Possibilities of Global Governance: World Heritage and the Politics of Universal Value and Expertise

A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY

Elif Kalaycioglu

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Advisor: Raymond Duvall

August 2019

© Elif Kalaycioglu 2019

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Acknowledgments

From beginning to end, I have written this dissertation only once. But, in pieces, it has

been written and re-written, starting with a graduate seminar paper in my second year at

Minnesota, moving through proto-chapters that never made the final version, multiple

draft chapters, and finally, this. And now that it has been written, from beginning to end,

I find myself excited about its afterlives, even though they will undoubtedly involve

many other rounds of editing, discarding, adding. The very lucky fact that I can come out

the other end of graduate school and dissertation writing with excitement for what is to

come, I owe to the mentors, peers, friends, and family who have lent me self and project-

sustaining support over the last six years. Without them, none of this would be possible.

I don’t think I can ever adequately thank my advisor, Bud Duvall. In a process

that is full of self-doubt and uncertainty, he has extended an almost impossible

combination of support: never undermining my worries but always making me see past

them. In a way, I am most thankful to Bud for the illusion he gave me that, even at a time

when the possibilities in and of academia are closing down in multiple ways, there is still

space to pursue the work that I am passionate about, and time to do it thoughtfully. It is

an illusion that I needed, an illusion that sustained the project, and one that ultimately

proved itself to be true. In moving forward, I can only hope to foster some of the

incredible qualities of a mentor that Bud brings together: an ability to always find time

for graduate students, to read endless drafts with the most exacting eye, concerned not

only with what is at stake with the work but also with what drives the students to that

work, and to offer all of that invaluable advice through intellectual rigor, nurturing and

warmth. None of this would be possible without him.

This dissertation has also benefited immensely from a very supportive committee

that engaged consistently with the project throughout the years, challenging and shaping

in in countless ways. Ron Krebs extended many hours of his time and thought. He not

only read the same chapters multiple times, but he also had many versions of the same

conversation with me, pushing me to clarify and sharpen the stakes of this project. For his

tenacity in pursuing these key conversations I am thankful to Ron, and I can only hope

that he hears their many echoes in the pages that follow. I wrote my first paper on world

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heritage in David Blaney’s graduate class. Since then, David has made the trip from St.

Paul to Minneapolis many times, with neatly stapled drafts of my chapters, filled with his

incisive and thoughtful comments. The conversations we had over cups of tea and coffee

always left me energized to go back to the work. David not only pushed me to sharpen

my conceptions, but also to recognize that conceptions work until they don’t, and that as

they are sharpened, they also have to be nuanced. Last but not least, Cosette Creamer

joined the department at Minnesota when I was already through with coursework, but

graciously accepted to join my committee at the cusp of my prospectus defense. From

that first moment, she has been on board with full intellectual force, raising questions that

I realize I still have to think about in moving forward, and I am only happy to do so.

Michael Barnett has been a wonderful and generous mentor for the last two years.

In that short amount of time, he has read my work, written letters of recommendation, put

me in touch with a book project in progress, and met with me in D.C. in the midst of a

tense stretch of dissertation writing and job applications. I have learned so much from

Michael and from his engagement with my work, and I hope to continue to do so in the

coming years. What I have learned from Michael, however, precedes meeting him. His

Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism has shaped my approach to research,

in the depth of its empirical engagement and in its recognition of constitutive tensions. In

writing about the participants in the world heritage regime, I have often thought of

Michael’s uncanny ability to hold onto such tension in pursuing his analysis. I hope to

have achieved something of the sort in the following pages.

In the meantime, the project Michael put me in touch with has become the edited

volume Culture and Order in World Politics. I owe gratitude to its co-editors, Andrew

Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit, for including me as a discussant in the 2017 pre-ISA

workshop and for inviting me to contribute a chapter to the book. The discussions I could

be part of shaped the dissertation as it moved towards its later stages. I am especially

indebted to the stellar editorship of Chris and Andrew, who provided feedback on

multiple drafts of my book chapter. Their comments have been formative of my thinking

on political and epistemic change.

I am grateful to members of the Political Science Department for their incisive

engagement with the work over the years. Tanisha Fazal, Helen Kinsella, Mark Bell, Jane

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Lawrence Sumner and Paul Goren gave feedback on oral presentations of this work.

Nisha has not only sat through two lengthy presentations, but she also mentored me

through a grant application. Helen’s challenging questions alongside her incredible

support to push this project towards its more forceful interventions continue to ring in my

ears. Mark has not only asked important questions but offered to think through better

answers together. Jane and Paul have both shown me how important it is to have an

“outside” eye, which can catch gaps and assumptions much better than our well-trained,

and thus habituated, ones. I am also thankful to Nancy Luxon and Robert Nichols for

their very careful reading and perceptive comments on earlier versions of this work.

Over the years, I have benefited from razor-sharp graduate student comments on

my work as part of two dissertation groups. In Bud’s dissertation group, Charmaine

Chua, Chase Hobbs-Morgan, David Temin, Sema Binay, Samarjit Ghosh, and Maria Jose

Mendez commented on early drafts of this work. Despite my long-standing participation

in it, I have always felt like a bit of an interloper in Ron’s dissertation group, and I thank

him for adding me alongside his advisees. Jen Spindel, Robert Ralston, Florencia Montal

and Tracey Blansenheim read many draft chapters. Their comments were the perfect mix

of sharpness and kindness. Nothing ever slipped by their careful eyes, but they always

raised their challenges in recognition that we were all in the same boat. From them, I

have learned an immense amount in how to engage with the work of peers, even and

especially when such work is orthogonal to one’s own, epistemologically and

methodologically.

Of course, the material on which I have received invaluable feedback itself would

not be possible if it were not for international experts and civil servants of the world

heritage regime, who have generously extended their time through interviews and

informal conversations. In trying to arrange those interviews, I gained newfound

appreciation of the endless amounts of work they are continuously undertaking to ensure

the implementation of the regime. My appreciation for their agreement to take time out of

such busy schedules to answer my questions is immense. I have learned an incredible

amount from those interviews and conversations – both when the tape recorder was

turned on and when it was off. I can only reflect the former here, but my understanding is

infinitely richer for the latter. As the following pages attest, I have not always agreed

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with the interpretations of my interlocutors. But when in disagreement, I have tried to the

best of my ability to reflect their concerns in their own terms and to note the grounds on

which such concerns are rooted. I hope that my divergent interpretations can be useful in

thinking about the past and possible futures of the world heritage regime.

Intellectual support, of course, is only a part of this story. And while my mentors

have recognized and supported me as a person, and not only a dissertation-writing,

graduate-student subject, it is to graduate student peers, friends and family that I owe

most of the thanks in sustaining me through the process. I am often struck at how lucky I

have been in going through this process with graduate students, many of whom have

become my closest friends. Quynh Pham had already been at Minnesota when I arrived

and she took me under her communal wings very quickly. I have never met anyone as

collectivist in her orientation to life, friendship and giving, and I have been lucky to be

wrapped in it. Her and Majo Mendez’s home provided me with countless hours of

closeness, conversation, and good food, without which my years at Minnesota would not

be the same. For going through six years of graduate school with, Tracey Blasenheim,

Shai Gortler, Samarjit Ghosh, and Elena Gambino are like no other. And I can’t possibly

express what Tracey’s friendship has meant for me in these years. He was always there,

with the most thoughtful advice, and when no advice would do, he had the best hugs that

made me think things would be ok. For the years that Baris Ine was here, I felt right at

home, and his presence has been sorely missed since. The one year that Freya Irani was

in Minneapolis was pure joy. I have crossed paths with her and Tom in more cities than I

have with anyone else, and I hope it never changes. Baruchi Malewich has been a friend

and neighbor extraordinaire for my last year in Minneapolis. Last but not least, I am

endlessly thankful for the calming presences of Garrett Johnson and Emily Mitamura,

who have reminded me of some very essential things, right when I was losing sight of

them.

Having left the city where I grew up over a decade ago now, I have long had

friends and family long-distance. At times, missing their presence overtakes. Mostly,

however, I am amazed at how much closeness they can communicate over the distance.

Tulio Resende Baêta Zille, Ebru Ilhan and Suna Kafadar have been constant sources of

support, knowing my submission and defense dates better than myself, and always

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checking in just in time. Thank you Can Kalaycioglu and Yagmur Telaferli for long-

distance celebrating the many landmarks through this process. To Baran Kalaycioglu for

always making me feel home, and Fulya Baran for her uncanny ability to lighten things

up. I am indebted to my mother, Neyyir Berktay, for her sharp editorial eye, when I was

sure this dissertation would never end. And my father, Oktem Kalaycioglu, has been an

unwavering source of support, making sure that there would always be at least a kitten

video waiting for me in my messages for the mornings when I had to wake up and start

writing. I started graduate school with my family, and quickly came into the wonderful

family of my partner. To Uri Hadar, Mirjam Meerschwam Hadar, and Dina Hadar: thank

you, for extending your warmth, support and closeness my way.

Most of the writing of this dissertation has happened at the home I share with

Misha Hadar, and our cat Firca. [As a quick detour, I must thank Chris Reus-Smit for

thanking his weimaraner in his acknowledgments and for paving the path to non-human

animal acknowledgments]. Firca has stayed awake with me at all odd hours, and spent the

days sleeping on my desk, between two monitors. Awake and asleep, he has been a

constant companion. And lastly, it is Misha to whom I owe the greatest gratitude, in life

and academia, and for reminding me of the things that truly matter; including the force of

the argument.

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Abstract

This dissertation turns to UNESCO’s world heritage regime to analyze the possibilities of global governance in a pluralizing world order. By pluralizing world order, I mean the contemporary global political context in which a greater number of actors take part in the making and the remaking of the order, based on a range of substantive visions and demand recognition for these visions. The dissertation thus pivots from the current global political moment, when the foundational principles of the liberal international order are under increased stress, but a coherent push for a new order, on a different ideational basis, has not yet emerged. International institutions and governance regimes negotiate this fractious political terrain with founding values, actors and mechanisms that might prove inadequate. Within this broader context, culture has emerged as an axis of plurality and demand-making. Established in 1972, UNESCO’s world heritage regime, has attempted to globally govern cultural heritage, based on a conception of culture as universalizable, through a universal value as adjudicated by international experts, and towards a convergent heritage of humanity. Thus, the challenges it has faced to these foundations since the mid-1990s, the resulting and the ongoing renegotiation of the regime provide a critical vantage point onto the question of governance amidst substantive plurality. Towards this analysis, the dissertation puts forth a theoretical framework that foregrounds the substantive and recursive relation between the world order and global governance. The latter puts the former to work, reproduces its hierarchies but also provides avenues for inclusion and the renegotiation of such hierarchy. In a context of plurality, this link becomes negotiated through contentious participation, whereby actors engage in piecemeal renegotiations of the ideational-institutional contours of existing regimes and institutions. I trace the emergence and early implementation of the regime in a permissive political context and ideational hegemony (Chapter 2). This stands in contrast to the contestation and renegotiation of the regime’s universalist conception of culture starting with the mid-1990s, and connected to the changing global politics of culture (Chapter 3). Next, I analyze the challenges to the authority of international experts to argue that this plurality also entails a renegotiation of the actors and relations of authority within the regime, with implications for how the regime can act in and on the world (Chapter 4). What emerges from these analyses are not only the challenges of plurality, but also alternative repertoires of cooperation that better correspond to this changing terrain. Lastly, I focus on a recent trend of nominating contentious sites, which conflict with the world order’s historiography as making and maintaining peace and security and with the regime’s congruently progressive universalist historiography (Chapter 5). These nominations, I contend, are similarly grounded in the pluralizing world order, and the concomitant emergence of Other histories onto its stage. It is, I argue, not a putative universal, but an engagement with plurality that can allow for the renegotiation of these contested histories, and point the way to not the possibility but also the desirability of something like the world heritage regime.

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Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter I: Theoretical Framework: Order, Governance and Plurality ............................. 23

Chapter II: Genesis and Early Implementation of the World Heritage Regime: The

(Re)production of Hegemony ........................................................................................... 79

Chapter III: Waning Hegemony and Pluralizing Cultural Value .................................... 130

Chapter IV: Pluralizing Culture, Contested Expertise and Amalgam Authority ............ 177

Chapter V: Divisive Sites and World-Historical Renegotiations ................................... 217

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 259

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 270

Annexes ........................................................................................................................... 289

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Annexes

Annex I: Evolution of the OUV Criteria (1978 – 2016) ................................................. 289

Annex II: Properties Inscribed on the World Heritage List (1978 – 1993) .................... 295

Annex III: Inscriptions on the World Heritage List by Region and Year ....................... 305

Annex IV: List of Interviews and Meeting Attendance .................................................. 306

1

Introduction

The 42nd meeting of the World Heritage Committee was held in Manama, Bahrain

between 24 June-3 July 2018. These annual meetings take the implementing decisions of

UNESCO’s world heritage regime, founded in 1972, and which designates as shared

human heritage certain cultural and natural heritage sites that possess “Outstanding

Universal Value” (“OUV”). Such designation is expected to generate international

cooperation for the protection of these sites and to construct a convergent and peaceful

humanity through the shared identification with these sites of cultural-civilizational

production and human progress. Over the course of its implementation, the world

heritage regime has become UNESCO’s flagship program, and an increasingly prominent

and heated affair. The annual meetings are attended by not only the 21 members of the

rotating intergovernmental committee who take the final implementing decisions of the

regime, but it is observed by the majority of the 193 signatory states to the Convention.

Also present are civil servants from UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, acting as the

regime’s Secretariat, international experts that represent the three Advisory Bodies, and a

plethora of other observers – from well-known international non-governmental

organizations to citizen groups that crowd-fund to send members.

The heated nature of the meetings can be gleaned from a selective overview: in

1996, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial was inscribed as world heritage, with the U.S.

dissociating itself from the decision. In 2010, expert evaluations on whether nominated

sites possess universal value, and therefore qualify as world heritage, were overturned in

great numbers. As a result, a joint statement of concern was made a by a group of states

in 2011. The 2015 meeting witnessed negotiations between South Korea and Japan over

the history of forced labor implicated in the nomination Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial

Revolution, and the 2018 meeting included debates on expert evaluations – such as state

of conservation reports that stigmatize the African region – and a lengthy discussion on

sites attached to memories of recent conflicts. These heated discussions implicate the

grounds of the regime, based in a universal conception of cultural value that can be

scientific-technically adjudicated by international experts, and its vision that a shared

humanity can emerge from a progressive and productive history of civilizational-cultural

production, as narrated through these sites.

2

I was able to observe the World Heritage Committee meeting in 2018, and after

three years of combing over archival files, reports of the annual meetings between 1978-

2017, as well as interviewing civil servants and international experts. I had come to this

project with a critique of the regime’s cultural universalism, only to realize that long

before my academic-textual critique of it, the regime had started to be contested by its

participants. Such contestation, in turn, was put forth starting with the mid-1990s and its

changing global political context, and through alternative conceptions of cultural value

staked not only in universal, but also in local and contextual terms. These changing

patterns of engagement raise the challenges of a pluralizing world order, specifically in

the domain of global cultural politics, for the possibility of the world heritage regime’s

global governance of cultural value. This dissertation analyzes the consequences of this

plurality in relation to the grounding conception of the regime – that is, of cultural value

as universal and universalizable – and its reliance on international expertise, as well as

the world-historical negotiations that unfold through the regime in this context.

Try as we might to diligently think all aspects of our research, sometimes it is the

accidental observations that stay with us – an additional archival file pulled out just in

case, or in this case, a convention hotel booked at the intersection of a graduate

researcher budget and proximity to the meeting venue – the UNESCO World Village tent

set up in the gardens of Ritz Carlton, Manama. Each day of the committee meeting, I

took a circuitous shuttle route, which started at our hotel and made its winding way to the

Ritz Carlton, picking up state delegations and other observers in between. On this day, as

I sat in the shuttle, I watched delegation members come in and exchanged polite nods

with faces that had become familiar through shared elevator rides, and encounters in the

hotel cafeteria. Shortly into our trip, as I was looking out the window at what Manama

looks like beyond our well-catered glimpses into it, the passenger next to me leaned over

to point to a few buildings: “I have never seen an architectural style like that before.”

Glancing at the nametag, I noticed s/he was an expert-observer. I nodded, unable to carry

on the conversation and feeling like an impostor – what little I know of architectural and

art historical styles, I have learned through reading world heritage nominations and their

evaluations, and my interest is in the global politics of culture that unfold in and through

the regime. Undeterred, s/he picked up a conversation with the member of an East

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African delegate on the other side, recounting family’s trips to the delegate’s country s/he

took as a child. S/he shared that s/he recently went back, with the idea for a research

project on linguistic similarities along the East African coast. It was during this recent

trip that s/he saw the waters s/he swam in as a child populated with the many ships that

come in and out of a newly constructed port. The delegate paused, and said, “well, the

world has changed.”

This was my not first encounter with the phrase that has become ubiquitous

within the regime, often attached to the range of challenges to its exercise of authority

grounded in a universal conception of culture and international expertise, and ultimately,

to the suitability of its vision for contemporary global politics. I had already read the

phrase in meeting records, and listened to it in my interview with an expert, who used it

as the hinge for two key points: that something like the Convention Concerning the

Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (hereafter, “World Heritage

Convention”) could not be signed today due to insufficient consensus, and that – at the

same time – there is greater demand for cultural representation, which pushes against the

regime’s selective bases.1 This encounter stayed with me, then, not because I became

aware of the phrase, but because it was the first time I saw it “in action,” so to speak.

Rather than explaining or putting forth challenges to the regime, “in action,” it is an

articulation that seeks to make space for such change – whether it is between a “European

expert” and an “East African delegate/expert” on the shuttle bus to the meeting, or as it

would subsequently be expressed by the Angolan delegate during the committee meeting,

in front of a broader audience and live-streamed.2 In making this space, the phrase

indicates that it is no longer possible to produce knowledge on, govern, and order the

world in ways that once (seemingly) were.

Moving beyond the confines of the shuttle and the world heritage regime,

discussion of such change – an already changed world, a changing world, a world in flux

– are rife in the global political domain. At the time of writing this Introduction, and

concomitant with a G20 summit in Japan, the Russian president Vladimir Putin has

1 Interview with an international expert conducted on 2 May 2017. 2 42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 03 July 2018, recording available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/42com/records/?day=2018-07-03 (1:09:32’-1:11:00’), accessed on 3 July 2019.

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declared liberal values to be “obsolete,” pointing to Donald Trump’s election to the U.S.

presidency as evidence. He added that its purveyors can no longer dictate to societies

how to organize themselves. His remarks were speedily responded to by the President of

the European Council, Donald Tusk, that Europeans were ready to “firmly and

unequivocally defend and promote liberal democracy.”3 This exchange is testament to old

and new worries about what this changing world means for the future of its ordering: the

old worries of the rise of countries with “different” (non-Western and non-liberal)

cultural and political backgrounds combined with the new challenge of liberal

internationalism’s decline in its strongholds, with the election of Donald Trump and the

UK vote for exiting the EU. At the same time, it is a lot less clear what this end means.

Given its declaration at an international summit, we might assume that it is not a

withdrawal from all formal and informal institutional interdependencies that have been

constructed as part of the same liberal international order. Indeed, at the same summit the

Chinese President Xi Jinping accused the United States of undermining the global

economic order and its interdependencies. On the one hand, then, the world has changed

significantly, and in ways that produce resistance to its existing ordering and governance.

On the other hand, parts of that order continue to be articulated as practically and

normatively desirable – as what it means to be a good, responsible member of the

international community. We might add that in the case of Putin’s declaration, what is at

stake is not a simple obsolescence but an ideational-normative structure that continues to

structure and haunt the conduct of global politics.

These developments have been widely commented on by pundits and in think-

tank reports, especially in the so-called incumbent countries of the liberal-international

order. In the United States, leading think-tanks – such as the Rand Corporation, the

Brookings Institution, The Woodrow Wilson Center and the Council on Foreign

Relations – have published multiple reports on the future of the order, with a focus on

America’s role in it.4 While the reports attach different levels of gravity to the challenges

3 Boffey, Daniel. “Western leaders defend liberal values against Putin’s ‘obsolete’ claim,” The Guardian, 28 June 2019, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/28/western-leaders-defend-liberal-order-putin-obsolete-claim-donald-tusk, accessed on 3 July 2019. 4 See, for example, the Fall 2018 issue of the Wilson quarterly on “The Fate of the International Order,” with contributions from Joseph Nye, David Bosco and others, available at: https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/the-fate-of-the-international-order/, accessed on 3 July 2019.

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facing this order and diverge on how the United States should position itself in it, they

share patterns of agreement: 1) We are talking about an order that emerged ideationally

and institutionally after World War II. This is broadly defined as an open and rules-based

order, implemented through U.S. hegemony and/or multilateral institutions. 2) There are

important changes in this order. Until recently, the focus was on the “rise of the Rest” –

the becoming materially powerful of non-Western nations, especially China. This

diffusion of power beyond the liberal-democratic core of the order raised worries about

its future. Since 2016, this has been replaced by a preoccupation with the erosion of

support for the order in its core – manifested most clearly in the election of Donald

Trump to the U.S. presidency, as well as the U.K. referendum to leave the EU and the

rise of nationalist-populist movements in parts of Europe. 3) Lastly, two – at times

contradictory – recommendations are made. That the world order cannot be governed in

ways that it used to be, and that the post-WWII order is still better than the alternatives

and must be defended. The policy proposals are, therefore, and often simultaneously, to

open the order up and accommodate a greater diversity of actors, while also pushing for a

continued U.S. defense of the order and its liberal values.5

These contradictory recommendations emerge at the intersection of a few threads.

First and the easiest to diagnose is a normative commitment to liberal ideas –as universal

and as able to accommodate plural conceptions of the good life. Second is a belief in the

possibility of neutral – that is open and rules-based – institutions as the sinews of the

order that can hold together these plural conceptions. However, if we take one and two

together, it would seem that the plurality that is feasible is the pursuit of iterations of the

liberal good life. Third, as the reports assert normatively that the liberal international is

For the Rand Corporation’s “Building a Sustainable International Order” project and attendant publications see: https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/international-order.html. For the report of the Council on Foreign Relation’s 2019 “Council of Councils meeting,” with a focus on six themes, including “what should the future of world order look like, see: https://www.cfr.org/report/council-councils-eighth-annual-conference, accessed on 3 July 2019. For the 2016 workshop “Challenging Multilateralism and the Liberal Order” convened by the Council on Foreign Relations, which brought together the Brookings Institution, University of Toronto and Princeton University, see: https://www.cfr.org/report/challenging-multilateralism-and-liberal-order, accessed on 3 July 2019. 5 Conversely, but emerging from the same global political moment, think-tank reports in the U.K. and Europe have turned their attention to what the middle powers can and should do for the perseverance of this order. Paris, Roland. “Can Middle Powers Save the Liberal World Order,” Chatham House: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 18 June 2019, available at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/can-middle-powers-save-liberal-world-order, accessed on 3 July 2019.

6

the least bad option, they also note empirically that coherent and compelling alternatives

for a different ordering of world politics have not emerged. To the contrary, the rising

powers are incorporated – to varying degrees – into the world order, some of them are

liberal democracies whereas others (China and Russia) have either not ventured or been

able to put forth alternative visions. Further, China has demonstrated a mixed track

record of shoring up parts of the order, such as in the aftermath of the 2008 financial

crisis and its more recent willingness to contribute to global environmental governance.

The think-tank reports, at the interface of political analysis and policy recommendation,

would seem to suggest that the order is at once substantively undergirded and

institutionally neutral, in crisis and strong, needs to be pluralized and shored up.

How have International Relations (IR) scholars been making sense of the same

dynamics? In contradistinction to the discussions of the world order that take place in

other venues, scholars working within very different theoretical traditions note the key

insight that just like the order itself is not neutral, neither is talk of order (Bull 1977: 7-8,

Rosenau 1992: 10, Slaughter 2004: 27, Mattern 2005: 29, Hurrell 2007: 20, Acharya

2018: 8). 6 At the most obvious level, the order is not neutral because it embodies

normative elements (i.e. a liberal commitment to institutional interdependence or human

rights); something that realist theories of IR will contest. Some scholarship on the order,

therefore, is not neutral because it shares these normative commitments, and orients its

analysis, explicitly or implicitly, towards their further expansion, and deepening. Less

evidently, the definition of order as patterns of behavior– what some have called “order

as fact” (Hurrell 2007: 2, Acharya 2018: 7) – is also not devoid of normativity. As Bull

expressed early on, there is “value to the order at least in part because of the

predictability” it generates (1977: 7-8). Writing about the order’s repeating patterns and

warning of dangerous shifts to them, is therefore a normatively oriented endeavor, which

seeks to expand and deepen the possibility of such predictability. In both obvious and less

evident cases, the analytical push is in the assumed direction of global peace and (through

6 Hurrell provides a powerful articulation of this non-neutrality, including in the case of global governance scholarship as follows: “..the language of ‘international order’ or ‘global governance’ is never politically neutral. Indeed a capacity to produce and project proposals, conceptions, and theories of order is a central part of the practice of power. Unsurprisingly, in debates on world order, it is the voices of the most powerful that dominate the discussion, either talking about the world or taking their ideas to the world” (2007: 20).

7

it) prosperity. While a majority of the scholarship on world orders have been written from

these two normative perspectives, a third possibility is writing about the order with an

eye to its constitutive exclusions, hierarchies and violence(s) – the underbelly that

contributes to making convergence and predictability possible amidst contingency and

plurality (see for example: Jahn 2018, Parmar 2018).

I will analytically parse the scholarship on world order in the next chapter. Here,

my aim is to tease out the recently emerging “shared” orientations, within this

scholarship, in its analyses of the contemporary global political moment. As noted by

Beate Jahn, there is agreement, for the first time, between its academic observers that the

order is suffering from significant tensions (2018: 43). This agreement has opened up

new conversations and unexpected (if limited) cross-overs. To illustrate, the seminal

author of offensive realism, John Mearsheimer has written about the possibility of an

“ideological” – that is substantively defined –hegemonic order (2018: 12). At the same

time, Beate Jahn, whose critical scholarship has informed my understanding of the longer

history and constitutive contradictions of the liberal international order, has adopted the

terminology of bipolarity in describing the world-ordering practices of the Cold War

(2018: 55). At the same time, John Ikenberry, who previously predicted the perseverance

of the liberal international order on account of its low cost and high-payoff membership,

has postulated that the order is suffering from a lack of social purpose, suggesting a

return to the ideas of the New Deal and social progress (2018: 13, 16 and 22). Last but

not least, Ikenberry and his co-authors have described a recent special issue of their

curation as placing in conversation deep criticisms of the order, such as its elitist and

racialized character, alongside its defenses (Ikenberry et. al. 2018: 1-2).

I point to these recent contributions to the debate on the future of the world order

not to cast them as fundamental cross-paradigmatic shifts in IR theory. To the contrary,

Mearsheimer declares the substantive-hegemonic order as having been “bound to fail” in

a realist world, Ikenberry declares the liberal international to still have a fighting chance

and asks that its critics put forth feasible alternatives (Ikenberry 2018: 7-8, Ikenberry et.

al. 2018: 2), and Jahn returns to the fundamental contradictions of the liberal international

as the causes of its unmaking. Nevertheless, they demonstrate that the world has changed

in ways that were unpredictable, facilitating these new conversations. I suspect, for

8

Mearsheimer, such surprising developments include the extent to which substantive

agendas could (albeit foolishly) be pursued as part of order-making, for Ikenberry, as he

admits, it is the dissatisfaction with liberalism in its core (2018: 7-8), and for Jahn, it is

worrisome political mobilizations that are making “nationalism, racism, misogyny and

attacks on minorities respectable again” (2018: 47). I contend that, normatively and

theoretically, we need to stay with these unexpected developments longer and allow them

to take a greater toll on our existing theoretical conventions.

Let me now put together the conversation in the shuttle and these debates on the

future of the world order before parting ways with that anecdote. Put simply, the

conversation in the shuttle is intricately connected to changes on the stage of the world

order, and it should make us think about them more openly. Thinking schematically, a

key figure of change in the anecdote is the new port and increased maritime commercial

activity, pointing to economic development. Critically, this development interrupts a

particular imagination of the country, frozen in time and memory, and as the subject of

knowledge production. It is a change that is recognized by both parties, but understood

very differently. At stake, therefore, are not simply changes that allow more actors to

pursue their interests, where both change and interest are understood in material terms.

These are changes that challenge long-standing practices of representing and governing

the world, which increasingly encounter their former subjects as participants, who may or

may not have alternative ideational bases on which the world can be ordered and

governed, and who have divergent histories, experiences and understandings of its

existing institutions. It is also important to note that not all has changed, as attested to the

delegate staying in the same hotel with the graduate student and implicit in the ease with

which the expert’s childhood memory was shared as a loss that can be co-lamented.

This dissertation argues that the increased challenges to the world heritage

regime’s grounds in universal cultural value, its reliance on international experts and its

aim of fostering a peaceful and shared humanity around a civilizational history of cultural

production can best be understood through the changing global politics of culture, as

connected to the shifting meaning and role of culture in the world order. The changing

meaning of culture entails the valorization of plurality and particularity, as the sources of

cultural value. It is manifested in two parallel streams of global cultural politics:

9

multiculturalism and civilizational co-evality. Next, is the changing role of culture as an

axis of demand-making for equal recognition on the world stage. The end of the Cold

War and the resulting liberal optimism produced renewed efforts at political-cultural

governance, which has been met with increased resistance, expressed through claims to

cultural and civilizational co-evality. Along with the receding economic-ideological axis

of contestation, the pursuit of ordering through universalist projects of governance and

claims of recognition and co-evality made through plurality produced culture as a realm

of contentious plurality.

This global political context pushes against the original conceptions of the world

heritage regime, reflected in challenges to universal value as the governing grounds of

culture, the amendments to expert evaluations that adjudicate site nominations based on

this value, and the nomination of sites that bring the divisive and destructive rather than

reconciled and productive memories of humanity to the stage of the regime. At the same

time, however, the participants who are unhappy with the regime’s original conceptions

continue to take part in it, and the regime continues to be implemented amidst these

contestations, neither becoming defunct nor able to continue in its original form. This

contentious participation entails nothing less than the renegotiation of the regime, in and

through a context of plurality. It produces what I call new repertoires of cooperation,

which might better mediate the plural terrain at stake.

The implications of my argument are a few-fold. First, it places the current

challenges faced by the world heritage regime within broader discussion of a pluralizing

world order, and analyzes it as a question of the possibility of global governance in this

order. Second, in doing so, it casts the challenge of plurality as connected to past and

present governance in singular-universal terms. Third, it proposes that in this pluralizing

context actors continue to participate in existing institutions in ways that transform their

grounding terms. What is at stake, therefore, is not a disengagement from existing

institutions, nor their straightforward overturning. Rather, these are significant,

substantive changes to the terms on and towards which world political domains have

been governed. Fourth, such changes are the newly emerging repertoires that are

piecemeal, contradictory and hybrid, but that require analytical attentiveness and

openness. To say more about why we observe these dynamics, however, requires a brief

10

overview of my theoretical framework, which relies on particular conceptions of the

world order and global governance, as well as the relation between the two.

A Framework for Order, Governance and Plurality

My analysis of the challenges facing the world heritage regime, its consequent and

continued renegotiation emerges from a theoretical framework that focuses on the

relationship between the world order and global governance. I posit this as a recursive

relation. Regimes govern particular domains of global politics in line with the ideational

precepts of the world order. On the one hand, this produces and reproduces the order “on

the ground,” with attendant hierarchies and exclusions. On the other hand, governance

regimes provide possibilities for inclusion and recognition within the order. Both the

world order and global governance are “social” – constituted by shared meaning. For the

world order, these include ideas about the pursuit of peace and prosperity, as well as the

kind and units of authority in global politics that are recognized as legitimate. For global

governance, they entail substantive conceptions of the object that is to be governed – “the

environment” or “cultural heritage” – and a social good towards which such governance

is implemented. This implementation involves molding actors and fostering desired

behavior. In turn, by becoming “proper” subjects through such governance domains,

states can establish themselves as responsible order-making actors – such as the positive

reception of China’s declaration of continued commitment to the Paris accords.

Such a virtuous cycle, however, requires both a degree of ideational hegemony

and it demands the transformation of those who might hold different meanings, values or

conceptions. Consequently, the absence of ideational hegemony interrupts this cycle.

There is, of course, the possibility that one hegemonic conception will be replaced by

another – a liberal understanding of the economy with a Marxist one as the grounds of its

global governance, for example. However, as contemporary global politics shows us, this

is not the only possibility, and ideational grounds of the order can come under stress, and

pluralize, without the emergence of a consolidated alternative. At this juncture, the

relationship I posited between order and governance becomes critical. First, the originally

conceived grounds and aims of governance will be challenged by this plurality. Second,

there will not be a new hegemony on the basis of which fundamental and coherent

institutional re-building can take place. Third, insofar as global governance contributes to

11

order-making, and provides arenas for inclusion and standing within that order,

contentiously participating in them will offer opportunities for substantive transformation

for the order.

How does my framework relate to existing approaches to order and governance?

Existing literature has focused on either global governance or world order, and by

foregrounding the connection between the two, I point to a particular transformative

dynamics that can emerge and become significant in a time of global political contention

and plurality. In doing so, I depart most significantly from asocial approaches, which

conceive of the international system as a distribution of material power and national

interest (realism and neoliberal institutionalism). There is, of course, much wisdom to

pointing to the relation between great powers and the international institutions’

distribution of privileges and benefits, with their inner sanctums such as the UN Security

Council or the neoliberal turn in the International Monetary Fund. But a focus on the

distribution of material capability cannot capture the substantive renegotiations of the

order and its governance, and importantly, the uneven manifestation of such renegotiation

across domains. There is a vast field of global politics that is not captured by expectations

of a great power conflict and competition, or by institutional re-adjustments of joint

gains. Social approaches, such as the English school and constructivism conceive of the

world order and global governance as ideationally grounded. However, they focus on the

virtuous – or the hegemonically reproductive – circle I invoked above. The question of

plurality and its encounter with existing structures of governance, grounded in hegemonic

ideas, is under-explored. There are exceptions, of course, and increasingly so. 7 By

theoretically foregrounding the order-governance relationship in a context of plurality

and empirically analyzing how it unfolds and with what consequence, I position my

research in close conversation with – and as contributing to – these emerging exceptions.

Having put forth an abridged iteration of my theoretical framework, let me lay out

its normative stakes. If the world is changing, it is doing so in ways that are predictable

and unpredictable, new and old, and that go against the grain of a range of IR theoretical

7 For the world order scholarship, this includes recent contributions that foreground the plural terrain on which orders are foisted, and ask how they can better respond to such plurality (Hurrell 2007, Reus-Smit 2017 and 2018). In global governance scholarship, object-oriented approaches have posited shared meaning as emerging out of processes of authority contestation and negotiation, and as opened up to further negotiation based on political and epistemic shifts (Sending 2015, Allan 2017b).

12

wisdoms. Among these dynamics, the pluralization of the order, in which a greater

number of actors take part in the making and the remaking of the order, based on a range

of substantive visions and demand recognition for these visions, is key. And to make

sense of it, we need to stay with its contradictions and challenges. The first normative call

that this work makes is to stay longer with the recognition that the world is changing in

unexpected ways. Keeping these spaces of reflection open requires a suspension of the

terms of failure or success – of the liberal international or the order by another name –

and attending, instead, to the contours of these negotiations and what they produce. My

contention is that global governance provides a better focus than performances of

statehood on the global stage through declarations of leaders. It acts as the sinews that

make the order hold, and thus it is still deeply connected to it, but at a step’s remove from

its most performative stage. Here, a greater plurality of actors negotiate the past and

future of the order in, through and against its existing ideational-institutional frameworks.

As such, my call is not to suspend normative judgment in relation to these contestations

and their outcomes, but to cast these against this historical-political background.

Why UNESCO and World Heritage?

Even if plurality is a concern about the order and its governance, can UNESCO’s world

heritage regime say anything meaningful about it, with implications beyond the regime’s

remit? It is usually the economic institutions and regimes of the liberal international that

scholars turn to as a pulse check of its continued vitality. Conversely, a recent

contribution by Duncombe and Dunne (2018) focuses on humanitarianism as a domain

from which to think about the strength of the liberal international, as a manifestation of

the international community’s commitment to the welfare of distant others. The argue

that while humanitarianism might not be an object of consensus in the UN Security

Council, in a clear moment of need such as the Syrian war, it is picked up and carried

forth by other actors within the international community, such as the Médecin Sans

Frontières (MSF). My concern is less with the argument they put forth and more with the

decision to turn to humanitarianism, understood as an integral part of the universalizing

aspirations of the liberal international order, as a place from which to gauge its duress.

13

The focus on world heritage regime foregrounds culture8 in relation to the world

order. While the most recent worries about the order’s future have centered on challenges

to it from the “inside” (Western liberal democracies), longer standing anxiety has been

attached to the diffusion of material power beyond this core, and the emergence of actors

with different political-cultural backgrounds onto the scene of world order-making. These

worries point to the ways in which (perceptions of) shared culture provide the connective

tissue of the order and its institutions, and posit cultural plurality as a challenge to shared

value and cooperation. The essentialist and deterministic articulation of these worries in

the aftermath of the Cold War are encapsulated in the so-called clash of civilizations

thesis. Huntington’s provocation was picked up by scholars who objected to this

essentialist and essentially conflictual casting of culture and cultural difference, while

also making the case for thinking meaningfully about culture in IR (Lapid and

Kratochwil 1995, Katzenstein 1996, Weldes et. al. 1996). More recent scholarship has

added to this dual objection the key insight that while culture may have been largely

missing from IR scholarship, many of its theoretical paradigms – including realism – has

relied on implicit culturalist bases (Reus-Smit 2018: 50-187).

I turn to culture as a domain of plurality, which asserts itself on the stage of the

world order, to raise the question of what possibilities of global governance are

foreclosed and which ones remain. At that level, I take the worries about cultural

plurality, order and governance at their word. However, I make two important

distinctions. First, I do not understand the questions of plurality as uniquely attributable

to culture. Rather, as I elaborate in detail in the next chapter, I approach the establishment

of global governance domains as the constitution of particular objects as governable, by

delineating them through hegemonic conceptions, which become further reproduced

through the workings of the regimes. There may indeed be a great number of cultural

identifications and values, however, other domains of governance – such as the

environment, the economy, or humanitarianism – can also be (and have been) multiply

understood. Thus, the analysis of the challenges to and future possibilities of the world

8 I only focus on cultural heritage, and exclude the regime’s governance of natural heritage from the scope of my analysis. However, natural heritage, despite its reliance on similar notions of universal value and international expert authority has come under less challenge, suggesting that not all is in equal flux across and even within domains of governance, lending credence to the claim that we need to think substantively about these shifts.

14

heritage regime is nested within the broader question of possibilities of global governance

within a pluralizing world order. At the same time, it explores this question through a key

domain of plurality within the order. Second, while I adopt a provisional definition of

culture in the next chapter, as a field of representation in which identities and power are

negotiated (Salter 2002: 13), my engagement is less with getting this definition right. I

am, rather, interested in how culture becomes an axis of global political negotiations, at

the intersection of past and present practices of ordering and governing it, and the

hierarchies and resistance produced by such practices.

If the world heritage regime provides an important lens onto a domain of fractious

plurality in the world order, UNESCO brings into view the long-standing universalist

aspirations of this order, and what such aspirations necessitate by way of productive

governing. The UN Educational, Science and Cultural Organization was established in

1945, shortly after the San Francisco conference that brought the United Nations into

being. The organization’s vision has been articulated as “building peace in the minds of

men and women,” which entailed nothing less than building the social fabric of a

common and peaceful humanity through culture, science and education as sources of

convergence. Such aspirational pursuit would be undertaken in ways that broadly

corresponded to the ideational-institutional infrastructure of liberal international order’s

other governance regimes. The institution would be staffed by international civil servants,

at the helm of its bureaucracy. Its members states would benefit from, contribute to and

be shaped by the organization’s scientific, educational and cultural pursuit. The

conceptualization and implementation of its projects would involve cadres of

international experts. Ideationally, the institution was grounded in the universalism of

liberal-modernity and its belief in progress and convergence. This is especially evident in

the domains of science and education. In the realm of culture, there is a similar

conviction in the possibility of convergence, grounded in and building towards a

humanity with a shared cultural-civilizational history. It is an emphasis that is also born

out of the destructive nationalisms of Europe that played out in World Wars I and II, to

which liberal universalism was seen as a viable and necessary antidote. Thus, like other

domains of post-WWII governance, UNESCO set out to pursue its aspirational grounds

through putatively apolitical, scientific-technical means, further bolstering claims to

15

universality. The world heritage regime came into being through UNESCO’s efforts in

1972, grounded in similar cultural-historical precepts, and an analogous institutional

structure.

Two key reasons for approaching the world order and its governance through

UNESCO’s world heritage regime are, therefore, the entry it allows into an important

domain of plurality, and the ways in which it brings into sharp relief the substantive-

aspirational grounds of order-making. There are three additional reasons why the regime

can provide good analytical traction into the question at hand. The first is its longevity,

which precedes the revamped efforts of post-Cold War political-cultural governance. In

fact, the regime was founded in 1972 in a context of widespread optimism, after the

UNESCO-led international salvage campaign for the Nubian temples in Egypt and

Sudan. The campaign, seemingly pointed to the possibility for cultural cooperation across

the economic-ideological divides of the time. This world political context was not only

permissive for the emergence of the regime, but also witnessed its non-controversial

implementation until the mid-1990s. This longevity, and the changing nature of the

question of plurality directs us away from essentialist approaches to cultural difference,

and towards historical-political analyses. Second and third, the world heritage convention

is almost universally endorsed and it has a one-state one-vote structure. It is signed by

193 states. The regime, therefore, brings together a broad array of states, and does not

structure their participation in relation to their level of wealth or geopolitical import.

There are, of course, deep inequalities between the states themselves, reflected in their

ability to prepare technically complex site nomination dossiers, keep permanent

UNESCO delegations in Paris, and send observers to the annual convention. However,

such inequalities are not institutionally reproduced by mechanisms such as weighted

voting. This wide membership and formal voting equality, in turn, allows for the

emergence of plurality in fuller force, and the analytical opportunity to observe its

unfolding and consequences.

Research Method and Dissertation Outline

My aim in this dissertation is to make an empirically-grounded theoretical contribution to

the conversations on the future of the world order and the possibility of its governance.

Some of the normative stakes of this contribution have been spelled out above and the

16

next chapter develops the theoretical framework in further detail. Here, I turn to the

empirical material on which my analysis is based, and how I approach this material.

