UNESCO, Heritage and Africa

ISBN-13: 9783838302836 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 100 str.

Joost Fontein

Opis

This book explores the politics of heritage. Beyond its use in the construction of identity or the politics of representation, labeling something heritage is an intensely political act that legitimises certain processes over others. As a policy document the World Heritage Convention gives institutional authority to discourses of heritage and internationalism. At the core of the world heritage system is a tension between the need to protect the worlds heritage, and the sovereignty of State Parties. While there have been many recent changes to the world heritage system - provoked by the imbalances of the World Heritage List, the eurocentricities its definitions, and a growing concern for its wider credibility, what cannot change is the sovereignty of State Parties. Through labelling something world heritage certain actions of the state are legitimised and empowered by claims to its outstanding universal value, which must be preserved for humanity. Thus the world heritage system can be viewed as an anti-politics machine (Ferguson1990) which reifies the role of state bureaucracy in Africa through de-politicised claims to universal value.

O autorze

Fontein, Joost Joost Fontein, MA, MSc, PHD, is lecturer in social anthropologyat Edinburgh University, editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies & co-founder ofa new online publication called Critical African Studies.