 237 rock art sites, 23, 24–25, 219–47 Rofel, Lisa, 4, 5 Rome, 213n1 Ronaldo, Cristiano, 197 Rowlands, Michael, 34, 118, 187 Russia, 14, 117, 248, 283, 286, 296, 297, 303, 304, 308, 309–15 Saint Petersburg, 14, 248, 286, 296, 297, 304, 309–15 Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), 67 Sangha Trinational nature reserve, 307–9 SANparks, 24, 274, 276, 278–80 Schwetzingen, 310–11 Senegal, 68, 287, 311 senses, 46–49, 55. See also affects, heritage: and emotions Seville, 14 Shang dynasty, 182, 184–85, 189 Shangri-La, 81 Slim, Carlos, 197

Index  ◆  325

Smith, Laurajane, 28, 78, 79 Smuts, General Jan, 275 sociology and sociologists, 127 Sodi Miranda, Federica, 205–6 South Africa, 14, 24, 26, 68, 228–29, 257, 273–93, 287, 312 Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP), 228–30 Spain, 10, 14 State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), 80–83 State Bureau of Cultural Relics, 80 Suárez del Real, José Alfonso, 202 Sufis and Sufism, 61, 66, 149, 242n1, 310 sustainable development, 91, 135–42 Swank, Hilary, 197 Sweden, 232, 304, 306 Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), 129 Switzerland, 67, 193, 283, 287, 304 Tadrart Acacus, 26–27, 219–47 Taj Mahal, 153, 213n1 tak baad, 105–7, 114 Tanzania, 23, 25, 26–27, 219–47 Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage site, 308 TBS Tokyo, 302 Thompson, Edward H., 200, 214n2 Timbuktu, 24, 25, 26, 60–77, 267, 309–14 time-space compression, 3 Tomb of Askia. See Gao tombs, 24, 40, 61, 62, 69, 174, 267, 310 Touré, Amadou Toumani, 66 tourism, 2, 17, 23, 26, 37, 39, 42, 43, 62, 75, 98, 101, 103, 105, 107, 108–10, 112, 113, 115, 117, 150, 151, 152, 155, 158, 163, 168, 171, 172, 179–83, 194, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203–4, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213, 220, 221, 225, 226, 231, 234, 238, 239, 241, 273, 280, 288, 298 circuits, 42, 75, 231

companies, 98, 109, 116 and development, 40, 43, 78–96, 99, 116, 126, 128, 131, 134, 135–42, 151, 163, 175, 194, 210, 211–12, 298 domestic, 16, 78, 81, 82, 151 luxury, 210–11 ministries of, 130, 150, 167n20, 197 sustainable, 137–38, 141, 298 Tourist Office in Djenné (OMATHO), 71 tradition, invention of, 7 Traoré, Moussa, 66 Tuareg, 61–62, 64, 74, 225–26, 238–39 Turkey, 14 United Kingdom, 14, 296 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), 307–9 Development Programme (UNDP), 42, 129 Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), 6, 307–8 Secretary-General, 312 system, 4 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 8, 101 Africa 2009 programme, 227 cultural policies, 7, 12 diplomats, 299–300 Director-General, 13, 69, 127, 163, 244n24, 310 financial difficulties, 9–10, 297–98 Group of Islamic Cooperation, 311 peacebuilding agenda, 25, 63–64 safeguarding campaigns, 8, 156, 227

326  ◆  Index

See also Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, World Heritage United States of America, 66, 214n2, 277, 297–98 Valcamonica, 25–27, 219–47 Venice Charter, 8 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 11 Weber, Bernard, 193, 196–98, 203, 206, 207 Wenger, Susanne, 252, 253–54, 257, 258, 261, 268n7 Western Ghats, 306, 307–9 Whitehouse, Bruce, 62 Wilk, Richard, 27 ‘Wondergate’. See New 7 Wonders World Heritage advisory bodies, 9, 13, 73, 221, 278, 283, 284, 285, 294, 295, 296–99, 300–305 (see also International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property/ICCROM, International Council of Monuments and Sites/ ICOMOS, International Union for Conservation of Nature/IUCN) anthropological conceptions in, 11 authenticity requirements, 11, 296

buffer zones, 3, 89, 129, 135, 190n1, 235 Category Two Centres, 12 as colonial, 27, 219–47 as common heritage of humanity, 2, 8–9, 147, 298 conception of culture, 6 conservation effects, 25–26 cultural landscapes, 6, 11, 219–93, 230–31, 295, 298–99 destruction of, 25 (see also iconoclasm, Timbuktu) ethnographic approaches to, 1–2, 28, 148, 315n1 as Eurocentric, 10, 223, 233 experts and expert meetings, 12, 67, 97–122, 295 Global Strategy, 2–3, 4–6, 11, 256 history of, 8–13 impact studies, 1 and indigenous peoples, 200, 233, 234, 288, 306–9 and mass media, 12, 222, 302 missions, 300–301, 304, 310 myths about, 10 and national interests, 10, 13, 27, 171–192, 295, 299–300, 303–4, 311 natural properties, 6, 14, 204, 298 and NGOs, 306, 308 nominations, 9, 10–11, 12, 295–96, 300–305 Periodic Reporting Exercise, 298 and prehistory, 231–32 property delimitation, 3–4 property management and corporate models, 24 and religion, 24–25, 60–77, 296 outstanding universal value (OUV), 9, 68, 73, 75, 88–89, 125, 195, 219, 229, 255–56, 298, 301

Index  ◆  327

secretariat (see World Heritage Centre) serial properties, 3 site communities, 305–6, 314–15 states parties, 9 thematic programmes, 232 threats, 298 (see also World Heritage in Danger) university programmes, 12 workload and pressures, 296–98 World Heritage Centre, 9, 13, 242n3, 283, 285, 294, 296–99, 300–305 World Heritage Committee, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 22–23, 27, 73, 78, 82, 87, 89, 104, 132, 149, 157, 163, 228, 230, 248–49, 257, 263, 268n11, 273–74, 277, 278, 281, 283, 286, 288, 294–97, 305–9, 313–15 World Heritage Committee sessions, 12, 14, 23, 294–315 in Brasilia (2010), 13, 281, 289n5 in Cairns (2000), 307 in Christchurch, New Zealand (2007), 314 in Doha (2014), 1 in Helsinki (2001), 307 in Quebec (2008), 289n5 in Saint Petersburg (2012), 296, 304, 309–15

in Vilnius (2006), 289n5 World Heritage Convention, 6, 8–9, 12, 28 World Heritage Fund, 9 World Heritage General Assembly, 9, 294 World Heritage in Danger, List of, 54, 73, 95n9, 220, 296, 310 World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE), 307 World Heritage List, 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 68, 248, 255, 283, 294 deletion from, 10 World Heritage Review, 308 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 6 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 137 World Trade Organization (WTO), 6 Xiaoping, Deng, 172 Xiaotun village. See Yin Xu Xibei University, 175 Yin Xu, 23, 26, 27, 171–92 Yoruba. See Osogbo Yunnan Tourism Planning Conference, 82 Zambia, 228 Zimbabwe, 227, 228, 273, 275, 277 Zuma, Jacob, 281