First, and as it will have become clear by now, this dissertation focuses on a

single governance regime. I have given substantive reasons for why I focus on the world

heritage regime, but not on why I focus only on this regime. In positing that the recursive

relation between the world order and global governance allows us to make sense of

contentious participation in the latter to transform the former, I also make the wager that

such contestation and negotiation produce new repertoires of cooperation that do not fit

neatly within our existing frameworks. To explore these repertoires, I have pursued an

inductive research, which has required in-depth engagement with the material, and

sometimes more than once. I have approached this material not only with assumptions of

what I might expect, but also with the open-ended question of what such repertoires

might be. This in-depth research would not have been possible to undertake in multiple

domains within the confines of a dissertation. Consequently, I do not generalize from or

further categorize the repertoires I identify. I do, however, point to the broader

implications of contentious participation, as it is grounded in my theoretical framework,

and speaks to the question of the possibility of global governance in the context of a

pluralizing world order.9

As a good international bureaucracy, the world heritage regime has left and

continues to leave in its trail a mountain of paperwork. The annual world heritage

committee meetings are a main source of this paper-mountain, with the plethora of

background documents that feed into them, such as the state of conservation reports for

already inscribed world heritage sites, the evaluation of new site nominations, along with

the yearly activity reports of the Secretariat and the Advisory Bodies, progress reports on

strategic goals and thematic policy initiatives, draft decisions prepared for adoption, and

the budget report. The conclusion of each meeting only contributes to this pile: the

amended and adopted decisions, the public nomination files of inscribed sites, and a

summary record that can range anywhere from a few-hundred to almost a thousand

9 There is further theoretical and empirical support for the kind of dynamics I analyze. These include Hurrell’s positing of prudential and practice-based languages of cooperation that emerge out of global governance, or Acharya’s examples of the renegotiation of international security in and through the divergent perspectives of the Global South (Hurrell 2007: 314-318, Acharya 2018: 128-155).

17

pages. Add to this the biennial meetings of the General Assembly of states party to the

Convention, to which a lesser but still considerable range of documents are submitted.

The General Assembly undertakes the intricate task of regional-quota based elections to

the rotating intergovernmental committee, discusses substantive issues it deems of

import, and produces its own decisions and summary record. At the same time, the

Advisory Bodies continue to produce training manuals, guidelines for the implementation

of the regime, compendiums of its implementation to date, thematic studies of heritage

typologies, and best practices of nomination and conservation, either at the request of the

states or on their own initiative.

The first question is how to parse this documentation. Here, I have proceeded in a

few ways. First, I have analyzed the annual and biennial meeting records between 1978-

2018 to construct the broad arc of areas of discussion and contention within the regime,

and to pinpoint to shifts in the actors’ engagement with the regime’s basic premises.

Second, as my focus is on plurality, I have selected the Global Study and the Global

Strategy as the regime’s two successive approaches to difference and inclusion. For both

policies, I have read the progress reports penned by the experts, and the reports of the

regional meetings that have been held within the scope of the Global Strategy as well as

revising the discussions of the policies’ held as part of the annual meetings. I have,

however, omitted the thematic studies conducted by the experts into new typologies of

heritage, as these fall further from my analytical focus. These additional documents have

allowed me to trace the different emphases and uptakes between the epistemic (expert

reports) and the political (the annual meeting records) understandings of plurality, the

tensions between the two, as well as the relation between the universal and the local as

manifested in regional meeting reports. Similarly, in analyzing the challenges to the

regime’s universal value, I turn to discussions beyond annual meetings: the 2005 Experts

meeting on Outstanding Universal Value, the 2011 External Auditor’s report and the

2012 High Level Panel Discussion on the Future of the Convention.

The second question is how to read the reports: what are they documents of and

what kind of documents are they? These questions are complicated by the shifting

reporting practices over time, including the dispensation in 2005 with the annual Bureau

meeting, and the initiation of the live-streaming of annual committee sessions since 2012.

18

Most importantly, however, the reporting has gotten more detailed over time, paralleling

committee meetings which have gotten lengthier. First, in relation to the earlier time,

when the reports are succinct, I supplement my analysis by the secondary literature,

which has conducted oral historical research with regime’s pioneers and which confirms

the impression that this is a time of less contentious implementation. We might, however,

suspect such recollection to involve a modicum of “good old days,” especially in

comparison to the current challenges to the regime. On the one hand, this would still

indicate that something has changed. On the other hand, I have also analyzed all available

ICOMOS evaluations10 of site nominations for this period, which consistently emphasize

an overlap between nominated sites and the regime’s conception of OUV, and note with

appreciation that states are right in choosing which sites to nominate and the

modifications they make in response to ICOMOS advice. Second, I note that the current

practice of drawing up meeting reports includes circulating the draft report to committee

members to ensure that their interventions are reflected satisfactorily. Thus, what makes

it to the summary record is not the priorities of the regime, or the editorial choices of the

rapporteur, but also the agreement of the states. In this sense, the reports are consensus

documents – including on the contours and substance of disagreements.

At the same time, I assume that states, represented by delegations of political

(ambassadors) and epistemic (expert) actors, have more leeway in expressing their

opinions and politics than civil servants and international experts, who are positioned as

the neutral, apolitical actors within the regime. The interventions of civil servants and

international experts affiliated with the Advisory Bodies consist, for the most part, in

expressing their professional commitments to the Convention, their recognition of the

implementing authority of the intergovernmental committee, and at their strongest

respectful disagreement with states on the evaluations of site nominations or state of

conservation reports on professional bases (experts) or reminding the states of the rules

and operational procedures of the regime (civil servants). I have, therefore, conducted

formal interviews and held informal conversations with civil servants and experts, to

further explore how they understand the regime’s challenges, their role in it, the positions

10 The International Council of Monuments and Sites is the Advisory Body responsible for the evaluation of nomination files and state of conservation reports of cultural heritage sites.

19

they take in relation to it, and their evaluation of the changes that emerge as a result. I

have conducted 14 interviews with experts and civil servants, between May 2016 and

March 2018 (See Annex IV). With one exception of a Skype interview, all the interviews

were in-person, open-ended, and on average, an hour in length. They focused on

Outstanding Universal Value, its understanding by various actors in the regime, and the

challenges to the regime, dubbed as politicization. These interviews have given me a

deeper understanding of how these actors interpret the regime’s aims, changes and

challenges beyond their reserved public articulations, and provided me with one of the

key cuts I make into the debates on politicization as different from politics (Chapter 4).

Most importantly, they have left me with a deep admiration of these actors’ keen

awareness of global politics, and their apt negotiation of it, despite their positional

constraints and inadequate institutional budgets. At the same time, I have become

increasingly intrigued by their ability to sustain faith in the grounding vision of the

regime: the possibility of a non-political identification and protection of cultural heritage,

which can mean, ultimately, that they are keenly aware of the politics of states, but less

so when it comes to epistemic politics.

These primary documents constitute the main bases of my analysis for Chapters

2-4. In addition, I supplement the analysis in Chapter 2, on the emergence and early

implementation of the world heritage regime, with the archival documents on the expert

meetings leading up to the adoption of the Convention. These documents reveal the

sentiment of optimism, alternative models proposed but not adopted, the objections and

interventions that were taken into account, and others that were marginalized. In Chapter

5, I adopt a case-study based approach, where I focus on recently nominated “divisive

sites,” associated with the memories of recent conflicts and challenging the regime’s

focus on a progressive and productive history of humankind. My analysis moves between

the nomination files, which include the nominating states’ narrative of the site’s history

and value, the evaluations of the Advisory Body, which adjudicate this value against the

parameters of the regime, and the discussions at the committee meeting, which point to

how the competing histories are taken up and evaluated by a broader community of

states.

20

My arguments are grounded in textual analysis: the changing expressions of

cultural value, tied up with transformed demands for inclusion within the regime and

substantive-procedural objections to the decisions of international experts. Mapping

multiple and changing discursive threads allows me to better capture the plurality that is

at stake than starting with actors – such as rising states, incumbent powers, or states vs.

experts – would allow. These are part of the dynamics at play, but not fully stable ways,

as incumbent states learn how to navigate a pluralizing field with a mix of frustration and

openness, rising powers put forth alternative terms while remaining oriented to and

haunted by terms of the previous hegemony. At the same time, there is a subset of experts

who think more politically about what it means to identify and conserve heritage, and a

subset of states that are consistently supportive of the regime’s original basis in expert-

knowledge. My focus is on the complex terrain on which these shifting and at times

inconsistent positions are put forth, and which is structured by competing understanding

of cultural value as the grounds on and aims towards which it can be authoritatively and

legitimately governed. I do not discount the possibility of strategic adoption of these

discourses, and I cast the regime’s renegotiation as a deeply political process. However,

what is at stake is the strategic adoption of these narratives, which are structured by and

which further shape the global politics of cultural recognition.

Lastly, while these are the formal bases of my analysis, over the course of the last

two years, I have also attended a world heritage committee meeting, and three meetings

of international experts, 11 and had informal conversations with experts and state

delegations on the sidelines of these meetings. Some of these make their way into the

dissertation, such as the anecdote I was privy to in the shuttle, but others cannot be

included here as they were held in confidence. The same is true for the moments when

the tape recorder was shut during my interviews. While these moments cannot become an

explicit part of my analysis, they have given me a deeper appreciation of the negotiations

11 These are the Culture in Crisis Conference held at Yale University in April 2016, the ICOMOS International Scientific Symposium on Post-Disaster Reconstruction held in Istanbul held in Istanbul in October 2016, and the ICOMOS International Scientific Conference on Place of Memory: Protection, Conservation, Interpretation, held in Florence in March 2017. While the first conference was not organized by ICOMOS, it was attended by members of the Advisory Body, as well as the then-Director of ICCROM, the Advisory Body that is responsible for the provision of training within the world heritage regime.

21

that unfold in and through this regime, and filled in the lines of the meeting documents. I

can only hope they have been adequately reflected in the writing of the dissertation.

Without further ado, then, this dissertation proceeds as follow. In Chapter 1, I

review the literature on world orders and global governance and put forth my theoretical

framework. I also evaluate two alternative explanations of the regime’s challenges, as put

forth by its participants: “victim of its own success” and “politicization.” I recognize the

merits of each, but recast these within my framework in part, and depart from them in

other parts. Lastly, in this chapter, I review multiculturalism and civilizational co-evality

as two threads of global cultural politics of plurality.

In Chapter 2, I analyze the founding and early implementation of the regime. I

argue that it emerged in a permissive global political context and hegemonically shared

conception of cultural value. The latter is demonstrated in the ICOMOS evaluations of

sites, and the decision of states to nominate sites that were legible within the parameters

of this value. However, this does not mean that the early implementation of the regime is

devoid of hierarchies, and questions of difference and inclusion. My argument, rather

focuses on how these questions are taken up by the Global Study, which aims at

providing a universal context of evaluation to accommodate these challenges. The

chapter concludes with an emerging thread of interventions by both experts and states,

pointing to changes to cultural value that had been taking place beyond the scope of the

regime.

Chapter 3 opens in the midst of these changes, and at the cusp of the transition

from the Global Study to Global Strategy, which expanded the regime’s conception of

cultural value amidst increasing criticisms of Eurocentrism. I argue that these changes are

both epistemic and political, but each bring to the regime different challenges. My

analysis shows that the emergence of a political demand for plurality and its encounter

with the regime’s universalist grounds results in an inductive-emergent approach to

“universal value.” Chapter 4 focuses on the challenges to the authority in and of the

regime. I begin with the delineation of politics and politicization put forth by my

interviewees, and argue that the changing conception of culture undergirds authority

contestations within the regime, as manifested in challenges to the expert evaluations

through claims to cultural plurality, and challenges to the authority of the regime via

22

representativity as an alternative basis of governance. I similarly conclude with emerging

alternatives, such as greater dialogue between experts and states and an iterative

evaluation process.

Chapter 5 switches gears to focus on a more contentious plurality – between

competing narratives of history and value around sites. Specifically, it attends to a subset

of recent nominations that have challenged the histories of a peaceful and progressive

world order by pointing to its conflictual underbelly. These are the sites of the Hiroshima

Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome, the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site, and the pending

nominations of African Liberation Heritage Sites. I argue that the emergence of these

sites as nominations for world heritage can best be understood through the waning

historical hegemony of the world order and the emergence of alternative histories of that

order. These histories recast not only the order’s past but also its present and possible

futures. Next, I show through the negotiations around Japan’s nomination of the Meiji

Industrial Revolution Site and the South Korean demands for the recognition of the use of

Korean forced labor, that universal conceptions of history, which are directly or indirectly

reproductive of its hegemonic narrations, cannot provide an adequate solution to fractious

narratives.

In each chapter, then, it becomes clear that both the original grounds of the regime

in a putatively universal value and its current renegotiation are political, in their grounds

and consequences. At a world political time in which culture has become an axis of

salient plurality, these original conceptions have become differently inadequate grounds

of governance. However, plurality is also not a guarantee of an inclusive approach to

culture, as a power and difference-laden field of representation. Having noted some of the

possibilities and limits of emergent repertoires of value and authority, I conclude with an

analysis of not only the practical possibility but also the political and normative

legitimacy and desirability of something like the global governance of culture.

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Chapter I: Theoretical Framework: Order, Governance and Plurality

The world clearly constitutes a single system, i.e., a coherent whole, but the knowledge of this system presupposes a knowledge of all nature and history, which man will never attain. Hence he who makes systems must fill in the countless gaps with figments of his own imagination, i.e. engage in irrational fancies, ideologise. – Friedrich Engels 1. Introduction

The introduction set a two-fold starting point for this dissertation. The first of these are

the worries about the future of the world order. Within these worries, I pointed to a long-

standing thread about the diffusion of material capabilities to countries with divergent

cultural, historical and political backgrounds. Second, taking this cultural anxiety at its

word – that the domain of the world order is becoming culturally more plural place – I

turned to UNESCO’s world heritage regime as a long-standing attempt at the global

governance of culture. The brief snapshots of the regime’s recent implementation pointed

to ongoing contestation of its grounding in a universalist conception of culture, the

evaluation of this value by experts, and lastly, of its aspiration to foster a shared humanity

through a historical-cultural list of its great accomplishments across time and place.

Bringing the two starting points together, I put forth my argument: the increased

contestation of the world heritage regime arises from the changing understanding and role

of culture in the realm of the world order. This changing understanding, I suggested

presents challenges to the original singular-universal grounds of the regime. At the same

time, I posited that these challenges as a dynamics of contentious participation: a

renegotiation that unfolds at the in relation to the plurality of terms on the world stage.

This renegotiation is productive of new understandings of the object of governance, as

well as new forms of value, actors and relations of authority, and ultimately, possibilities

of governance. By possibilities, I do not only mean what global governance can do but

more fundamentally, what it can mean in this context of plurality.

The tasks of this chapter are a few-fold. First, to review the literature on world

order and global governance, in relation to their approach (if any) to plurality. Second, I

present my theoretical framework, which posits a recursive relation between the order

and its governance: governance regimes put the ideational grounds of the order to work,

thus making and remaking the order. Importantly, they provide avenues for inclusion

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within the order. Consequently, contentious participation makes sense as a form of

change and renegotiation amidst plurality. Third, I turn to culture, and two key

manifestations of its changing role and understanding within the world order:

multiculturalism and civilizational co-evality. Fourth, I evaluate two alternative

arguments presented by participants of the regime, and by scholarship produced in other

fields: that the regime is a victim of its own success and that it is becoming politicized. In

engaging with these arguments, I show how my framework recasts and makes different

sense of them. I conclude with a few caveats and limits of this theoretical framework.

2. Order, Governance and Plurality: Existing Approaches

In this section, I review existing IR theoretical approaches to world order and global

governance, attending to the links (if any) they posit between the two. Second, I ask if

and how these approaches take into account questions of plurality. This is a broad swath

of literature, and it requires analytical cuts to become manageable. I limit my review to

key theoretical contributions, by which I mean scholarship that puts forth particular

understandings of the world order and/or global governance, rather than work that is

primarily empirical explorations. Such divides, of course, are not absolute. The

theoretical works that have been formative of my approach to world order and global

governance such as Reus-Smit (1999), Barnett and Finnemore (2004), Sending (2015)

and Allan (2017a) are also richly empirical. However, the stakes are theoretical. Put

another way, they are not works that apply well-established paradigms (such as neoliberal

institutionalism) to a particular empirical puzzle, and in the process fine-tune the causal

dynamics of the paradigm. Second, I group this literature as “social” and “asocial.” By

this, I mean whether the order and its governance are understood as ideationally

grounded. I include realism and neoliberal institutionalism under asocial approaches, and

group the English school, constructivism, and object-oriented approaches as social.

2.1. Asocial Approaches: Power, Interests and Some Recent Caveats

The dominant realist account of the international system is that of structural realism

(Waltz 1979, Mearsheimer 2002). In this account, the international system is structured

by anarchy, which is the lack of an overarching authority, and populated by self-

interested states, who pursue their survival based on their material capabilities. Barring

theoretical disagreements on how much power is adequate or desirable to pursue, realists

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share these key tenets of anarchy, self-interest and material power. The character of the

international system and its possibility of peace and stability depend on the number of

great powers within it. The behavior of states, and their relation to one another, are

schematically defined through a repertoire of security-related behavior: balancing,

bandwagoning, buck-passing etc. The plurality that is of concern for this staunchly

asocial understanding of the international system is material power and its distribution. In

turn, the realist attention to international institutions is scant and, importantly, consistent

with its understanding of international politics. In this scheme, international institutions

are defined as demonstrative of great power interests (Krasner 1982: 191, Mearsheimer

1994): they exist insofar as they serve the interests of great powers and they do not have

independent effects of state behavior.

An important partial caveat to this asocial conception has recently been provided

by Mearsheimer’s “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order”

(2019). Mearsheimer begins by noting that “because states in the modern world are

deeply interconnected in a variety of ways, orders are essential for facilitating efficient

and timely interactions” and defines order as “an organized group of international

institutions that help govern the interactions among the member states” (2019: 7 and 9).

This conception already goes further than an international system where states are placed

in perennial power and security competitions with one another. Further, it brings in a

historical understanding of interdependence. At the same time, Mearsheimer allows for

the possibility of ideological orders, which can emerge in unipolarity. In other words,

distributions of power that are bipolar or multipolar are beholden to realist dynamics of

power competition, whereas unipolarity allows an escape from such dynamics and the

establishment of an order on substantive-ideational grounds. It is, of course, the hegemon

that can pursue such an order.12 Consequently, Mearsheimer analyzes the world order that

emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War as a liberal international order.

12 Mearsheimer’s acknowledgment of ideological order as possible under unipolarity is undergirded by a sleight of hand, based on an analytical distinction between international and bounded orders (2019: 11-12). International orders must have all great powers in the system as part of the order. Otherwise, they are bounded orders. In this conception, the international order of Council of Europe and the Cold War order would qualify as bounded orders. However, this does not take into account the ideational, institutional and material power that this order exercised by such orders beyond their membership domain.

26

These caveats are not unimportant. However, exist alongside a trenchant realist

approach. It is, ultimately, the distribution of power that is the condition of possibility for

orders, including the rare event of an ideological order. Such ideological orders,

including but not limited to the liberal international, are bound to fail because of their

invasive universalism, which runs up against the strong thread of nationalism.

Mearsheimer’s intervention and his advocacy for an agnostic unilateral order as a more

stable option, therefore, might be better understood as a return to realism’s pre-

behavioralist, explicit emphasis on prudence as the principle orientation in the conduct of

global politics. Lastly, while institutions seem to play a greater role as the “building

blocks of orders,” Mearsheimer is careful to emphasize that they are devised by great

powers, followed only out of interest, and violated when they are no longer in accordance

with “vital interests of dominant powers” (2019: 10).

Given the dominance of realist theories of IR during the Cold War and the

shadow they have continued to cast over the field, scholarship across the social-asocial

divide have taken its presuppositions and limits to task. As I review below, neoliberal

institutionalism took on itself the task of demonstrating that even if one accepts realist

postulates about the international system, the possibility of international cooperation

exists, and it can tame some of the excess of power politics. Stronger critiques of realism

have been put forth by social theories. Most recently and in the domain of world order,

scholars have pointed to the unevenness of contestation across policy domains (Buzan

and Lawson 2015), and unexpected cooperation from China in the aftermath of the 2008

financial crisis (Goh 2019), indicating the limits of great power competition in explaining

global political negotiations and the importance of shared ideas – or lack thereof – in

generating domain-based convergence in a time of power plurality. Others have

foregrounded the key role that the order and its institutions play in distributing

international recognition (Reus-Smit 2018). At the same time, a plethora of scholarship

has pointed to an expanding and deepening web of global governance regimes and

institutions, which exercise significant productive power over member states (Barnett and

Finnemore 2004, Hurrell 2007, Avant et. al. 2010, Neumann and Sending 2010, Zürn

2018). While the realist retort might be that such power is exercised over the weaker

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states, this thick institutional web nevertheless structures political action at the global

level, including the contestation of the existing order.13

Neoliberal institutionalism starts from similar assumptions: the international

system is anarchical and states, as the main actors in it, pursue their interests within this

system. However, they insert into this framework institutions and regimes as “intervening

variables” (Krasner 1982: 191, Keohane 1984: 64). Regimes intervene between the

causal dynamics of international politics and the outcome of state behavior by changing

the context in which states act, and thereby creating new opportunities for cooperation. In

the seminal articulation of this approach, Keohane begins by acknowledging that

“regimes are rarely, if ever, instituted by disinterested idealists for the sake of the

common good.” (1984: 22) Rather, they are constructed principally by states to further

their interests. However, Keohane distinguishes his argument from realism, by positing

that international institutions and practices can effect state behavior, by making

cooperation possible, primarily through the reduction of transaction costs and the

provision of information, which reduces the mistrust raised by the possibility of being

suckered by another state (Ibid.: 22-26). Others have located the ability of institutions to

foster cooperation, which would not be possible in their absence, in their provision of a

neutral space, shared information, venues for intergovernmental negotiation, locking in

commitments through treaty provision and imposing sanctions for defection (Krasner

1982, Keohane 1984, Keohane and Martin 1995, Abbott and Snidal 1998, Martin and

Simmons 1998, Buchanan and Keohane 2006: 408, Abbott et. al. 2015: 3). 14

Furthermore, and in contrast to realist theories, these scholars have posited that, in the

absence of hegemonic support, other actors with vested interests in the regimes will

13 Hurrell argues that these proliferating structures of governance may well be interest-driven in part, but “cannot be reduced to the provision of international public goods or the resolution of well-understood collective action problems” (2007: 10 and 288). The interests at stake are closely connected to the solidarist conceptions of international society. 14 Abbott and Snidal define international organizations as producers of norms and shapers of international discourse. However, they qualify this role with the assertion that the norms at stake are predominantly technical. The authors also note as the “more controversial roles” of IOs that of acting as community representatives for a set of ideas that extend beyond neutrality to areas such as human rights, democracy and liberal economic relations. The recognition of this more expansive role is rounded out by noting that the process through which IOs affect values and interests is initiated and shaped by states. (1998: 11, 22-25).

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contribute to their sustenance, and that they might even create stronger regimes in the

process (Krasner 1982: 197-199).

I categorize this literature as asocial for a few reasons. The first is the conception

of interest as discrete, already formed and attached to states. What the institutions and

regimes coordinate, albeit in hierarchical ways, is state interest, understood as such.

Second is the conviction in and the emphasis on the procedural elements that can provide

the best neutral ground for cooperation. In other words, it is marked by a– theoretical and

I will contend normative – belief in the possibility of certain institutional forms and

procedures to be neutral, rather than sedimented cultural practices. This is combined with

a thin, rather than thick and intersubjectively informed, concept of states’ aims (Reus-

Smit 1999: 160 and 2018: 7).

At the same time, the social enters into this conception in ways that are not the

case for realism. Keohane’s scope condition is that regimes foster cooperation among

common interests, and he excludes the production of such interest from his remit of

analysis (1984: 14). This suggests, however, that interest is produced rather than naturally

existing, and that it varies. Such variance is significant, because it opens two possibilities.

Take economic cooperation, which is Keohane’s focus. Here, common interests can

mean international cooperation towards national economic prosperity. Different interests

could then entail a lack of desire for economic prosperity or divergent understandings of

the best path towards it (i.e. how to get from here to there). Assuming that it is the latter,

the global political domain becomes populated not by states that have predetermined and

predictable stocks of interest, but rather by states that have substantively different

conceptions of how to pursue a seemingly shared interest. Keohane also notes that

regardless of their legitimation as serving the common good, regimes and institutions

serve the interests of powerful states (Ibid.: 22). This opens a second social door: if

global politics runs on distribution of material power and state interest, why is there need

for such legitimation?

These social threads are either bracketed out or remain implicit, and in either case,

unexplored in the earlier scholarship. However, like Mearsheimer’s recent work, scholars

writing in this tradition have steered their interventions more towards the ideational

grounds of global politics. Keohane focused his 2000 American Political Science

29

Association presidential address on “how to design institutions for a polity of

unprecedented size and diversity” (2001: 1, see also Keohane 2012), Buchanan and

Keohane (2006) have set out to develop standards of legitimacy appropriate for

international institutions of global scale, and Abbott et. al. note substantive divergence

between IOs and member states as among the reasons why IOs use third parties to

orchestrate policy implementation (2018: 23). In these cases, the plurality or divergence

at stake is not one of interests, but rather multiple conceptions of what constitutes

legitimate pursuit of global policy and politics, grounded in a plurality of cultures, values,

and ideas.

If such plurality pushes against the conception of regimes and institutions as

neutral spaces where thinly conceived interests are pursued, how do the authors engage

with this tension? Abbott et. al.’s focus is on the causes and implementation of

orchestration, and the substantive divergence between the institutions and their state-

participants does not receive additional analytical attention. Keohane turns to realist

prudence, stating that given such plurality, the majority of governance should take place

at local and national levels. He adds that global governance should be attentive to the

multiplicity of values. At the same time, however, this is a prudence that does not give up

on the liberal belief in progress through institutions. Thus, Keohane calls upon political

scientists to pay greater attention to values and beliefs and to generate expectations of

how others might behave (2001: 9). Keohane’s more recent intervention pushes further in

the realist direction, contending that changing global conditions require a scaling back of

the liberal moral and legal zeal exercised in and through international institutions, as

these might prove counterproductive (2012: 134-136). At the same time, given their

persistent belief in neutral institutions and institutional progress, both Keohane (2001)

and Keohane and Buchanan (2006), ground the legitimacy and the future of international

organizations in rational persuasion and control by democratic states. Put differently, the

engagement with plurality is grounded in and pushes towards instrumentalist and neutral

conceptions of institutions and regimes as ultimately engaged with the provision of joint

gains.

In parts, my analysis overlaps with the recent interventions by Keohane and

Mearsheimer. The contestation of the world heritage regime emerges at the encounter of

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plurality in global politics with a governance regime constituted on singular-universal

grounds. However, unlike Mearsheimer, I do not think of the post-Cold War ideological

order as a blip in a long history of otherwise realist, power-competition determined

orders. Unlike Keohane, I contend that these spaces have been, and have been perceived

as, substantively grounded and oriented by at least some of their participants. Thus, while

the retreats Keohane calls for might ease some of the tensions, it cannot be a solution to

the challenge of plurality. But if we agree that there is a significant tension between the

plurality of the world and the universal pursuits of global governance, and yet contend

that neutrality is not the way out of this dilemma, then what might be? I turn next to

social approaches to global governance, to ask whether they provide a better engagement

with plurality.

2.2. Social Approaches: Intersubjective Meaning and Change

I position the approaches I review in this section broadly as “cognate,” while departing

from them to different degrees. I mark these departures as I proceed through the section.

Like realism and neoliberal institutionalism, the approaches grouped here have important

overlaps and divergences. The English school is historically oriented in its approach to

the social substance of the order (Bull 1977, Bull and Watson 1984, Buzan and Lawson

2015, Goh 2019), whereas constructivism proceeds by snapshots of intersubjectively

shared meaning (Wendt 1999, Allan et. al. 2018), with others (Reus-Smit 1999) bridging

this gap. Furthermore, the English school posits a unidirectional order-governance

relationship (Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017, Reus-Smit 1999 and 2018), whereas

constructivism holds the ideational substance of the order as a constant background

(Barnett and Finnemore 2004 and 2005), and object-oriented approaches understand the

global political realm as emerging from or structured by governance regimes (Corry

2013, Sending 2015). These differences are consequential for the order-governance

relation as well as the approach to plurality.

2.2.1. World Order: Intersubjective and Historical

Alex Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999) provides the key

constructivist account of the international system. Wendt takes as his main foil and

interlocutor Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979). Thus, he begins from

anarchy as the organizing principle of international relations, but defines it as an empty

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vessel, which indicates a lack of centralized authority and not predetermining any

particular presence (1999: 309). The vessel, he contends, can be filled in multiple ways.

This disagreement with Waltz is grounded in a social conception of the structure, by

which Wendt means that actors take each other into account in their actions (Ibid.: 249).

This social structure is defined by the distribution of ideas states have about each other,

specifically the roles they play in relation to one another. Thus, the self-Other role

identities of states is the ideational distribution that defines the order. These are social

ideas that are shared between the actors and that constitute cultures. Wendt proposes

three cultures of anarchy with corresponding role identities: Hobbesian (enemy), Lockean

(rival), and Kantian (friend) (Ibid.: 259-307). While Wendt talks about distribution of

role identities, his typology proceeds by way of three scenarios, each with a dominant

ideal-type. At the same time, he defines three degrees of compliance with role identities

as coercion, self-interest and internalization. These provide a mechanism for the

becoming and remaining dominant of an identity: as forced by others, as actors

understand it to be in their self-interest, or because this identity is a part of their self-

definition.

Having set up this typological framework, Wendt notes that cultures are

inherently conservative, given the human desire for predictability and stability. This

makes structural change difficult, but also worthy of explanation. He posits that, under

the permissive cause of self-restraint (as informed by the institution of sovereignty),

structural change can arise from the efficient causes of interdependence, common fate

and homogeneity. It unfolds through social learning (Ibid.: 336-366). Without going into

the nuance and intricacies of Wendt’s theory, a few elements need to be noted. Wendt’s

focus is on a particular kind of structural change, from the Westphalian system’s Lockean

anarchy to an emergent Kantian one. This is a historical-empirical concern, undergirded

by the theoretical assumption that while there is no reason to predict a “progressive”

socialization from coercion to internalization and from Hobbes to Kant, “reversals” will

be rare. Second is the central role of stability in Wendt’s theory: once initial interactions

set in place a pattern of identities, further developments take place on this seemingly

stable ground (Mattern 2005: 9). Such developments are also towards further stable

ground – a new dominant distribution of identity.

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While Wendt’s account provides a corrective challenge to Waltz’s asocial

conception, this engagement marks the limits of Wendt’s theory. First, while he attends to

the structure as social, the structure’s concern remains limited to security, without

consideration for broader substantive domains, such as prosperity, and the production of

proper kinds of authority. Much like the realist conception, except for the relations

between states, the international remains an empty rather than substantiated domain.

Thus, Wendt engages with the Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian anarchies as

distributions of particular roles, and not ordering conceptions of how we get from here

(“conflict”) to there (“peace and prosperity”). Significantly, both Lockean rivals and

Kantian friends are liberal conceptions, which not only point to particular roles but also

substantiate them: for example, as the pursuit of collective prosperity through trade. At

the same time, the reliance on dominant role-relations forecloses the question of plurality,

not as a transition between roles but as different substantiations of what it would take to

be rivals instead of enemies, or for that matter, friends that work towards a shared future.

Janice Bially Mattern’s (post)-constructivist conception takes on Wendt’s reliance

on stability as the “grounds of making and maintaining identities” (2005: 9). Mattern

argues that during unsettled times – such as global political crises – identities can still be

formed and maintained. This is because identities are narrative constructions that remain

in force as long as they are authored, shared, and collectively believed in (Ibid.: 12), and

also because there are “multiple intersubjectively constituted self-other relations” that the

actors can draw from in such authoring (Ibid.: 13). Thus, Mattern dispenses with the

assumption of stability as the ground of identities and of an international social structure.

At the same time, however, she re-introduces identities as stabilizing – as particular

narratives are offered during crises to re-enforce previously existing social structures.

Importantly, like Wendt, Mattern also conceives of the order as unfolding through

relations between actors, as “shared understandings of expectations and behaviors with

respect to one another” (Ibid.: 30), rather than broader ideational signposts of proper

behavior that structure these relations. Such signposts, however, might be consequential

for which forms of identity authoring (don’t) become part of collective beliefs. It is in this

respect that I depart from both Wendt and Mattern. However, Mattern’s introduction of

unsettled times, as global political moments when the previously established social

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grounds become inadequate for further global political engagement and action, is key. I

return to this articulation in developing my theoretical framework.

Conversely, Allan et. al.’s recent “constructivist account of hegemonic

transition,” shifts the lens from the distribution of identity understood as role-relations to

the ideational grounds that are hegemonic within the order (2018: 839). They define

orders as “constituted by an underlying structure of institutions, rules, norms and

discourses that structure and shape state practices” (Ibid.: 843). In other words, it is not

(only) the role-identities between states, but (also) these undergirding values and norms

that are productive of state behavior across a range of domains – from the conduct of war

to trade regimes and humanitarian concerns (Ibid.). The authors further specify

hegemonic orders as having a dominant state or coalition of states, along with “a

legitimizing ideology, a network of institutions that act as transmission belts and

socialization mechanisms to disseminate the ideology globally” (Ibid.: 842). The

distribution of identity that is consequential for this order – that is its stability or

transition – is elite and mass identification with these values and norms. In a permissive

ideational context, such transition can take place in one of two ways: “yoking together a

new order” as in the transition between Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, or through

the mobilization of a counter-hegemonic bloc, such as one that might be headed by

China. The authors conclude that given high levels of continued identification with

liberal democracy and the absence of an attractive alternative around which a counter-

hegemonic bloc can coalesce, these two pathways of transition are unlikely.

Allan et. al.’s conception comes closer to the definition of order that I adopt, as it

focuses on broader ideational-institutional structures through which global politics

unfold, and which are (re)produced through global governance. Such a conception can

help us make better sense of the contestations of the order and its institutions, which are

not aimed at making enemies of friends or vice versa, but at changing something else in

the fabric of global politics. At the same time, however, as they focus only on hegemonic

transition, the authors also overlook the breadth and depth of such contestation. In their

analysis of national identity databases, which ground their claim on the unlikely-hood of

such a transition, the authors point to but do not dwell on the plurality within this broader

consensus – the resistance to neoliberal economics alongside the acceptance of

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capitalism, different self-definitions as democratic states (Ibid.: 859-864). My concern is

with the transformative changes that can take place at these interstices, pending a

transition from one hegemony to another. It is in the absence of a hegemonic transition

but in the presence of plurality, that a different transformative process unfolds through

contentious participation in the order and its institutions.

The seminal account of the so-called English-school approach to the international

order is Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics

(1977), which established it as a Grotian via-media alternative to Hobbesian realism and

Kantian liberalism. In The Anarchical Society, Bull defined international order and

international society, and set the – at times implicit – recursive relation between the two.

Bull began with a bare-bones definition of the international order as “a pattern of activity

that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states, or international

society.” These are: the preservation of the system and society of states, the maintenance

of the independence or external sovereignty of individual states, limitation of violence,

the keeping of promises and the stability of possessions (1977: 17). At first sight, then,

Bull would appear as connecting the order to a similar set of universal primary interests

as does realism. However, what is at stake is not the individually pursued survival of

states, but an order that works towards their preservation more generally. Thus,

purposiveness is a key attribute of order. It is not simply patterns of behavior or

arrangements of units, but patterns and arrangements that have a purpose – in this case, to

maintain the primary goals of international order (Bull 1977: 4, Reus-Smit 2017: 854).

What complicates this resemblance further is the invocation of a society of states, which

points to social substance. In fact, Bull notes that if the order ensures the preservation of

the society of states, it is the society of states which has “a sense of common interest in

those elementary or primary goals,” and sustains it through rules and institutions (Ibid.:

51).15

In the above definition, common interests in primary goals is an adequate

condition for the emergence of international society and order. However, Mattern asks, if

15 It is important to note that Bull’s, and more broadly the English school’s, use of the term institutions does not correspond to how broader scholarship employs the term. For Bull et al., institutions that emerge out of international society are at the level of international law or balance of power. Bull briefly mentions international assemblies and organizations as contemporary and important means for the legitimation of these rules and institutions (Bull 1977: 69).

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these primary interests are widely shared, why don’t we always end up with international

society and order? Put another way, why do actors sometimes recognize such

commonality of interest and not at other times (Mattern 2005: 40-41)? In fact, Bull’s

argument that fear and calculations of reciprocity are adequate grounds for international

society is preceded and followed by socially thicker articulations. Setting the conceptual

scene of his book, Bull contends that a society of states forms when a group of states are

“conscious of certain common interests and common values,” and therefore “conceive

themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another and

share in the workings of common institutions” (1977.: 13). He further elaborates that,

historically, international societies have been “founded upon a common culture or

civilization, or at least some elements [thereof],” which allows for easier communication,

closer awareness and understanding, facilitating the “definition of common rules and the

evolution of common institutions” (Ibid.: 15). Thus, while interest in survival might be

perennial, its recognition as common –to be pursued together – is at least facilitated by

common cultural codes. These codes, furthermore, point to similar sets of institutions and

rules as the proper conduits for the pursuit of primary goals.

Bull and Watson expand on the cultural grounds of the international society,

along with the other contributors, in their edited volume The Expansion of International

Society (1984). Written amidst global political shifts brought about by decolonization

(Hall 2017: 345-362), the volume traces the emergence of international society to a group

of European states in Medieval Christendom (Watson 1984: 23-32). Bull’s contribution

to the volume notes that this international society underwent a decisive change in its

membership rules in the 19th century, and received its contemporary form in the 20th

century with the entry of newly independent non-European states (1984: 117-120). While

his co-authors take starker positions in relation to the expansion of international society

(see for example: Bozeman 1984: 387-407), Bull maintains his ambivalence (Bull 1984:

117-127). On the one hand, he upholds that the desire of newly independent countries to

join the international society is demonstrative of the continued attraction of this society

and its order. He contends, moreover, that such desire indicates (implicit) acceptance of

36

the existing grounds of the society and the order. 16 On the other hand, here and

elsewhere, Bull notes that the shared grounds of this expanded international society will

need to be different. Namely, a cosmopolitan culture, which exists at the elite and

diplomatic levels, and comprises a culture of modernity with a common scientific

understanding17 of the world (see also 1975: 20, and 1977: 305).

In Bull’s account, then, states enter into rule-governed relations with one another

based on a perception of common interests, the recognition of which is facilitated by a

common culture or civilization, including shared epistemic grounds such as a scientific

understanding of the world. Out of this recognition of common interests emerge the

institutions that maintain the international order. While he moves between a thinner and

thicker conception of the international order, Bull’s framework nevertheless opens

important space to conceptualize the international order as connected to socially-

constituted understandings of the world, rather than emerging automatically out of

structural conditions of power distribution.

Recent scholarship has taken this order and society relationship in two different

directions. Those who have steered close to Bull elaborated on the distinctions between

international society as grounded on common interests or shared values, producing a

domain-based approach to the order (Buzan 2004, Buzan and Lawson 2015, Goh 2019).

Others, have closed the gap between the international order and society by casting the

order as a social and political project (Reus-Smit 1999, Reus-Smit and Dunne 2017: 3-18

and 18-43, Reus-Smit 2018). Starting with the former, Buzan has argued that the

contemporary international society is best understood as a combination of gemeinschaft

and gesellschaft, which expanded out from its Western cultural core through a series of

functional integrations. This has produced an international society where the primary

institutions – such as multilateralism – are held together by a combination of coercion,

calculation and belief, depending on the issue area and the sub-global society (2004: 1-

25, 176-195). Thus, while it is possible to talk about a global international society, it is

16 One can recognize in this position echoes of the argument that Ikenberry has made in relation to the liberal international order’s crisis of authority: that there is no crisis of principle as demonstrated by the greater number of actors’ willingness to participate in the order (2011: 3-11, see also section 3.2. this chapter).17 This secularizing of a shared Christian epistemology is a key way in which Watson and Bull trace the emergence of the European-international society over the course of two chapters in The Expansion of International Society (1984: 13-33, 117-127).

37

internally fragmented and comprises an uneven political terrain. Buzan and Lawson

(2015) further pursue this domain-based analysis, melding the historical-social approach

of the English school with a realist distribution of power to designate three iterations of

the modern order: colonial, western global and decentered global. They note that in the

decentered global order, there is greater ideational convergence in the economic domain

and more divergence in political-cultural domains. They forecast further cooperation in

the former, and the receding of governance projects in the latter. And lastly, Goh (2019)

brought questions of contestation and renegotiation into this uneven terrain. She contends

that the international order “must be underpinned by an intersubjective consensus

regarding the basic goals and means of conducting international affairs” and that these

shared understandings emerge out of “contestation and negotiation, with consensus

neither easily achieved nor automatically sustained” (2019: 5-6). Such consensus can

vary across issue areas. Goh argues, through the example of China’s contestation of the

hegemonic order in East Asia, that its renegotiation will depend on the depth of the social

compact – the degree to which there is a shared understanding of the conduct of affairs –

and social structure – the position of actors within that issue area.

These conceptions provide important analytical leverage in understanding why

contestation has played out differently across issue areas, and how worries about the

waning comparative power of the United States and the emergence of newly powerful

actors on the world political arena have not manifested as an all out rejection of the order

and its institutions. At the same time, however, they miss important dynamics. Namely,

that the push back against the non-shared substance of the order might not be through and

towards instrumental governance, but rather unfold as alternative claims and visions that

demand a voice on the global stage.

If we instead follow the path taken by Reus-Smit, which brings together the

English school’s tiered conceptions with the intersubjective emphases of constructivism,

we end up with a definition of the order as “systemic configurations of political authority,

which are arranged according to a particular principle of differentiation, such as

sovereignty or suzerainty (2017: 855, 2018: 13). The order is defined by a principle of

differentiation, and it distributes – that is grants and withholds – political authority based

on that principle. Thus, it is in the “business of recognition” (2017: 870). This business of

38

recognition, in turn, has its roots in constitutional institutions that define what a proper

authority is and does: hegemonic beliefs about the moral purpose of the state, an

organizing principle of sovereignty and a systemic norm of procedural justice (1999: 6).

