In A Future in Ruins, archaeologist Lynn Meskell offers an institutional ethnography of UNESCO. The organization's broad remit ranges from publishing to promoting women in science, but Meskell focuses exclusively on its role in protecting world heritage and archaeology, particularly through the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Inevitably, this role has been highly political. UNESCO's mission was to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally,
Meskell observes. Yet increasingly, she argues, its efforts are caught up in the proliferation and prolongation of local conflicts and tensions...Meskell offers a trenchant critique of how UNESCO's aim of preventing war sits oddly with projects commemorating sites associated with violence [while
noting] notes that international recognition enshrines only one version of history."- Nature
Lynn Meskell is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, and Honorary Professor in the School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Her previous books include Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt, The Nature of Culture: The New South Africa, and, as editor, Global Heritage: A Reader.