While all three are constitutional institutions, at the center is the moral purpose of the

state, which provides the justificatory principles of sovereignty and informs the norm of

procedural justice (Ibid.). Fundamental institutions – such as multilateralism and

contractual international law – are foisted on this constitutional ground, and make and

maintain the international order (Ibid.: 4). Reus-Smit’s framework demonstrates the

greater political stakes of inclusion within the order, and opens the path to stipulating

why actors that are excluded – or unequally included – might continue to engage with it

in terms that are neither full acceptance or total rejection.

Reus-Smit’s conception, however, falls into some of the well-recognized

shortcomings of constructivism. Foregrounding intersubjectively shared value in

hegemonic terms raises the question of how contestation and change might be possible in

global politics. In his earlier work, Reus-Smit concludes that insofar as constitutional

structures define and shape the international systems of rule, changes in the meta-values

that comprise those structures “must be a primary determinant of systems change” (1999:

164).18 The sources of these meta-value changes are left open. However, implicit in this

conception is the assumption that constitutional institutions will be replaced by another

intersubjectively shared set as the grounds of another system. Put differently, plurality

can make an appearance – as an alternative to existing meta-values – only to be

consolidated into a new hegemonic conception.

In his recent book, Reus-Smit acknowledges this analytical bias – what he terms

“monism of a deep structure” (2018: 145). He proposes, instead, that international orders

are always foisted on a terrain of power inequalities and cultural plurality (2018: 13, see

also Hurrell 2007: 2). This terrain renders the monism of deep structures analytically

inadequate in grappling with diverse complexes of meaning within the order (Ibid.). In

this later conception, a key task of the order becomes legitimating these inequalities and

the particular organizations of cultural difference by a narrative of why certain units, on

18 While this constitutes a purposive change, another source of change is configurative: the transformation of “the organizing principle that governs the distribution of authority” (Reus-Smit 1999: 164.).

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particular substantive grounds, are linked to international political authority. In this

conception, then, Reus-Smit seems to have retained the key political definition of the

order, while moving away from a static conception of intersubjectively shared meaning.

However, Reus-Smit posits shifts in power and the emergence of new cultural

claims as two sources of change that can challenge the legitimacy of the order’s

distribution of authority and recognition. This turn to power redistribution and the

singling out of cultural plurality marks my key departure from Reus-Smit’s framework.

Despite the empirical focus of my dissertation, I conceive of all issue domains as

potential sites of plurality and divergence – on how they are understood, whether they are

to be governed globally, and to what end. On this, my conception is closer to the domain-

based approaches reviewed above as well as the work of Hurrell (2007), who points to

lack of shared scripts as presenting governance challenges, in domains such as

environmental governance as well. It is this divergence that is integral to the kind of

renegotiation that power shifts might entail.

2.2.2. Global Governance: Putting Order to Work, Ordering Global Politics

If the English school has focused on the theorization of the international order to a greater

extent than constructivism, this balance is inverted in the case of global governance. In

Reus-Smit’s conception, governance regimes are third-level issue-specific regimes that

sit atop the constitutional and fundamental institutions and “enact basic institutional

practices in particular realms of interstate relations” (1999: 14). This unidirectional

relation, where issue-specific regimes carry out basic institutional practices, can partly

explain the insufficient attention to global governance and international institutions by

this literature (Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017: 13). Exceptions to this inattention include

Beeson and Bell, who analyze the impact of economic governance on the constitutional

structures of the world order, with the caveat that the dialectical relation they identify

might be specific to the domain of the economy (Beeson and Bell 2017: 284-304). A

more extensive treatment of this relation is undertaken by Hurrell, who focuses on the

liberal-solidarist element in the international society and its conceptions of how to limit

violence (fundamental institutions), the resulting expansion and deepening of governance

regimes (issue-specific institutions), and the lowered waterline of sovereignty

(constitutional institutions) (2007: 9-10 and 95-177). Hurrell also notes the resistance to

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this lowered waterline, taken up by pluralist elements of the international society, and

manifested in reactions to the reach of global governance regimes. Similarly, but without

the tri-partite terminology of order-society-governance, I posit that the relation between

order and governance is recursive, rather than unidirectional. While governance regimes

put the ideational grounds of the order to work, this is not a simple enactment of already

existing shared ideas. It is, rather, world-making.

Constructivist theories attend to this world-making aspect of global governance,

as grounded in the intersubjectively shared social purposes of regimes. Ruggie’s seminal

formulation approximates international regimes to political authority because they fuse

power with legitimate social purpose. Ruggie argues that while power may predict the

form of regimes, it is social purpose that is productive of their content (1982: 380). Thus,

international regimes would remain in existence and pursue the same social purpose, if

the global power structures shifted but the consensus around this purpose remained.

Others have also pointed to the pursuit of social good or a common good as constitutive

of the legitimacy of global governance regimes and their ability to exercise authority

(Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 162, Hall 2016: 75, Zürn 2018: 65-67).

This raises two questions: what is the source of this social good or purpose and

how is it different from common interests? The literature locates the sources of the social

purpose or the common good in broader international politics– Ruggie points to states as

sharing conceptions of the social good, whereas Barnett and Finnemore gesture to the

liberal social goals that are widely viewed as desirable and legitimate at the level of the

world order (2005: 162). Hall stays at the same level, but brings into view changes to

shared conceptions, asking whether the existing pursuits of the social good can

accommodate the visions and desires of rising powers in a more polycentric world (2016:

91). Thus, while this scholarship emphasizes the world-making attribute of global

governance, unfolding through a social purpose, it also locates (a modicum of) consensus

around that social good as existing in the world.

Second, how is shared conceptions of the social good different from shared

interest? What is the difference between depicting the post-WWII liberal economic order

as emerging out of the common interests (Keohane) of the western industrialized

countries or casting it as growing out of shared normative conceptions of good economic

41

organization (Ruggie)? First, while the interests might be common, they remain,

ultimately, attached to individual states. Conceptions of the good, conversely, are

intersubjectively shared. They might be held individually by states, but they exist as

social meanings and beyond their possession by any one state. Second, while interests are

pursued through conduit institutions, conceptions of social good make institutions what

they are –the generative grammars around which understandings converge (Ruggie 1988:

870). If we proceed with the former conception, we will understand objections to

governance as emerging out of unmet interests and amenable to correction through re-

configured institutional bargains. In the second conception, we will encounter states who

understand their interest through social conceptions and who pursue such interest in ways

that are legitimate within such conceptions. This framework also opens up the possibility

that governance regimes will be contested on grounds of different substantive

conceptions of the social good and its pursuit. Lastly, the concept of the social good

allows us to account for a much broader terrain of governance, where pursuits resemble

aspirations rather than interests, declarations of the good of mankind are not mere

legitimations but undergird regimes that are universalistic in their aspirations and pursuit,

and hierarchical in their grounds and outcome.

Before we go further down the paths not taken by constructivism, there remains

the question of how global governance is world-making: how it can act authoritatively in

the world, producing actors and desired forms of behavior (Barnett and Finnemore 2004:

3)? This means, in a further departure from the neoliberal institutionalism, that states do

not come into and leave governance regimes as unchanged actors with predetermined

interests. Rather, they might adopt a different set of meanings on the kind of actor that it

is appropriate or good to be, along with a corresponding set of new interests. Regimes

produce this social world based on widely shared ideas, and through their proper pursuit.

The shared conception of a social good provides institutions and regimes with legitimacy,

and the proper pursuit of this good lends authority. Proper pursuit is conceptualized in

ideal-typical terms and through impartiality. 19 The latter constitutes international

organizations as bureaucracies (Barnett and Finnemore 2004), represented by the corps of

19 As Barnett and Finnemore astutely note, the ability to frame this pursuit as depoliticized and neutral cannot be easily separated from the ways in which the grounds and goals of the pursuit are shared (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 27).

42

international civil servants (Sending 2015: 45-47). The sources of ideal-typical authority

have been traced to delegated, moral and expert authority (Barnett and Finnemore 2004:

22-24) or more expansively to institutional, delegated, expert, principled and capacity-

based authority (Avant et. al. 2010: 11-14). A few elements are important in this

designation of authority. First, it is defined as a social relation that requires recognition

by those over whom it is exercised. Thus, authority is different from power or coercion

(Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 22, Avant et. al. 2010: 9). Second, these ideal-typical

authorities point to broader intersubjective meanings – such as the premium placed on

rational-legal bureaucracies in modern societies. Third, and consequently, the

conceptualization of authority adds further layers of shared substance into the picture –a

shared social purpose is pursued through ideal-types of actors, who already find broad

acceptance as authorities.

Constructivism has been criticized for relying on the ideational and overlooking

power. Ruggie’s seminal article provides a strong refutation of this claim. Approaching

the political authority of international regimes as a fusion of power and social interest,

Ruggie points to the former as constitutive of the form – but not content – of international

order and regimes. Admittedly, his emphasis on material power is not representative of

constructivist scholarship. While disregard of power is most clearly at work in the norms

literature, Barnett and Finnemore describe international organizations as powerful and

generative of new actors and interests, and Avant et. al. emphasize that the very

constitution of the social good is political and power-laden (2005: 162, 2010: 3, 17-20).

In such casting, power is at play in the production of a world that corresponds to a social

good or goal, which may be intersubjectively shared but which still needs to be further

fostered in the world, and transform actors in the process. This, I would contend, is

constructivism at its best, in its ability to point us towards power as not only material but

also ideational, productive and institutional (Barnett and Duvall 2005).

The criticism I build on is the insufficient attention to plurality and contestation.

Sending’s engagement with Barnett and Finnemore’s theory of IO authority starts us

productively on this path. Sending contends that starting from ideal-types of authority

occludes the question of how particular actors become authoritative in the first place

(2015: 16-18). We can extend this line of inquiry to the social purpose of governance

43

regimes. Locating this purpose as intersubjectively shared forecloses inquiry into how it

came to be shared, if and whether it might become un-shared, and with what

consequence. We can also ask whether states that do not share the same conception of the

social good join governance regimes, and whether regimes only reproduce this world by

entrenching it for those who already inhabit it or if they can expand it further. Without

necessarily answering these questions, Barnett and Finnemore and Avant et. al.,

recognize the problems of authority and legitimacy grounded in divergent conceptions of

the common good, or “lack of consensus on what values or goals are universally desired

or welfare promoting” (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 169). However, these insights do

not become a fundamental challenge to their theoretical edifice grounded on shared

value. Instead, the analytical and empirical focus is on endogenous sources of challenge

to institutions and regimes, such as bureaucratic expansionism, conflicts between

different sources of authority within a regime or accountability in the exercise of

authority (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 16-45, Avant et. al. 2010: 17-35).20We are left,

then, with an acknowledgment that divergence of opinion around common good exists

and that such divergence is significant for the substantive legitimacy of governance

regimes, but without a theoretical or empirical analysis of what it might mean for the

possibility of global governance in a context of substantive plurality.

A more recent set of contributions to the field of global governance, dubbed

object-oriented approaches (Allan 2017a), take us further on shared and divergent

conceptions at work in global governance (Corry 2013, Sending 2015, Allan 2017b). A

key insight shared by this scholarship is that there are no naturally existing domains of

governance. Instead, objects of governance come into being because they are defined as

concrete and finite issue areas that need global responses. There is, therefore, no such

thing as “world heritage” without states and experts deciding that it exists and that it

needs to be identified and protected at the international level.

This insight is attached to a greater focus on the genesis of global governance.

Some place emphasis on the shared orientation towards an object of governance, defined

thinly as a shared understanding that an object is governable and should be governed

20 For Barnett and Finnemore, the focus on endogenous factors is connected to their wager that IOs have autonomy and that they are not simply subjected to the whims of what happens in world politics.

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(Corry 2013). In orienting themselves towards same issues, participants – and Corry

flattens the terrain between different actors – become subjects of governance and

governance objects become co-constitutive of their identities. Others introduce hegemony

into this flat terrain, contending that governance regimes emerge from authority

contestations between actors with different ideas on how an object should be defined and

governed (Sending 2015). Global governance regimes, thus, emerge through the

movement from a plurality of conceptions about an object to its singular understanding.

Such movement is possible, Sending posits, because actors enter into authority

contestations with unequal amounts of social capital. The actors that emerge victorious

from this contestation posit their definition of the object as the definition of it, and

establish themselves as its proper authorities. The result is the misrecognition of the

particular-subjective categories of those actors as universal-objective definition of the

object (Ibid.: 21-29). In turn, some actors are “conferred the symbolic capital through

which others understand and act in the world” in relation to the object of governance

(Ibid.: 24). Furthermore, authority contestations persist within the field of governance.

But now, they unfold in the field’s terms, and reproduce the terms and positions of the

hegemonic actors.

Let me illustrate: the misrecognition of a particular understanding of the

economy –liberal or neoliberal – as what the economy is – its definition – produces

putatively universal policies for healthy or growing economies. The actors who

authoritatively put forth such policies are those whose understanding of the economy

became established as the field’s definition of it. Recall the infamous Chicago school

economists, who could authoritatively position their economic understanding as the

object of governance, and themselves as its proper authorities, in institutions such as the

IMF. Lastly, if Corry flattens the field between shared orientations, and Sending turns to

hegemony, Allan’s more recent account uses co-production to posit that global

governance emerges from a process of negotiation between political and epistemic actors,

where the former steer it through national interest and the latter provide its epistemic

underpinnings as universal, substantive frameworks.

Object-oriented approaches conceive of the global political domain as emerging

through these governance objects. Taking a radical departure from IR theoretical

45

conceptions of global politics as anarchical or hierarchical, Corry argues that a global

polity emerges from discursive orientations towards objects of governance, which can

include domains such as “the environment” or that of the global polity itself (2013: 81-

111). Sending posits global governance objects as structuring political action (2015: 125-

128), whereas Neumann and Sending focus on liberal governmentality as a rationality

that structures not only political action but also molds political actors to act in certain

ways (2010: 46-70). Lastly, while his approach to global governance tracks closer to

constructivism, Zürn also describes a similar global political arena that emerges from a

thick web of governance, which reworks sovereignty through normative criteria that

define proper authorities at the international level (2018: 6).

The object-oriented scholarship on global governance, therefore, take us out of

some of the binds of constructivism. And, put forth key insights that I take up in putting

forth my theoretical framework. The first is Corry’s distinction between thick (on how to

govern) and thin (that it should be globally governed) forms of orientation towards an

object. Second is Sending’s account of how particular conceptions of the object institute

themselves as universal in the genesis of governance regimes. Third is Allan’s re-

inflection of these authority contestations as (also) processes of negotiation: not pure

instantiations of a group of actors’ original conception but a co-produced object,

reflective of divergent interests and perspectives. Furthermore, like the constructivist

scholarship, this literature defines governance regimes as actively structuring the field of

global politics.

However, a few questions remain, best approached through the theme of change.

The focus here is on the genesis of governance objects, as a movement from plurality to

singularity. Thus, questions such as whether plurality can re-assert itself, how, and with

what consequence remain under-explored. Sending’s account is torn between the

theoretical propositions of field theory and his historical-sociological tracing of particular

cases. A field of governance unites participants around a common object and

differentiates them based on their positions within it. The recognition struggles by those

in subordinate positions take place in terms of the field and reproduce existing

hierarchies. However, actors also continue to have different ideas about how the object

should be governed. Sending does not provide a theoretical answer to when the field’s

46

authority source is reproduced through recognition struggles and when it might be

transformed through other ideas. His empirical investigation provides a historical-

sociological answer to this question by pointing to a series of intergovernmental

conferences that opened up the insular field of population governance to outside

intervention, which coincided with growing discontent with its original bases, to initiate

the transformation of the field’s terms (2015: 103-125). Allan’s account provides a more

structured dynamic of change: if there are changes to the political or epistemic grounds of

the object, it will be reopened to negotiation (Ibid.: 139). These sources of change include

shifts in political power, changes in the salience of the object, or transformations of the

knowledge grounds. However, these remain analytically and empirically unexplored. In

the next section, as I develop my own framework, I parse these further.

3. Order and Governance in Plurality: Recursivity and Contentious Participation

3.1. Order and Governance: A Recursive Relation

I adopt the terminology of the world order, rather than an international system or an

international order. I proceed with order over system for two complementary reasons:

System can suggest automaticity in the emergence and continued existence of a structure,

especially as it has been employed by realist theories. Conversely, order can be linked

more easily to purposiveness, both in how it has been taken up IR theoretically, but also

in its semantic proximity to order-ing, order-making and order-maintaining, which

gesture towards the intentional, productive and continued nature of its sustenance. Order

is made, maintained and unmade rather than automatically emerging. I adopt world rather

than international as the descriptor, despite limiting my research to political and

epistemic actors at the detriment of civil society and grassroots participation. I say more

about this in the last section of the chapter. Nevertheless, I use world, because the order is

not limited to the maintenance of predictable patterns of behavior between states but

involves the remaking of those states as good members of the order, with implications for

their societies, if and when necessary. Further, and in contrast to the contention that civil

society begun to play a consequential role in world order-making after the Cold War, the

makers of the world order on the ground have always included a plurality of actors, such

as chartered companies and missionaries during the 18th and 19th centuries. Thus, the

domain of the world order is more populous, and its enactment is not only political but

47

also social, cultural and epistemic.21 Following from the first two propositions, order-

making extends beyond the regulation of an existing realm of interstate relations. Rather,

it involves the making of a world that corresponds to particular ideational grounds. As

such, it is both order-making and world-making.

I understand world orders as ideationally grounded political projects, with

particular understandings of peace and prosperity, that authorize certain forms and units

of authority in conjunction with that understanding, and that are pursued through a web

of institutions.22 These substantive grounds concern ideas and norms on how to organize

collective political life at the international level, concerned not only – but importantly –

with peace and prosperity. Orders can – and have had – different ideational grounds on

how to get from here (possibly the aftermath of an order-collapsing conflict) to there

(limits on the use of inter-state violence and stable interactions). As a political project, the

order is constitutive of inclusions, exclusions, and hierarchies based on these ideational

grounds. To illustrate, an order that conceives of imperial civilizing missions by a select

group of states as the path to peace and prosperity is different from one that imagines

institutional and economic interdependence between otherwise independent units. In the

former, civilized empire-nations are recognized as proper units of authority, in the latter it

is nation-states. The former was pursued through informal or treaty-based institutions,

whereas the latter involves permanent institutions and membership structures.

These ideational grounds have multiple threads, including legacies of previous

orders, and while they might cohere theoretically, they can also come in practical

contradiction with one another. As a result, the order not only produces inclusions and

exclusions, but also internal hierarchies. One can think of the Japanese and Ottoman

21 Having noted this, my research focuses on states as the actors whose contestations present challenges of shared value, legitimacy and authority, and on civil servants and experts that steer the regime towards epistemic change or keep in circulation its rules. As with other regimes and institutions of governance, world heritage draws the attention of multiple international NGOs and grassroots organizations, with concerns ranging from climate change, poaching of wildlife, urban regeneration projects and indigenous heritage. These groups are part of the terrain on which the world order is staked. Nevertheless, as states have become a main driver of plurality and change, they are the focus of my inquiry. I speak to some of the limits of this focus in the conclusion. 22 Implicit in my account is that the sovereign state is the recognized unit of authority in the order. Here, I follow Reus-Smit’s (1999) lead in thinking of the state as an organizing principle. The ideational bases of the order act on the form and content of this unit. It delegates some as proper sovereigns, molds certain units to desirable form and content, and withholds sovereignty from others. Thus, states are not only the units that act within the world order, but they are the units on which the order acts through its institutions and regimes.

48

empires as the unequal members of the pre-WWI order, shaped by the standards of

civilization as its membership criteria. On the one hand, they were recognizable

“civilizations,” with consolidated and hierarchical socio-political structures, engaged in

imperial missions not unlike those of Europe. At the same time, they did not have

Christian-European pedigree, resulting in their hierarchical accommodation within this

order. In the post-WWII order, while the form of authority is as nation-state, the

legitimate kind of authority, in tandem with the order’s precepts of peace and prosperity,

is a liberal-democracy (Wendt 1999: 293), where democracy itself is understood in

procedural-liberal terms. 23 This creates hierarchies, demonstrative of the possible

tensions between the ideational grounds of the order, between liberal-democracies,

authoritarian capitalism, and finally, rogue states that shun political and economic

liberalism.

A broad range of scholarship, from hegemonic stability and power transition

theories to parts of the English school have traced the end of an order and the emergence

of a new one to wars, which take place between great powers – old and new – and

demonstrate the bankruptcy of the old order – its power distribution, ideas and

institutions (Ikenberry and Nexon 2019). Comversely, the contemporary global political

context raises the question of what happens to an order, challenged on its ideational

bases, in the absence of a catastrophic moment of violence that results in new ideational-

institutional order-building. The absence, moreover, is not only that of a great war, but

seemingly, also of an alternative ideational basis put forth by counter-hegemonic actors

(Allan et. al. 2018). These actors have engaged with the order through a mix of

participating in its institutions, setting up alternative ones, and discursive expressions of

support and critique. It is this moment that is my theoretical and empirical focus: where a

greater number of actors assert themselves within the world order, take part in its making

and remaking based on a range of substantive visions, and demand recognition for these

visions. We can call this dynamic the pluralization of the world order.

As this analytical pivot is a call to reorient our analyses away from a sole focus on

the presence, absence, or the wait for this order-ending war, it is also important to note

23 For a review of kinds of democracy, beyond its liberal variant with a procedural-juridical emphasis, see Kurki 2010.

49

that even in cases of order-changing violence, previously hegemonic ideas do not simply

die. Often, they cast their shadow over the new order. For example, scholars have noted

the echoes of civilizing missions, with assumptions about the capacity of Asian and

African nations for self-government in the post-Cold War emergence of humanitarian

interventions (Orford 2011). Furthermore, those who were formerly and formally on the

receiving end of such hierarchies orient themselves to the new order through these

historical understandings (Zarakol 2010).

While old ordering ideas can cast their shadow on a new project of order-making,

ideational change, consequential for the kind and unit of authority granted political

recognition, can also happen with the same order. Within the post-WWII liberal

international order, we can note two important such changes. One is the transition from

embedded liberalism to neoliberalism, as the proper pursuit of prosperity. This resulted in

changes to the tasks and policies of international organizations such as the IMF, and

through their conditionality demands, to the domestic organization of the state and the

economy. Another shift is from ethnic nations to multicultural societies as the proper kind

of authority. Its relation to the pursuit of peace can best be understood by comparing the

post-WWI practices of population exchanges aimed at sustaining peace through the

creation of mono-ethnic nations with the international community’s insistence on

sustaining multicultural societies in the aftermath of former Yugoslavia’s violent

breakdown. This second change is directly related to the world ordering of culture, and I

analyze it in section 4 of this chapter. Both changes, consequential as they have been,

have remained within the remit of a liberal understanding of peace and prosperity:

economic interdependence and institutional cooperation, liberal-democracies as the

proper kind and unit of authority, and pursued through the same institutional

infrastructure.

Order-making through institutions brings us to global governance. Global

governance regimes are sites where the world order ‘touches down’ and its ideational

bases are put to work in particular policy areas. One can conceive of these ideational

bases both at the general level –i.e. institutional interdependence and cooperation– and as

particular to policy areas – i.e. open economies and free trade. However, as the example

of UNESCO and its world heritage regime demonstrate, the possible domains of

50

governance are not limited to security and the economy. The establishment of new

domains of governance can involve decisions by a group of states, as in the case of the

institutions that emerged from the San Francisco conference, or a negotiation process

between political and epistemic actors, such as UNESCO’s world heritage regime or

global environmental governance. However, these regimes will be connected to the

ideational grounds of the order, whether it is the world heritage regime’s conviction in a

liberal progressive historiography of humanity, or approaching the environment as

manageable through the production of proper scientific knowledge.

Global governance puts the world order to work at the intersection of dynamics

identified by constructivist and object-oriented approaches. Governance regimes

constitute their objects and produce authoritative policies on them, as grounded in

hegemonically shared conceptions congruent with the world order and posited in

universalistic terms.24 The production of authority involves processes in which shared

conceptions are operationalized into benchmarks, good practices, and desirable forms of

behavior, which mold actors into good and responsible states, while also creating

hierarchies between them. Like the object of governance, the hierarchies produced by

global governance exist in the broader global political world. It is on this stage that states

are ranked as good members of the order through their standing on indexes of corruption,

rule of law, electoral freedom or climate change performance. Thus, regimes not only

govern their objects but also mold actors and order them in relation to this object on the

world stage.

If shared conceptions of an object – ideas on what it is, and the ends to which it

should be governed – are integral to the ability of global governance regimes to generate

shared value, mold actors, and produce authoritative policies, we might assume that

plurality will challenge these – and especially their pursuit in universal terms.

Furthermore, if such shared conceptions are traced to the world order, than plurality at

that level will be consequential to the continued implementation of regimes. In the first

place, it will produce divergence around the understanding of the object –the generative

24 The framework I develop does not take a side on the arena/actor debate on institutions and regimes. I recognize the power that global governance institutions can exert, while also acknowledging the ways in which they are perceived as stages or arenas by participants. For recent work that conceives of IOs acting as agents in relation to states but as orchestrators and delegators in relation to civil society or private actors see Abbott et. al. 2016.

51

grammar of the regime. Such divergence, in turn, would reveal the previously settled and

seemingly universal definition of the object as particular, and its instantiation as universal

to be political and power-laden. Given the intricate connection between the conception of

the object and its authoritative governance, we can assume that this plurality will impact

both who can act as authorities within the regime, and the ability of the regime to act

authoritatively. These dynamics, in turn, will have important bearing on the continued

implementation of the governance regime, as possible and legitimate.

Before I go any further, my aim is not to suggest that plurality within the world

order is the only source of change and challenge for global governance. In fact, my

analysis proceeds through a comparison of this political plurality with epistemic change,

as a different kind of challenge. In addition, as noted by the constructivist scholarship,

important endogenous sources of change, such as bureaucratic expansion, also impact

international institutions and regimes. And lastly, I also argue, through the concept of

contentious participation, that these external sources of change are taken up and

negotiated in and through the existing terms of regimes. However, I do contend that the

pluralizing world order is a particular source of challenge that is both politically pertinent

and that remains under-analyzed.

To make sense of these dynamics, I make two theoretical wagers. First, global

governance not only puts the order to work, but it is also a location from which world-

ordering practices can be transformed. Second, if governance regimes position states in

the world, they also provides arenas for inclusion in the world order. These two

propositions become critical in a context of ideational plurality, where the bases of the

order are under stress but a coherent alternative on a different ideational basis has not

(yet) emerged. In this context, global governance regimes provide arenas through which

the existing ideational grounds, as well as the standing of particular actors in relation to

them, can be renegotiated.

Such renegotiation takes place through what I call “contentious participation,”

where actors, who are dissatisfied with the terms of the order, continue to participate in

its institutions. This participation brings in alternative conceptions of the object, as the

grounds on and towards which it can be governed. However, these alternatives are not

simple ruptures from existing ideational-institutional forms. Rather, they are articulated

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as resistance to, demanding recognition from, and intermixed with the extant terms. Thus,

it is a contentious participation, not only because it takes place within the existing

institutions and regimes but also because rather than dispensing with the order’s terms, it

re-substantiates them. In the case of world heritage, such contentious participation brings

in conceptions of particularity, subjectivity, and local experts without fully dispensing

with the universal value and international expertise that are the regime’s original grounds.

Put in terms of the object-oriented approaches, this is a case of shared orientation

towards an object, without consensus on the grounds on and aims towards which it

should be governed. One can think of the global governance of the environment in

somewhat similar terms: should it be governed as a question of industrial pollution or as

one of poverty and development (Hurrell 2007: 216-239, Acharya 2018: 196)? These

divergent conceptions challenge universality as a descriptor of the value or social good

that is pursued. Different conceptions of the object also point to alternative sets of actors

and relations as proper bases of authority. At the same time, these renegotiations point to

nascent repertoires of cooperation within a changing order.

These wagers require an analytical reorientation: to approach contentious

participation as productive and not only as the destruction of regimes and institutions, and

with them the aspirations of the liberal international order. They are the latter in

significant ways. But they also comprise different possibilities of shared value, actors and

relations of authority. Put more strongly, the analysis I pursue requires a normative

orientation away from the investment in the liberal international order and the forms of

governance it has produced, as they have informed the study of global governance

(Barnett and Duvall 2005: 3-8). Thus, I suspend the question of desirability of global

governance until the conclusion. In the following chapters, I point to inductive-emergent

value, local experts, amalgam relations of authority as important elements of this new

repertoire. This is not to say that what emerges from such renegotiation is unproblematic

and/or devoid of hierarchies – just like the original grounds of these regimes, their

negotiations are also political. And it is precisely as a global political dynamic that they

require analytical and theoretical attentiveness and openness.

Let me situate the contribution this framework makes in relation to the literature I

reviewed. My key departure from and contribution to cognate literature is to foreground

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the relation between the order and governance as key to understanding how global

political change is negotiated between the two. In doing so, my framework makes new

and theoretical sense of behavior such as continued participation in international

institutions and regimes in this context of plurality, including by the rising powers who

have long been expected to engage in more fractious behavior (Acharya 2018: 1-33,

Drezner 2019: 2-3, Goh 2019: 1-5.). To the scholarship on world order, the focus on

global governance contributes another possible path of change, which is not order-

destroying violence but rather transformation that is piece-meal, uneven, and

amalgamated, but also significant and political. To the object-oriented scholarship on

global governance, my framework contributes a process of renegotiation. My analysis

further refines this by pointing to distinctions between political and epistemically-driven

change. And to the constructivist scholarship, it proposes that meaning can sit at the

intersection of shared and divergent, where both are formed and transformed through

global political histories.

What, if anything, can this conception contribute to a growing literature on the

fragmentation of global governance? This is a vast scholarship, which traces different

sources and casts divergent normative judgments on of this trend. It includes studies on

the emergence of informal and ad-hoc forms of governance as a new organizational

ecology emerging from institutional fatigue on the part of states (Tallberg et. al. 2014,

Abbott et. al. 2016), others analyze regime complexity as it relates to overlapping

jurisdictions (Alter and Meunier 2009), and investigate how authority relations are

established between governors in these cases (Pratt 2018). For some this fracturing is

grounded in changing global political dynamics, either as a trend that is forecast to

continue towards a more plural world (Acharya 2016: 18-19, Acharya 2018: 195-198), or

warned against as the loss of a shared international (Zürn 2018).25 Among those who

adopt this order-governance connection, some foreground the compatibility of new and

25At the same time, Zürn points to a key dynamic of this plural terrain, often overlooked in the debates about the future of the order and its governance. This is the disengagement of previously incumbent powers from one-state one-vote institutions. Plurality, therefore, is not a problem that is of, by and for newly emerging powers or previously colonized and weaker states. It is rather, a new terrain on which all actors have to operate, including those whose conceptions of the order and its governance have been cast as universal.

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old institutions (Drezner 2019), whereas others cast it as a “competitive pluralization,”

(Goh 2019).

In this field, contentious participation can contribute to adjudicating the

significance of developments such as the establishment of alternative institutional

structures. However, I focus on the liminal dynamics, which are productive of the

transformative changes, rather than on whether they are pro-order or against, and whether

pluralization is aimed at taking down the order or contributing to it. A focus on the

divergent substantive conceptions at work and their renegotiation can allow for further

traction on these questions. But it also proposes moving beyond them to emergent

meanings, modes and actors of governance. It is, therefore, a contribution that shifts the

terms of the debate.

3.2. The Liberal International Order and Its Governance

Until this point, this overview of the scholarship on world order has had a notable

absence – namely, the seminal conception of the liberal international order, put forth by

John Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the

American Order (2011). This is because the previous sections have engaged with

theoretical approaches to the world order, which are deeply historical but which

nevertheless make theoretical propositions on world orders as such and not on a

particular historical iteration of it (see also: Slaughter 2004, Kissinger 2015, Kagan

2018). In this section, where I also adopt liberal international to define the order-building

that began with the end of WWII,26 I engage with Ikenberry’s conception, only to depart

from it and follow instead the historical-theoretical line pursued by Jahn (2013). At this

juncture, it is important to clarify the place that this historical-political route occupies in

my analytical framework. If orders are not asocial structures that emerge from the

distribution of power and capabilities, but are rooted in particular approaches to peace

and prosperity, then the analyses of the pluralization of this order need to be grounded in

these substantive bases. In other words, what is at stake are not perennial dynamics of

26 Cf. Mearsheimer, who argues that the Cold War order was a thin, realist, bounded order dominated by the United States, “which included a number of other liberal democracies, [but] it was a realist order from top to bottom,” with “the aim to create a powerful West that could contain and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union and its allies” (2019: 20).

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global politics that manifest across time and space, but particular historico-political

projects, their contestation and renegotiation.

In the Liberal Leviathan, Ikenberry defines the liberal international order as a

loosely rule-based, open system, formed and maintained through American hegemony.

Ikenberry’s account moves between the order’s substance and its organizational

principle, where the latter bears the weight of the liberal international’s resilience. The

substantive sources of the order are traced to the 200 year ascendance of liberal

democratic states to global dominance, their efforts to build a liberal order through open

markets, international institutions, cooperative security, a community of democratic

states, the rule of law and a belief in progressive change (2011: 2). The post-WWII

iteration of this order is defined by seven logics: open markets, economic security and the

social bargain (“embedded liberalism”), multilateral institutional cooperation, security

binding, western democratic solidarity, human rights and progressive change, and

American hegemonic leadership (Ibid.: 171-188).27 We can connect these logics to the

order’s ideas about the pursuit of peace and prosperity – open markets, security

communities and multilateral institutions – and to the kind of authority fully recognized

by it – democratic and respectful of human rights. Defined as logics, these substantive

bases are intricately connected to the organizational structure of the order: a loosely

rules-based open-system, with low entry costs and significant benefits, where the

hegemon provides social goods and binds itself to multilateral institutions. Thus, the U.S.

is not only a liberal hegemon, but it is also a rule-abiding and open one.

Within this set-up, Ikenberry notes that the relationship of the hegemon has been

as a liberal (almost)-peer in the western-democratic domains, whereas a hierarchical and

coercive relation has endured in other global political realms, such as in relations with

states in Asia and the Middle East (Ibid.: 79-119). Ikenberry also notes that some of the

power relations undergirding these relations have shifted, and such shifts require different

institutional-organizational bargains to be struck. Thus, he contends that insofar as the

liberal international has remained the most attractive alternative for organizing global

27 For an account of the world order that identifies similar substantive characteristics, but ties these firmly to “American idealism and exceptionalism,” rather than liberalism, see Kissinger (2015: 277). This account provides key glimpses into the self-understanding of the U.S. in its role as the order-maker and maintainer, from Roosevelt’s empire of liberty to Wilson’s moral universalism (Ibid.: 236-266). It is, however, highly inattentive to other actors within the order.

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politics, and is recognized as such on account of its low-entry costs and significant

benefits, there is no crisis of the order and its principles. Rather, there is a crisis of

American authority within that order, which requires renewed bargains. The only way out

of the crisis of liberal-internationalism is, therefore, more of liberal internationalism, and

making the order and its institutions more open to new actors. Concomitantly, Ikenberry

makes a concluding call to the U.S. to continue to take part in this order, and in the “deep

work of liberal modernization,” as “it push[es] and pull[s] the world on a pathway” (Ibid.:

360).

Critically, Ikenberry undercuts the substantive roots and stakes of the order by

positing them as primarily organizational logics, despite connecting them to the 200 year

ascendance of liberal democratic states to global dominance. This partial evacuation of

substantive stakes allows for positing the liberal international order as an order with low-

entry costs and high returns. This is not to contest that this order and its governance have

also enabled the diffusion of material power beyond its original core (Buzan and Lawson

2015: 1-15, Duvall and Barnett 2018: 51-63). However, the order not only comes with

entry costs, but imposes further costs to remain in it as a legitimate member, including, at

times fundamental and even violent restructuring of states and societies. At the same

time, this 200 year ascendance entails histories of hierarchy that continue to inform some

states’ fraught relation to international order, precisely because the pre and post-WWII

orders are marked by a similar subset of ascendant states and liberal-ideational overlap.

Lastly, normatively committed as he is to the deep – and transformative – work of liberal

modernization to set states on a path of convergence, Ikenberry doesn’t connect this work

to the active pursuits of the order and its institutions. It is through these oversights and

elisions that the crisis of the order comes to be cast as one of authority, and not also its

substantive grounds.28

Beate Jahn’s Liberal Internationalism: Theory, History, Practice (2013), takes a

closer look at the two centuries Ikenberry invokes, and positions liberal internationalism

as a political project, grounded on a set of economic, political and normative precepts,

28 It is when the bases of the liberal international have started to erode in its “home(s),” that is liberal democracies in general and the United States in particular, that Ikenberry (2018) recasts this challenge. As I reviewed in the Introduction, this is still not a challenge of principles, but rather one of social purpose, to be potentially recovered by a return to the earlier roots of liberalism in the New Deal and social progress.

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which are productive of constitutive inequalities and hierarchies, which are narrated as

legitimate through a progressive historiography. At the same time, insofar as liberal

internationalism is a political project, it has been pursued differently in and through

particular historical moments. Jahn begins by noting that liberal internationalism remains

fragmented between its economic, political and normative bases, its theory and practice,

its past and present. 29 To reconstruct a cohesive account of it and to pinpoint its

constitutive hierarchies, Jahn turns to John Locke, who was concerned with the

promotion of liberalism in a non-liberal context (Ibid.: 44). My aim here is not to

reconstruct Jahn’s reconstruction of Locke’s theory to arrive at liberal internationalism as

a coherent political project or trace its long durée. Rather, it is to point to the constitutive

contradictions that have left their mark on the post-WWII world order.

Through Locke, Jahn reconstructs liberalism as “a political project that aims to

establish individual freedom through private property and to protect and extend this

freedom through government by consent. It pursues this goal through the privatization

and expropriation of common property, which requires the maintenance of unequal power

relations by economic, political, ideological or military means. And it justifies this

inequality through a philosophy of history that attributes to different actors different

levels of development corresponding to different rights and obligations” (Ibid.: 71). This

definition links the political, economic and normative precepts of liberalism, at the same

time as it posits inequality as constitutive of and sustained by liberalism. The pursuit of

economic gain produces inequalities between those who have wealth and those who do

not, which is reflected in unequal access to the political domain. However, as liberalism

is grounded in ideas of individual rights and freedoms, such inequality needs to be

legitimated, so that it does not come in direct contradiction with these bases. Jahn

contends that, historically, liberalism has relied on its outside – that is, the international –

to delegate such inequality.30 This has included the denial of political sovereignty to some

29 In this fragmented terrain, economic theories of liberalism link interdependence and peace, political theories contend that the proliferation of liberal-democracies results in peaceful global relations, and normative theories push for human rights and individual liberties at the international level. While each segment works with core liberal tenets, they do not establish causal or analytical links between the economic-political-normative elements (Jahn 2013: 75-90, 105-108, 143).30 For an alternative account that posits Locke’s positioning as the exemplary liberal thinker as part of the construction of a post-WWII transatlantic liberal identity in contradistinction to communism see: (Bell 2016: 62-91). Locke is not the only liberal thinker through whom the ideational bases of the contemporary

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from whom wealth could be accumulated to alleviate domestic hierarchies. Both

domestically and internationally – but more prominently in the case of the latter – these

inequalities of wealth and political recognition were narrated as legitimate via a

philosophy of history, which promised progress and future equality, thereby squaring the

circle between its universalistic grounds in individual equality, and the existing

conditions of social, political and economic inequality of individuals. Two constitutive

contradictions emerge from this account: the first is inherent to the universalist-

individualism, which promotes the individual pursuit of prosperity universally and

produces inequalities. The second is between this universalism and the need for an

illiberal or non-liberal outside to which these contradictions can be delegated – by

exempting relations with it from liberal precepts and making it the terrain of

accumulation, or by constituting it as the social purpose against which the internal

hierarchies and violence of the liberal domain can be legitimated.

If liberal internationalism is a political project, and “its realization is dependent

on, and requires adjustment to a variety of conditions in different times and places” (Jahn

2013: 176), how might we narrate the ordering project that emerged in the aftermath of

WWII? We can note the economic, political and normative bases of the liberal

international order as follows: Economically, open markets and free trade are the grounds

for the pursuit of prosperity. Political and normative precepts, combined with this

economic dimension, undergird proper kinds of authority within this order: states that are

liberal-democracies with proper procedures and institutions, market economies, and

abiding by human rights and the rule of law. Peace is pursued through permanent

multilateral institutions that generate interdependency and cooperation between these

units of authority. Theoretically, these three elements can be posited as existing in a

virtuous circle, where each begets the other. In practice, they create hierarchies of

recognition and come into tension with one another, such as in the pursuit of economic

relations with authoritarian capitalist countries that have poor human rights records.

order can be traced. To the contrary, Kant and his perpetual peace have been integral to democratic peace theory, and elsewhere, Jahn has turned to Mill to trace the liberal-interventionism (Owen 1994, Russett 1996, Doyle 2005, Jahn 2005). I turn to Jahn’s Lockean account because it brings together the multiple constituent precepts of the liberal international order. For a prescient analysis of how liberal logics require ever-more expansive governance because individuals and communities must be molded in particular ways to be entrusted with self-governing, see also Neumann and Sending 2010: 175.

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The ideational-institutional infrastructure of this order was constructed in the

aftermath of WWII. 31 This order-building effort, led by the U.S., put in place key

political and economic organizations, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and

the IMF, as permanent multilateral institutions to guarantee peace and cooperation. While

some have cast this order as realist rather than liberal as it unfolded through the Cold War

(Mearsheimer 2019), others have coined the term liberalism of fear to define an

institution-building that is grounded in both realist concerns about “self-serving elites and

their worst impulses” and the liberal hope in the ability of institutions to tame them

(Keohane 2001: 2). I have posited that what constitutes an order is not the presence or

absence of power struggles, but rather ideas about how to get from here (aftermath of a

world war) to there (global peace). We can push this thread further, by recognizing that

this post-war building did not only have the “bare necessities,” institutions that would

govern political conflict and economic cooperation, but others such as UNESCO, which

are testament to the substantive grounds and universalistic aspirations of this order-

making project, as nothing short of fostering a shared humanity and restoring faith in it.

At the same time, if the aspirations of the order were universalistic and productive, the

institutional infrastructure it relied on emphasized neutrality of bureaucracies, manned by

international civil servants (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, Sending 2015: 40-45). These

aspirations would be pursued through rational-legal institutions and by scientific-

technical means, with the latter bringing epistemic communities into governance regimes

in increasingly central roles.

If these universalist aspirations met the reality of the Cold War, which created

deadlocks in various institutions – although as the 1972 establishment of the world

heritage regime demonstrates not evenly across this structure – the Cold War’s end

removed these obstacles from its path. Famously, Fukuyama (1989) declared the end of

history, and forecast a global politics of technocratic solutions to shared problems under

the consensus on liberal-democracies as the only viable economic-political organization.

Others note the broad enthusiastic perception of this juncture as ripe for renewed efforts

31 There are, of course, continuities with the inter-war institutions. For a stronger articulation of this, see Reus-Smit (1999: 152), who contends that post-WWII order-building is not a period of “architectural innovation” but rather one of “mass construction” of the institutional principles and practices that had been at work in the international society, extending to the 19th century.

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for a deeper and wider liberal world-making, manifested in the proliferation and

deepening of governance efforts (Hurrell 2007: 1-5, Ikenberry 2011: 3, Jahn 2013: 1-7,

Zürn 2018: 18 and 30).32 Ikenberry describes this moment as the transformation from a

dual-logic to single-logic order. If the Cold War required constructing a liberal

international order on one side of the Iron Curtain, while engaging geopolitically across

it, its end signaled the globalization of the first logic. However, his later work reframes

this globalization as the loss of a social purpose for the liberal international, with the

disappearance a constitutive outside (Ikenberry forthcoming). Jahn’s account helps us

think historically and theoretically about what this loss entails, as the place against which

the liberal international was constructed and to which its contradictions and inequalities

were delegated. Such a loss then, is not only one of social purpose, but also of a lessened

ability to legitimate the constitutive contradictions of the order, at the same time as its

hierarchies and exclusions become heightened through renewed efforts at global

governance.

Taking a further step from the immediate aftermath of the Cold War brings us to

the contemporary worries over the future of the liberal international order. For some,

what we are witnessing is a return to great power competition (Mearsheimer 2019). For

others, the worries implicate the rules and principles of this order – and thus, in

significant part, its regimes and institutions of governance. For those who cast these

worries as a crisis of authority in an unusually integrative order, what is necessary – and

presumably adequate – is a renegotiation of institutional bargains. However, if these

changes unfold at the intersection of greater social, political, and cultural plurality and a

less uneven distribution of power (Buzan and Lawson 2015: 275-280. Acharya 2018: 1),

other changes might be afoot. Acharya posits that the active and transformative

participation of postcolonial and formerly weak states extend beyond a renegotiation of

institutional-procedural bargains (Acharya 2018). 33 Rather, this pluralization entails

different conceptions of just, inclusive and participatory ordering practices.

32 Others like Rosenau (1992 and 1995) pointed to the transnational nature and more ambivalent possibilities of the period. 33 Acharya focuses on weaker and postcolonial states and proposes that their representation and participation is the key question of legitimacy facing the order. He separates these actors from other weaker states, such as small and poorer states in Europe, insofar as the postcolonial states have a different historical-political relation to and claim on the order (2018: 8-12).

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I have also described the pluralization of the order as a dynamic where a greater

number of actors assert themselves within the world order, take part in its making and

remaking based on a range of substantive visions, and demand recognition for these

visions. Following Jahn, we can now note the additional stress caused by the inability to

delegate or suspend this plurality in relation to a constitutive outside. At the same time, a

coherent alternative for an order organized on a different ideational basis has not yet

emerged.34 In this context, contestation, renegotiation and continued participation within

the existing institutions of the order unfold unevenly across issue domains as connected

to the plurality of visions for the grounds and goals of governance. For example, the

economic domains of the order manifest broader consensus than the political-cultural

realms.35 Thus, the objections to the former have mostly been in terms of the institutional

hierarchies of existing governance mechanisms, and the latter have unfolded through the

invocation of alternative substantive bases. Importantly, however, decreased consensus

does not necessarily lead to a retreat of governance, on account of the order-governance

relation I have posited. As these domains remain salient to questions of recognition

within the world order, what emerges instead is their renegotiation.

4. Culture and Its Pluralizing Global Politics

Until now, this chapter has indicated that an issue-based approach to plurality and the

order is more productive than undifferentiated analyses of crisis or business-as-usual. It

has also gestured towards culture as a domain of plurality, but without elaborating further

34 See also: Zürn 2018: 182. However, Zürn interprets substantive objections to the existing contours of global politics as predominantly symbolic (such as the pro-Palestinian declarations at the UN General Assembly) or as not fundamentally revisionist (such as the BRICS desire for the previous iteration of embedded liberalism to neoliberalism). I am concerned with the transformations in and of the order that this plurality produces. 35 While these distinctions are analytically useful and provide a better understanding of the challenges to the liberal international order, they are neither absolute nor static. They are not absolute as it is not possible to fully separate challenges of re-substantiation from those of procedural representation. For example, Zürn concurs with Buzan and Lawson that there is broad agreement around liberal economics. He observes that Brazil, India and China raise objections to neoliberal prescriptions, and push for policies that are closer to “embedded liberalism” (2018: 182. See also Allan et. al. 2018.). In this case, a readjustment of voting weights might not entail a move away from liberal economics as such, however, it might still indicate movement towards a different substantiation of it. And yet, this re-substantiation is not identical to a contestation between ideas of whether the economy should be organized around free trade and capitalism, or redistribution and state-led economies. Second, insofar as governance objects do not exist in nature and are produced as singular-universal, it is not possible to claim that plurality is inherent to some domains and not others. Thus, I do not conceptualize the economy as innately more amenable to consensus and governance, and culture as less so. Areas in which more or less contestation arise is a historical-political question.

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on this claim. These claims, of course, extend well beyond this dissertation. I have

already cited Buzan and Lawson’s prediction that cultural and political governance will

take a backseat in a decentered global order (2015: 273-304). Most recently, Reus-Smit

has put forth the connection between shifting power dynamics in the order and cultural

anxieties of Western leaders, as manifested in repeated calls for China to be a responsible

member of the order, and frequent invocations of commitment to the rules-based order

(2018: 223).36 The worries about the future of the order, therefore, cannot be reduced to a

redistribution of power, but they are intricately connected to the question of to whom

power diffuses.

We might be tempted at this point to reach two foregone conclusions: that culture

is an area of inherent, essential and unique plurality, and/or that cultural plurality is

grounds of essentially conflictual dynamics. I posit that what counts as cultural plurality

and the implications of this plurality for the world order are not stable through time.

Rather, it emerges through interactions with the order’s governance of culture. The two

main threads of the global politics of cultural plurality are claims of multiculturalism and

civilizational politics. Lastly, global cultural politics is a non-hegemonic terrain, not only

because of these claims of plurality, but also as it is suspended between these claims and

the lingering universals of receding hegemonies.

If I have suspended offering a definition of culture until this point, it is because –

to quote Raymond Williams’s familiar statement on this – “culture is one of the most

contested and complex words in the English language” (quoted in Salter 2002: 13).

However, some provisional definition is necessary to proceed. I adopt Salter’s definition

of culture as “the field of representation in which power and identities are constructed,

reified, negotiated and resisted.”37 This field of representation, plural in itself, comprises

abstract ideas, history and values of a group, as well as the specific textual and

institutional practices of such ideas (Ibid.). What is key is the definition of culture as not

only internally plural, ideational, constitutive of identities and power-laden, but also as

36 These worries exist alongside another set of more recent concerns about the decaying support for the liberal international order among Western publics, and consequently a newly emerging group of populist-nationalist political elites. 37 A cognate and more provisional definition is provided by Weldes and Duvall (1999: 1-2): “culture can thus be thought of as encompassing a multiplicity of discourses or ‘codes of intelligibility’ through which meaning is produced – including discourses about ‘culture’ itself.”

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institutionally practiced. Pivoting from a similar conception of culture, Reus-Smit

contends that institutions give patterned and structured form to plural and dynamic

cultures. Turning to sociology and anthropology, he posits that “institutions themselves

are cultural artefacts, but once established – once they take a structural form, reproduced

through routinized practices – they channel the cultural flow” (2018: 7). The argument,

therefore, is two-fold. On the one hand, even though culture is internally and inherently

plural, this plurality is molded through institutional practices grounded in and productive

of particular identities and representations, and not others. We can assume such molding

to be power-laden, in its bases and outcomes. On the other hand, and contrary to the

claim that institutions are spaces that neutralize cultural difference, what they do, in fact,

is to organize culture through authorizing acceptable forms of difference (Ibid.: 9).

This institutional molding of culture is not limited to the domestic level. Reus-

Smit contends that each international order has organized cultural difference through

“diversity regimes,” which are “systemic norms and practices that legitimize certain units

of political authority (states), define recognized categories of cultural difference (nation),

and relate the two (nation and state) (Ibid.: 14). This process not only legitimizes certain

kinds of cultural difference, but also delegitimizes others, for example religion and state.

It creates social and political hierarchies, patterns of inclusion and exclusion, that “are a

fertile terrain for grievances” (Ibid.: 225). Such grievances, in turn, emerge when material

and ideational conditions change. They can “fuel struggles for recognition and the

reconfiguration of political authority or emotionally energize the pursuit of other

objectives” (Ibid.) At this point, we might ask, if culture is such a potentially treacherous

terrain, why do order-makers engage in this endeavor? Here, Reus-Smit argues that

cultural diversity regimes are integral parts of international orders, for three reasons: 1) to

control and institutionalize preferred configurations of meanings and identities, engineer

consent, limit the scope for cultural cooperation; 2) locate one’s self as an order builder

within this cultural terrain; 3) generate the grounds of social and political coordination so

that conflict can be avoided when interests diverge (Ibid.: 13). At stake in the ordering of

culture, then, is nothing less than the production of responsible agents through whom the

order can be put to work, and maintained.

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A further insight follows from Reus-Smit’s framework:38 the institutional and

hierarchical organization of culture, which legitimizes particular forms of difference and

not others, is key to understanding expressions of grievance at the level of the world

order. Here, Reus-Smit’s thinking is categorical: nation vs. religion. I push further on this

authorized difference by returning to the distinction between kind and form of authority.

While international orders have relied on systemic configurations of cultural difference,

the order-culture relation has been more complex than the assignment of a particular

category of difference as the proper grounds of authority. Put simply, hierarchies of

recognition have existed not only between civilizations and barbarians, or nations and

non-nations, but also between civilizations and between nations. This is important

because such hierarchies can produce grievances not only in the form of new cultural

claims as the grounds for authority recognition – such as indigenous sovereignty – but

they can also attach to existing terms and demand their re-substantiation to reflect a

plurality of understandings on what constitutes a nation or a civilization.

With this caveat in mind, we can turn to Iriye’s tracing of the long history of

culture and international politics, starting with the turn of the 20th century, when culture

and race were interlinked. High culture was linked to civilization, and separated from the

so-called barbarians on grounds of race (1997: 5). World exhibitions became a mainstay

of global cultural politics as representations of the world, which reestablished ranks of the

civilized and barbarian, and confirmed to the imperial populations their place in the

hierarchy (Ibid.: 39, Salter 2002: 48). The ordering of the world, grounded in these

standards of civilization, began to shift with the emergence of Japan onto the world stage,

which possessed the hierarchical social and political organization that was integral to

civilizations, without, however, the proper geographical, racial and religious pedigree

38 I depart from Reus-Smit’s conception in two important ways. One, I do not think that culture is the only domain in which plurality can assert itself in contrast to existing modes of ordering. Two, Reus-Smit thinks of diversity regimes as system-wide configurations that link a particular difference to a unit of authority. I do not analyze the governance of cultural diversity as taking place at a singular-systemic level, while I would expect its various iterations to be compatible with the broader ideational grounds of the order. For example, the world heritage regime does not govern a nation-state conception of culture, but grounds itself in a universal understanding of culture, a liberal historiography of humanity, and scientific-technical evaluation mechanisms that fit within the broader ideational-institutional remit of the order. At the same time, it aims to foster dynamics very similar to what Reus-Smit diagnoses: an ideational convergence, increased identification with the order and peaceful global relations. Thus, the order-plurality-governance relation, as it concerns culture is not limited to a single systemic configuration.

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shared by European high civilizations. Cultural ordering in the inter-war years, was

focused on combating parochialism (as nationalized culture) with universalism (of

civilizations), unfolding through the cooperation of cultural elites (Iriye 1997: 60-84).

The International Committee on Intercultural Cooperation, which was established by a

League of Nations Decree and functioned through national committees, to generate such

cooperation, is an important precursor to UNESCO.

The post-WWII order’s governance of culture can be understood through the

paradigm of liberal-modernity. The order set out by attaching nations to states as the key

cultural difference that was recognized and regulated by the order. This conception of

nationhood, however, has never been severed from liberalism’s philosophy of history.

Some nations have been deemed unready for or failing statehood, resulting in the

severing of this link, and the non-recognition of authority. Within this order, there is a

further shift from ethno-nations to multiculturalism as the proper domestic organization

of difference. Within this scheme, UNESCO is marked by the pursuit of this liberal-

modern, universal philosophy of history, under which the difference of nations would be

organized as convergent.39Historically, cultural governance also received a renewed push

with the end of the Cold War, including the pursuit of human rights and rule of law as

universal (political) cultures. This quest was posited as culturally neutral: technical,

functional and rational, at the same time as it was pursued in moral-cultural terms:

through projects that aimed to generate cultures of human rights, rule of law and

democracy, which required transformations of cultures as fields of representation and

institutional practices (Boli and Thomas 1999: 19, Lipschutz 2001: 84). Put differently,

politico-cultural homogenization was not only predicted (Salter 2002: 128), but it was

also actively pursued and subsequently resisted. I analyze such resistance as the political

uptakes of multiculturalism and politics of civilizational equality.

4.1. Changing Politics of Plurality I: Global Multiculturalism

It might seem counterintuitive to think of multiculturalism as a resistant politics of

plurality, in light of the observation that it has been pursued as part of order-making as

the proper domestic organization of cultural diversity. Reus-Smit places this multicultural

39 Lentin (2005) argues that, especially during the early years of UNESCO, this emphasis on culture, which can be posited as plural in apolitical and convergent ways, had the effect of marginalizing discussions on race as an axis of identity for making claims of recognition and compensation.

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turn to the 1970s, whereas Kymlicka traces its authorization as a governance pursuit to

the aftermath of the Balkan wars, when IOs were “authorized or encouraged by powerful

member-states to ‘do something’ about ethnic diversity” (2007: 12). Kymlicka notes that

this authorization resulted in the recruitment of experts and academics, including himself,

tasked with proposing policies of engagement with ethnic diversity beyond the existing

precepts of non-discrimination (Ibid.: 13-16). He defines the multiculturalism

consequently adopted by IOs as liberal and grounded in a human rights culture, which not

only justifies claims to rights beyond non-discrimination but also frames and filters which

claims can be pursued on what terms (Ibid.: 88). Kymlicka’s main concern is the

sustainable future of this international liberal multiculturalism. To that end, he evaluates

its divergent adoption by IOs, caused by short-term concerns and calculations, as

undermining even its minimalistic future prospects. My focus is not this thoughtful

overview. It is rather a constitutive disjuncture that Kymlicka points out, between the

emergence of multiculturalism, as theory and practice, under particular historical-political

conditions in Western domestic societies, and its international pursuit for societies under

very different circumstances. This is significant for understanding multiculturalism as an

ordering practice and as a resistant political uptake. We can call this universalized pursuit

of multiculturalism, which occludes its particular origins and which is pursued by

international institutions as its hegemonic, order-making iteration.

At the same time, however, multiculturalism opens up discursive and political

space for thinking about culture in plural and non-hierarchical terms, as the grounds for

claim-making to recognition and inclusion. It is this space that has been taken up by

political actors in ways that are either not bound by or in direct contrast to the liberal

roots of this multiculturalism. We can think of the assertion of “Asian values” as an

important instance when the multicultural claim stands in contrast to the claim to human

rights’ transcendence of cultural particularity. In this vein, elaborating – and lamenting –

these dynamics of post-Cold War cultural politics, Iriye writes: “we may characterize the

Third World as ‘multicultural’ and refer to its self-assertiveness as ‘multiculturalism’ ”

(1997: 170). In this assertion, he notes a move away from “a unified value system with

implied universal and absolute validity” (Ibid.). A similar distinction can be made

through Brown’s critique of Kymlicka’s liberal-multiculturalism that “the group-

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differentiated rights he is prepared to give to minorities are not the kind of rights that the

minorities themselves believe themselves to be entitled to” (2001: 126). In contrast, then,

the so-called multiculturalism of the Third World is a demand for recognition to which

the states believe themselves to be entitled, which is neither separate from nor identical to

the one to which they are institutionally guided.

4.2. Changing Politics of Plurality II: Civilizational Co-evality

The second way in which counterhegemonic cultural politics have been pursued is

through claims to civilizational plurality and co-evality. In separating these two streams,

my aim is not to reproduce a distinction where culture is associated with the local or the

national, thicker in meaning and attachment (such as a Herderian Volksgeist), and

civilization is a watered-down identification. Culture and multiculturalism can, in fact, be

invoked at a range of levels – from the local to the civilizational – and it is harder for

civilizational claims to be put forth by an equally wide range of groups, as civilization

continues to be attached to larger socio-political groupings. However, as power-laden

fields of meaning through which representation and identities are negotiated,

consolidated and contested, culture and civilization share important overlaps. Note for

example, the switches that Dallmayr et. al. make in introducing their volume on

civilizational dialogue: “Post-Cold war tensions accompanied by the phenomenon of

cultural/civilizational resurgence have deepened the necessity of reflecting critically on

“civilizations” and “world order(s)” and “conceptions of global and regional order are

everywhere intermeshed with cultural and civilizational traditions and aspirations (2014:

xv and xxii). Or Michael and Petito’s assertion that civilizations have reasserted

themselves as “strategic frames of reference, and understood in culturalist terms,”

through which actors negotiate global politics and their place in it (2009: 9). I hold these

two politics of plurality separately because they have been pursued through interlinked

but separate discursive fields, political actors and arenas – albeit with similar objections

to a (perceived) singular-universal model presented and pushed forth as world order-

making.40

40 Best gives the example of Asian values as illustrative of civilizational plurality, rather than multiculturalism, pointing to a further blurring of these lines (2007: 187). We might conceivably think of religion, and its greater role in civilizational discourse as another dividing line, although once we relax the liberalism assumption, multiculturalism also begins to include religious plurality.

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The scholarship on civilizational politics within IR grounds itself in post-Cold

War world political developments, and emerges in the shadow of Huntington’s Clash of

Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). The critical scholarship refuting

Huntington’s essentialist and deterministic analysis also notes the end of the Cold War as

a turning point in civilizational politics. However, they depart significantly from the

approach to civilizational difference as essential in its origins and hostile in its

consequences. Importantly, and congruent with my framework, they trace the emergence

of civilizational politics to an intensified pursuit of post-Cold War global liberal cultural-

civilizational projects, and reactions to its “ravages of civilization (singular)” (Bettiza and

Petito 2018: 42, Köchler 2014: 20). What is stake is a reemergence of the standards of

civilization – albeit as transformed from “minimalist, exclusive and hierarchical” to

“more inclusive, universal and liberal” – as the new benchmarks for recognition within

global politics, and a concomitant politics of civilizational co-evality that pushes back on

it. (Wendt 1999: 292-293, O’Hagan 2007: 28. See also, Bowden and Seebrooke 2007:

123, Köchler 2014: 23).41 As such, the politics of civilizational co-evality emphasizes

diversity, respect, goodwill and dialogue, rather than hierarchy and clash as the proper

relationship between civilizations (Marchetti 2009: 99, Petito 2009: 49). At the same

time, however, such politics present a challenge to “the very idea that there could be [a

universal model for the rest of the world],” beyond the question of whether liberalism

fails to provide it (Brown 2014: 60).

4.3. Limits of Politics of Pluralism

I have argued that the pushback on the liberal international order’s governance of culture

unfolds through a politics of multiculturalism and civilizational co-evality. At the

intersection of these threads, culture emerges as a non-hegemonic terrain, with a plurality

of conceptions on what kind of an object culture is and the ends towards which it can be

governed. In the case of the world heritage regime, it has manifested as contestations

between the regime’s original grounds in “outstanding universal value,” which still find

41 For an incisive account of the changes in the use of civilization in world politics, also see Salter, who notes its mobilization in WWII propaganda by European countries against one another as civilized vs. barbaric, undermining the distinction between civilized Europeans and barbaric non-Europeans in the process, and declining in use with the loss of European self-confidence in civilization brought on by the WWII (2002: 17). Like others, Salter posits civilization and its political use as not static, but rather “ shifted and changed to meet the contemporary political imagination” (Ibid.: 156).

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acceptance by some participants, and claims of singularity, plurality, and local contexts

as the proper value grounds of culture. Such contestations have resulted in debates about

the proper actors and relations of authority in the regime, and the constitution of the

regime itself as authoritative. At stake in these renegotiations are demands for cultural

recognition on the world stage.

At this point, it is important to note three important limits, which will reemerge in

the following chapters. First, civilizational politics are elite projects that can be more

tolerant of diversity between civilizations than plurality within a civilization – although,

as broader cultural units, they are representationally more capacious than ethno-nations

(Marchetti 2009, Bettiza and Petito 2018: 43). Second, as these politics of co-evality

emerge from and continue to be oriented toward the world order, they are haunted,

shaped, and structured by its past and present hegemonies. Jacqueline Best articulates this

dilemma by pointing to the connection between singular and plural conceptions of

civilization(s): the universalist conception needs the (barbarian) other against which to

frame itself, whereas pluralist conceptions need universal metrics to know if one

civilization is superior to another (2007: 184-186). Thus, she argues, “while one logic

remains dominant, it is always haunted by the other as both its condition of possibility

and its limit.” (Ibid.: 186). Consequently, while civilizational debates can “open up new

spaces of contestation,” such space will be limited if it does not undertake “a critique of

the terms of the debate themselves” (Ibid.: 187). While I am in broad agreement with

Best on the limits of these civilizational politics, I do not think that plurality needs a

universal metric, insofar as hierarchy is not the only possible relation to difference

(Inayatullah and Blaney 1996: 65-85). However, demands for recognition on the world

stage require positing one’s self as a civilization that is particular and different but also

equal and recognizable. This complex engagement with the hegemonic terms of

civilization expand these terms, while also limiting the possibilities of alternative and

more inclusive global cultural politics.

Importantly, in the case of both civilizational politics and multiculturalism, a

politics of plurality is not necessarily one of pluralism. As cogently put by Levine and

McCourt (2018), albeit in reference to IR theories, that there are multiple (cultural)

approaches (plurality) does not mean that the approaches themselves are more open to

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engagement with and challenge by others (pluralism). I take into account this important

limit throughout the dissertation. For now, let me note that I do not claim a politics of

plurality will lead us to a global political terrain – cultural or otherwise – that is devoid of

power, hierarchies and exclusions. However, claims to plurality – limited, discursive and

at times strategic though they may be – nevertheless open up a terrain that can be taken

up by multiple actors.

5. Further Alternative Accounts

This overview of changing global cultural politics sets me up to review two alternative

accounts of the challenges faced by the world heritage regime, offered by its participants

(by states during committee and general assembly meetings, and some of the experts and

civil servants I have interviewed), and by a growing scholarship on it produced in the

fields of anthropology, archeology and public economy. The two, at times related,

arguments are that the regime has become “a victim of its own success” and that it has

“become politicized.” The first argument posits that states put pressure on the regime for

the inscription of their sites, at the detriment of expert evaluations and proper procedures,

because of the prestige and renown of the regime. The politicization argument posits that

states have foregrounded political concerns at the detriment of heritage, resulting in

tensions with the scientific-technical bases of the regime. Let me address each in turn,

and how my argument – that the challenges to the regime are reflective of the pluralizing

global politics of culture – departs from, overlaps with and recasts these concerns.

First, the victim of its own success argument. An early articulation of this

diagnosis was made by Hernán Crespo-Toral, UNESCO’s then-Assistant Director

General for Culture, at the 12th General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage

Convention. In opening the session, Crespo-Toral “suggested that the Convention was

possibly a victim of its success,” as evidenced by the increased number of nominations

and an unmanageable workload for the Advisory Bodies (UNESCO 1999: 2). It has since

been expressed by civil servants and some state delegations in close connection to the

stress on the regime’s ideational-institutional grounds (UNESCO 2005: 32 and 52). It

was also voiced in two of my interviews: with an international expert on 7 March 2017

and with a civil servant on 15 March 2017.

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Undoubtedly, the regime has grown in prominence through time. During its first

years, some annual committee meetings took place without the full attendance of the 21

delegations comprising the intergovernmental committee. The current meetings are not

only attended by all committee members, but the majority of signatories to the

Convention join as observers. Local civil society organizations and international NGOs

are regularly in attendance, often in relation to particular site nominations and

conservation reports.42 Having noted this increase in the prominence of the convention, as

reflected in and undoubtedly reproduced by the greater attention, two questions remain:

why did the convention’s prominence increase and why is this increase manifested as

politicization. In both cases, a single answer is not possible. However, my framework

captures key global political dynamics that otherwise get sidelined, at the detriment of a

better analysis of the stakes of these contestations.43

Let me return to the two interviewees who expressed this argument with further

context than the brief and oblique articulations at the annual meetings. For the expert, the

success entails the almost universal membership of the Convention, which emerged from

the efforts within the scope of the Global Strategy adopted in 1994 (see Chapter 3). S/he

contends that “when the convention was a little less well-known, there was less pressure

from countries to put things [sites] on [the List].” S/he insists that this universalization

was still a success, but that it produced a system that is “too successful and too

important,” resulting in the production of costly nomination files and management plans.

After incurring such cost, states want to see their sites inscribed. For the civil servant, the

success of the Convention is inherent to a simple fact “that has always been there in the

minds of men since the seven wonders.” This simple fact is that “Any state party around

the globe understand[s] the importance of preserving its own culture... [and] all the state

parties are interested in conserving their own sites and at the same time let[ting] them be

known by the rest of the world.” Important threads emerge from these articulations: First,

there is greater interest in inclusion in the regime. Second, there are two possible sources

42 For example, during the first committee meeting in 1977, all members of the committee (then capped at 15 delegations) were present along with 2 observer states and 1 observer NGO. In the 1978 meeting, 13/15 committee members were present, and 5 observer states. Conversely, the 2009 world heritage committee meeting was attended by 21 members of the committee as well as 97 state delegations as observers. During the 2011 meeting, in addition to the 21 committee members, 121 state delegations were present as observers. 43 Tourism income is listed as another reason why states pursue inscription of sites.

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of this greater interest: the efforts pursued by the regime towards universal membership

and the desire for states to let their cultural heritage be known by the rest of the world.

Third, this greater demand for inclusion manifests in the willingness to expand significant

economic resources for the preparation of nomination files and an unwillingness to delay

inscription by undertaking revisions required by the Advisory Bodies.

My framework does not discount these dynamics but recasts them as follows: If

international cultural recognition has always been important, the relative importance and

the particular substantiation of such recognition in the world order has changed over time.

In fact, the longer arc of the regime’s implementation is illustrative of these changing

dynamics: participants in the regime started with broad agreement on its postulation of

universal cultural value and demonstrated a willingness for inclusion in it, evidenced in

the sites they nominated and in their engagement with international expertise (Chapter 2).

The possibility of this universal value began to be questioned in the mid-1990s,

accompanied by a change in the kind of sites nominated, the cultural value attached to

them, and the engagement with international experts’ evaluation of these sites (Chapters

3 and 4). This includes changes in the long-standing participants’ patterns of site

nominations and engagement with expert evaluations (Chapters 2, 3 and 5). The

dynamics, therefore, do not only point to plurality of the regime’s membership, but also

to the push for the recognition of this plurality. In turn, the changing salience of cultural

recognition is manifested in post-inscription speeches by states that emphasize the

dynamics of world stage recognition, and also in the contentious sites that are put forth to

renegotiate world-political histories (Chapter 5).

Lastly, the sunken costs of nomination files not only demonstrate a willingness on

the part of states to devote considerable funds to cultural identification and promotion

(salience), but also raises the question of why nomination files and management plans

became such costly endeavors. Meskell notes that as the world heritage regime started to

become more contested, its response was to further bureaucratize by creating a mountain

of paperwork (2018: 81-85). In the case of the nomination files, there are increased

expectations for the proof of universal value, authenticity, and adequate legal protection

mechanisms. I connect this expectation to waning hegemony and a shift between evident

universal value and value that needs to prove itself (Chapters 2 and 3). But this increased

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bureaucratization also calls to mind Barnett and Finnemore’s diagnosis of the pathology

of IOs-as-bureaucracies: inherently expansive and universalizing in the rational-legal

governance of their object. Meskell’s insight provides a key supplement to this analysis:

that the sprawling bureaucracy is in part a response to the political questions that have

been raised by the global governance of culture. This bureaucratic expansion, in turn,

further facilitates the turn to the political as the path to cultural recognition.44

The second argument: that the regime has become politicized. The politicization

argument, put forth by some participants in the regime and also by its researcher

observers, has a few components. The first is that participation in the regime is grounded

in political (or geopolitical) rather than heritage concerns. This is manifested in the

overturning of expert evaluations, but also in the more subtle dynamics of ambassadors

rather than experts taking the floor on behalf of state delegations during the committee

meeting (Brumann 2014), and the less visible dynamics of corridor negotiations (Meskell

2015). For my interlocutors, it also involves the substance of the discussions that are no

longer about “technicalities or professional arguments” or “actual heritage issues or

value-related issues,”45 but “more just up or down, yes or no.”46 These claims set up a

clear divide between heritage and politics with no seeming overlaps, based on particular

definitions of both. The undergirding definition of heritage accepts the regime’s

grounding values: “to protect the global merit good of cultural and natural heritage of

universal value for humanity” (Bertacchini et. al. 2016: 95). Politics is understood as

primarily strategic, grounded in national power and interest, and geopolitical alliances

(Askew 2010, Meskell 2014 and 2015). Meskell’s recent ethnographies of the committee

meetings have been significant in putting forth this interpretation of the regime as

subjected to the whims of the powerful states, with a particular focus on BRICS, and as

44Examples of these dynamics in the 2018 meeting included Germany wanting a site nomination to be discussed by the committee after three previous attempts at taking into account Advisory Body evaluations failed to produce a positive evaluation. Angola also remarked that consistent unfavorable decisions by the experts facilitates the further shift to the political route. In this context, reliance on further bureaucratization is at best a dubious relief –it may delay some inscriptions, but it also produces further amendments to expert evaluations, such as cases where site inscriptions are postponed on grounds of inadequate management mechanisms (Meskell 2012). 45 Interviews conducted on 7 March 2017, 15 March 2017 and 2 May 2017. 46 Interview conducted on 7 March 2017. Another interviewee supports this interpretation by noting that states are interested in the outcome rather than the substance (Interview conducted on 11 July 2016).

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unable to dislodge states from nationalist heritage interpretations towards internationalist

ones (Meskell 2014, 2015 and 2018. See also Bertacchini et. al. 2016).

And yet, these starkly posited dynamics are undercut by other elements.

Complicating this understanding of politics, Brumann notes that the interplay between

experts and ambassadors is not one of cosmopolitanism vs. nationalism, but rather

“colliding cosmopolitanisms,” with experts operating on the ideational basis of a

universal humanity, whereas ambassadors are concerned with maintaining harmonious

relations between state delegations (2014: 2188-2189). At the same time, and in tension

with the over-determined politics of national interest and geopolitical alliances, Meskell

and Brumann note that the “geopolitical alliances” emerged “to challenge the perceived

hegemony of European nations within the organization,” and that they are “shifting,

mutable, and might at any one time be based on religious, regional political or economic

linkages” (2015: 33). Indeed, the states that object to expert decisions have also signed

petitions warning against the politicization of the Convention, suggesting that more is at

work than an either-or dynamic (Chapter 4). At the same time, experts and civil servants

note that politics has always been a part of the regime – including states’ desire to see

their nominations inscribed, and the site nominations being informed by at least some

domestic concerns (Chapter 4. See also Labadi 2015: 59-77). Two experts I interviewed

push these observations further. The first interviewee points to the greater desire for

cultural representation and recognition as challenging the selective bases of the regime.47

The second one contends: “I have been saying this for a long time, conservation is

political. If you think it is technical, it is crazy.”48Conservation, posited as material-

technical interventions for the preservation of sites, is political because it involves

decisions on what to preserve, how and for whom. Surely, then, a process that designates

some of these sites as having universal value, towards their protection by and for

humanity will be all the more political.

Let me parse these complex and at times contradictory dynamics, put them in the

terms of my framework, and make a case for why the theoretical approach I am

47 Interview conducted on 2 May 2017. 48 Interview conducted on 6 March 2017. A civil servant also noted that acts of heritage destruction as part of recent conflicts contributes to making the work of conservation more political (Interview conducted on 15 March 2017).

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proposing can allow us to make different and better “political” sense of these changes and

challenges. First, I argue that both the regime’s original conception and its current

renegotiation are political. The former has been criticized as Eurocentric by participants

and scholars (Turtinen 2000). The corresponding World Heritage List was not only

grounded in but also reproduced hierarchies and exclusions rooted in the particular

origins of this putatively universal value. At the same time, this pursuit was political in its

aim to foster peaceful global relations through producing convergent historical-cultural

identifications. The subsequent renegotiation is grounded in global cultural politics, in

tandem with the past and present world ordering of culture and cultural difference. While

these claims are not the universal-international understandings of heritage that the regime

seeks to foster, they are expressions of internationalized national or civilizational

identities. As I argue in Chapter 4, this conception of culture is consequential to the

renegotiations that are framed as the “politicization” of the regime. This recasting of

politicization moves away from an inherently “negative” understanding of politics as

strategic and divisive and towards a broader interpretation that also includes recognition,

and representation.49 It can also help us make sense of recent dynamics, such as the

nomination of “divisive sites” that bring conflictual histories of the world order for

renegotiation, in ways that do not easily follow from prestige or the rising power of

BRICS (Chapter 5).

6. Caveats and Limits

Having laid out my theoretical framework, it is necessary clarify caveats and limits. The

first concerns my use of hegemonic and non-hegemonic in describing the domain of

global cultural politics and the contestations of the world heritage regime. Hegemony has

made a few appearances in IR theory, in each case pointing to some combination of

material and ideational predominance. With the exception of Cox’s seminal essay (1983),

focused on modes of production, material power has entailed a combination of wealth

and military superiority. Placed on a continuum, power transition and hegemonic stability

49 Zürn defines the contemporary condition as “a process through which widening arrays of actors – individual citizens, NGOs, parties, lobby groups and governmental bodies – are reoriented toward international institutions” (2018: 138). Subsequently, and in contrast to its predominantly negative connotation, Zürn defines politicization as bringing an issue into the field or sphere of politics, and therefore that of public choice, and away from the realm of executive, legal or technocratic decision making (Ibid.: 138-145).

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theories veer strongly towards the material, Ikenberry’s liberal hegemony and the English

school are somewhere in the middle, and constructivist approaches emphasize a set of

ideational factors or relations as hegemonically constitutive of the international order.

The distinction between the middle and ideational approaches is not only the

relative weight they assign to social elements, but their thin (efficient cause a la Wendt

1999: 343) or thick (constitutive) conception of them. The conception of the social

matters for the kind of consent understood to be at work in and through hegemony. If

hegemonic ideas are at least partly constitutive and transformative (Cox 1983, Reus-Smit

1999, Allan et. al. 2018), “consent” is not given by an actor that can stand apart from and

rationally evaluate the costs and benefits of this ideational-material system. If ideas are

epiphenomenal, one can give consent to the system, as an independently formed actor

willing to join its terms and abide by its rules, based on rational (including cost-benefit)

calculations (Ikenberry 2011, Goh 2019). The dilemmas that the two conceptions pose

should be familiar by now – the constitutive account raises the question of origins (how

ideas came to be shared) and that of change (why we ever see contestation of hegemonic

ideas). The thin social account, on the other hand, overlooks the substantive

transformation these institutions and relations require from the actors, and the actors’

contestation of them, which is neither exit, nor loyalty but what I have called contentious

participation, as a particular kind of voice. Put in terms of the world heritage regime,

states thought of universal value as a tenable approach to cultural heritage in the first

place to contest this possibility later. In doing so, states initially proved willing to

represent themselves through this value to later engage in extensive debate about it

(rather than leave a regime that did not serve their interests).

Following Sending (2015), I define hegemony as a process in which a particular

idea, value or conception constitutes itself as universal. This process might be one of

order-building by the victors of a world war or negotiation between different groups of

scientists, activists and states on how to define and govern the environment. What gets

constituted as universal in this process is usually the ideas of actors that have more social

and material capital. Established and sedimented as universal, the hierarchical and

particular origins of these concepts are occluded. The becoming universal of particular

ideas, values and conceptions are therefore power-laden negotiations that can involve a

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range of actors oriented towards or with stakes in a particular issue area. At the same

time, however, the work of hegemony is never complete (Reus-Smit 1999: 33) – it might

not be able to reach peripheral members of the international community (Ibid., and also

Cox 1983), or actors whose conceptions were initially marginalized might continue to

hold onto them at some level. Lastly, actors are never constituted along a single

dimension and identity. Not being fully defined along a single axis of hegemonic

constitution, actors can bring other domains of identity to bear on an issue area in the

future (Mattern 2005).

Having allowed for these multiple possibilities, I do not aim to provide an account

of why these latent possibilities might become active and challenge established

hegemonies. It is rather to focus on the kind of political time these challenges point to

and produce. Mattern draws upon Swidler’s (1986) designation of settled and unsettled

times as moments when existing epistemological orders can no longer provide the

grounds on which to build social structures (Mattern 2005: 55). In contrast, Mattern

describes settled domains as “when groups of people can take for granted certain implicit,

unarticulated identities and cultural truths,” orient themselves, their identities and future

actions on these bases (Ibid.). Social and political life, of course, continues to be

negotiated during settled times (Wendt 1999: 340). However, these negotiations can take

certain base truth claims as shared, which constitute a provisionally fixed sedimented

layer. Conversely, unsettled times throw into question the grounds on which we approach

objects – their meaning, our orientation towards them, and our identity in relation to

them. Mattern points to the Suez crisis as an example of an unsettled time in the U.S. and

U.K. relationship, bringing into question its epistemological grounds in the “special

relationship” (2005: 63-89) In challenging such ground, the crisis resulted in uncertainty

about how the actors could relate to each other, and to the crisis. Such times, then,

challenge already fixed and hegemonic meanings. And if they don’t entail a return to the

old hegemonic fix, as in the case of the Suez crisis, they reveal the former hegemony as

particular, political and power-laden, like in the case of the world heritage regime. The

pluralizing world order presents such an unsettled time, as it challenges and expands the

bases on which this order is to be made and remade.

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Hegemony – unless we use it as a substitute for power or domination – is a

difficult concept to work with and more so when attached to thicker conceptions of the

social. For instance, I do not cast either the establishment nor the waning of hegemony as

total. Just as hegemony is never complete, neither is its unraveling – as actors continue to

subscribe to its terms, and its hierarchies continue to cast their material and ideational

shadows. Despite these difficulties, the concept is a useful one in advancing my analysis.

It provides a path from the particular to the universal (ideas and values). And as I argue

across Chapters 2 and 3, the problem of the production of shared value is different in the

presence and absence of hegemonic conceptions. Thus, the concept allows me to stake a

qualitative difference between how contestation is taken up in the two political contexts

and with what consequence.

A second caveat follows directly. Throughout this dissertation, I talk about the

liberal international order as the order that emerged ideationally and institutionally in the

aftermath of WWII to expand and deepen with the end of the Cold War. In doing so, I

adopt a critical juncture approach in line with the predominant approach to the world

order, which traces it to benchmark dates such as Westphalia, World War I, World War

II, end of the Cold War. But, if plurality is rife, and at times in direct challenge to the

self-understanding and historiography of the order, does it make sense to talk about the

world order in the singular? I contend that it makes analytical sense. Starting with the

hegemonic iteration of the order allows me to put forth an analysis of resistance to it. At

the same time, I attend to this renegotiation as a productive process. However, I do not

make a judgment on whether the piece-meal renegotiation of the old order at work can be

understood as a new order. Others have declared the death of the liberal international,

successive transformations of the world order or forecast a multiplex order as emerging

(Buzan and Lawson 2015, Acharya 2018, Mearsheimer 2019). While the world heritage

regime provides an important domain of renegotiation in this order, it is nevertheless only

one such domain from which it is not feasible to cast a broader verdict. Instead, I point to

a key way in which these negotiations unfold, as they move between the order, its

governance and back.

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Chapter II: Genesis and Early Implementation of the World Heritage Regime: The

(Re)production of Hegemony

1. Introduction

The analytical question that drives this dissertation is the possibility of global governance

in a pluralizing world order. In answering this question, I focus on the manifestation of

plurality in the world order, rather than its presence or absence in the world. Plurality

might indeed be the perennial ground on which the world order is foisted and governed,

and ordering and governing are processes of taming, reducing, and transforming such

plurality. However, such plurality doesn’t always assert itself within the same domains or

in similar ways. This is a historico-political question. I have also laid out a theoretical

framework, which foregrounds the recursive relation between the world order and global

governance, where governance regimes put to work particular ideational configurations

of the order, in the process transforming particular domains of world politics and

presenting avenues for (hierarchical) inclusion within that order. Substantive shifts in the

world order, therefore, are consequential to the possibility of global governance.

This chapter turns to the genesis and early implementation of the world heritage

regime, including the founding of UNESCO, the host institution for the regime, which is

an important part of this genesis story. Although the chapter briefly goes further back to

trace genealogical threads, the focus is on the period between 1945-1994, which starts

with the founding of UNESCO and ends with the transition from the “Global Study” to

the “Global Strategy” as the regime’s paradigm for inclusion. I traces the founding of

UNESCO to post-WWII order-building. The institution emerges out of the loss of faith in

humanity in the aftermath of two world wars, and focuses on progressive-liberal notions

of education and science, along with a liberal-imperial emphasis on culture, civilization

and world-history to foster a humanity in whom such faith could be (re)stored. The world

heritage regime, in turn, emerges in the aftermath of the Nubian safeguarding campaign,

which posits monumental civilizational culture as a realm of international cooperation

that can transcend Cold War’s economic-ideological fractures. The regime is grounded in

a seeming international consensus: the already existing recognition that there is a kind of

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cultural value that is pertinent to humanity across time and geography, and sites reflecting

such value need to be protected in collaboration. To further foster this shared value, the

regime turned to epistemic consensus in the relevant fields of expertise – primarily

archeology, art history and architecture. In this permissive political context and epistemic

hegemony, the regime’s World Heritage List produced a cultural-historical humanity,

whose long arc that began in Africa and traveled to the “new world,” but had its center of

gravity in Europe. The sites on this arc were narrated in reconciliatory and productive

terms. The question of inclusion was negotiated primarily through a shared orientation

towards universal value between the regime’s participants, including a demand from the

Advisory Bodies for a Global Study that would produce a comprehensive matrix of all

possible world heritage sites. Such demand and efforts towards it, began to be undercut

towards the end of this period, with states and experts gesturing towards changes in the

world, which challenged the regime’s approach to culture.

In presenting this genesis and early implementation story, the purposes of the

chapter are four-fold. First, I explore the theoretical relation I staked between the order

and governance regimes by tracing the regime’s emergence to particular world political

developments and ideational contours, and by analyzing how the regime orders cultural

heritage on the world stage through its implementation. This is not a story that cannot

accommodate questions of interest or power, as manifested in the founding interventions

of the United States, but it points to important substantive-political dynamics of world

ordering and governing that are occluded from stories of power and interest. Second, I

show that ideational convergence or hegemony at the level of the world order needs

governance for its continued (re)production, deepening, and ultimately to transform

particular policy areas in its image. Governance, therefore, is not a simple mirroring of

already existing shared value, but a process of its operationalization, concretization, and

implementation. The analysis below, therefore, operates at the intersection of

constructivist approaches to governance as put forth by Barnett, Finnemore, and Zürn on

the one hand, and the epistemic-sociological accounts of Allan, Sending, and Sending

and Neumann on the other. Like the former, I attend to shared value at the level of the

world order as constitutive of governance, but alongside the latter, I think of this value as

receiving concrete articulation through processes of governance towards hegemonic

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consolidation. Third, this chapter shows that this early implementation of the regime is

not a time that is devoid of questions of uncertainty around the meaning of universal

value and attendant challenges of inclusion. However, both questions are engaged with

through a heavy reliance on expertise to resolve the challenges of the move from an

abstract recognition of universal value to the governance of its concrete manifestations.

This sets up a contrast with the later implementation of the regime, where it is no longer

experts that are designated as the proper authorities for this bridging, and where universal

value itself comes under challenge as a way of understanding and governing culture.

Fourth, and related, I analyze the evaluation of universal value in this time to show that

while the questions of plurality and particularity that afflict the regime in the recent years

were never settled, they could be suspended at the intersection of epistemic hegemony

and seeming political convergence. These last two points urge for a historico-political

analysis of these changes, rather than approaching culture as a pre-determined domain of

plurality.

2. UNESCO and the Post-World War II Order: Recovering Humanity

Founded in 1945, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) remains one of the under-researched institutions of the UN system and the

post-World War II liberal international order. 50 The organization falls between the cracks

of “the real stuff of the liberal-international order,” such as the monetary regimes at the

heart of the global capitalist economy, the security organizations that shore up the order,

and its “ideational aspirations” with more teeth, such as human rights and humanitarian

governance with international courts and intervention regimes, and picked up by

international NGOs as causes of advocacy.51 In comparison, UNESCO seems to attend to

“wooly stuff,” such as culture and education, which are not the stuff on which the world

order might stand or fall or even measure its progress towards its universalistic idea(l)s.

50 For early and important exceptions to this dearth of attention to UNESCO, see Sewell 1975 and Finnemore 1993. 51 My aim is not to reproduce these distinctions, which posit economy and security as realms of rational, high-policy making, and evacuate them of the substantive world order-making underpinnings that draw particular connections between “failed states” and security or between open markets, free trade and sound global economies. It is rather to emphasize the ways in which these domains of governance are cast as the instrumental coordination of interests, and as domains to which the future of the order is closely tethered. I also recognize that the remit of UN institutions, let alone global governance regimes exceeds this schematic overview, including specialized agencies such as ILO, FAO and WHO. My aim is to give broad lines of focus within IR scholarship.

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In contrast to this inattention, the early perception of the organization’s broad

mandate and seemingly utopian approach to it, gave rise to colorful definitions by its

observers including “a cavalry of hobby horses,” and as “a pork barrel riding on a cloud”

(Sewell quoted in Buehrig 1976: 680). It might come as a surprise, then, that it was none

other than Reinhold Niebuhr, as the American Delegate to UNESCO, who wrote that the

organization was in the “paradoxical position of performing most useful and necessary

functions in the nascent world community but of giving very implausible reasons for the

performance of its functions” (Niehbuhr 1950: 3, emphases mine). This most useful and

necessary function was the further integration of the world community through cultural

communication, which lagged behind the pace of commercial integration. However,

Niehbuhr asserted, peace could not be the rationale of such work, as peace could only be

established between the community of free states within the American sphere of

influence and not through UNESCO’s efforts of cultural communication (Meskell 2018:

15). The problem, therefore, was not the aims of UNESCO, but the linking of such aims

to the pursuit of global peace.

Looking at the liberal international order from the vantage point of UNESCO

provides a corrective to the dominant interpretations of this order as built to respond to

the exigencies of the Cold War: dual efforts by the United States to create a sphere of

freedom and prosperity on one side of the Iron Curtain, and engage in realpolitik on the

other side (Ikenberry 2011, Kissinger 2015). UNESCO’s founding points to an order-

making that was at once broader and deeper. The breadth and depth of such inspiration

was – and has been – nothing less than the construction of a shared humanity, around

(inter)cultural communication in the aftermath of two world wars that shook the

(European) faith in (its) civilization to the core. Second, given its concern with culture on

the one hand, and its institutional setup – one-state one-vote – UNESCO was faced with

questions of plurality earlier than some of the more jealously guarded international

institutions with weighted participation structures. In fact, as a former Acting Director

General of UNESCO wrote, the organization has been better known amongst the

developing nations (Hoggart 1978: 31). Third and related, UNESCO has been suspended

between attempts to recover a Western-universal faith in humanity and its structural

openness and thematic interest to developing nations. This liminality makes for

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productive grounds on which to explore questions of universality, plurality, hegemony

and contestation. The self-perception of UNESCO, perhaps not surprisingly, is as an

organization that has been on the side of the “good,” including attempts to expand the

scope of the universal history of mankind. This section takes UNESCO at this liminality,

recognizing both that it positioned itself against the more exclusionary historiographies

and conceptions of civilization, as well as the implicit and explicit Eurocentric-

universalism that continued to undergird such efforts.

2.1. Founding UNESCO

One can trace multiple lineages for UNESCO’s founding: The historico-political context

in which it came to being (itself multiply interpreted), its ideational grounds,

intergovernmental negotiations, charismatic personalities with their history-altering

interventions, and accidents of history that appear inevitable in retrospect. There is, of

course, politics in the telling of this genesis story, as some elements fade to the

background and others are foregrounded. The account I sketch is tethered to the

analytical question and framework of this dissertation, and foregrounds the relation

between UNESCO and the world-order to trace how the historico-political moment of

order-building is reflected in the organization’s ideational-institutional make-up, and its

envisioned contribution to this new order. Where necessary, I bring in longer lineages to

ask if and how they are re-inflected in this context of world order-making.

A direct predecessor to UNESCO was the Conference of Allied Ministers of

Education (CAME). CAME began meeting in London during World War II, with the

goal of developing comprehensive international cultural cooperation between European

states after the war, through uniformly drafted and bilaterally adopted conventions (De

Capello 1970: 4). CAME met for the first time in November 1942. During its July 1943

meeting, the Czechoslovak Minister of Interior, acting as the chairman, proposed that

CAME should include all members of the United Nations, if possible, and act under a

permanent executive Bureau (Ibid.: 5). Subsequently and in an effort to strengthen

relations, the sixth meeting of CAME was attended by historian Ralph Turner, appointed

by the U.S. Department of State. Turner communicated to the participants of the meeting

that the U.S. was interested in the establishment of a UN Bureau of Education. Further

collaboration between CAME and the U.S. resulted in the proposal for “United Nations

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Organization for Educational and Cultural Reconstruction” (Ibid.: 8 and 11). During the

1945 San Francisco conference, which founded the United Nations, the U.S. Delegation

tabled a request for Britain to host “an international educational and cultural conference,”

which would become UNESCO’s founding conference.52 At the same time, Article 57 of

the UN Charter made the provision for a specialized agency for cooperation in the

educational and cultural realms. This article has been dubbed as the “spiritual

foundation” of UNESCO (UNESCO 2015a: 14).

Between 10-16 November 1945, 44 State Delegations met in London, “the capital

of the declining British Empire, heavily marked by the Second World War, to elaborate

the principles of intellectual and moral reconstruction of a deeply shaken mankind”

(Ibid.: 18).53 During his opening remarks at this meeting, British Prime Minister Clement

Attlee uttered the phrase, which, given final form by the American poet Archibald

MacLeish, became the oft-quoted preamble to UNESCO’s Constitution: “since wars

begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be

constructed.” (Mayor 1997: 14, Hoggart 1978: 27). The description of the mood in

London and the preamble are reflective of the context of UNESCO’s emergence, how its

founders understood that context, and the role that UNESCO would be slated to play in

the production of a peaceful world order. Let’s take each of these in turn.

The first is the context of UNESCO’s emergence. While wars in general may start

in the minds of men, it was particular wars that were constitutive of UNESCO’s

emergence – World War I and World War II54 – which unleashed widespread destruction

52 Tellingly, UNESCO’s self-historiography quotes Truman’s address to the San Francisco Conference that the determination to find a way to end wars could make forgotten all the differences between “these fifty countries differing so much in race and religion, in language and culture.” It is this ability to unite around the cause of peace, and through cultural difference that lends both import and credence to the organization’s raison d’etre (UNESCO 2015a: 13-14). 53 Among these, the U.S. Delegation was the most numerous, and both the U.S. and French delegations included notable intellectuals in addition to state officials (De Capello 1970: 19-20). The Soviet Union was absent from the founding conference and joined UNESCO only after Stalin’s death, in April 1954 under Khrushchev (Duedahl 2011: 123). 54 The 70th anniversary historiography of UNESCO places the post-WWII birth of the institution in relation not only to the broad and genocidal destruction within Europe but also the shadow of the atomic bomb. This mention of the atomic bomb is rare in the more distant historiographies of UNESCO, which have a firmer focus on the European mainland, and the commitment to “never again” that grew out of this destruction. (For the mention of the atomic bomb see UNESCO 2015: 19, for explicit connections to “never again,” see for example, the Foreword to the same publication by UNESCO’s then Director-General Irina Bokova (Ibid.: 7)).

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in Europe,55 shook its faith in civilization and in the progress of mankind.56 The two

world wars were not the only world historical changes that had been and that were still

taking place. As evidenced in the description of London as the capital of the declining

British empire, this was also a time of decolonization. In fact, Grovogui describes the

1939-1950 period, which is inclusive of UNESCO’s foundation, as “plural, democratic,

cooperative with the ability to imagine multiple political horizons,” grounded in the

momentary indefensibility of “Europe as a metaphor for progress and, as such, enactor of

collective good” (Grovogui 2006: 9). This openness was not only closed down by the

“formalization of the cold war” (Ibid.), but it was also marked by the question of the

moral, political and ideational resources with which faith in humanity could be

reconstructed, for those who had not given up on restoring this unsettled faith. This was,

then, a period of institutional and ideational order-building that unfolded in the aftermath

of moral and political destruction, and alongside ongoing decolonization.

Second and related, is the particular understanding of this context of destruction.

For UNESCO, the culprits were ignorance, misunderstanding and lack of

communication. 57 It was because people were unaware of one another – cultures,

histories etc. – that prejudice and misunderstanding could take root and be manipulated to

disastrous circumstances.58 As this destruction and its crisis of faith in humanity59 were

55 In linking this destruction to heritage, Michel Batisse, who played a key role in UNESCO’s Science Sector between 1961-1972, wrote: “It must be recalled that the destruction of historical and artistic monuments by the war in Europe was of such dimensions that only genuine international cooperation, as regards both financing and expertise, could deal with reconstruction and restoration. Thus, from early on, Unesco paid special attention to what was later known as world cultural heritage, i.e. monuments, architectural groups, historical and archaeological sites.” (Batisse 2005: 15). 56 “Against this background of utter destruction and moral degradation, the task of reconstructing the fabric of humanity and the dignity of peoples became urgent” (UNESCO 2015: 19, emphasis mine). See also Salter 2002: 64-91. 57 While the world heritage regime has become the flagship program of UNESCO and gained further recognition with heritage destruction as part of the recent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, education was the organization’s highest priority in its founding and made up the biggest portion of its budget (Singh 2010: 54). 58 UNESCO’s Constitution puts forth its aims as the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth, free exchange of ideas and knowledge (UNESCO 2015a: 21). It is precisely this connection to peace that Niebuhr objects to early on, pointing out that some of the bloodiest wars in history have taken place between nations that know each other quite well, such as the English and the French (1950: 4). 59 Providing a retrospective take on this moment, Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s Director General between 2009-2017, writes: “UNESCO was created in a world rebuilding after a devastating war, when shared values had been soiled like never before” (UNESCO 2015a: 8). Similarly, Richard Hoggart, who acted as the Assistant Director-General of Culture of the organization during 1969-1975 writes: “The extraordinary assertions within UNESCO’s Constitution – that governments will collectively promote the objective

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interpreted as arising out of ignorance and lack of mutual understanding, UNESCO was

tasked with using education and culture – and science as a last minute addition– to restore

faith in humanity, and importantly, to produce the kind of humanity in which this faith

could be placed. Tellingly, authoring the intellectual historiography of UNESCO at its

60th anniversary, philosopher Roger-Pol Droit wrote: “What is UNESCO’s task?

Constructing humanity” (Droit 2005: 21). In such (re)construction of a shared humanity,

“education, culture and heritage would have to be tethered in new ways at UNESCO in

order to achieve a new world order” (Meskell 2018: 10). While critics such as Niehbuhr

found this last step all too ambitious, UNESCO set about it with diligence and

industriousness, through a range of projects from the efforts to eradicate adult illiteracy to

rewriting the history of mankind.

If UNESCO would foster a shared humanity to constitute the moral fabric of a

peaceful global order, what would be the ideational bases of such construction? This

ideational basis is the focus of the remainder of this section, leading up to the adoption of

the Convention, demonstrating that the task of the institution was to foster education,

culture and science in ways that would lead to a greater convergence between humanity,

as grounded in liberal-modernist precepts. Before I do, however, let me note the

institutional congruence of the organization with the broader order-building efforts. The

story I have traced until this point has moved between the UK and the US, as host nations

of the two founding conferences, and central to fostering and steering the conversations

out of which UNESCO emerged. In this genesis story, CAME is the predecessor to

UNESCO, and the U.S. steering transforms it from an effort at European cooperation to a

UN body. However, another important predecessor of UNESCO, and one that features

prominently in its institutional histories, is the International Committee for Intellectual

Cooperation (ICIC), established as part of the League of Nations and active during the

inter-war years. A brief overview of the ICIC not only makes this ideational lineage clear,

but also points to post-WWII institutional departures.

pursuit of knowledge and its free circulation – are redolent of their time. The world had just come through a terrible and protracted war, one initiated by false philosophies working on ignorance through massive control of free speech” (1978: 27). At stake, therefore, was education for the “correct” kinds of philosophies, and against the false ones.

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The International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation was a “barely funded

advisory committee” established by a 1922 resolution of the League of Nations (Titchen

1995: 16). It was also a tour de force of the intellectuals and scientists of the time.

Chaired by Henri Bergson, the Committee brought together Madam Curie-Sklodowska,

Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley.60 More than forty-five

National Committees for intellectual life were established in member states of the League

of Nations. These committees acted as the link between the ICIC and domestic scientific

and cultural institutions (Ibid.). In 1925, the International Institute of Intellectual

Cooperation (IIIC) was founded to act as ICIC’s executive organ. The IIIC was based in

Paris – and would become the grounds for the French claims to base UNESCO in this

city (Ibid.: 17). One of the aims of ICIC, not unlike that of UNESCO, was to contribute

to peace, through “geographical and cultural universalism” in contradistinction to

nationalism. ICIC has since been criticized for putting forth “only the well known

European universalism pervaded with a strong feeling of European superiority,” and

because it was “pervaded by strong provincial feelings of European intellectual

superiority in every domain of human creative ability” (Kolasa 1962: 164 and 63).

Importantly, in the inter-war years, the ICIC was instrumental in the organization of

international meetings of experts on cultural heritage preservation, generating early

conceptions of internationalized heritage on which the world heritage regime built. To

sum, this international body of intellectuals, with an executive organ in Paris and national

committees in multiple states, undertook international conferences towards greater

intellectual cooperation during the inter-war years in domains that would become

UNESCO’s policy realm.

Given this substantive overlap, it is not surprising that the ICIC and its executive

organ IIIC were recalled at the London Conference. It is perhaps also not surprising that

it was recalled by the Delegation of France. On the one hand, it seems as if little more

than self-promotion in the cultural realm was at stake when the Delegation requested

UNESCO to be moved to Paris from London: “France’s claims are older than those of

60 In one of the direct lineages between ICIC and UNESCO, Aldous Huxley’s brother, Julian Huxley would come to be UNESCO’s first Director-General. Julian Huxley’s scientific-humanism, expounded in his essay “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy,” (1946) raised controversy among the member states and his outspoken atheism drew the ire of United States.

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other nations, their lustre is no greater. If we did possess one advantage, it would be due

to the fact on the one hand that French culture has always been marked by a tendency

towards universality” (UNESCO 2015a: 22). However, at stake in the resurrection of the

IIIC was also a different organizational model, decentralized through National

Commissions with bigger roles for non-governmental organizations and intellectuals.

What won the day, instead, was the institutional infrastructure favored by the US and the

UK: the familiar structure of an intergovernmental organization with a secretariat

comprised of a cadre of international civil servants, and the permanent membership of

states, based on the conviction that more voluntary and decentered organizational models,

associated with the time of the League of Nations, had proven too weak (Singh 2010: 13).

UNESCO would take the familiar form in which states are not only its members and

power-wielders, but also participants that are molded and governed, where such

governance draws significantly upon international experts, who produce the “objective”

knowledge that undergirds “scientific-technical” and “universal” policymaking.

Returning to the ideational grounds of UNESCO, the organization set to foster

shared humanity through education, culture and science. Ambitiously put by the president

of its first general conference, Leon Blum, this was the task of “creating the intellectual,

moral and emotional atmosphere upon which cooperation of the whole system rests”

(UNESCO 2015a: 24). As noted above, such creation was marked by the disillusionment

of post-WWII Europe. Blum, thus, continued to remark that it was not enough to

“develop and improve [these domains] but to steer in the direction of that ideology of

democracy and progress” (quoted in Mayor 1997: 15). UNESCO would, therefore, would

develop an intellectual, moral and emotional atmosphere upon which cooperation and

peaceful global relations could be built by fostering particularly understood versions of

its three policy domains. Moreover, this pursuit would be undertaken in universal and

universalizing terms – as the right ideologies for everyone and at all times.

The ideational bases of such steering have been variously defined as humanism

(Singh 2011: 3), imperial internationalism (Meskell 2018: 11), and mid-century

liberalism (Betts 2015). In defining the humanism of the organization, Singh draws on

Immanuel Kant, and specifically his essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”

(2010: 3), which has become a key orienting text on liberal peace theories. Kant’s

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proposition in this essay on the convergence of enlightened republics, with populations

increasingly opposed to war, bears a striking resemblance to the one-worldism of

UNESCO (Meskell 2018: 11), with the caveat that Kant also included economic

interdependencies as key to this emergent pacifism. Framed this way, all three descriptors

involve an important element of liberalism. Here, it is helpful to recall Jahn’s proposition

that as a political project, liberalism has adjusted itself to a variety of conditions, “leading

to significant variations in liberal thought and practice” (Jahn 2013: 176). UNESCO

began its life with a conception of great civilizations, reminiscent of the 19th century

standard of civilizations, supplemented with the mutual recognizability of world

civilizations, and producing a mix of imperial and cosmopolitan liberalism.

Subsequently, the institution and its regimes adopted a more familiar approach of liberal

multiculturalism, with a premium placed on plurality, where such plurality was bound by

the “ideologies of democracy and progress.” Throughout these shifts, the organization’s

approach to the history of humanity remained progressive, reconciliatory and universalist.

Lastly, scientific rationality and technology have been key drivers of the organization, in

its attempts to foster progressive change. Thus, while they have shifted in prominence

over time, these elements, within the broader remit of liberal precepts, have been at work

throughout the course of the organization, marking its projects of governance.

An early UNESCO project is a good demonstration of these ideational grounds

and the aspirations towards which they were put to work. History of Mankind61 was a

mammoth seven-volume effort undertaken by UNESCO for two decades, with the goal of

“writing history anew for a world emerging from the death and destruction of the Second

World War,” through a focus on science as the prime mover of history (Duedahl 2011:

103, Betts 2015: 250). A brief foray into this project is demonstrative of the conceptions

of civilization and history that undergirded the organization’s approach to the production

of humanity, which reappear within the world heritage regime (Duedahl 2011: 132).

Furthermore, it places the organization within the broader ideational context of its time,

61 Both Duedahl and Betts recognize that the world had changed in the two decades that it took the volumes to be completed, and these changes cast the project as multiply outdated, including its title. In fact, UNESCO has renamed the volumes “History of Humanity: Scientific and Cultural Development.” They have been published and are presented on its website under this amended title (see: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/general-and-regional-histories/history-of-humanity/).

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emphasizing its liminal position as attempting to open up conceptions of history,

civilizations62 and humanity, but falling prey to Eurocentrism.

History of Mankind was written in the aftermath of World War II and against

other histories and historiographies of the world. “The main challenge driving the project

was how to conceive of global history as something other than a chronicle of competing

political elites, warring blocs and rival civilizations” (Betts 2015: 251). At the same time,

however, the project positioned itself “against the Spengler-Toynbee view at the time that

civilizations are discrete and follow their own paths of development,” by claiming instead

that civilizations have interacted at every stage of their history, and that any past claims

to civilizational greatness had been possible precisely on account of such interaction

(Duedahl 2011: 102). The volumes’ approach to civilization took its final form when the

brainchild of Julian Huxley, whose scientific-humanism was wedded to a stagist

conception of civilizational development, was handed over to the French historian Lucien

Febvre. Febvre formulated the volumes’ structure and coordinated their authoring, which

brought together multiple editors for each volume and over 45 academics in total. Febvre

also discarded Huxley’s scientific-humanist ranking of civilizations. The volumes

became, instead, a chronicle of the “peaceful exchanges of cultures and humanity on the

move” (Betts 2015: 259). Civilizations were co-eval rather than hierarchical. They were

already intertwined rather than unfolding through hermetically sealed histories. The

history of these civilizations were conveyed through “an accent of peace:” “on offer is

very little on colonialism, slavery or even war, and most of the unpleasant aspects of

history are expunged or subordinated to the main plotline of exchange, commonality and

progress across the century” (Betts 2015: 262). Thus, if civilizational history was

peaceful, civilizations were the units of such peace. Lastly, this peaceful history was

oriented towards convergence, with “priority of universalism over cultural diversity,”

driven by the conviction in a “world civilization” (Duedahl 2011: 130). The drivers of

such convergence, in turn, were none other than science, technology, and their promotion

through education.

62 For a longer history of these two conceptions of civilization, and their recent return to global politics, see: O’Hagan 2017.

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In the end, the volumes generated criticism of the under-representation of African

and South American history (Ibid.), drew Soviet disapproval for being too liberal, liberal

critique for not emphasizing individual rights and freedoms enough, and the Catholic

Church along with a group of Christian countries decried its portrayal of the religion in

terms that were too secular and/or too critical. While UNESCO’s framing of civilizations

as intertwined rather than developmentally discrete was welcomed at the outset as

moving beyond the more Eurocentric conceptions of the time, by the time of its

publication in the 1970s, its approach seemed outdated – along with its framing of

“mankind.”63 However, as the case of world heritage demonstrates, with a civilizational

conception of culture and a reconciliatory world-history becoming key grounds to the

regime in 1972, these themes have proven resilient in UNESCO’s approach to a shared

humanity.

One might, with good reason, see in these ideational bases a continuation of 19th

century standards of civilization, positioning UNESCO as the post-WWII resurrection of

civilizing missions (Betts 2015: 249). However, these continuities are refracted and

undercut by the loss of faith in Europe as the center from which the progressive march of

human civilization would unfold. This loss of faith did not entail the end of Eurocentrism

as such, but it did result in attempts to move beyond it through the construction a new

universal history and humanity, haunted by the desire to re-instill such faith for Europe

and through its conceptual apparatus. The result replicates the liminality of UNESCO, in

the audacity and self-assurance of its universalist claims on the one hand, and the parallel

self-doubt and attempts on the other.

Another important change between 19th century civilizing missions and

UNESCO’s turn to a civilizational history concerns the question of violence. The former

legitimated colonial violence as necessary – if burdensome – to civilize populations that

could not otherwise be brought into the fold of international society. Conversely,

UNESCO’s uptake of civilizational discourse aimed to equate it with the possibility of

peace. As a result, rather than engaging with the violence that had been integral to this

history, it looked for and cast an arc of exchange, discovery and progress. The analysis of

63 Betts conveys the response of selected Indian scholars to the project as a welcome “correct[ive to] the myopia of Western savants, so many of whom, unable to see beyond Greece have withheld from the East and especially from India the credit for cultural priority.” (Betts 2015: 264).

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the early implementation of the world heritage regime below shows how this history

frames violence when forced to encounter it.

This turn to civilizations also rendered them a legitimate unit of interaction and

difference within global politics. Put differently, as an international organization

undertaking projects of global governance, UNESCO not only relied on civilizational

language, but also reproduced it as a language of global political participation. It steered

such participation as one of peaceful difference, bound together by increased

convergence produced by scientific-technical progress. This foregrounding of civilization

and culture as a way of understanding peaceful and convergent difference has been

criticized as a move away from the contemporaneous language of race and racism, and

the accompanying politics of redress at the global political level (Lentin 2005). These key

political stakes are beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, they are produced by

a similar structural dynamic of UNESCO’s attempt to dispense with race-thinking as

violent and prejudicial through a turn to cultures as reconciliatory sets of equal

differences. Understood this way, the current woes of the world heritage regime are

grounded in changes in the world order to which UNESCO in general and the heritage

regime in particular have contributed by foregrounding culture as a particular language of

talking about difference. In the context of a pluralizing world order, such difference has

returned to “politicize” culture as an axis of demanding equality and recognition on the

world stage.

2.2. UNESCO During the Cold War

If the emergence of the world heritage regime demonstrates how the culmination

of the History of Mankind did not spell the obsolescence of UNESCO’s original

ideational grounds, the deepening of the Cold War strengthened the technocratic

character of the organization, in an effort to side-step substantive contentions through

cooperation based on scientific-technical expertise.64 Perhaps not surprisingly, UNESCO

narrates its encounter with the Cold War as follows: “in spite of tensions, UNESCO

launched a series of initiatives for cooperation in areas of natural sciences and cultural

heritage, as tangible proofs of the possibility of peaceful settlement of conflicts”

64 Meskell narrates this as a shift from a British-imperial vision for the organization to a U.S. technocratic one (Meskell 2018: 24).

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(UNESCO 2015a: 61). There is, of course, a lot of tension that this victorious

historiography overlooks. Most importantly, the debates around the New World

Information and Communication Order (NWICO), a topical manifestation of the broader

developmental turn in the early to mid-Cold War that played across a majority of global

governance regimes, and included most significantly the demand for a New International

Economic Order (NIEO). While it is beyond the scope of the dissertation to go fully into

this history, it is nevertheless an important reminder that cultural plurality is not the only

divergence that can exert itself on the world stage, put forth different conceptions as the

grounds on and towards which global governance of domains and the ordering of the

world through them should unfold. It is also important to note that while demands for re-

distribution and the transfer of expertise as the developmental response to them made a

strong appearance on UNESCO’s stage, moving the organization towards technical

assistance and away from “soaring rhetoric” (Betts 2015: 278), the international

safeguarding campaign for the Nubian monuments could also unfold in this political

context and result in the establishment of the world heritage regime.

The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), closely

connected to the contemporaneous demands for a New International Economic Order as a

more just organization of the global economy (Blaney and Inayatullah 1996: 91-97), was

at the crux of Cold War tensions in UNESCO. The core of the issue was the Western

bloc’s media hegemony and its impact on newly decolonized nations. Despite the U.S.

attempts to keep the issue of mass media and communication on the U.N. agenda, where

it had more leverage in comparison to UNESCO’s one-member one-vote structure, the

issue was placed squarely on UNESCO’s agenda in the 1970s and early 1980s. At stake

was both the representation of the newly independent nations in Western media, and the

presence of Western media in their domestic media spheres. Thus, in important ways, this

was a North-South tension rather than the East-West tension understood as definitive of

the Cold War period. However, as it was often the case, these sets of tension were

interlinked. The Soviet Bloc’s engagement with the issue of mass communication

foregrounded the U.S. use of mass media for propaganda in connection with the Korean

war. In this overlapping concern with U.S. media dominance, it was broadly supportive

of the demands of what might anachronistically be called the Global South. Moreover,

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while the NWICO was deeply connected to issues of representation on the world stage, it

had a strong redistributive bent, which sets it apart from the culturalist overtones of

contemporary demands for world stage recognition. This redistributive bent was taken up

by the Western bloc through the embrace of technocratic developmentalism.

The debates on the NWICO, along with compounding issues, resulted in the U.S.

and the U.K. leaving UNESCO in 1984. These debates have been recently interpreted as

the politicization of the institution and its discrediting in the eyes of developed nations

(Singh 2011: 124-125), whereas an earlier study reveals a process in which the charges of

politicization correspond to the movement of the debate away from the wishes of the U.S.

and its allies (Wells 1987: 59-114 and 188). My aim is not to weigh in on the analysis of

this debate. Rather, the NWICO is illustrative for my argument in a few ways. First, it

shows that UNESCO confronted issues of plurality, integral to anxieties about the world

order, early on and on a North-South axis. Second, and at the same time, the question of

plurality was structured by the broader Cold War context, with a strong emphasis on

inequality and attendant redistributive-restructuring demands. These were also the terms

in which representation was framed. Third, and related, such demands were instrumental

in the U.S. push towards development, understood as technical assistance and the transfer

of expertise in contradistinction to redistribution. Put differently, if the demand for

equality was made in redistributive-restructuring terms from the hegemonic centers, it

was extended back as an offer to develop others. Fourth, and last, the controversy around

the NWICO took place simultaneously as the world heritage regime was coming into

being. While the latter gave UNESCO renewed hope about its universalist mission

succeeding amidst the fractures of the Cold War, a juxtaposition of the two shows that

domain-based consensus or lessened contestation is also the case for this period.

3. Founding the World Heritage Regime

Until this point, the chapter has put forth the following arguments through the founding

and early years of UNESCO, bringing us up to the genesis of the world heritage regime:

UNESCO was part of the post-WWII order-making efforts. It grew out of the destruction

of the two world wars and aimed to restore faith in humanity by (re)producing this

humanity as educated and enlightened. Such production, in turn, relied on conceptions of

civilizations and civilizational history articulated as peaceful and convergent. At the same

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time, Cold War dynamics generated an increasingly pragmatic and technocratic approach

to these ideational bases. It is at this juncture that the world heritage regime emerged in

1972 to eventually become UNESCO’s flagship program.

3.1. Early Internationalization of Cultural Heritage and the Nubian Campaign

While education received the bulk of UNESCO’s budget at the outset, culture has

decidedly become the fulcrum of the organization. Article 1 of UNESCO’s Constitution

includes among its purposes and functions “assuring the conservation and protection of

the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science, and

recommending to the nations concerned the necessary international conventions” (quoted

in Titchen 1995: 38). Culture, therefore, was never incidental to the organization. In fact,

the destruction of city-scapes and cultural heritage in Europe during the WWII and the

mobilization around such heritage, be it the monuments men or the ordinary citizens who

salvaged pieces of art from the Nazi looting, inspired a focus on the protection of great

civilizational artifacts from the outset (Turtinen 2000: 3, Sandholtz 2007: 127-167). This

focus is reflected in the multiple efforts undertaken in the field of cultural heritage in the

decades between the establishment of UNESCO and the founding of the world heritage

regime. The organization began to explore the possibility of establishing an international

fund for the protection of monuments and sites of historical value as early as 1948, which

was met with a combination of indifference and post-War financial constraints (Cameron

and Rössler 2016: 11). The same post-War context, however, also resulted in an early

success with the adoption of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the

Event of Armed Conflict in 1954, drawing from the same recent context of destruction

(Ibid.). The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of

Cultural Property (ICCROM)65 was established in the same year, and the Venice Charter

on conservation66 was adopted in 1964. The Charter’s adoption conference put forth the

proposition for the establishment of an International Council of Monuments and Sites

65 ICCROM was previously called the Rome Centre and got its present acronym in 1977. Therefore, it appears as the Rome Centre in some of the preparatory documents leading up to the adoption of the regime. 66 The full title of the Venice Charter is “the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites.” (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 13). The fuller ideational lineage of this charter can be traced back to the Athens Conference held by the ICIC in 1931 (Titchen 1995: 38). However, the accounts of the Charter in the founding documents of the regime de-emphasize this lineage, and focus instead on how it reflects a shift in the approach to heritage as holistic, rather than as single buildings or monuments divorced from their broader context.

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(ICOMOS), which came into being a year later in 1965 (Ibid.: 13).67 Both ICCROM and

ICOMOS have been acting as Advisory Bodies to the world heritage regime, and the

regime’s original conception of authenticity and preservation of cultural properties drew

heavily from the Venice Charter.

While these instruments were being developed at a slow but steady pace, the

international safeguarding campaign for the Nubian monuments constituted a turning

point towards the establishment of the world heritage regime. The impetus for the

campaign came from the 1959 requests for assistance submitted by Egypt and Sudan to

UNESCO for the rescue of the ancient Nubian monuments, which would be inundated

with the construction of the Aswan Dam. Meskell defines the ensuing campaign as “a

remarkable feat of bureaucracy, diplomacy, fundraising, international cooperation and

salvage archaeology” (2018: 30). UNESCO’s then Director General Rene Maheu, who

championed the campaign put it in the following words: “Culture, an essential element of

the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind, has thus been recognized by States, for

all the world to see as an important factor in their cooperation for the promotion of peace

by the spirit to which the members of Unesco have pledged themselves” (Ibid.: 33).68 At

the most obvious level, then, the international safeguarding campaign restored faith in the

ability of culture to move states towards cooperation, including across ideological

fractures, as teams of archaeologists from the Soviet and Western blocs, and non-aligned

countries, participated in the rescue mission. Such participation was not always smooth

nor devoid of national interests, but the cooperative possibility of cultural heritage could

ultimately transcend these conflicts. The salvage archeology, in turn, rested on a striking

technological feat that allowed for the Nubian temples to be dismantled and relocated.69

67 The developments above are included as the most direct precedents to the World Heritage Convention. However, UNESCO’s activities in the realm of cultural heritage during this period also include the establishment of the International Council of Museums (1946), recommendations on international principles of archeological excavations, rendering museums accessible, safeguarding landscapes and sites, and the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (Titchen 1995: 39). The last Convention has received renewed attention in the present context of cultural heritage smuggling. 68 “The international assembly was the utopian image UNESCO had dreamed of, uniting nations with different ideologies, religions and traditions, and even those who were engaged in mutual hostilities” (Meskell 2018: 38). 69 The international campaign was indifferent to the plight of the Nubians who continued to live around the temples, and had to be displaced from their homes for the construction of the Aswan Dam (Harrison 2013: 61).

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The monuments were sawed into component parts, mechanically moved and reassembled

on higher ground. Thus, if culture provided the “what” of international cooperation in a

time of ideological fractures, technology provided the “how” of it. Lastly, the

coordination of the safeguarding campaign positioned UNESCO as a credible and

capable authority, resulting in the multiplication of applications for similar assistance,

and the launching of, among others, safeguarding campaigns for Venice, Italy (1966) and

the Temple of Borobudur, Indonesia (1972). These safeguarding campaigns, in turn,

further fueled the conviction, which aligned easily with the European-universal approach

to cultural heritage as monumental, that famous sites can garner international attention

for protection.

3.2. Towards a Possible and Appropriate International System

If “the Nubian salvage operations mark a turning point when great swaths of the

world were presented with ideas that aspired to universal acceptance: a common

humanity premised on a shared global past, shared responsibility for heritage protection

worldwide, and the dissemination of Western technical expertise,” this “system of

presumed universals” would require “novel legal and bureaucratic structures for the

management of cultural heritage worldwide” (Meskell 2018: 47). Thus, while the Nubian

campaign continued, the 1966 UNESCO General Conference authorized the Director-

General to “study the possibility of arranging an appropriate system of international

protection, at the request of the States concerned, for a few of the monuments that form

an integral part of the cultural heritage of mankind” (Batisse 2005: 16). This resolution

initiated the series of non-governmental and intergovernmental expert meetings, draft

conventions and General Assembly discussions that culminated in the adoption of the

Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (“World

Heritage Convention”) in 1972. As the last chapter has posited, governance domains or

objects do not exist in nature. Rather, they are constituted through particular definitions

of issues and objects, cast as needing international measures. It was these series of

meetings, in the optimistic shadow of the Nubian campaign, that constructed world

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heritage as an object,70 positing it both as in need of global governance and framing such

governance as being for the good of mankind.

The identification of cultural heritage as international in its value and as an

international problem were intricately connected. The first expert meeting on the issue71

proposed it to be “universally agreed that any major cultural loss represents a spiritual

and material impoverishment for all men” (UNESCO 1968: 19). The 1969 meeting72

built on this definition to posit that “the world’s cultural property heritage is a vast

accumulation of wealth. The collective and common heritage of all countries, it needs

greater protection against the grave dangers that may threaten [it] nowadays, so that man

can conserve and continue to enjoy its scientific, aesthetic, educational and recreative

potentialities.” It echoed the 1968 meeting that “the preservation, study and knowledge of

monuments, groups and sites in different countries of the world contribute to mutual

understanding between nations” (D’Ossat 1968: 5, UNESCO 1969a: 2, UNESCO 1969b:

1). This definition of spiritual and material loss for mankind as a whole was picked up by

the 16th General Conference of UNESCO, received its final articulation in the

Preliminary Draft Convention drawn up in 1971 (UNESCO 1971, Annex II: 39), and it

was included in the World Heritage Convention adopted in 1972: “deterioration or

disappearance of any item of the cultural and natural heritage constitutes a harmful

70 Such optimism is manifested in discussions of “timing.” The background document to the 1969 meeting builds on the 1968 meeting as follows: “Has the time not come to regulate for emergencies, cases in which Unesco can participate permanently or as needed on behalf of the international community and for the benefit of all countries when major enterprises are needed to protect what is the concern of all? The 1968 meeting thought so” (UNESCO 1969a: 3). The 1968 meeting, in turn, had noted that “many countries have on several occasions given outstanding proof of solidarity when major monuments were threatened e.g. the international campaign for Florence and Venice” (UNESCO 1968: 18). In its conclusion, the 1969 meeting, once again, affirmed the ripeness of time for an international instrument (UNESCO 1969b: 6). At the same time, these documents refer to other precedents, such as the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflict, and multiple recent regional efforts. 71 Bearing the unwieldy title “Meeting of Experts to Coordinate with a View to their International Adoption, Principles and Scientific, Technical and Legal Criteria which would make it Possible to Establish an Effective System for the Protection of Monuments and Sites,” the 1968 meeting was attended by experts from Austria, France, Ghana, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, USSR, United Arab Republic, United Kingdom, USA, and Yugoslavia. 72 The 1969 “Meeting of experts for the establishment of an international system for the protection of monuments and sites of universal interest,” was attended by experts from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Ghana, India, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Spain, Tunisia, United Kingdom and USA.

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impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world.”73 Thus, cultural heritage

was articulated as an international object in a two-fold manner: it constituted a collective

source of enrichment for humanity and facilitated mutual understanding at the

international level. This value-laden conception was also articulated in the negative,

which framed cultural heritage as a problem that needs international governance: the loss

of cultural heritage constituted an impoverishment for mankind as a whole. This was a

problem that was not only domestic in its repercussions but also global and universal.74

This global and universal approach, however, did not (or perhaps could not)

discard questions of territorial sovereignty. The final reports, draft conventions and the

final text of the world heritage convention remark that the establishment of an

international system and authority, and the protection of particular sites by this authority

do not entail an internationalization of the sites, and do not undermine sovereign

authority. 75 Having recognized this, however, the documents also posit sovereign

authorities as responsible with the protection of cultural heritage in the first place. At first

73 See Preamble to the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, https://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf, 1972: 1. 74 The identification of the causes of this problem were rooted in the two genealogies of the regime: the destructions of World War II and the safeguarding campaigns leading up to the Convention’s adoption. The former entered the discussions of expert meetings mostly by way of precedents, such as the recurring invocations of the Hague Convention (UNESCO 1968: 19, UNESCO 1970: 4). However, both expert meetings noted that peacetime presents its own problems of protection. A background paper to the 1968 meeting defined these dynamics as population increase and rural to urban migration in developed countries, and “a danger that valuable evidence of former civilizations, which is sometimes unknown and often underestimated, may at any moment be destroyed or defaced as a result of political and social upheavals and the many changes continually produced by developments in the everyday life of these [developing] countries” (d’Ossat 1968: 1). This distinction, between developed and developing countries, would mean that the latter would be on the receiving end of greater financial and technical assistance, and more extensive governance measures such as the development of “proper” legal instruments, the modification or termination of development projects. The 1969 meeting pushed this thread further to argue that “the least violent [threats] are the most harmful” to heritage preservation, and listed among these social progress, economic development, natural disasters and slow deterioration. The 1971 meeting, in which the Draft Convention was presented, listed the threats facing cultural heritage as “population increase, development projects, pollution, war, rapid urbanization” (UNESCO 1971: 5-6). While the Preamble of the World Heritage Convention adopted the more vague formulation of “changing social and economic conditions,” alongside “traditional causes of decay” and “even more formidable phenomena of damage or destruction” (UNESCO 1972, Preamble: 1), it further elaborated “serious and specific dangers” that might threaten heritage as “large-scale public or private projects or rapid urban and tourist development projects,” “the outbreak or the threat of an armed conflict,” and a list of “natural disasters” (UNESCO 1972, Article 11: 6). 75 However, the preliminary report of the 1969 meeting also notes: “Only in exceptional cases and under strict conditions which could rarely be satisfied would its [the International Authority] activities replace those of the State concerned” (Brichet 1969, Part II: 1). These articulations disappeared from further drafts, but they are demonstrative of the desire for the production of responsible sovereigns alongside the recognition of sovereign authority.

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sight, and in line with IR theoretical commonsense, we can declare the first caution as

proof that states are the principle actors in global politics and the principals of IOs.

However, this is undercut by the positioning of sovereign authorities as responsible,

where such responsibility entails a normative relation to the international community. At

the discursive level, such positioning calls upon states to live up to such responsibility,

reinforced through the resulting hierarchical standing, and more recently naming and

shaming mechanisms. This is precisely the relationship I have invoked in Chapter 1,

where participation in global governance regimes as responsible and good members of

the international community allows states’ opportunities for standing and recognition

within the order. At the risk of a momentary anachronism, we can recall here Russia’s

positioning of itself on the right side of humanity through its help in the recapture of the

Palmyra world heritage site from the Islamic State. Staying with the World Heritage

Convention, we can also further observe what the production of states as responsible

actors entails the parallel efforts and simultaneous adoption in 1972 of an International

Recommendation Concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and

Natural Heritage. 76 Thus, while the international mechanism recognized sovereign

authority as a key factor of the organization of global politics, this was nested within

broader efforts at the production of responsible sovereigns.77

The object of cultural heritage that was to be governed at the international level,

on account of its universal value, was monumental, universal and universalizable on

philosophical and pragmatic grounds.78 Some articulations of this object put forth during

the preparatory meetings are: “masterpieces whose fate concerns all men,” (UNESCO

1968: 18), the “superb, unique and irreplaceable examples of the universal cultural

heritage,” (1969a: 3), “cultural property of universal interest,” (1970: 5) “monuments

76 The full-text of the Recommendation is available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13087&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. 77 Here, I do not only mean the parallel UNESCO Recommendation, as the most directly connected example, but also the plethora of projects geared towards the production of a social fabric for peaceful international cooperation. 78 UNESCO’s original focus was on cultural heritage. This changed with the parallel efforts that emerged through the UN Conference on the Human Environment. What became the World Heritage Convention and its much touted innovative bringing together of cultural and natural heritage was in fact a combination of accidents of history, in which institutions became aware of parallel and partly overlapping efforts, and institutional wrangling for authority, where UNESCO’s lobbying meant that it became the host for the Convention, although with significant changes to its original Draft.

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groups of buildings and sites of universal value” (1971: 21). The philosophical grounds

of this monumental emphasis, along with the material-authenticity based approach to

conservation, have since been criticized as Eurocentric. In these meetings, they were

posited as universally recognizable conceptions of cultural heritage, to be categorized as

monuments, groups of buildings and sites, and evaluated through the relevant fields of

expertise – such as architecture, art history and archaeology. It was assumed that these

sites – and only these sites – crossed a threshold of value that made them objects of

international interest. Here, doctrinal approaches were supplemented by pragmatic

concerns. It was assumed that costly international efforts to save awe-striking,

monumental sites were likely to garner international support. 79 A second pragmatic

reasoning was that any international authority would be under-equipped, financially and

otherwise, to aid in the preservation of all cultural heritage.80 Thus, in made practical and

philosophical sense to focus only on a subset of “most valuable” sites.

Yet, despite the declaration that there are cultural sites of universal interest on

account of their aesthetic and historical value, these early meetings also showed an

awareness of the potential difficulties in designating such sites. The first expert meeting

underlined that items of universal importance and interest “are not limited to any specific

canon or canons of aesthetics, but might include unique archaeological remains of past

civilizations, the best specimens of a country’s architecture, grandiose groups that

represent a decisive moment or period in an art or style and so on.”81 Its discussion report

conveyed that “a clear definition of what was of universal importance was not easily

arrived at” (UNESCO 1968: 18). Importantly, however, these worries were not located at

79 See for example, the conclusions of the 1969 meeting of the experts: “However, the experience of many countries has shown that a campaign designed to preserve some important monument or spectacular group of buildings arouses far more enthusiasm than proposals to save a monument or a site of more modest appearance” (UNESCO 1969b: 19). 80 The background paper submitted by Robert Brichet to the 1968 meeting contended that “there can be no question of extending the benefits of international protection to all cultural property indiscriminately for the obvious reason that no international organization (or Unesco) could cope with a task of such proportions.. This international protection could therefore apply only to sites or monuments of international importance” (Brichet 1968: 19). This language of international, as the qualifying and limit condition of the regime, would shift first to universal (1970), and subsequently to “outstanding universal,” with the proposal of the UK Delegation during the discussions of the draft convention. 81 Similarly, the 1970 report noted that given “the universally recognized principle that every loss of important immovable cultural property is a spiritual and material loss for mankind as a whole.. it would [] be advisable that property saved or to be saved should belong to various civilizations throughout the world” (quoted in Titchen 1995: 60).

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the level of whether there is such a thing as universal value, but rather the terms of its

possible concretization. This definitional problem was connected to political ones, such

as tensions that might arise between the international authority and states in the

designation of such properties, hierarchies between states that have different levels of

‘heritage wealth,’ and between heritage of universal vs. national or regional value.

While these definitional issues might seem inevitable in the case of something

plural and heterogeneous like culture, others have analyzed similar processes of the

reduction of plurality and uncertainty as integral to the genesis of governance regimes,

including international law, population, and the environment (Sending 2015, Allan 2017).

In this case, the preparatory documents responded to this challenge in a few ways. First,

they posited national and international protection as complementary mechanisms,

indicating that all cultural heritage should be valorized and protected by national

mechanisms. Second, its was found not “advisable to establish an ‘international register’

held by UNESCO” (UNESCO 1970: 6). Third, and related, the envisioned international

authority would extend assistance to sites based on applications by states (Ibid).

However, these measures could only suspend rather than resolve the question of value

and valuation. In fact, the same documents that advised against a permanent register of

sites also stated that the applications for international assistance would be evaluated by

experts, based on objective criteria and taking into account the extent of the threat to

property and its significance for the world’s cultural heritage. Fourth, the documents

emphasized science and technology as the proper, apolitical, and objective bases of such

governance.

At the intersection of these threads, the meetings put forth what they called “a

kind of Red Cross for monuments, groups and sites of universal importance” (UNESCO

1969a: 3 and 1970: 5). To pull together the threads developed until this point, this

international authority was necessary because cultural heritage constituted a source of

immense wealth for humanity, and because it was threatened by a multiplicity of factors.

Such danger threatened parts of cultural heritage, which were of universal (aesthetic and

historical) value and interest, and the loss of which would constitute the impoverishment

of mankind as a whole. However, not all was bleak. The international community had

recently demonstrated its willingness to cooperate to save these sites, and in the process

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manifested the ability of culture to generate shared understanding and international

cooperation, even amidst parties with otherwise hostile relations. At the same time, the

science and technology of preservation had developed in ways that made it possible to

undertake the necessary actions to protect these monuments, sites and groups of

buildings. There was, however, acknowledgment of the difficulties that would arise in the

adjudication of this universal value, and the proposal was made for an international

authority that would extend assistance, in the form of technical aid, loans, and education

and information priovision to raise public awareness on heritage protection. In contrast to

the regime that ultimately emerged, the proposal was for two short lists to be kept: one

list of monuments, sites and groups of buildings of universal value which require major

operations and will enjoy international protection, and a second list of properties that

have been saved by such protection. The regime’s final form emerged from the

intervention of the United States, as the hegemon, and as a hegemonically consolidated

regime that moved away from some of these initial questions.

3.3. World Heritage: The Regime and the List

To understand why the world heritage regime took its final form, after the decisive

involvement of the United States, it is necessary to turn to a parallel history of the

growing international environmental movement, culminating in the Stockholm

Conference on the Human Environment (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 10), and the

connected development within the United States of the idea for a World Heritage Trust,

which reached its zenith with the endorsement of U.S. President Richard Nixon (Titchen

1995: 61). The 1960s had given rise to an international environmental movement with

concerns such as ozone depletion. The Stockholm Conference, which resulted in the

adoption of the UN Environmental Program was reflective of the international uptake of

these growing conservation concerns. In the lead up to the conference, the International

Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has been the third Advisory Body for

the world heritage regime, had been working on a “Draft Convention for the

Conservation of World’s Heritage,” predominantly focused on natural heritage, and

“hoping to use the summit for an opportunity to get endorsement for new international

environmental laws” (Titchen 1995: 63, Cameron and Rössler 2016: 10). In the

meantime, Nixon delivered a message entitled “Program for a Better Environment,” to

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the U.S. Congress in 8 February 1971, in which he proposed that “it would be fitting by

1972 for the nations of the world to agree to the principle that there are certain areas of

such unique worldwide value that they should be treated as part of the heritage of all

mankind and accorded special recognition as part of a World Heritage Trust” (Nixon

quoted in Titchen 1995: 6). While the title of the address included only the environment,

Nixon placed alongside the “most outstanding natural areas,” “unique historical,

archeological, architectural and cultural values to mankind,” as also in need of saving for

future generations. (Ibid.). As a result, in the lead-up to the Stockholm Conference and

UNESCO’s final discussion on a world heritage convention, three parallel and partly

overlapping draft conventions were in making and circulation, with heritage as the object

of global governance: a natural-heritage focused Convention by the IUCN, a cultural-

heritage focused one by UNESCO, and a cultural and natural heritage focused World

Heritage Trust idea circulated by the U.S. (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 20).

As the UNESCO archives prior to 1972 have largely been destroyed by fire,

Cameron and Rössler (2016) have interviewed influential figures in UNESCO involved

with the development of the Convention to reconstruct this period. Some of these figures

have also penned their own recollections of the events (Batisse 2005, Bolla 2005). It

emerges from these accounts that, given the separation of the culture and science sectors

of UNESCO, Michel Batisse, the UNESCO official involved in the Stockholm summit,

recognized the potentially duplicative nature of IUCN’s Convention with the work of

UNESCO’s cultural sector only late in 1970 (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 10). Batisse

himself recounts it as a “quite accidental” discovery in May 1970, of which he

immediately informed UNESCO’s culture sector (Batisse 2005: 20). This resulted in the

submission of two Draft Conventions – by IUCN and UNESCO – to the

Intergovernmental Working Group on Conservation, which met in New York on 14-17

September 1971 prior to the Stockholm Conference (Ibid., Titchen 1995: 63). The

meeting decided that the evaluation of the UNESCO Convention was beyond its

competence, and Gerard Bolla, UNESCO’s Deputy Director-General of Culture and

Communication, began his diplomatic tour of Washington D.C. immediately afterwards.

During these meetings, the U.S. demonstrated its willingness to have UNESCO as the

international authority to which a future Convention could be entrusted, as well as a

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strong preference for a single convention that would bring together cultural and natural

heritage. Bolla promised a revised UNESCO Convention and he was informed of U.S.

support before departing the capital (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 21-24).82

Given this endorsement, there was some surprise when the United States

submitted its own Draft Convention to the April 1972 UNESCO meeting of government

experts, convened to prepare the international instrument. The American Delegation

argued that its draft “should .. serve as the basis for the discussion” since “it gave equal

attention to cultural and natural heritage” (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 23). In fact, Bolla

readily admits to the continued cultural emphasis of the UNESCO Draft Convention,

leading up to and including the 1972 meeting: “despite several meetings I had with

permanent delegates, suggesting that experts on natural heritage be also included in their

delegations, we found ourselves faced with a largely cultural committee, which did not

immediately grasp the reason for a marriage with nature and the advantages which might

flow from it” (Bolla 2005: 74). Once proponents for a cultural convention were

convinced of the merits of this “marriage,” working groups were formed to tackle the

definitions (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 24). For its part, UNESCO put together a table

comparing the two Draft Conventions by article, emphasizing points of overlap, and

incorporating the divergent elements into a single document (UNESCO 1972b).

A key difference between the two Draft Conventions concerned the nature of the

list(s) that the regime would produce. As explained above, the UNESCO draft made

provisions for two short lists: properties that needed and those that had received

international protection aid. Conversely, the U.S. draft stipulated a permanent World

Heritage List, comprising properties of “exceptional universal value in terms of the

criteria it will establish” (UNESCO 1972b: 7-8). The establishment of the criteria and the

List would be entrusted to an Intergovernmental Committee, comprising experts on

national and cultural heritage, delegated by states. Based on but not limited to inventories

of sites complied by the states, this Committee would take the initiative on including

properties on the List. The Committee would, however, inform and obtain the consent of

82 Bolla recounts the communication of U.S. support over lunch in the State Department’s VIP quarters: “The talks and the lunch had only one objective, that of giving me formal notice that the US had confidence in Unesco as regards the drafting of a convention on the protection of world cultural and natural heritage (the Americans were particularly attached to the wording ‘World Heritage’). I learned later that the final decision had been taken at the White House!” (Bolla 2005: 71).

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states on whose territory the properties designated for inclusion were located. In cases of

objection, states would be expected to provide a reasoned response.

The Convention that emerged from this meeting and adopted on 16 November

1972 provided the compromise for the creation of two lists: a permanent World Heritage

List and a temporary World Heritage in Danger List. To be inscribed on the World

Heritage List, sites would need to be nominated by states. These nominations would be

evaluated by international and independent experts affiliated with Advisory Bodies, and

receive the final approval from the Intergovernmental Committee. The Danger list would

be mobilized at the request of states or through the recommendations of the Advisory

Bodies for sites whose state of conservation was a cause of concern. It is only sites that

are already on the World Heritage List that can be placed on the Danger List, which

allows access to material and technical aid for conservation. In the past, some states have

demanded their sites to be placed on the Danger List, such as the U.S. for the case of the

Yellowstone National Park, and Mali for Timbuktu in 1990 due to sand encroachment.

The perception of the List, however, remains predominantly as (international) naming

and shaming, especially amongst developing nations.

In hindsight, this shift from a revolving short list to a permanent register

significantly raised the recognition stakes of the regime, resulting in early discussions of

representativity, and contributing to a strong and political push for inclusion, sometimes

called an “inscription race.” The interventions made by the delegations during the 1972,

however suggest that neither the List, nor its grounds of universal value, were the main

areas of contention. Out of the 127 written interventions, only 7 focused on the List, and

these included the proposal for two separate lists of cultural and natural properties

submitted by Canada, the proposal by Egypt that the list should be updated “whenever

circumstances require” rather than every two years, and more significantly, Austria’s

proposal that “states can submit applications for inclusion in the register.”83 (I review the

amendments concerning the definition of cultural heritage below.) Instead, the biggest

point of contention was the contributions to the international fund, and whether these

83 Draft Amendment submitted by the Delegation of Canada (10 April 1972), Draft Amendment submitted by the Delegation of Egypt (11 April 1972), Draft Amendment submitted by 1 delegation: Austria (12 April 1972). The others are submitted by Ghana (request for assistance), Spain (on the committee receiving, considering and deciding on requests for a list of properties of universal value), and Italy (a register for information and education).

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should be voluntary or compulsory. 84 The Convention that was eventually adopted

requires compulsory contributions and disallows states with arrears from serving on the

Intergovernmental Committee. The Convention also allows for additional voluntary

contributions.

The relation that the regime established with its object was therefore one of

identification, evaluation, valorization and protection. How did the Convention define

this object, which would need to be produced and reproduced through the regime’s

implementation? “Outstanding Universal Value” (“OUV”) was coined as the constitutive

condition of world heritage – as what separated it from national or regional heritage.

Cultural heritage that could potentially possess such value was defined through a three-

part categorization, set out in Article 1 of the Convention:

monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view (UNESCO 1972b: 2, Article 1).85

This article took its final shape after the proposed and accepted additions of “caves” by

Indonesia, “science” by Germany, “historical and ethnological” by the Netherlands and

84 Bolla recalls these discussions as follows: “The developing countries suspected the industrialized countries of seeking, by a system of voluntary contributions earmarked for such and such a project, to obtain the choice and the control of operations” (Bolla 2005: 77). They pushed, therefore, for compulsory contributions. On the contrary, Cameron and Rössler posit that “while many believe that the United States opposed an obligatory contribution because it would commit them to paying too much, internal government correspondence proves otherwise,” arguing that the U.S. insistence on voluntary funding was grounded in the belief that compulsory contributions would only produce the minimum necessary funds (2016: 25). These debates took place mostly by way of discussions during the meetings. For the written interventions that were submitted see DR.32 (Egypt), DR.37 (Ghana), DR. 62-68 (USA), DR.73 (USA), DR. 109 (Afghanistan, Algeria, Brazil, Central African Republic, Egypt Ghana, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria and Senegal), DR.114 (Afghanistan, Algeria, Brazil, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia and Yugoslavia). 85 For a detailed overview of the development of the three categories of monuments, groups of buildings and sites themselves see Titchen 1995: 78-84.

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crucially, the wording of “outstanding universal value,” proposed by the United

Kingdom.86 Conversely, Spain’s amendment to introduce “geography and ecology” as

other points of view, and most significantly, Nigeria’s proposal “to delete the word

universal” were not adopted. 87 “Outstanding universal value,” without being further

defined, was attached to each of the three component parts of cultural heritage. These

component parts, in turn, focus on concrete, tangible, and for the most part monumental

elements of cultural heritage, in contrast to the intangible and vernacular. Next, this

definition gestures to art, history, science, ethnology and anthropology as the relevant

fields of expertise for the adjudication of universal value. However, as the early

implementation of the regime shows, it was art history, architecture and archeology88 that

took the front stage in such adjudication, and the 1994 adoption of the Global Strategy

was narrated as a shift to an anthropological conception of culture. For the moment,

cultural heritage was understood as primarily aesthetically and historically valuable,

manifested in monumental artifacts, and lastly, as universally valuable and recognizable

as such.

Let me put the lengthy process of founding the world heritage regime within the

terms of the theoretical relation I posit between the world order and global governance.

This genesis period points to a world political time of over two decades, including the

ideational-institutional building of a new world order, and the subsequent world-ordering

that unfolded in a context of a deepening Cold War. The former is reflected in the

ideational grounding of UNESCO as an organization tasked with fostering a shared

humanity and (re)constructing faith in this humanity through culture, science and

86 Draft Amendment submitted by the Delegation of the United Kingdom (10 April 1972). 87 Draft Amendment submitted by the Delegation of Spain (10 April 1972), and Draft Amendment submitted by the Delegation of Nigeria (10 April 1972). 88 Despite the strong references to archeology within the formulation and early implementation of the world heritage regime, Meskell identifies in the move from the scientific humanism and imperial idealism of UNESCO to its technocratic governance, a move away from archaeology. This, Meskell argues, is unfortunate for a few reasons: it implies a move away from intellectual discovery and research, and from a field which thinks of sites in terms of their lived experiences and not purely in their material manifestation and preservation, while also noting that this is an archaeology that has gone through its own paradigm shifts. (Meskell 2018: pp) It is undoubtedly true that different disciplines define and approach culture divergently. However, in my reading, UNESCO’s approach to cultural value is not one that can be understood mainly in terms of the disciplines it does or does not draw from, as each discipline has its orthodoxies, limits, critical approaches and paradigmatic shifts and plurality. It is, rather, grounded in the desire to globally govern culture into a universal heritage, which requires the production of standardized knowledge and centralized benchmarks, at the detriment of lived experiences and multiple meanings.

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education, and undergirded by a progressive, civilizational-cultural world-historiography.

The Cold War context, in turn, produced an increasingly technocratic approach to the

pursuit of these goals. The world heritage regime was birthed not only through this

institution but also through a key world political event: an international salvage operation

that foregrounded culture as a realm of cooperation that could transcend economic-

ideological fractures. However, a new international system would be necessary to turn

this ad-hoc cooperation into a permanent regime of the proper identification and

protection of such universal value towards fostering mutual understanding, ideational

convergence, and ultimately, the world-ordering of cultural value towards peaceful

relations. Within this permissive international context, the world heritage regime turned

to the epistemic consensus of aesthetic and historical expertise for the adjudication of

universal value, and to scientific-technical modes of governance for the purportedly

apolitical pursuit of shared goals. If this genesis was, in general, a process of the

reduction of the uncertainty and plurality that could undercut a singular-universal, it was

the intervention of the U.S. that produced the ultimate shape of the regime as the

seemingly self-confident pursuit of universal cultural value. At the same time, however,

what made such intervention possible was the extant assertion that there are, ultimately,

sites of universal value. In Ruggie’s terms, power could determine the form of

governance, but not its content (1982: 382). The early implementation of the regime then

corresponds to two subsequent elements of my theoretical framework: If the relation

between the order and governance is a recursive one, how does the implementation of the

world heritage regime order culture on the world stage? And how does such governance

unfold in a time of permissive political and epistemic conditions?

4. Implementing the Regime: Uncertain and Evident Universal Value

Article 11 (paragraphs 2 and 5) of the World Heritage Convention stipulated the

establishment of criteria to operationalize outstanding universal value, towards the

assessment and inscription of properties on the World Heritage List (UNESCO 1972b: 6).

Unlike the Convention, which requires UNESCO’s General Conference for its

modification, the OUV criteria were formulated as part of the Operational Guidelines for

the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (“Operational Guidelines”),

allowing them to be amended over the course of time, including in this period of early

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implementation. Thus, while the definition of cultural heritage has remained constant, the

particular interpretation of its universal value has changed, as facilitated by and reflected

in amendments to the OUV criteria.

The first iteration of the OUV criteria emerged out of two preparatory meetings

held in Morges and Paris. They comprised two separate lists: 6 criteria for cultural and 4

criteria for natural heritage. The original OUV criteria for cultural heritage were as

follows:

These criteria are the broadest operationalization of OUV to date, and they have been

subsequently narrowed down. However, this broad iteration also includes key points of

orientation. The first is the monumental emphasis, evident in the invocations of

masterpieces, monumental sculptures, and architecture. The second is the developmental

history at work. This history proceeds by particular cultures “exert[ing] considerable

influence” on others or through “important cultural, social, artistic, scientific,

technological or industrial development[s]” manifested in concrete structures. At the

same time, the criteria are demonstrative of this progressive history’s double relationship

with its past. It does not only desire to move beyond but also wishes to preserve and

salvage its beginnings and trajectory, which mark key points along a long arc of history

on which humanity can locate its past and present. Thus, if criteria (ii) and (iv) manifest

this progressive developmental bent, criterion (v) is testament to the salvaging instinct.

i) Represent a unique artistic or aesthetic achievement, a masterpiece of the creative genius; or ii) have exerted considerable influence, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on subsequent developments in architecture, monumental sculpture, garden and landscape design, related arts, or human settlements; or iii) be unique, extremely rare, or of great antiquity; or iv) be among the most characteristic examples of a type of structure, the type representing an important cultural, social, artistic, scientific, technological or industrial development; or v) be a characteristic example of a significant, traditional style of architecture, method of construction, or human settlement, that is fragile by nature or has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible socio-cultural or economic change; or vi) be most importantly associated with ideas or beliefs, with events or with persons, of outstanding historical importance or significance (Labadi 2015: 32)

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Strikingly, some of the criteria pull towards the unique, rare and influential, as might be

expected, whereas others gesture in the direction of the characteristic rather than the

exemplary. This points to the tension between the “universal” and the “representative”

that will mark the later implementation of the regime. In this period, it is the universal

that triumphs.

In the early period of implementation analyzed here, amendments were made to

the OUV criteria in 1978, 1980 and 1983.89 Criterion (i) remained unchanged through

these changes. The threshold of criterion (ii) was raised in 1980 to “great influence,” and

its range was refined as “architecture, monumental arts or town planning and

landscaping.” 90 Criterion (iii) was modified in 1980 to: “bear a unique or at least

exceptional testimony to a civilization which has disappeared.” This amendment

introduced both the terminology of civilizations into the criteria and limited the scope of

unique or rare objects of concern to disappeared civilizations. Amendments to criterion

(iv) were made over two rounds in 1980 and 1983 to result in the final formulation: “an

outstanding example of a type of building or architectural ensemble which illustrates a

significant stage in history,” which raised the threshold of admission to “outstanding”

from “the most characteristic,” clarified the types of structures of concern and reinforced

a stagist approach to history. As a result of two rounds of amendments, criterion (v)

received its further shape as: “an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement

which is representative of a culture and which has become vulnerable under the impact of

irreversible change.” While there is a similarly raised threshold from characteristic to

outstanding, in a departure from the general direction of amendments, this criterion came

to include the phrase “representative of a culture” to qualify human settlements. Lastly, a

1980 amendment restricted the scope and application of criterion (vi) to be: “directly or

tangibly associated with events or with ideas or beliefs of outstanding universal

significance (the Committee considered that this criterion should justify inclusion in the

List only in exceptional circumstances or in conjunction with other criteria).”91

89 See Annex I for a list of amendments to each criterion. 90 The addition of town-planning was brought on by a 1978 amendment. 91 At the same time as the OUV criteria were becoming more exclusionary, the following statement also – and tellingly – disappeared from the 1980 revision of the Operational Guidelines: “The definition of ‘universal’ in the phrase ‘outstanding universal value’ requires comment. Some properties may not be recognized by all people, everywhere, to be of great importance and significance. Opinions may vary from

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The modifications to the OUV criteria during this period, therefore, point to

increased thresholds, specification of relevant objects, and the introduction of civilization

and historical stages, which concretized and narrowed down the remit of universal

cultural value.92 The meeting records from this period do not convey contestation over

these changes. We might speculate that this is due to the briefer nature of documentation

during this period. However, other emerging themes suggest that keeping a short and

prestigious list through strict inscription criteria was a shared concern. As such, the

members of the intergovernmental committee concluded in 1977 that the List should be

drawn up with care to ensure its exclusivity (UNESCO 1977: 3) and the 1979 Committee

Meeting emphasized that it is absolutely essential for only properties with OUV to be

nominated (UNESCO 1979: 8). During the 1983 General Assembly, the Assistant

Director General praised the Committee’s due impartiality in drawing up the World

Heritage List, guided by Advisory Body inputs. Then ICOMOS President Michel Parent

noted at the Committee Meeting of the same year that there was general acceptance of

ICOMOS opinions by the intergovernmental committee and the Bureau (Parent 1983: 1,

UNESCO 1983: 2). As I analyze below, it was the committee that asked for a Global

Study as a global reference for potential world heritage sites, after the submission of 63

nominations in 1987. Two concerns, which constitute partial exceptions to this thread of

consensus, were expressed during the 1981 Committee Meeting and the 1985 Bureau

meeting. Both noted that the World Heritage List should be as representative as possible,

within the confines of OUV. Not only did these expressions confine representativity to

the remit of universal value, they also asked for the Advisory Bodies to be stricter in their

evaluations and for a coherence of inscriptions (UNESCO 1981: 12 and 14, UNESCO

1985: 1). Thus, they are only partial exceptions.

Part of the reason for this narrowed operationalization of OUV was pragmatically

given as the regime’s manageability. However, what allowed for the amendments were

conceptions of cultural value that were shared between political actors and the epistemic

one culture or period to another and the term ‘universal’ must therefore be interpreted referring to a property which is highly representative of the culture of which it forms part” (UNESCO 1977a: 4, UNESCO 1977b: 3, UNESCO 1978: 3). 92 See also Labadi 2015: 34-35. For a divergent interpretation that understands these revisions as moving away from the architectural focus of ICOMOS and towards an anthropological conception, see Cameron and Rössler 2016: 35-36.

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community. In turn, it produced a hierarchical and exclusionary cultural ordering. I start

with the role that experts and expertise played in this narrowing down, at times

purposeful, at others unwitting, and sometimes in contradiction with hesitancy and

openness expressed by the very same actors. The next section analyzes the uptake of this

conception of cultural value by political actors.

The Morges meeting, where the OUV criteria were first discussed and

formulated, is a good starting point to analyze the role played by experts in this

hegemonic production. 93 UNESCO’s summary of the discussion records that the

“participants agreed that it was not possible to draw up a set of objective criteria. It will

therefore be necessary to rely to some extent on the informed judgement of specialists

who could assist the World Heritage Committee in the evaluation of properties”

(UNESCO 1976 in Jokilehto 2008: 53, emphasis mine). There was agreement that

properties submitted for inclusion should “represent or symbolize a set of ideas or values

which are universally recognized as important,” or that “influenced the evolution of

mankind as a whole at one time or another” (Ibid.) The participants, also expressed their

hope for the inclusion of “only those properties which were, without doubt, of true

international significance” (Ibid.). These brief excerpts encapsulate key orientations and

tensions of this early period. On the one hand, the universal is approached by the

participants as something that is already in existence and recognized, but difficult to

define concretely. It is widely accepted as the organizing sign of the regime. Expertise is

called upon precisely in relation to the need to move from abstract acceptance to the

concrete definition of universal value. And this is precisely where expertise was inserted

by ICCROM during the same meeting: The fact that such a value be recognized to an object or a cultural ensemble cannot be justified except when referred to specialized scientific literature on the subject, which is considered the most up-to-date expression of the universal consciousness on the issue. Such references should thus play an important role in the preparation of the dossiers and the judgements by the Committee (ICCROM 1976 in Jokilehto 2008: 57, emphasis mine).94

93 In yet another example of unwieldy names of the meetings convened during this period, the full title of the Morges meeting is “Informal Consultation of Intergovernmental and Non-Governmental Organizations on the Implementation of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.” 94 The original contribution of ICCROM was submitted in French and the excerpt is from the official English translation.

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Specialized scientific literature, therefore, was not only apolitical and objective, but it

was the best expression of the universal consciousness on cultural value. Thus, the best

guidance on moving from its abstract iteration to concrete manifestations. 95 Put

differently, experts would play the key role in the movement between the recognition of

universal cultural value at the global political level, as manifested in instances such as the

Nubian campaign, to its concretization, operationalization and reproduction within the

regime, importantly through its attachment to concrete sites, and the consequent ordering,

through valorization and protection, of cultural heritage on the world stage.

These early discussions on the construction of OUV point to key attributes of

global governance as the (re)production of hegemonic universals. The first is the

simultaneous assumption and production of universal value. While a shared

understanding and value of the good – in this case cultural heritage – is posited as

universal, this conception and value still need to be produced through the implementation

of the governance regime. Such production is a combination of deepening, retrenchment

and expansion – the further consolidation of a never complete hegemony. It is also a

process in which the plurality and hesitancy evident in the establishment of the

governance object begin to recede from view. Such recession might be pragmatically

grounded, such as the manageability of the regime, but its stakes are the marginalization

of plurality and the production of exclusionary and hierarchical domains. In the case of

world heritage, this concretization entailed articulating a commonsense96 aesthetic and

historical judgment, in which experts played a key role, and the production of thresholds,

benchmarks and guidelines that would become the grounds of evaluation.

4.1. Producing the World Heritage List

What did the attachment of this universal value to concrete sites look like and what did it

produce by way of the global ordering of humanity’s cultural and historical heritage?

Based on the 299 cultural heritage sites that were inscribed during this period, and the

95 ICCROM’s contribution is a proto-expression of what the next chapter will identify and analyze as the epistemic approach to change. If “specialized scientific literature” is the “most up-to-date expression of the universal consciousness on the issue” the changes in such consciousness should be manifested, if not guided by this literature as the bases of justification for such value. 96 By commonsense, I mean sensus communis here.

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evaluation reports presented by ICOMOS for these sites,97 this was a time in which

universal value found its evident expression and easy attachment to an aesthetic-historical

narrative, which concentrated on Medieval and Renaissance Europe and monumental

sites testament to and products of social, economic and political consolidation. Beyond its

geographical-temporal center of gravity, this narrative extended to have early days of

humanity in Africa and North America, traveled to the Middle East and North Africa

through ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire, and be stretched to the “new world”

through “voyages of discovery.” In analyzing the arc below, my aim is not to only show

the (expected) Eurocentrism that lay beneath the commonsense of universal aesthetics

and history. It is also to show how such hegemonic commonsense makes value judgments

possible by removing questions of adjudication. Put simply, these sites were found to be

universally valuable because they already were.

Starting with the aesthetics, there is a clear monumental emphasis, which attaches

to Greek and Roman old/ancient towns, cathedrals, Islamic monuments and a Mayan

city.98 Alongside the explicit use of the adjective “monumental” itself, the evaluations for

sites inscribed on the List abound with superlatives such as grand and grandeur,

astonishing, excellent and phenomenal in describing their materiality. This awe-striking

aesthetics imposes itself and exerts influence beyond its immediate realm: it becomes

regionally adopted or brought to the “new world” through imperial ventures. At other

times, the universalization of aesthetics takes place through a process of recognizable

aesthetic styles adapting themselves to local circumstances: different sets of climatic

conditions and material availabilities in the newly established colonies. However, the

97 The reports for 4 sites not available. For the name, location and keyword descriptors of the sites inscribed during this period, see Annex II. 98 For example, the evaluation reports remark on the monumental integrity of Santiago de Compostela (Spain, ICOMOS 1985e), the monumental Musulman art of Historic Cairo (Egypt, ICOMOS 1979b), and the adjective is used in the evaluations of the Historical Complex of Split (as nominated by Yugoslavia, ICOMOS 1979c), Old Town Segovia and its Aqueduct (Spain, ICOMOS 1985b), Meidan Emam (Iran, ICOMOS 1979d), Al Qal’a of Beni Hammad (Algeria, ICOMOS 1980a), Historic Centre of Florence (Italy, ICOMOS 1982b), Abbey Church of Saint-Savin sur Gartempe (France, ICOMOS 1983a), Ancient City of Nessebar (Bulgaria, ICOMOS 1983b), City of Cuzco (Peru, ICOMOS 1983c), Place Stainislas, Place de la Carriere and Place d’alliance in Nancy (France, ICOMOS 1983d), Historic Centre of Evora (Portugal, ICOMOS 1986b), Historic City of Toledo (Spain, ICOMOS 1986c), Studley Royal Park Including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey (United Kingdom, ICOMOS 1986d), Cathedral, Alcazar and Archivo de Indias in Seville (Spain, ICOMOS 1987c), City of Bath (United Kingdom, ICOMOS 1987d), Sacred City of Kandy (Sri Lanka, ICOMOS 1988a), Strasbourg, Grande-Ile and Neustadt (France, ICOMOS 1988b), Colonial City of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic, ICOMOS 1990).

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language of fusion and interaction, which would become widespread in the regime’s later

approach to aesthetics, is rare in this period.99 What is at play is rather the dynamics of a

dominant aesthetic tradition being adapted to and adopted in places that have local

traditions and material availabilities but not universal styles.

The evaluation of the Baroque Churches of the Philippines by the Brazilian expert

Jorge Gazaneo, quoted in the ICOMOS evaluation report, provides an important

exception to these dominant threads: No Philippine church is a complete example of one art period, but a living document of how time and context have left traces on the early founding intentions of the original designer-builder. .. at the crossroads of different cultures -Malay, Chinese, European, American. The architecture and art of the Philippines should be valued on standards different from those developed by European scholars. (ICOMOS 1993, emphasis mine)

Coming towards the end of this period, Gazaneo’s evaluation foreshadows important

changes. One is a shift away from influence, as it unfolds between dominant cultures and

non-dominant others to fusion between co-eval cultures, which produces something new

that is equally valuable.100 At the same time, this new thing calls for different standards

of evaluation. Taken seriously, the latter points to the insufficiency of centralized

benchmarks and standards for the evaluation of cultural production.

The substance and concerns of Gazaneo’s evaluation are an exception to the

broader evaluative contours of the regime in this period. These emphasize well-

established Western canons of art historiography, such as Baroque, Renaissance, Neo-

classical, alongside ancient Roman and Greek civilizational aesthetics. This does not

result in the inscription only of sites in Europe, but also Greek and Roman remains in the

Middle East and North Africa as nominated by states such as Algeria, Tunisia and

Lebanon,101 Jesuit missions in Latin America as nominated by Brazil, Argentina and

99 The exceptions are: Kathmandu (Nepal), Thatta (Bangladesh), Ellora Caves (India) and the Historic Centre of Cordoba (Spain). 100 A concrete manifestation of this change is the amendment to criterion (ii), where “exertion of influence” was replaced with “interchange of human values” as a universally valuable relation between cultures (See Annex I). This transition, however, produces a language of fusion and interaction, without attending to the power and hierarchy that has existed and continue to exist in such encounters. 101 For example, Djemila and Timgad in Algeria (inscribed in 1982), El Jem Amphitheatre (1979) and Punic Town of Kerkuane and its Necropolis (1985) in Tunisia, and Tyre and Baalbek in Lebanon (inscribed in 1984). For these sites, see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/&order=country.

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Bolivia,102 and other recognizably monumental structures that had made it to the annals

of archaeology, art history and the history of civilizations, such as the Taj Mahal in India

and the Pyramids in Egypt. What is at stake, then, is not a straightforward exclusion but

rather an inclusion that rests on and reproduces particular hierarchies. To be included,

however, one is first rendered recognizable within particular monumental aesthetics,

world histories, and the civilizational units that were productive of them.

Aesthetics was not the only path of inclusion within the regime, which is also

hinged on world-historical value grounds. The main units of this history are civilizations,

harkening to UNESCO’s earlier History of Mankind project and indicating that these

ideas did not disappear from the remit of the institution with the culmination of the

volumes. Resonant with this earlier history, the regime posited civilizations as connected

to peace and progress; this time as agents of trans-historically and cross-geographically

valuable cultural production. However, such civilizational history is not necessarily less

violent, hierarchical or exclusionary than the nationalist histories and cultural valorization

against which the regime posited itself. What steers these civilizational histories towards

peace and progress is, instead, a two-fold narrative structure: these pasts are narrated

either as encounters (of communication, exchange etc.) or as difficult moments in

humanity’s history from which it has progressed. This narrative renders the violent or

hierarchical elements as the backdrop to the cultural production they generated: at best

less important than the universally valorized tangible remains they generated and at worst

partly redeemable through such material manifestation.

Let me put this in concrete terms. A key tension resides in the fact that

monumental structures of universal aesthetic value that survived the inevitable material

decay of the test of time, were often products of economic and political consolidation of

civilizations. In fact, Segovia is evaluated as “the most solemn testimony of empire”

(ICOMOS 1985b), Roman sites are inscribed as “the most impressive testimonies – and

doubtless the most celebrated – to the Roman architecture of the imperial period”

(ICOMOS 1984) and the inscription of the pre-Hispanic City and National Park of

Palenque notes that the “long duration, magnitude of territorial domination and the

102 Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis: San Ignacio Mini, Santa Ana, Nuestra Señora de Loreto and Santa Maria Mayor (Argentina), Ruins of Sao Miguel das Missoes (Brazil) (1983). See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/275

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dispersion of political structures” of the Mayan civilization “result[ed] in a prodigal

diversity of monumental art and style,” winning the “admiration of the conquistadores,”

and resulting in its preservation (ICOMOS 1987f). Similarly, it was the “extremely

hierarchical” structure of the Inca state that resulted in the “European invaders [to]

respect the plan of this rational city, so curiously close to the ideal cities of the

Renaissance” (ICOMOS 1083). These histories are noted matter of factly, and the

monumental structures they gave rise to, which garnered the respect of other civilizations

or influenced cultural production across geographic context, are valorized. Roman

imperial extension in the Middle East and North Africa is approached primarily through

urban engineering, town planning, and the myriad of amphitheaters that survive in partial

ruin form.103 Next, the colonial military architecture of the fortresses of Portobelo-San

Lorenzo (Panama), Cartagena (Colombia), and the Castles and Town Walls of King

Edward in Gwynedd (Wales) are admired for their “unique artistic achievements,” their

extensiveness, and as “magnificent” and “full of history” (ICOMOS 1980b, 1984 and

1986). Importantly, it is not only the Advisory Body evaluations that cast the sites as such

but, with the exception of Gwynedd where a clear Welsh sentiment on British

colonialism is communicated, the nomination files submitted by states adopt a

reconciliatory tone towards this history. In addition, they emphasize the materiality of the

sites, such as Ile de Gorée (Senegal) nomination file’s articulation of slavery and

reconciliation.104 Similarly, multiple former colonial towns are nominated and inscribed

for their charm, character, or as “a colonial city par excellence,” and “a model colonial

town” (ICOMOS 1982, ICOMOS 1985a, ICOMOS 1990). At the same time, the

evaluations frame these as histories of discovery and attendant communication, exchange

and joint activity, for instance, between Africans and Europeans. World-historically,

then, the world beyond Europe could also find itself in this universal heritage through

voyages of discovery and conquest or by having developed its own units of socio-

political consolidation.

103 More provocatively, the evaluation for a Roman Theatre and its surroundings in France contended that the site qualities for criterion (vi), if it is admitted that the events referred to in the sculpted reliefs on the northern face (the war against the barbarians and the establishment of Pax Romana) are of universal value. (ICOMOS 1981b). 104 For Ile de Gorée’s nomination narrative, see Chapter 5. The nomination file of The Castles and Town Walls of King Edward I in Gwynedd is available at the UNESCO Fontenoy Archives (Id. No. 374).

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While these threads run strong through the early List, it would not be fair to cast

them as the only ones. The arc of history that runs through the List extends further back

to the pre-historic origins of common humanity, as its signs are discovered in Ethiopia,

Libya and Canada through fossil sites, cave drawings and steep cliffs where buffaloes

were driven off to later be collected for food.105 The discovery of the alphabet finds a

place in this arc, which also passes through the Industrial Revolution, celebrated for the

genius of its individual purveyors and/or the technological progress it entailed. These

inscriptions also bring within the remit of the regime sites that are humble in appearance

in contrast to its monumental aesthetics.

It seems, then, that humanity started out in parts of the “old” and “new” world,

had its longest and most productive relay in Europe to spread out in waves, eastward with

the Romans, and to the west with the European empires. Meskell poignantly describes the

world heritage produced by the regime in this period as follows: “the very notion that a

turn to monumentality could be first universalized and then inculcated to anchor a future

world peace is steeped in a particularly Western perspective. The deep past was

appropriated from distant shores to serve the construction of a common humanity rather

than a world of difference” (2018: 24).

This, of course, is not a new story of a big reveal of Eurocentric history and

aesthetics. (However, the normative stakes of such critique do not disappear through

previous demonstrations or hinge on novel revelations.) Rather, this background is

important for my argument for a few reasons. First, insofar as hegemony is the becoming

universal of a particularity, this early history points to the particulars undergirding the

assertions of universal value, as they become revealed through the regime’s

implementation. Second, it shows that stakes of such hegemonic universal are not

inclusion vs. exclusion, but rather a selective inclusion. Such inclusion involves coming

under the remit of “universal” history, as a selective stringing together of events through

particular interpretations of their significance. Third, this period of the regime is

retrospectively cast as a time when iconic sites were nominated and when there was

substantive debate on heritage issues. However, the patterns I have been pointing to

105 In Ethiopia, these are Lower Valley of the Awash and Lower Valley of Omo, both inscribed in 1980. The Head-Smashed-in Buffalo Jump (Canada) was inscribed in 1981, and the Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus in Libya were inscribed in 1985. See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/&order=year

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demonstrate that this early production of humanity was also deeply political in its bases,

results, and the distributive consequences of who was part of this world culture and

history, and on what grounds. Fourth, and relatedly, the demonstration that the political

power and consolidation, which have been integral to the production sites, were

narratively recast through the regime pushes us to reconsider the stakes of the

contemporary critiques of politicization. If the regime had always entailed a recasting of

particular imperial-national or national-civilizational histories as universal, this move not

only detached the sites from these national grounds but also allowed internationalized

value to be reclaimed as a matter of national prestige on the world stage. We might then

ask what is new about the current dynamics of demanding civilizational recognition

through the regime and why it is experienced as a crisis of credibility? Understood as

such, the politicization of the regime, as a widely expressed concern, is not a movement

from an apolitical to a political construction of world cultural history, but rather a

manifestation of the changing politics of culture that push against the ideational-

institutional bases of the regime. These changing politics are counter-hegemonic, insofar

as they push against the previously hegemonic universal and posit a (contentious)

plurality.

Hegemonic value played an important role in the casting this epistemic

production as apolitical. Such value obviates key questions of evaluation, which later

appear as political. Let me illustrate. In multiple evaluations, the evidence for the

universal value of the properties are stated as their already existing recognition as

universally valuable. These properties include, but are not limited to: the Aachen

Cathedral (Germany), the old city of Damascus and Palmyra (Syria), Memphis and Its

Necropolis (the Pyramids, Egypt), the Temple of Apollo and the Acropolis (Greece), and

the Ancient City of Sigiriya (Sri Lanka). 106 Another set of adjectives used in the

106 These descriptions include: “from its inception, has been perceived as an exceptional artistic creation” (Aachen Cathedral, ICOMOS 1978a), “everyone agrees on the importance, the quality, the value of Damascus” (Damascus, ICOMOS 1979a), “the outstanding universal value of Palmyra has long been a recognized fact” (Palmyra, ICOMOS 1980d), “the pyramids of Egypt have always provoked universal admiration; even during antiquity, they were included among the “wonders of the world.” (Pyramids, ICOMOS 1979e), “a universally recognized cultural property” (Apollo, ICOMOS 1986e), “the ideal World Heritage List, as dreamt by the writers of the Convention in 1972, reserved a very special place for the Athenian Acropolis from the very beginning” (Acropolis ICOMOS 1987a), “visited by passionate admirers” (Sigiriya ICOMOS 1982a).

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evaluations do similar work of pointing to the clarity of the value at stake, such as:

“indisputable” (Ancient Thebes, Egypt), “undeniable/absolute priority” (Fasil Ghebbi,

Ethiopia and the Historical Centre of Rome, Italy), “absolutely unquestionable” (Historic

Cairo, Egypt), “can only be favorably received” (Independence Hall, USA), “most

obvious potential choice for inclusion” (Stonehenge, UK), and “indubitable fact of

universal religious and cultural importance” (Paphos, Cyprus). If these adjectives might

be interpreted as invoking an ease evaluation, rather than obviating it, a striking set of

articulations posit the evaluation process as either “unnecessary,” or even “derisory:” The inclusion of Leningrad on the World Heritage List is so obvious that any detailed justification seems superfluous. (ICOMOS 1990) The inclusion of the Würzburg Residence on the WHL constitutes a measure, which is so clearly desirable that the proposal of the Federal Republic of Germany does not require lengthly [sic] justification. (ICOMOS 1981c) This unique cultural property [the Historic Centre of Florence] should, with every good reason, have figured among the first lists of the World Heritage List and any justification would be both impertinent and derisory. (ICOMOS 1982b)

When, and insofar as, universal value is hegemonically shared, it is not only evident and

already recognized as such, but processes of evaluation and justification sit somewhere

between unnecessary and insulting. These recurrent phrases recast a later diagnosis by

ICOMOS that nomination files often assert rather than prove universal value, by listing

and valorizing the material components of the nominated sites rather than explaining the

sources of universal value (see Chapter 3). These evaluations raise the question, instead,

of whether such value has ever been “proven” or “demonstrated,” what such proof and

demonstration would mean beyond invocations and concretizations of a sensus

communis. Ultimately, this raises the question of value in the absence or plurality of such

a community.

Lastly, if these sites are posited as already universally recognized, the evaluations

also demonstrate the longstanding role of expertise in the production of such recognition.

This includes the discovery of Nemrut (Turkey) by Charles Sester in 1881 (ICOMOS

1987e), the Italo-Libyan archaeological missions, which ran continuously from 1955,

under the guidance of Italians in Tadrart Acasus (Libya) (ICOMOS 1985d), and the

excavation of the Lower Valley of the Omo (Ethiopia) by international archeologists

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(ICOMOS 1980c). There is also the layered history of Quesir Amra (Jordan), where the

murals were discovered by the Austrian Alois Musil in 1898, who made them known in

1907, to be subsequently restored by a team of Spanish specialists (ICOMOS 1985c).

These processes of becoming known and recognized constitute the epistemological

counterpart to the world historical discoveries through which “particular” parts of the

world encountered and became incorporated into its “universal” history and culture.

Starting in 1992, these invocations of previous discoverers, excavators, and restorers

began to be supplemented by reports of ICOMOS consultations of area specialists,

mentions of the number of ICOMOS Bureau members that had “personal knowledge” of

the site, and lastly of field visits carried out (ICOMOS 1992b, 1992c and 1992d).

These expert evaluations, then, point to the ways in which the (re)production of

hegemonic value through governance relies on the existence of shared value, politically

and epistemically on the one hand, and undertakes its active (re)production through

processes of operationalization, and evaluation on the other, towards governaning and

ordering the world in its terms.

4.2. Early Questions of Inclusion and the Global Study

If the implementation of the regime revealed the particular cultural and historical bases

of this universal value, how did questions of inclusion and plurality come up during this

early period? The shared focus of the regime’s participants in this period was to keep the

expansion of the List at a slow pace to make sure that only properties of truly universal

value were inscribed. This willingness to participate within the terms of the regime is also

evidenced in the non-resubmission of rejected properties, revisions made to deferred files

and the other instances of taking ICOMOS recommendations into account in terms of the

choice, priority and formulation of nominated sites.107The Advisory Bodies were tasked

107 This hegemonic consensus is not devoid of power, domination and hierarchy. Rather, these unfold in and through the substantive convergence, occluded by but also pointing to its constitutive limits, exclusions and possible seeds of unraveling. The following example is illustrative of what such convergence can entail. The 1968 meeting of experts, in the lead up to the Convention’s drafting, devoted a section to the discussion of “various systems established in member states for the protection and enhancement of monuments and sites.” Ghana was a participant in this meeting and the discussion. The report writes that in 1951, the country had passed the Ancient Monuments Act, which was mainly concerned with the fortified towns and fortresses built by the Europeans along the coast during the seventeenth century and state property since Independence [in 1957].” (1968: 6) A decade later, the newly independent state positioned itself as “support[ing] the scheme to ensure the international protection of monuments and sites of universal importance,” as well as in need of assistance (Ibid.). Not surprisingly, the first property nominated by

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with the production of a Global Study, which would provide the context of evaluation for

further nominations. The Global Study indicates that there was some acknowledgment of

the ways in which not all properties of OUV might be immediately, which is to say

“universally” recognizable as such, and experts were tasked with constructing the global

context against which such value would become broadly recognizable. At the same time,

there was concern with including properties with evident value to construct the List as a

credible reflection of universal value. In this sense, the perennial tension of the regime

between “representativeness” and “universality” was tipped dominantly in the direction

of the latter, with concerns for the completeness or comprehensiveness of the List.

The completeness of the List as a challenge of inclusion of sites with evident

OUV was rooted in the regime’s institutional setup whereby inscriptions depended on

state nominations rather than expert priorities and prerogatives.108 When these priority

sites were nominated, such as the Acropolis and the Archeological Site of Delphi in

Greece, they were exuberantly welcomed and linked to the raison d’etre of the regime in

the evaluation reports. I quoted the evaluation of Acropolis’ value above, whereas Delphi

was evaluated as “one of the foremost sites the drafters of the World Heritage Convention

must have been thinking of” (ICOMOS 1987b). If the inclusion of these sites bolstered

the credibility of the List, their absence threatened it. Delos (Greece) was described as

“crucial to the credibility of the World Heritage List,” and the temporary absences of the

Cathedral of St. Sophia of Kiev (USSR),109 the Kremlin and Red Square (USSR), the

Angkor Wat (Cambodia), and the Bourges Cathedral (France) were all cast as resulting in

the loss of credibility of the List, its devaluation, and as prejudicial to its status (ICOMOS

1990c, 1990d, 1990e, 1992a and 1992b). Or, take ICOMOS’ evaluation of Venice’s

Ghana for inclusion on the World Heritage List was the Forts and Castles of Volta, Greater Accra. Similarly, one of my interviewees recounted the late 1980s and early 1990s as a time when coastal and colonial cultural heritage was valorized and preserved as priority in Kenya (Interviews conducted on 26 July 2016 and 7 March 2017). Such hegemony, then, exists, circulates and is reproduced between political actors and experts, resulting in consensus around what the heritage object is and the responsible relation to it as members of the international community and order. 108 As a scientific-technical, neutral actor, ICOMOS has not put forth a list of its priorities. However, in addition to its enthusiastic support for some nominations, the sites that would qualify as priorities for the Advisory Body are also indicated by its use of examples in the development of OUV criteria for the Morges Meeting (Jokilehto 2008: 59-61). 109 The parenthetical designation is of the state at the time of the site’s nomination, which also demonstrates participation by the USSR in terms that fit within the remit of the universal cultural value. For other sites nominated by the Soviet bloc during this time, see Annex II.

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nomination dossier, which lamented its delayed arrival on the regime’s stage and

commented that the “inclusion of Venice on the World Heritage List will further

strengthen the coherency of the cultural policy of UNESCO” (ICOMOS 1987g).

These evaluations demonstrate that for ICOMOS, the challenge of inclusion,

which implicated the credibility of the World Heritage List, was the inscription of sites

with evident universal value. What would make the List credible was its completeness in

terms of these sites, which would in turn lend coherence to UNESCO’s cultural policy.

This preoccupation seems to find at least some resonance with states, as evidenced in

their decision to invite the Vatican to ratify the Convention and nominate the sites that

would complement and complete the existing inscription of the Historic Centre of Rome.

It is, however, a concern that is most clearly attached to ICOMOS and expressed through

its evaluation reports.

Returning to the other question of inclusion, the increase in world heritage

nominations in 1979 resulted in worries among the Committee members, at the

intersection of the manageability of the List and the inscription only of properties of

universal value. Out of the 89 nominations received that year, 31 were deferred, and 2

were decided for non-inscription. The reasons given for deferrals were either that the file

was not found persuasive or that it lacked adequate technical information, such as a

designated buffer zone to ensure proper conservation. The non-inscription decisions

stated that while the properties had national and/or regional value, they did not possess

universal value.110 The committee meeting report for the year described it as witnessing

110 The two non-inscription decisions for this year were natural heritage sites and therefore beyond the remit of this research. For the rest of this period, non-inscription decisions were made for 44 properties. In 6 of these cases, the nominating state withdrew the nomination before it was discussed at the Committee Meeting. The reasons given for the non-inscriptions, with three exceptions of authenticity, were that they did not have OUV as understood for the purposes of the Convention, and that while they might possess great national or regional value, they did not have universal value. In only one case, a withdrawn nomination was resubmitted (Navan Fort, United Kingdom), to receive a second and final non-inscription decision. Out of the 44, only two files are re-submitted within this period. One is the property that ends up being inscribed as St. Mary’s Cathedral and St. Michael’s Church at Hildesheim, after substantial modification and with the subsequent ICOMOS evaluation that it is now “an exceptional testimony to the religious art of the holy roman empire of the Romanesque era” resulting in its “unmitigated agreement with the new nomination after serious reservation in 1982” (ICOMOS 1985f). The second is Thatta, which ICOMOS similarly recommended for inscription in 1981 after a new nomination dossier is submitted (ICOMOS 1981a). Six other properties, tellingly, were re-submitted with amendments and received a positive ICOMOS evaluation after the adoption of the Global Strategy in 1994. Significant among these is the Stone Town of Zanzibar, Tanzania, which was recommended for non-inscription for having retained only more recent structures and being “more oriental (sic) than african (sic) in appearance,” (ICOMOS

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“great increase in nominations for inscription, but largely unknown in majority of

countries, with many governments not fully understanding its implications.” While

nomination and inscription numbers declined after this peak, the question of what to do

with sites, which were not immediately recognizable as universally valuable, remained.

Responsible state participation was asked for, such as in the 1984 Bureau meeting, when

the ICOMOS coordinator asked that “only monuments of universal value be presented,”

as “the privileged witnesses of a civilization” (UNESCO 1984b: 21-22). The report of the

meeting for the harmonization of tentative lists from European countries conveyed that

the “participants were unanimous in their opinion that civilizations having exercised a

lesser influence should not be given equal representation and that priority should always

be given to the important centres” (Ibid.: 23).

These concerns culminated in the Committee members’ requesting the

development of a Global Study from the Advisory Bodies in 1987,111 after the submission

of 63 nominations. The working group established at the 1987 Committee meeting

presented its report to the 1988 Bureau session, and defined the Global Study as follows:

“[It] would enable the Committee to identify the outstanding cultural properties handed

down as patrimony to our contemporary world by all the cultural entities that have made

1982d as part of File Id. No. 173Rev). It was evaluated as “an outstanding material manifestation of cultural fusion and harmonization” in 2000 after the submission of a revised nomination file which comprised the same set of component parts (ICOMOS 2000). Ibiza, which was initially nominated as a cultural site in 1987 was inscribed in 1999, after significant revisions and as a mixed site. Cidade Velha/Cabo Verde was inscribed in 2009, with the ICOMOS recognition that the revised nomination file and the conservation efforts that had taken place between the site’s initial nomination in 1992 and then were significant, and allowed the manifestation of the site’s OUV, previously challenged by authenticity concerns (ICOMOS 2009). The Sydney Opera House and the Medici Villas and Terraces of Tuscany were inscribed in 2007 and 2013, after the inclusion of modern heritage and cultural landscapes within the typological purview of the regime. At the same time, and testament to the changing approach to non-inscription decisions, Spain submitted a revised nomination file for the Renaissance Monumental Ensembles of Úbeda and Baeza, first submitted in 1989, which received a non-inscription decision again in 2000. In return, a revised version of this rejected file was submitted in 2003 to be deferred by the Advisory Body, but inscribed by the Committee on the same year (ICOMOS 2003). Thus, in this early period, non-inscription decisions were abided, as manifested either in their non-return, or in significant revisions to the nomination files. Later on, others returned in the opening presented by the Global Strategy, to be evaluated enthusiastically by ICOMOS in contrast to its previous decision. In this later time, there is also a new dynamic of inscription despite Advisory Body decisions. 111 In the period between 1983-1987, based on states’ expression of difficulty in selecting sites of outstanding universal value, regional meetings were held to harmonize tentative lists and to think comparatively about properties in the same cultural and geographic region (Labadi 2015: 38-39). These meetings, or the need for them, are illustrative of the work that needs to be done in moving from ideational hegemony to its concrete reproduction, as well as the willingness of states to go along with this conception of OUV, instead of asserting alternative sources of cultural value.

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up the history of world civilization” (1988b: 14). The Secretariat supported the endeavor,

stating that it would allow for the quick establishment of a comprehensive list, and the

regime’s time and energy could be spent on the business of preservation instead (1988b:

4-5). This would be a Global Study fit for a universal culture and cultural history of

humanity, evidenced in the singular use of history and civilization. It would have

chronology as one axis, and cultural entities as the other, it would be compiled by

international experts, and it would guide the work of the committee by providing a broad

comparative context. The study would also guide states, who had expressed difficulties in

knowing which sites to nominate in the preparation of tentative lists112 and nomination

files. Importantly, at this point, committee members as well as other state participants in

the regime turned to Advisory Bodies for an authoritative survey of the pertinent sources

and manifestations of cultural value rather than claiming alternative sources or pointing

to the limits of such authority.

The efforts towards the Global Study became a regular part of the discussions at

the yearly Committee meetings. The Greek Delegation seconded an expert to help with

ICOMOS’ work. In line with the substantive contours of the List and the state of

scientific knowledge, the experts could quickly draft comprehensive lists of Greco-

Hellene, Roman and Byzantine civilizations and correlated cultures based on typology,

period and geographic location (UNESCO 1990: 20, Cameron and Rössler 2016: 79). At

the same time, there were continued discussions on what the proper axes for the study

should be, and whether the historical-aesthetic axes were adequate (Labadi 2015: 38).

Proposals were made for cultural and social approaches, either as supplementing or

replacing these axes. The Study received a last push from the American Delegation,

interested in applying its new computer technology to the completion of this matrix

(Titchen 1995) and towards a study that is “prepared by the experts, on a

multidisciplinary basis and in line with given universal considerations” (UNESCO 1992:

55-56). The 1992 committee meeting, marking the 20th year of the Convention, adopted

as the regime’s strategic goals completing the identification of potential world heritage

sites and ensuring the representativity of the List.

112 Tentative lists are indicative lists of properties states might nominate in the future.

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In hindsight, the Global Study has been interpreted as an effort in futility, which

nevertheless generated some useful side discussions. Cameron and Rössler describe it as

“revealing the futility of imposing rigid frameworks on cultural phenomena at the global

level,” which stalled “because of its complexity and lack of rigorous methodology”

(Cameron and Rössler 2016: 79). Ultimately, they contend, “it was an unrealistically

ambitious undertaking to create an overall framework for all cultures and regions of the

world” (Ibid.).113 Note the contradiction that emerges in this description, as it points to

the complexity of cultural phenomena at the global level and the lack of a rigorous

methodology as the two downfalls of the Global Study. This tension sits at the crux of the

epistemic approach to plurality I outline in the next chapter, which recognizes this

complexity, without giving up on the possibility of its governance through generalizable

benchmarks and frameworks. For now, I want to stress two other elements. First, this was

a time in the implementation of the world heritage regime, in which something like the

Global Study – as a comprehensive guideline of world’s cultural properties – was

demanded by committee members and undertaken by the Advisory Bodies. Such demand

arose out of uncertainty about universal value, but set out to reduce such uncertainty

through an epistemic and exhaustive survey.

Second, towards the end of the period I analyze, a new thread emerged to

increasingly became part of the discussions, alongside continued efforts toward the

production of the Global Study. In the 1989 Committee meeting, the ICOMOS

representative is reported as emphasizing “the need to highlight the changes which had

occurred in the world and in approaches to culture in the last twenty years,” and pointing

out that “new tendencies were appearing” (UNESCO 1989: 11). A similar remark was

made by a state delegation in 1991, cautioning against “a rigid list of cultural values,

especially at a time when the very notion of heritage is undergoing rapid changes”

(UNESCO 1991: 17). These interventions point to change that is underway in the world,

rather than within the regime, and pertinent to what the regime governs and how. The

ICOMOS representative invokes both “the world” and “approaches to culture,” but points

113 A more cynical approach to the Global Study was put forth by Herb Stovel, Secretary General of ICOMOS from 1990-1993, who defined it as an “effort to find a comprehensive matrix within which you could plant all civilizations and all forms of expressions of those civilizations” (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 79).

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primarily to epistemic changes: anthropised landscapes and vernacular architecture, the

relationship of man to his environment. I argue instead that there are both epistemic and

political changes at play, both of which point to a move away from the regime’s original

hegemonic configuration albeit in different directions, especially in relation to the

question of plurality. For now, it is important to recognize that this thread of interventions

bring the period under evaluation in this chapter full circle in an important manner. If the

genesis of the regime unfolded through key moments of world order-making, and its

early implementation constituted a time in which the regime set out to govern cultural

heritage and order it as a policy realm on the world stage, the end of this period is one

where the outside of the regime reasserts itself. Thus, the recursive relation between the

world order and global governance is an ongoing one, albeit with different components

being foregrounded through time.

5. Conclusion

This chapter traveled a significant timeline, starting with the foundation of UNESCO in

1945 to the early implementation of the world heritage regime, ending at 1993. In world

political time, this period is between the end of World War II and the end of Cold War.

Both are periods of high optimism, with important sides of pessimism. The post-World

War II pessimism concerned the preceding destruction, whereas the optimism was

directed at building a new world order. The end of the Cold War, on the other hand, was

split between optimistic declarations of the end of history and the triumph of the liberal

order, and worries about the return of the repressed –civilizational-cultural conflict. This

is not what the regime’s participants invoke when they talk about changing approaches to

culture, while also acknowledging that world political dynamics are, nevertheless,

intricately connected to the implementation and contestation of the regime. I will argue in

the next chapter that the two interventions quoted above, which seem to be in lockstep at

the concluding moment of this period, entail different sets of processes that are taken up

by actors with divergent implications for the possibility of global cultural governance.

The next two chapters turn to what I call epistemic and political approaches to

plurality to analyze how each bears on the regime’s original conception of value,

legitimacy and authority. In doing so, they demonstrate that the question of plurality is

multiply constituted, as it entails multiple possible moves away from a universal

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conception of value. In venturing to this terrain, I also begin to part company with the

scholarship with which this chapter has closely aligned itself, namely, the constructivist

and object-oriented approaches to global governance. In departing from the constructivist

scholarship, I foreground the plurality of conceptions that emerge on the regime’s stage

in relation to world political changes, rather than the constructivist emphasis on shared

value and endogenous change. As the last chapter has argued, this emphasis has resulted

not only in an empirical lack of exploration, but the absence of theoretical tools with

which to think about complex terrains, where previously hegemonic conceptions of value

are “shared,” insofar as they are intersubjectively understood, but they are also contested

through a plurality of conceptions. Such terrains are no less a social and intersubjective

than ones constructed through shared meaning, but for which the same analytical

concepts and tools might not be well-fitting. Object-oriented approaches, conversely,

have focused on moments of genesis as a movement from plurality to singularity.

However, plurality can also emerge over the course of a regime’s life. In this case, the

regime’s renegotiation can take place through and against existing institutional-ideational

infrastructures, rather than towards a new genesis. In parting company then, my aim is to

contribute theoretically and empirically to these literatures.

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Chapter III: Waning Hegemony and Pluralizing Cultural Value

“And my personal opinion is that the issue of OUV is not so critical. What is important is that we can contribute to bringing people together around what they consider shared value.”114 During the 2004 World Heritage Committee meeting, the Delegation of Benin asked the

Committee members to set aside time to discuss the concept of ‘outstanding universal

value’ (UNESCO 2006e: 74). As a result, a special experts meeting was held in Kazan,

Russia, on 6-9 April 2005. The keynote address at this meeting was delivered by

Professor Christina Cameron, two-time Chairperson of World Heritage Committee

Meetings, and long involved with the regime as first a member of the Delegation of

Canada and subsequently as an independent expert. In her remarks, since then frequently

quoted for the formulation “best of the best” and “representative of the best,” Cameron

narrated the early implementation of the regime as follows: In the first five years of the Convention, there was a strong tendency to list iconic sites. By iconic, I mean sites that transcend cultural affiliation, sites that are unique and widely known. These properties clearly meet the benchmark of “best of the best.” Their evaluation did not require much by way of comparative context and analysis, since they were unique and famous. The recommendations of the Advisory Bodies were for the most part positive, given that the universal values of the proposals were quite evident. The World Heritage Committee was able to reach a comfortable consensus on their outstanding universal value without the need for comparative studies. (UNESCO 2005d: 2, emphases mine.)

I begin with this excerpt and the Kazan meeting to highlight a few elements that set up

the analysis of the chapter. First, and most obvious, is the similarity of Cameron’s

narrative to what I argued in the last chapter, in framing of the regime’s early

implementation as a time of consensus that eased the regime’s task of evaluation.

However, her narrative attaches such ease to evident universal value, rather than the

ideational hegemony that makes something like universal value a possible construction.

Second, the excerpt indicates that this understanding of the regime’s early

implementation is shared by at least a group of its participants. However, as this chapter

will show, Cameron’s analysis is not the only interpretation of that early period. Sitting

uneasily with this narrative of “comfortable consensus” are two alternative retrospective

114 Interview with an international civil servant conducted on 6 April 2017.

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interpretations. These describe the regime’s early implementation as producing a List that

placed the center of the world’s cultural gravity in Europe. One interpretation – which I

call epistemic – traces the causes of this limited and skewed List to an inadequate

conceptualization of culture. The second – political approach – understands the regime’s

early implementation as Eurocentric. These two approaches are at the crux of my analysis

of the grounds and uptake of plurality within the world heritage regime. The last element

is the context in which Cameron delivered her remarks. If the last chapter left the regime

at a point when changing conceptions of culture were an emerging thread of discussion, a

decade later, we find the regime in the midst of a discussion on what universal cultural

value can mean. And as such, we find it as a regime that has had to open the definition

and grounding value of its object to renegotiation.

The story of how the regime got from its early implementation to this

renegotiation is the problematique of global governance in a pluralizing world order. This

is for a few reasons. First, the changing understanding of culture beyond the regime

pushes against the original conception of its object of governance. This changing

understanding, Chapter 1 has argued, entails culture as plural and subjective on the one

hand, and salient to recognition demands on the world stage on the other. Second, this

change entails a waning hegemony and emergent plurality. The waning– but not the

disappearance – hegemony is of a putatively universal value, grounded in a Eurocentric

civilizational-history. The emergent plurality is two-fold: a conception of cultural value

as inherently plural, and the co-existence of approaches to cultural value as plural and

universal.

In this complex terrain, two approaches to plurality mark the possibilities of

governance. The political approach is grounded in world political shifts. Its uptake within

the regime challenges the possibility of a deductive-universal value. At the same time, in

its demand for global co-evality, this approach continues to be haunted by the “universal”

in important ways. While resisted as a specter of past exclusions, the universal remains

desired. This results in a hybrid conception where the universal is kept in circulation as a

signpost, but as something that emerges from recognition demands. The epistemic

approach, conversely, links itself predominantly to changes in the conception of cultural

value in the relevant fields of knowledge production and expertise. Here, plurality is

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recognized but cultural heritage is still understood as an object that is amenable to

scientific study through and towards global benchmarks and standards.

If these negotiations are grounded in developments beyond the regime, they attach

themselves to its terms, in what I call contentious participation. Actors do not fully refuse

the terms of the regime, but introduce new terms, re-inflect the old ones, and reconfigure

the relations between them with consequences for what the regime means and does. Thus,

even if we are still left with universal value as the grounds and world heritage as the

object of governance, these terms have been re-substantiated significantly, such that

universal value is no longer evident but emergent and the ordering of world heritage sits

at the intersection of past exclusions from the world cultural stage, plurality as the

grounds of recognition and inclusion, and the structuring of this plurality by hauntings of

the universal within and beyond the regime.

The chapter proceeds as follows: First, I connect the argument to my theoretical

framework, outline how it departs from and contributes to existing approaches, and

engage with two alternative arguments. Second, I analyze how participants in the regime

articulate these broader shifts and connect them to the need to rethink the grounds of

world heritage. This is when I distinguish between the epistemic and political approaches.

Third, I analyze the development of the Global Strategy as an attempt to epistemically

open the regime up to plurality, and its political uptake by participants. The fourth section

turns to the Kazan meeting on universal value, which pushes further on the tension

between universality and plurality, whereas the fifth and six sections evaluate the ways in

which the universal continues to haunt this plurality. The last section brings these threads

together to analyze what the shifting value grounds mean for the regime’s aspirations to

the production of a shared humanity. It concludes with the theoretical, political and

normative implications of this new possibility of governance.

1. Introduction: Pluralizing Order, Governance and Value

I argue that the continued discussions and renegotiation of the world heritage regime’s

constitutive grounds arise from broader world political shifts understood as pluralization.

This argument makes sense only if we conceive of global governance as ideationally

constituted in the first place. Thus, as I did in Chapter 1, I position what I have called

“social approaches” to global governance as cognate scholarship to which my analysis

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contributes empirically and theoretically. This first cut suggests that asocial approaches

would provide the alternative accounts to my argument. In some ways, however, these

approaches operate at too great of an analytical distance to provide meaningful

alternatives. However, I briefly analyze the alternative accounts they might provide of the

renegotiation of the regime’s grounds. Lastly, I turn to an alternative interpretation of the

account that I provide, which would posit plurality – as it is structured by world politics –

as a hegemonic approach to culture.

As Chapter 1 has reviewed, social approaches to global governance give central

theoretical place to shared understanding in constituting an object of governance, and

allowing its governance in putatively universal terms. The constructivist scholarship

points to the realm of world politics as the location of such shared understanding (Ruggie

1982, Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 162-163), which allows for the ends of governance to

be posited as a “common” or “public good” (Ruggie 1982: 384, Barnett and Finnemore

2004: 169, Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 162, Hall 2016: 76 and 91, Zürn 2018: 3-4 and

30). Object-oriented approaches (Allan 2017b: 13) to global governance, conversely,

posit the common understanding of a governance object as emerging through shared

orientation (Corry 2013), authority contestation (Sending 2015), or co-production (Allan

2017a). Thus, the genesis of a governance object is the becoming hegemonic of a

particular set of ideas about it, as the grounds of its universal governance (Sending 2015:

11-33, Allan 2017a: 136-142). While they differ in how they trace its sources, both sets

of approaches place shared understanding centrally to the constitution of governance, its

pursuit as universal, and to how it acts in and on the global political world.

If shared understanding is integral to the constitution of governance as universal,

what happens when divergent ideas and values are at play? The criticism of the

constructivist emphasis on intersubjectively shared values, and the difficulty this raises in

accounting for contestation and change is well-versed. I have also pointed to it in Chapter

1. As a quick recap, I noted that while Barnett and Finnemore note that the “lack of

consensus on what values or goals are universally desired or welfare promoting has

plagued IO claims to substantive legitimacy on a variety of fronts (Barnett and

Finnemore 2004: 169), they do not further explore the implications of this observation.

Conversely, Avant et. al. start by noting that claims to global public good are not

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uncontested and raise the question of “good for whom” (Avant et. al. 2010: 18). They

explore this question through the relations between the governed and governors, and

between the governors. Their focus, however, is on a problem-solving framework that

can parse the causes and consequences of tensions between governors in particular cases.

In both cases, then, there remains the question of what kinds of plurality become

consequential for global governance and how. For Avant et. al., there is the question of

whether this is only a challenge of authority relations. And for Barnett and Finnemore,

the question is how plurality impacts institutions and regimes grounded in hegemonic

conceptions and implemented as universal?

Allan’s theoretical framework takes us further by positing that governance

regimes, co-produced by experts and political actors, will be opened to renegotiation if

there are changes to the political or epistemic grounds of their genesis. However, it is

hard to think of either politics or knowledge production as static, raising a set of

questions: Do all changes in these domains result in renegotiation, or only some? If the

latter, which ones? Do political and epistemic changes result in similar kinds of

renegotiation? And how does such renegotiation unfold given the existing ideational-

institutional structures of governance? Allan’s empirical and theoretical focus on the

genesis of governance objects leaves these questions unanswered.

In conversation with this cognate scholarship, I foreground plurality within the

world order as a qualitatively different challenge to global governance. It is a political

and salient plurality, and its encounter with existing regimes presents a challenge to

universality of the social good that is pursued. Not all political change, however, entails

plurality and plurality is not always put forth in political terms. Political change that

results in the establishment of a new hegemony can reconfigure the object of governance

such that it continues to be pursued universally. At the same time, what I call an

epistemic approach to plurality, pushes for an orderly expansion of universal value.

Plurality within the world order, in relation to an object of governance not only creates

questions of substantive legitimacy, but it opens the object to renegotiation. Such

renegotiation takes the form of contentious participation, which includes the introduction

of new terms, the reinterpretation of old ones, and the reconfiguration of their relations.

To anticipate the alternative arguments, what is at stake, is neither a crumbling of the

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regime or its institutional recalibration to accommodate new interests, but a substantive

renegotiation of what the governance regime is and does, consequential for the world

ordering it undertakes. To this cognate scholarship, then, my account contributes an

analytical and empirical investigation of the particular challenges that political-ideational

plurality presents to global governance as universal.

What if the debates on universal value are proxies for the changing power of

states? If we follow realist precepts, which pay minimal attention to international

institutions and understand them primarily as manifestations of the powerful states’

interest, we might think that the regime’s renegotiation reflects changing power

dynamics. Perhaps it is the rising powers, who seek to transform the regime such that

they can reap its benefits, and exclude previous incumbents from doing so in the process?

This does not fit the story of the challenges to the regime and its partial transformation in

a few ways. First, the question of cultural plurality was not spearheaded by the rising

powers, but found its strong advocates in regional meetings in Africa. It has also been

pursued by smaller nations in the Caribbean. Plurality is, therefore, put forth by those

previously excluded from the scope of the regime, but not necessarily in relation to their

increased power. Second, the defense of universal value does not map neatly on material

power basis. Some of its most ardent supporters are smaller European countries, which

were never the main beneficiaries of the regime. Such defense is staked on principled-

normative grounds that correspond to the actions undertaken by the defenders. Third, the

relation between the plural and universal grounds of cultural value is a complex one that

cannot simply be attached to the changing pursuit of state interests grounded in material

power. The proponents of plurality continue to desire a kind of universal, and the defense

of universal value does not posit an outright rejection of plurality. These are political

shifts and relations that require a different account of change. Lastly, this approach

misses other important shifts, such as changes in the kinds of sites that states prioritize for

nomination, which suggest that what is at stake is not only a demand for reaping the

regime’s benefits, but a transformation of the terms on which inclusion is desired. This

contains patterns such as the nomination of pre-colonial, vernacular sites that might be

less recognizable to the regime than monumental-imperial remains, as well as more

contentious decisions to nominate African liberation heritage sites. These changes

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become meaningful if we approach the regime as granting recognition on the world

cultural stage on particular substantive grounds.

A second asocial approach is neoliberal institutionalism. As Chapter 1 noted,

recent contributions within this theoretical domain have attended to ideational and value

plurality (for example: Keohane 2001: 1, Abbott et. al. 2015: 6-14). I have also argued

that this engagement with plurality hinges on a belief in institutions as spaces that are at

once neutral and sustaining the liberal faith in progress by taming power politics. Thus,

the recommendations have been for a more restrained liberalism and the emphasis on

joint gains, through which states get locked into institutional arrangements. But, if

institutions are never value-free (Reus-Smit 2018: 7), pushing for liberal restraint on

these terms might not get us very far in thinking about plurality in the world order as

consequential for global governance. It is also important to note that the renegotiation of

the world heritage regime is not initiated by an increase in the regime’s enthusiasm for

pursuing a liberal governance of culture. Thus, it is not clear that there is a joint gains

equilibrium that the regime can revert to in moving forward. To the contrary, attempts to

deflate political questions through ratcheting up bureaucratic procedures (Meskell 2018:

81-84) have not been able to prevent this renegotiation. Nevertheless, Keohane’s

cautionary note puts its finger on a dynamic that is important to my analysis – that key

challenges to contemporary global governance emerge in the encounter of this plurality

with singular-universal ideational structures.

A significant alternative account, and the last one I consider here, would posit that

plurality as the grounds of cultural value is another form of hegemony. Put differently,

isn’t the rise of cultural plurality on the world stage another kind of hegemony, rather

than the move towards a non-hegemonic terrain? This interpretation holds significant

insight and merits engagement on theoretical and historical-political grounds.

Theoretically, one can imagine hegemonic conceptions of plurality that posit a particular

understanding of it. As I argued in Chapter 1, a pertinent example is liberal

multiculturalism, as pursued by international institutions. Important theoretical and

historical-political differences exist between this pursuit and the shifts I am tracing here.

The positing of diversity and plurality on the world heritage stage is akin to a counter-

hegemonic uptake of multiculturalism or the politics of civilizational co-evality employed

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in response to the post-Cold War intensification of political-cultural governance. This

does not mean that these articulations do not have their own exclusions, that their

deployment automatically produces a more inclusive domain, nor does it mean that the

actors engaged in such defense of plurality might not seek to exercise hegemony. It does

mean, however, that more participants are able to stake their claims through plurality and

that plurality provides the discursive grounds for these multiple claims to co-exist with

one another. In the case of the world heritage regime, I posit a non-hegemonic terrain not

only on account of claims to cultural plurality but also because such claims take place

alongside, and in a fraught relation with, continued adherence to universal cultural value.

But the hierarchies and exclusions produced through the demands for global

cultural recognition made on the basis of plurality are important. As Chapter 1 has

argued, while civilizational co-evality is used to push back on global hegemonies and

argue for plurality at that level, it is an elitist project, conservative in relation to plurality

within. Moreover, international recognition can be used by states to bolster hegemonic

ideas domestically. And lastly, plurality can become the legitimating grounds for a

conception of culture as hermetically sealed, and closed off to engagement and critique

from the “outside.” The first two dynamics are not particular to the shifting global

political ground. There is no obstacle to universal value becoming the grounds for

bolstering national identity domestically. The early nomination of national symbols, such

as the Eiffel Tower, the Hall of Independence, or the Coliseum suggest that such

dynamics were often at work. The third, on the other hand, is a concern that is more

relevant to claims of cultural plurality. However, rather than plurality becoming

hegemonic, it is better understood through the distinction that Levine and McCourt

(2018) posit between plurality and pluralism. Put simply, that there are multiple

approaches (plurality) does not mean that the approaches are more open to engagement

with and challenge by others (pluralism). This is an important distinction, and a marker of

the limits of this plurality. However, as I argue in Chapter 5, a non-hegemonic terrain can

provide the opportunity for different pluralities to engage with one another, challenge

internally hegemonic narratives, and open them up.

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2. The World Has Changed, But How?

In tracing the challenges posited to the regime by political and epistemic developments

beyond it, I start with how these developments are articulated by the participants.

Significant here is the ubiquitous phrase, “the world has changed,” at once vague and

over-determined, used by state delegations during the discussion of Advisory Body

evaluations of site nominations or the future directions of the Convention. Recent

iterations of this phrase include: Humanity has changed, we need to take that on board, the dynamics are changing. (Delegation of Angola, 2018)115 [We need an] open and inclusive debate to ensure fair and professional recommendations, for the healthy development of world heritage protection in a more diverse world. (Delegation of China, 2018)116 [The Minister of Culture of Brazil] recalled that the Convention was born in 1970s to reflect on aspirations about the beauty of nature and structures of the world. Benefits were drawn from both natural and cultural heritage. Now the situation has changed and there is a need to reflect and discuss with courage and daring all the challenges and the conceptual framework of the Convention – what is the common vision we all aim at and how do we see it implemented to remain united under it? (UNESCO 2009a: 93-94) Of course we are aware of the evolution of the world since the adoption of the 1972 Convention, an argument often put forward to justify politically colored positions. For our part, we are of the opinion that this very evolution should force us to remain faithful to the fundamentals, or rather to return to them. For the sake of the credibility of the Convention, for the credibility of our governments, for the credibility of UNESCO. (Delegation of Switzerland, UNESCO 2011d: 329)

Vague in specifying the ways in which the world has changed, these articulations,

nevertheless, indicate that the stakes of such change are foundational for the regime.

Angola begins by positing that the regime cannot be insulated from changes that have

happened in the world to humanity. These are not changes that took place in a

governance regime hermetically sealed from broader world politics – either as a

Bourdieusian field or an autonomous bureaucracy. The remarks by the Delegations of

China and Brazil, on the other hand, note that taking these changes on board implicates

the regime’s founding vision and its particular pursuit (mechanisms and actors): the

115 42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 03 July 2018, recording available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/42com/records/?day=2018-07-03 (1:09:32’-1:11:00’). 116 42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 03 July 2018, recording available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/42com/records/?day=2018-07-03.

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regime’s foundational value, its conception of legitimacy and authority. This link

between the changes in the world and the fundamentals of the regime is also recognized

in the articulation of the Swiss delegation, who turns to the regime’s original conceptions

(universal value and its scientific-technical pursuit) to shield it from political changes.

This changed world is also acknowledged in official policy documents, such as

the report of the 2009 discussion on the “Future of the Convention,” which states that

“since 1972, the environment in which the Convention operates has changed. These

changes mean that the implementation of the Convention must also change and adapt if it

is to remain credible” (UNESCO 2011a: 2 and 6). In a prelude to the different uptakes of

this change that I turn to next, this discussion of the Convention’s future diagnosed

differing local interpretations of OUV and the divergent interpretations of the Convention

and OUV by States Parties, Advisory Bodies and the Secretariat as the main weaknesses

(UNESCO 2011a: 7 and 2011e: 4). 117 Put differently, while there is broad agreement that

the world has changed, what such change should mean for the Convention remains a

point of contention.

Another indicative articulation of these changes was put forth by an international

expert, who has been involved in a key capacity with the world heritage regime, during

our interview: Maybe as well because of the civil society in a way. This is what we hear from the ambassadors etc. – it is difficult for them to constrain the pressure they have from their civil society. [There is] more and more the willingness to have more representation from local communities, more recognition in a way. This is where there are problems of adjustment of the willingness of everyone to be represented on something that is elective…This is where there are tensions because the way the convention has been elaborated is an elective tool, it is a selective tool, and it is not something that should represent everyone or every type of heritage… Well, the society has changed, the world has changed, eh?118

The expert’s remarks point to increased mobilization around cultural representation at the

domestic level. However, as s/he notes, such mobilization does not remain at the

domestic level. It is taken up by the states and brought onto the stage of the regime. Thus,

s/he points to the dynamics of the encounter of plural demands for representation with a

117 At the same time, the reports note strong consensus and near universal membership as strengths of the regime. Given the divergence of interpretation around OUV, these elements of strength point to a shared perception on the importance of culture as an axis of recognition on the world stage (UNESCO 2011b: 4 and 2011c: 7).118 Interview with an international expert conducted on 2 May 2017.

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restrictively conceived regime. I trace the sources of increased demands for

representation as connected to global political dynamics, while agreeing with this critical

intersection. To return to the remarks of the Delegation of China, this is not a more

diverse world because new cultural values have appeared to transform a previously

mono-cultural world. Rather, it is a more diverse world because these values – expressed

as plural – demand recognition and representation on the world stage. This was put forth

explicitly, and in alignment with politics of civilizational co-evality, by Hao Ping, then

President of UNESCO’s General Conference: “Different cultures may come in different

colors, there is no dominant culture in the world and this makes the mutual learning and

exchanges possible and valuable” (UNESCO 2014b: 239).

The political sources of change, thus, emerge at the intersection of the changing

understanding and role of culture. The changing understanding points to culture as

diverse and equal in such diversity. The changing role points to an increased desire for

representation on the world stage through one’s own cultural-civilizational values – in

contrast to seeking inclusion within the terms of a hegemonic universal value. This stands

in contradistinction to the early implementation of the regime in a permissive global

political context and hegemonic consensus around its object of governance as universal

and universalizable. Such hegemonic consensus needs to be understood politically: as

manifesting and producing a desire on the part of states to be represented within the terms

of this putatively universal cultural value. This desire for representation had produced

demands for inclusion pivoting from the terms of the hegemonic value, and asking for its

expanded application. It was different from the focus of this chapter: demands for

recognition that require the transformation of such value, rather than its expansion. This

is not to argue that demands for the expansion of universal value would not have been

transformative of it – at the very least because they reveal this value’s limits. There is,

however, a qualitative difference between the two kinds of demands, and how they bear

on the value grounds the governance regime. Namely, the political uptake of this plurality

results in the push for an internally plural value, including the impossibility of something

like OUV, without giving up on the global or the world stage as the realm on which

recognition for this plural value is demanded.

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The epistemic sources and uptake of this pluralization, conversely, focus on the

changing conception of culture in the relevant domains of knowledge production. The

clearest articulation of this epistemic understanding is as a shift from the regime’s

original conception of OUV, rooted in archeology and art history, to a conception that

was “much more anthropological, multi-functional and universal” (UNESCO 1996c: 6,

emphasis mine). Its uptake does not give up on the possibility that universal value can

emerge from the proper reconceptualization of culture and the development of necessary

benchmarks for its evaluation. This is a shift that is narrated as the regime catching up

with orderly epistemic change, which first took place in the fields of knowledge

production, and in turn required the generation of new parameters for the evaluation of

OUV.

The plurality that has implications for the regime’s grounding cultural value, then,

is epistemic, grounded in changing conceptions of culture in the relevant fields of

expertise, and political, as new demands for world cultural recognition and

representation. The epistemic uptake of plurality pushes towards an orderly expansion of

cultural value, through deductive processes of knowledge, framework and benchmark

production. The political uptake demands the fracturing of this value and the

prioritization of recognition and representation as new grounds of value. The analysis

below shows that the political challenges and responses to them gesture towards an

inductive approach to what shared value can mean in a context of plurality, rather than

deductive expansions that can fall short of engaging with the political questions at stake.

Having set up these two different approaches to plurality, a few caveats are in

order. First, what makes an approach “political” or an “epistemic” is not the actors that

express it but rather the grounds and implications of the approach. As the remarks by the

Swiss delegation above suggests and the analysis below further develops, the epistemic

uptake of plurality is not limited to experts, and as my interviews show, neither is it held

by all experts. Second, while the political approach foregrounds plurality, and the

epistemic approach orients itself towards OUV, this is not a simple rupture. The

epistemic approach is complicated by the recognition of cultural value as subjective and

plural, whereas the political approach exists in a fraught relationship to the universal.

Third, I do not intend this distinction to cast the epistemic approach as apolitical, or the

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political approach as not epistemically grounded in its approach to culture. As succinctly

communicated by one of my interviewees, “there is the politics of the politicians and

there is the politics of the professionals.”119 The politics of the professionals include the

pursuit of their domain of authority,120 and the distributive consequences of the exercise

of such authority, which grant world cultural recognition to some and withhold it from

others. However, the epistemic approach conceives of itself as apolitical, scientific and

technical. The political approach foregrounds representation and recognition, and in

doing so, implicitly or explicitly relies on a conception of culture that should be valorized

by its communities of membership. To sum, I posit these as two distinct approaches

because their differences are consequential for the possibility of global cultural

governance. These are not differences of binaries and ruptures, but rather departures of

significance, re-inflections of meaning and reconfigurations of the relation between

plurality and universality, inclusion and recognition. Consequently, I do not treat them as

ideal-types, focusing on their dominant traits, but also demonstrate how such dominance

is undercut, producing a complex terrain of negotiation.

And lastly, a caveat about inductive and deductive. I recognize that no process of

knowledge – or in this case value – production is ever purely one or the other, but

involves an iterative process between the two. However, different starting points are

adopted and divergent weights are attached to induction and deduction. One of my expert

interviewees articulates this iterative process for the regime over time as one where the

nomination of new sites result in a rethinking of the regime’s universal value, while at the

same time this universal value is formative of which sites are nominated. However, in

this iterative process, there is a hierarchy: “on the one hand, we are given new ideas about

heritage in the nomination, and then we have to say yes, but does your approach fit into

119 Interview with an international expert conducted on 6 March 2017. 120 This domain of authority is not constructed only in relation to the states. In my interviews, two experts speak about it in relation to local populations. One acknowledges their past participation in such hierarchies through practices of heritage conservation that did not take into account the needs of the local population. A second expert concurs with this hierarchical relation, but does not think of it as only in the past. This expert recalls the time when nominations were written with the spirit “what community, we are the experts, we know everything.” S/he recalls being told more than a decade ago and at a time when local populations had already become a part of discussions, “if communities are going to do the job [of conservation] what is going to happen to us.” S/he recognizes that while some of this hierarchical relation is changing, the dominance of non-practitioner experts, and the continued hegemony of Western practices of conservation and valuation, reproduce the hierarchies and politics of professionals within the regime. (Interviews conducted on 26 July 2016 and 6 March 2017).

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what world heritage is supposed to be all about?” 121 The spirit and letter of the

Convention, solidified into OUV, mark sites as common human heritage, and become the

organizing sign under which this process unfolds. Conversely, the case-law approach

proposed by states inverts the hierarchies and direction of this process, making common

heritage emerge from the sites that come forth.

3. From the Global Study to the Global Strategy: A Representative Universal?

The last chapter concluded with discussions of the Global Study, requested in 1987 by

World Heritage Committee members, overwhelmed with the increasing number of

nominations. The period between 1987-1993 witnessed continued discussions on the

proper axes of this Global Study, torn between typological, historical and cultural

approaches. In hindsight, the study has been interpreted as a futile attempt at ordering

cultural diversity. In turn, I emphasized not the futility of this exercise, but the regime’s

grounding conception of world heritage as producing a need for it, and the continued

attempts at manifesting also a shared belief in the feasibility and desirability of such an

ordering. At the same time, Chapter 2 concluded with the reflections of ICOMOS experts

and committee members on the ongoing changes in the global understanding of culture,

and cautions against imposing rigid categories and limited understandings of culture at

such a time.

Hindsight, as they say is, 20/20 and it is easier to recognize the futility and naïveté

of past attempts at cultural governance, and harder to think in similar terms about what

futile attempts might look like under contemporary circumstances. There are also

interpretive and normative stakes to this choice of adjectives: that the attempt was futile

and naïve, rather than exclusionary and reproductive of cultural hierarchies, for example.

These limits set up my analysis of the “Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced

and Credible World Heritage List” (hereafter “the Global Strategy”) as a partial paradigm

shift. The Global Strategy emerged from an expert meeting on 20-22 June 1994, with

participation of experts from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Niger, Sri

Lanka and Tunisia to discuss the representativeness of the World Heritage List. This

meeting had at its disposal ICOMOS’s evaluation of the Convention’s early

implementation, which concluded that the List suffered from an over-representation of

121 Interview with an international expert conducted on 16 March 2018.

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elitist architecture (i.e. monumental), historic towns, historic periods, sites related to

Christianity, and European sites.122 In conjunction with this report, some have argued that

the paradigm shift of the Global Strategy arose out of cosmopolitan European and

American experts’ desire for inclusion (Brumann 2014b: 2181). I take this observation

further to argue that this epistemic desire marks the Global Strategy’s approach to

plurality, not only in its possibilities but also in its limits.

The official report of the 20-22 June experts’ meeting begins with reflections on

the changing understanding of cultural heritage since the adoption of the Convention, and

the past approaches to inclusion and representation within the regime. These changes

encompass scientific knowledge and extend to intellectual attitudes concerning the

“perception and understanding of the history of human societies.” The report also states,

without further clarifying, that “the ways in which different societies looked at

themselves – their values, history and the relations they maintained or had maintained

with other societies – had developed significantly” (UNESCO 1996c: 1-4). At the same

time, it notes that past discussions on the best way to ensure “the representative nature,

and hence the credibility of the World Heritage List .. had failed to achieve a consensus

among the scientific community” (Ibid.: 1). These observations point to important

threads: One, the changes that had taken place since the adoption of the Convention were

epistemic and socio-political. And two, the question of representation was a difficult one

for the experts.

As pursued by international experts, the Global Strategy began by emphasizing an

epistemic shift to a dynamic, evolving, anthropological and truly universal conception of

culture (UNESCO 1996c: 4). The adjudication of universal value based on this

conception of culture required, instead of a comprehensive matrix, “a continuous

collaborative study,” and the development of knowledge, scientific thought and views on

the relationship between world cultures (Ibid.). Towards that end, the Global Strategy put

forth a two-fold methodological basis: 1) the identification of typological, regional and

period-based gaps on the World Heritage List and 2) the identification of “a battery of

objective criteria and operational procedures” that would “reveal significant

122 For the collection of documents that have been produced within the scope of the “Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List,” see https://whc.unesco.org/en/globalstrategy/.

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characteristics to be able to produce truly relevant selections” (Ibid.: 6). However, if

culture is dynamic and evolving, how can one identify its gaps, which suggests the

existence of a stable whole against which they can be determined? And what battery of

objective criteria would be – could be – applicable to this conception of culture?

Nevertheless, the experts’ meeting concluded that these goals would be pursued through

a series of regional meetings, which would bring together local experts with their

international counterparts, and via targeted thematic studies carried out by the

international experts.

The understanding of plurality was bound by universal value on the one hand, and

scientifically developed criteria and method of its identification on the other. This

understanding is consequential in linking the two terms that are part of the full title of the

Global Strategy – representativity and credibility. If representativity was connected to the

credibility of the regime, credible representation would need to take place on the terrain

of universal value as its condition of possibility and limit. An expanded understanding of

universal value, via a dynamic conception of culture, would undoubtedly increase such

representative value beyond the remit of Greco-Roman remains. However, it would also

constitute the limit to it, as determined by the scientific community.

The Global Strategy, thus, constituted a paradigm shift in a few significant ways.

In terms of the regime’s grounding value, it entailed a move away from a conception of

cultural value that could ultimately be captured on a single matrix to a dynamic and open-

ended one. Chapter 1 pointed to sites that could not be inscribed within the earlier

conception of value and that received positive expert evaluation after the Global Study.

This includes, most significantly, the Stone Town of Zanzibar, which was rejected for

being “more oriental than african” in 1982, and inscribed as an outstanding example of

cultural fusion in 2000 (See Chapter 1). Similarly, the OUV criteria were amended in

1996. Criterion (i), which had most clearly focused on “a unique artistic or aesthetic

achievement, a masterpiece of creative genius” was broadened to “a masterpiece of

human creative genius,” not giving up on the idea of a masterpiece, but expanding its

scope by removing its attachment to art historical categories. Criterion (ii) was also

revised from a focus on sites that “exerted great influence” to those that “exhibit an

important interchange of human values.” It is this move away from the valorization of a

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dominant culture to an emphasis on cultural interchange that allowed for the recognition

of sites such as Zanzibar. At the same time, however, if the former approached valorized

cultural dominance, the revised one sidesteps hierarchies through this language of

interchange. Criterion (iii), in turn, introduced living cultures to its scope, which was

previously limited to disappeared civilizations or cultural traditions.

At the same time as it opened up the conception of culture, the Global Strategy

bound this opening by methodological contours that stand in tension with this conceptual

broadening. These methodological goals (the identification of gaps and new objective

criteria) might follow logically from an objective-universal conception of culture, which

is a discoverable whole, and for the discovery of which operational criteria can be

deduced. However, a dynamic conception of culture, grounded in how humans view and

value their society and relations raises foundational questions of what constitutes a gap,

and how one might go about its identification. Thus, this partial paradigm shift is defined

by a move to open up cultural value to a more diverse and plural understanding on the

one hand, and by its epistemic-methodological bounding of this openness towards an

orderly expansion on the other. It is an attempt at plurality without giving up on the

universal.

The first regional meeting within the scope of the Global Strategy, “African

Cultural Heritage and the World Heritage Convention” was held in Harare (Zimbabwe) in

1995. The meeting provides an important early example of the paradigm shift at work.

The Harare meeting emphasized the key import of representativity, with Léon

Pressouyre, a prominent expert who was affiliated with ICOMOS, asserting in his

opening speech that the World Heritage List was at the risk of “losing all universal

representativeness and thus all credibility” (UNESCO 1995: 16), coining together the two

elements that can pull the regime in different directions into a single phrase – universal

representativeness. The meeting was organized into five thematic areas. The themes were

introduced by (European)-international experts, affiliated with ICOMOS. These

introductions framed the Global Strategy, situated the thematic area in focus within the

strategy, and mapped the contours of eligibility for inscription on the World Heritage List

(Ibid.: 9). This constitutes a deductive expansion of universal value, with its genesis in

the realms of knowledge production. In this scheme, the (African)-regional experts were

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given the role of “the best authority on the sites.” They were asked to use the frames

provided to them to think about what sites in their region might be eligible for

inclusion.123

The discussions of the Harare meeting and a subsequent meeting at Addis Ababa

were reported as confirming renewed interest in the Convention, as not necessitating

modification of the OUV criteria and instead requiring the application of existing criteria

in a way that is attentive to the nature-culture continuum, spiritual and sacred heritage,

cultural landscapes and exchange routes (UNESCO 1996a: 2-3). At the same time, the

particular themes discussed at the Harare meeting were narrated as demonstrating the

need for further study and production of scientific information for the proper

documentation of heritage value (Ibid.: 3). Overall, the report seemed to indicate the

potential of the Global Strategy to succeed in expanding the remit of cultural value while

keeping it tethered to the regime’s conviction in the universal recognizability of such

value through scientific-technical means.

Conversely, a subsequent regional meeting pointed to the limits of this epistemic

strategy by bringing in challenges of the political uptake of plurality. The 1998 meeting

on the Global Strategy for West Africa (16-19 September, Porto Novo, Benin) followed a

similar format in which (European)-international experts presented papers and (West

African)-national experts discussed their sites and asked questions. The meeting also

included an intervention by Dawson Munjeri, Director of National Museums and

Monuments of Zimbabwe, a member of Zimbabwe’s World Heritage Committee

delegation and a member of the ICOMOS Executive Committee. Munjeri’s intervention

indicates that the emergent plurality might not easily fit within the parameters of the

epistemically pursued transformation. As summarized in the meeting’s report: Mr D. Munjeri, drawing on several examples that illustrate the singularity of African culture, questioned the adequacy of certain global conceptions of the World Heritage Convention to the specificity of sub-Saharan Africa. For the inscription of a property on the World Heritage List, he favoured "the African perspective" because it is familiar with the nature of the property, its value and significance. He illustrated his words with the example of the site of Great Zimbabwe. An unfortunate western restoration activity begun at the turn of this

123 This meeting also included key observations by Pressouyre that the cultural priorities and notion of heritage in Africa did not correspond to those of the 1972 Convention. He contended that the epistemic development in multiple fields of knowledge production over the last two decades have begun to overcome these divergences (1995: 19).

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century was not only in opposition to the African concept, but also to the opinion of the traditional chiefs (UNESCO 1998b: 6, emphases mine).124

The intervention is significant in introducing the challenge of “specificity” into debates

on cultural value, which continued to be hinged on universality. Specificity is articulated

as constitutive of the value and significance of the site, as the grounds of its proper

comprehension, evaluation and conservation, for which traditional chiefs’ opinions

should also be taken into account. 125 The next chapter takes up the challenges this

understanding of culture presents for adjudication by international experts. For now, it is

important to note that the perspectivalism at work re-inflects “global conceptions” as

inadequate or worse, detrimental. The global conceptions, Munjeri contends, are

inadequate in the recognition and identification of African sites and detrimental to their

proper conservation, where such preservation necessitates the acknowledgement of the

site’s political-spiritual values, including angered spirits. These considerations far exceed

the remit of additional research and documentation by scientific communities.

The line pursued by Munjeri is reflected in the conclusions of the meeting. These

conclusions point to alternative interpretations of the early implementation of the regime,

not as consensus around iconic sites or a naïve approach to cultural diversity, but rather

as the particular and hierarchical grounds of a fraying hegemony. Thus, the explicit

messages of the 1998 meeting include the observation that “authenticity still poses a

problem, marred by European ethnocentrism” (Ibid.: 15). 126 Similarly, while OUV

124 In a subsequent meeting, Munjeri stated: “For all its grandeur, Great Zimbabwe is a spiritual and political statement rather than a product of human creative genius per se” (UNESCO 2000b: 3). His intervention was part of an appeal to take living cultures and functionality rather than aesthetic considerations as the basis of heritage sites’ authenticity. 125 A further indication of this uptake is an intervention by Ambassador Tidjani-Serpos, Benin’s Permanent Delegate to UNESCO at the same meeting, stating that local populations make up a local and regional expertise of prime importance, pointing to alternative sources of knowledge and authority that need to be taken into further account (UNESCO 1998: 6). 126 In fact, a parallel tracing of the challenges to the regime’s grounding universal-singular value could have focused on authenticity. The regime’s original concept of authenticity was European, with its roots in the 19th century, and more recently in the 1964 Venice Charter. It postulated minimum material intervention as the proper preservation of heritage. Its emphasis on material authenticity has come under criticism by conservation approaches that foresee regular reconstruction, such as Japanese traditions of regular rebuilding of temples to preserve their sacred character. These discussions resulted in the adoption of the Nara Document on Authenticity in 1994, which introduced relativity of values into the regime, arguing that the sources of heritage value, which should undergird decisions on what is to be preserved and how, cannot be universally derived and adjudicated. The incorporation of the Nara Document into the Operational Guidelines of the Convention did not take place until 2005. For the Nara Document see:

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criteria were previously reported on as an item of consensus, in the conclusion of this

meeting, they are articulated as inciting reservations from the African experts.127

This introduction of singularity, and the concomitant questioning of the

compatibility of representation and universality –that is, the feasibility of a representative

universal– is not unique to the regional meetings held in Africa. To illustrate, a 2000

meeting on cultural landscapes in Central America concluded that it was “necessary to

clarify the concept ‘exceptional universal value,’ set between the concepts of

‘universality’ vs. ‘representativity’ and taking into account the peculiarities of specific

areas or regional cultures” (UNESCO 2000c: 19). At the same time, as the regional

meetings unfolded, the Advisory Bodies continued to reflect on an expanded universal

cultural value. A significant early reflection is found in the report on “Comparative and

Related Studies Carried Out by ICOMOS 1992-1996.” In this report, ICOMOS notes: “it

is self-evident that there can be no absolute definition of ‘outstanding universal value’ so

far as cultural properties are concerned” (UNESCO 1996b: 1). However, it follows this

observation by positing that the spirit of the Convention requires some form of selection

procedure (Ibid.: 2); in this case a universal that is to be interpreted through a series of

geo-cultural and temporal categories. What is necessary, then, is to proceed with

preemptive and reactive comparative studies, which provide the appropriate geo-cultural

and temporal context of comparison through which the most outstanding and

representative sites can be inscribed on the List.

This reflection by ICOMOS is illustrative of the distinction I make between the

epistemic and political uptakes of plurality. The quote from the meeting on Central

American landscapes, and the report of the 1998 Benin meeting indicate that the political

approach to plurality points to singularity and representation as values in themselves, and

as in tension with the universal. The epistemic uptake, on the other hand, continues to

proceed by way of categories that aim at expanding rather than dispensing with universal

value, and nests possibilities of representation within this universal. What is striking in

the quote above, however, is the persistence in this uptake despite the recognition that

https://www.icomos.org/charters/nara-e.pdf. For the Venice Charter see: https://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf. 127 This becomes more significant, since the OUV criteria received a round of revision in 1996. It lends support to my argument that while the universal is always limited, such limits are not always taken up nor are they taken up in the same ways across time.

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there cannot be “an absolute universal value” when cultural properties are concerned. It is

beyond the scope of this dissertation to speculate on the reasons of this insistence –

although I might venture that the experts have a commitment to particular forms of

knowledge production, whereas states that adopt an epistemic position might be

continuing to adhere to a formerly hegemonic conception of culture. Whatever the

reasons may be, when such insistence is grounded on an acknowledgment of its

impossible grounds, it produces a politics of wrangling over the containment of plurality

towards its coherent governance.

As the Global Strategy was elaborated through ICOMOS studies, which

recognized the impossibility of a(n absolute) universal cultural value without giving up

on its pursuit, and furthered through regional meetings, which inserted challenges of

singularity and pointed to the representative-universal tension, the reports of these

activities regularly made it to the floor of the annual World Heritage Committee

meetings, where they were discussed by state delegations. These discussions aligned with

and reproduced the epistemic and political approaches. On the one hand, there were early

cautionary notes as the one raised by the Chairperson of the 21st World Heritage

Committee meeting on “the need to apply the concept of universality, even though there

is a growing tendency towards the promotion of local identity and singularity” (UNESCO

1997b: 3). At the same time, Eurocentrism – rather than “a static conception of culture,”

or “a monumental focus” (Ibid.: 6) was marked as the cause of exclusions from the World

Heritage List. The 24th Bureau session included a long discussion on the List’s

representativity. Its summary report noted the emphasis made by multiple delegations

that “all the cultures had elements of an outstanding universal nature and that it was

necessary to be able to identify the most significant sites that they have produced so as to

increase the representativity of the List” (UNESCO 2000: 89). This is precisely the kind

of articulation that brings together representation, singularity and shared/universal value

to push – not necessarily explicitly or consciously – towards an inductive formulation of

shared value. This is an inductive value, because it begins with the proposition or

assumption that all the cultures have elements of an outstanding universal nature, and

thinks of “universal value” as emerging from a collation of these most important

productions. It does not discard the universal, but arrives at it from the existing plurality,

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rather than starting with an operationalization of the universal to then categorize and

adjudicate the plurality.

There were, then, three parallel, and at times intersecting, threads of discussion

within the scope of the Global Strategy. The first thread is a series of regional meetings,

which brought together regional and international experts. The aim of these meetings

were the epistemic expansion of the regime’s grounding value through a deductive

process, where the international experts put forth expanded categories of cultural value

for the local experts to engage with by thinking about their sites through these framings.

This was envisioned as a process of rendering the universal more representative. These

meetings, however, witnessed articulations of singularity and perspectivalism,

challenging the compatibility of universalism and representativity as tethered together by

the Global Strategy. The ICOMOS reports, on the other hand, recognized the

impossibility of an “absolute value” in the case of cultural heritage, and yet insisted on

the necessity of benchmarks and bases of comparison and evaluation to be developed

through further thematic studies.

Such recognition of the lack of absolute grounds of the object of governance is

undoubtedly significant, if not rare. The significance is not only empirical but also

theoretical, insofar as the establishment and authoritative pursuit of global governance

requires the production and shared conception of an object as extant and in need of

international intervention. However, equally striking is the insistence on “more of the

same,” instead of grappling with the political questions of evaluation such admission

raises. Crucially: If not absolute and intrinsic, what are the sources of cultural value, and

from what grounds can they be evaluated to decide whether they should be conserved for

posterity on behalf of humankind? ICOMOS connects this continued need for the

production of benchmarks to the regime’s aim of producing a selective list of world’s

cultural heritage. Thus, if the political actors are haunted by the global stage and its

universals in their demand for pluralism and co-evality, the epistemic actors are bound

not only by their approach to plurality and knowledge production but also navigate the

existing structures of the regime. Thus, the limits of the epistemic approach emerge from

the scientific-technical approach to plurality, which are further structured by the existing

ideational-institutional framework of the regime. Put differently, the epistemic approach

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to plurality and the transformation it generates begins with the epistemic shifts Allan

(2017b) points to, but unfolds through endogenous elements emphasized by Sending

(2015), Barnett and Finnemore (2004). Such synthesis is less able to capture the political

dynamics of renegotiation and/or the difference between the two, as I explore further

below.

I pause the analysis of the Global Strategy here, not because it has been

terminated but because the Kazan meeting (2005) on outstanding universal value and the

external audit of the World Heritage Convention (2011) went further in the renegotiation

of OUV and its preservation as the regime’s grounds, respectively. However, a 2004

report produced within the scope of the Global Strategy can still sharpen the significance

and limits of this partial paradigm shift and its scientific-technical uptake, further setting

the stage for the following discussion. In 2004, and as requested four years earlier by the

World Heritage Committee, ICOMOS presented its analysis report on the composition of

the World Heritage List and states’ tentative lists. The request was for a chronological,

geographical and thematic analysis that would encourage states to prepare, revise and if

necessary harmonize their tentative lists, and that would determine un/der-represented

categories of heritage to be prioritized in the evaluation of nominations.128

While the enumerated categories sound similar to the earlier attempts towards the

Global Study, the resulting report shows the significance of the epistemic shift at work.

First, instead of trying to cohere typological, chronological-regional and thematic

analyses, ICOMOS presented them separately, with each demonstrating a different aspect

of the List (UNESCO 2004a: 19-39). Moreover, the analysis – or rather the analyses – of

the List recognized that each site is inflected differently through the particular axis of

evaluation and that sites can correspond to more than one thematic category – for

example, the same site can fit under the typology of cultural landscapes and sacred

settlements (Ibid.: 19). This mode of analysis points to the recognition of plurality, both

128 This need for prioritization grew out of what is known as the Cairns Decision. Adopted in 2000, the Decision limited the number of new nominations to be examined by the Committee each year to 30, and the number of properties that could be submitted by each state to one per year. States with no properties on the List were exempted from this Decision, and could nominate up to three sites. Furthermore, the Decision stipulated that if the total number of nominations submitted exceeded the cap of 30, the choice of the nominations to be examined would be based on a hierarchy of: sites submitted by states with no inscriptions on the List, sites of un-represented or less represented categories, and other nominations. The annual cap was increased to 40 nominations in 2003, and to 45 in 2004. This is still in effect.

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as a way of approaching cultural value and also in the plurality of values that sites

themselves hold. Put another way, it comes much closer to the plea of one of my

interviewees, whose express criticism of the “professional politics” of the regime I cited

above: “The point is… what we are saying is that there can be more than one approach.

There can be more right answers. Culture by definition is diverse, so how can you put [a]

one-size-fits-all formula into this thing? All that we are saying is [that] there can be

different approaches.”129

The report also presses further on the observation that there can be no absolute

cultural value. It expresses the decision not to combine the three categorizations of

heritage as follows: “Unlike natural heritage, cultural heritage is fragmented and diverse

and not predisposed to clear classification systems. One of the main reasons for this is the

need to take account of qualities, which are subjective, and of the value that society may

give to those qualities” (UNESCO 2004a: 45, emphases mine). The questions that are

raised by the pursuit of crafting shared value from such fragmented and diverse grounds,

are those of recognition and representation that cannot be answered on epistemic

grounds. Instead, they require engagement with the question of the possibilities of global

governance, including if and why culture should be an object of governance at the global

level and towards what ends. I provide a two-fold answer to this question in the

conclusion of this chapter: one that emerges from the contestations and negotiations

within the regime, and the other, theoretical-normative.

Rather than posing these questions, the ICOMOS report suggests that the answer

lies in further knowledge production.130 Take for instance, the question of gaps. The

129 In the same interview, the expert recalls: “When we were students of conservation, which we were [as] Western products, we were told there is only one way of doing things, you go and do it. That is what we were, and I still remember my earlier work, and how I had a turning point, and what I wrote at that time.” (Interview conducted on 6 March 2017). The expert declines to comment on when or how this turning point came, but his/her remarks are an important expression of hegemony, which instates itself as universal and universally applicable, and molds others to relate to cultural production, with which they are otherwise familiar, through this “universal” lens instead. 130 In pointing out that ICOMOS has not raised these questions, I do not aim to assign blame. We might venture a range of answers why these questions have not been raised, including: answers to them could obviate the need for ICOMOS and its evaluations, the experts continue to hold – an albeit qualified – conviction in the possibility of authoritative, generalized knowledge production and lastly, as the Advisory Body to the regime, it is beyond their mandate to raise such questions. Such answers would position ICOMOS differently vis-à-vis the continued production of generalized knowledge on and evaluation of cultural heritage. Regardless of such implications, my aim is to rather point out a significant limit to this approach to plurality.

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report writes: “the topic of “gaps” in the World Heritage List is first of all concerned with

a seemingly simple question: which cultural properties of outstanding universal value, for

which everybody should feel responsible, are not on the List?” (Ibid.: 7). A fundamental

problem here, the report argues, is that “in many countries the range and extent of

cultural heritage is not completely known, as it has been either only partly recorded, or

not recorded at all. In such countries, there is no scientific documentation, nor inventories

of cultural heritage which could be used to assess cultural heritage properties of

outstanding universal value in comparison to the existing total stock” (Ibid.: 6). Such

striving for an existing total stock to construct a cultural whole against which the

universal value of individual parts are adjudicated, can however lead to another exercise

in futility. This is not because of the enormity of the task but because these sites have

value only insofar as they are understood as valuable by particular communities, which

may well be transnational, for specific reasons at certain times. Such value is neither

stable nor necessarily amenable to discovery through inventory making and scientific

documentation. It is to these impossibilities that the Kazan meeting further attended.

4. Renegotiating the Fundamentals: Kazan Meeting on the Concept of OUV

The Global Strategy, as analyzed above, held universal value constant in its quest for a

representative, plural and credible World Heritage List. As pursued by experts, it strove

to expand this universal value through a series of regional meetings and thematic studies

that would allow for greater opportunities of representation. The political demand, in

turn, attached itself to the Global Strategy to push forward with representativity by

foregrounding singularity and specificity. Understood politically, it seemed, the Global

Strategy might have to give up on the claims to universality.

The World Heritage Committee, at its 28th session decided to set aside time to

discuss OUV, including divergent approaches to it by ICOMOS and IUCN (UNESCO

2005c: 1). A special expert meeting on the concept of OUV was held in Kazan, Russia on

6-9 April 2005. The request for the nomination of experts to participate in the meeting,

circulated by the World Heritage Centre in November 2004, resulted in the submissions

of “180 expert curricula vitae from 73 countries,” reflecting the high level of state interest

in the issue (Ibid.: 2). 30 experts were chosen, with the aim to strike a balance of gender,

geographical background, area of expertise, and natural and cultural heritage expertise. In

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addition, three former chairpersons of World Heritage Committee sessions, five members

of the three Advisory Bodies, and five civil servants of UNESCO’s World Heritage

Centre were in attendance. The first two sessions of the meeting took place under the

broad heading “understanding the concept of outstanding universal value under the

World Heritage Convention,” and the next two moved onto the question of “application

of the concept of outstanding universal value,” followed by a fifth session on conclusions

and proposals (Ibid.: 15-22, emphases mine).

The background paper by UNESCO’s World Heritage Center provides a standard

narrative account of OUV and the Convention: the purpose of the World Heritage

Convention is to identify, protect, conserve, present and transmit to future generations

cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value (UNESCO 2005b: 2). It adds

that this value, while integral, was not defined in the Convention. However, the paper

proceeds, the Convention made the provision for OUV to be operationalized through

further criteria. The Operational Guidelines have defined these criteria, which have been

amended over time to accommodate changes in the understanding of cultural heritage.

Since 2005, integrity, authenticity, management and protection requirements have also

been made a part of the evaluation of OUV (Ibid.: 3-4).131 This is the narrative of a

Convention, which was set up to identify and conserve world heritage and which has

remained in step with the changing conception of cultural value without departing from

its original spirit and goals.

However, as the document proceeds, its reflections depart from this standard

account. This includes, significantly, three articulations of what I have called an inductive

approach to value. First, a short reflection on the changes to the Operational Guidelines:

“In this regard, the notion of OUV has been constructed and developed through the

discussions of the World Heritage Committee” (Ibid.: 4). Put differently, the notion of

OUV is not something that exists in the world and changes with it. Rather, it is an active

construction grounded in the discussions of the World Heritage Committee, which are

themselves shaped by the thematic reports, site nominations and expert evaluations of the

131 The inclusion of management requirements within the evaluation of OUV has been a contentious issue within the regime, acting as an additional ground of objections to expert evaluations. The next chapter recognizes this pattern, but still brackets it. It can be said at this point, however, that raising the threshold of OUV when it is being renegotiated has not fared smoothly.

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nominations. The changes in the world that concern the regime’s object of governance –

that is culture – enter the domain of the regime, where they are negotiated through and in

contradistinction to the regime’s existing terms, transform what those terms mean, and

consequently, how the regime acts in the world.

Next, the report notes that the OUV of a property derives from the input of the

nominating state, the evaluation of the Advisory Bodies and the formal decision for

inclusion made by the World Heritage Committee (Ibid.: 14). This too is a conception of

value that does not exist “out there” as objectively recognized and recognizable, but one

that is put forth, evaluated, negotiated – and thus produced – by a range of actors. Lastly,

the background paper notes that after three decades of implementation, it is “important

and timely to evaluate the ways in which the concept of outstanding universal value has

been perceived and applied in different regions and for different categories of heritage,”

towards “a generally acceptable understanding of the concept of OUV and its application

within the context of the World Heritage Convention” (Ibid.: 19). Once again, then, OUV

is not only not intrinsic to sites but it is, effectively, what emerges from the shared and

divergent understandings of value that are put forth and negotiated by different actors

within the regime. Thus, in their attempt to govern in a context of plurality, these actors

make and remake the regime’s grounding value and, through it, the object of governance

itself. While a “generally acceptable understanding” of cultural value might seem a long

shot from the optimistic beginnings of the regime, it is not the death toll of all possibility

of shared value and governance in the context of a pluralizing world order.

At this point, let me clarify what it means for something to be “out there,” in

relation to this complex negotiation that is at once external and internal to the regime.

First, I use the term above to contrast it with the social construction of OUV. Second,

however, such construction, its contestation and renegotiation unfold at the intersection

of external and internal elements. There are, therefore, alternative conceptions of culture

and cultural value “out there,” themselves fields of representation and negotiation. These

conceptions of culture and its value are brought to the domain of the regime through

choices of site nominations, their narratives of nomination, and in the explicit debates on

universal value. In the domain of the regime, they encounter already existing conceptions

of cultural value, which are similarly resonant beyond the remit of the regime. The

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renegotiation that unfolds through this encounter is at the intersection of the terms of

OUV and alternative conceptions. It can, of course, result in the dispensation with OUV

altogether. But it can also re-substantiate it significantly, such that the term begins to

correspond to a different kind of value. The Kazan meeting points in the direction of this

second possibility.

The ICOMOS paper presented at the Kazan meeting tows a similar line,

recognizing that significant changes in how societies value cultural heritage have taken

place since the Convention’s adoption, and that value is not intrinsic to sites but given by

people. At the same time, it reiterates that outstanding universal value is fundamental to

the Convention, that it underpins the whole process and sets the Convention apart from

other cultural heritage instruments. Thus, the position paper of the Advisory Body

contends that, while much broader than the seven wonders of the world, the World

Heritage List will “by no means contain everything which from a different point of view

could also be of outstanding universal value” (UNESCO 2005d: 20, emphasis mine). This

raises the question of the point of view on which the regime is grounded – if it is not

going to be a Eurocentric universalism, what can it be? And what would be the grounds

on which this point of view would be better than another one? ICOMOS’s remark, in

fact, raises an essential question of value adjudication in the absence of hegemony, which

reveals the particular point of view on which seemingly objective valuation of intrinsic

and evident value is grounded. In tandem, the Advisory Body remarked that many

nominations suffer because they do not systematically and convincingly demonstrate

universal value. It seems, however, that at stake is not a systematicity of demonstration,

but the need for a shared point of view on which such demonstration can unfold.

The presentation of the Kazan meeting’s conclusions and recommendations to the

29th World Heritage Committee Meeting unfolded through the by-now familiar narratives

of changes in societies’ evaluation of cultural value, ICOMOS’ concerns for a better

understanding and demonstration of OUV in nomination files, alongside articulations that

picked up the background paper’s indirect gestures at an inductive approach to OUV

(UNESCO 2006b: 4-6). 18 committee members, 7 observer states and Advisory Bodies

joined the lengthy discussion that followed. Dominating the discussion were questions

raised by the elusiveness of universal value. The Delegation of New Zealand stated that

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“the value of heritage was not fixed in time and could not necessarily be determined by

scientific methods,” whereas the representative of Portugal “wonder[ed] how outstanding

universal value could be established, particularly given that heritage value was not

considered to be intrinsic” (Ibid.: 27-28). The Delegation of Lebanon took on Christina

Cameron’s keynote address to propose that while “the time had come to consider the

issue of outstanding universal value in a broader perspective,” approaching such

consideration through the juxtaposition of “the best of the best” and “a representative

example of the best” might be simplistic and create “a dangerous dichotomy between

world heritage properties and also between different cultures” (Ibid.: 27). Nigeria

underlined “the importance of taking into account non-Western ways of considering

value and heritage,” Benin asserted that “the notion of outstanding universal value should

not remain Eurocentric” and Colombia stressed the importance of participation by “local

communities and indigenous peoples” (Ibid.: 28-29 and 33).

How, then, to move forward from this recognition of the inherent instability of its

object of governance and the elusive and shifting grounds of the regime? One proposal,

made by Iran and Barbados, was to keep the discussion on OUV open, either at every

committee session or to return to it on a regular basis (Ibid.: 34-35). Another proposal,

put forth by Lebanon and supported by Japan, was to form a “committee of wise men,”

who would develop proposals on how to move forward (Ibid.: 28). India pushed further,

arguing that “it was important for the discussion of the concept and the application of

outstanding universal value to be placed in the context of the history of developing

countries and the need to ensure cultural diversity, because the construction of such value

was too often politically motivated. Certain categories of heritage and geographical

regions were under-represented as a result of colonialism and therefore it was acceptable

that only certain types of cultural heritage were considered to be of universal value”

(Ibid.: 33). Thus, the Delegate argued, what is at stake was a political issue that needed to

be attended to as such. In response, the Delegate of Lebanon argued that having OUV

defined by governments rather than experts was a dangerous one, even though OUV

certainly had a political component (Ibid.: 34).

These interventions point to the key threads I have been pursuing. On the one

hand, there is the challenge of evaluation in the absence of a stable object, rendered

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explicit in the move to comprehending cultural heritage as subjective and dynamic. At the

same time, some point to this shift in political terms, and posit that the hierarchies

undergirding and sustaining the previously hegemonic conception of the object require a

political corrective. At the same time, this political corrective as producing an alternative

conception of the object does not find consensus with the participants of the regime, even

as they agree on the elusiveness of universal value.

The other proposal, which became adopted as a decision, was a case-law, or

inductive approach to OUV. This proposal advocated for the production of a corpus of

past Committee decisions and discussions on outstanding universal value. Such a

proposal entails a shift in the understanding of OUV. Understood as such, OUV is not the

evaluation and application of universal cultural value. Rather, OUV is something that is

produced through the implementation of the regime. This implementation, I have argued,

does not only unfold endogenously, it is also closely connected to broader epistemic and

political developments. These developments are taken up within the regime, in relation to

its existing terms, and result in their re-substantiation and re-configuration, through what

I have called contentious participation. This inductive value, then, would reflect these

complex negotiations as well as their hierarchies and exclusions. Thus, that this inductive

value might be better suited to a context of plurality is not to suggest that it is devoid of

hierarchies or all-inclusive. However, as such value is cast as one in progress, it can allow

for further claims to be made.

This ambivalent possibility is located in the emergent plurality in the world order,

the waning hegemony of a universalist conception of culture, and their political uptake

within the regime. This possibility stands between the intervention of the Delegation of

India and the concerns expressed by the Delegate of Lebanon. Returning to UNESCO’s

background paper, which pointed to OUV as emerging at the intersection of state,

advisory body and committee input, this inductive value is neither scientific-technical nor

political – inadequate as these distinctions are – but a negotiated combination of both,

where such negotiation unfolds through particular historico-political moments. Its

ambivalence is further captured in the two interventions made by the Delegation of

Netherlands at the discussion of the Kazan meeting. The first intervention stated that the

World Heritage List in its entirety should be a means to narrate stories of humankind.

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And the second one pointed out that while the development of this corpus of decisions

was necessary, their development should be an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of

the past – rather than reproducing or normalizing them (Ibid.: 27 and 37). However, if the

objects, through which these stories –in the plural – are narrated, become pluralized, so

do the grounds on which the stories are told. Mistakes might not capture this dynamic.

But, it is one that opens up differently exclusionary or mutually exclusive narrations.

However, universal value, with its own exclusions and hierarchies, and its inability to

attend to questions of representation and recognition, cannot be the solution to this worry.

What is needed, rather, is something like the move from plurality to pluralism. I return to

its possibility in the conclusion.

Until now, this chapter has aimed to do a few things. First, it posited that the

sources of change that challenge the regime’s original conception of universal cultural

value are located beyond the regime. Epistemically, this includes changing conceptions

of culture in the relevant domains of expertise and politically, the shifting understanding

of culture within the world order. This shifting understanding grounds cultural value in

plurality and attaches recognition demands to it. Third, these changes are brought onto

the stage of the regime and open its terms up to renegotiation. Their political uptake

produces a contentious participation, which foregrounds singularity and representation,

whereas the epistemic approach prioritizes knowledge production towards an orderly

expansion of universal value. Fourth, this context points to inductive value, emerging

from the shared and divergent concerns of multiple actors as an alternative grounds of

value in a non-hegemonic, plural terrain. However, this last point requires a further

illustration of the ways in which universal value continues to circulate in the regime, and

leave its mark on this renegotiation.

5. Universal Value Strikes Back I: The External Audit

If the Kazan meeting resulted in reflections on the Convention’s grounding value, the

external audit of the Global Strategy, conducted in 2010-2011, made a strong appeal for a

return to the Convention’s “spirit and letter,” including the suggestion that the goals of

the Strategy might not, ultimately, be reconcilable with these foundations. This Audit and

its discussions show that the non-hegemonic terrain of value is one that is fraught

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between a continued adherence to OUV as it was originally conceived and a desire to

move away from it.

The External Audit of the Global Strategy was conducted between November

2010 and April 2011 by two auditors, who examined the documents produced by the

World Heritage Committee, the World Heritage Center and Advisory Bodies, and

listened to audio recordings of Committee interventions. The resulting evaluation of the

Global Strategy was few-fold. First, the audit identified representativity, balance and

credibility as under-defined and as producing “an apparent consensus that masks

divergent interpretations in the absence of defined notions of reference” (UNESCO

2011c: 6). This description resonates with what I have been calling contentious

participation, which is not a direct rejection of terms, but rather their substantive

renegotiation through alternative interpretations and uptakes. The report posits that, under

the guise of this apparent consensus, states depart from the spirit and letter of the

Convention and its stipulation that only properties with OUV can be considered for

inscription. Instead, states put forth political and geographical interpretations of

representation and balance. The report contends that OUV is at the heart of the List and

should not be lost to view in the pursuit of diversification. Up to this point, the External

Audit strikes a similar tone to some of the previous reports of Advisory Bodies, where

questions of representation are engaged on grounds of universal value, and insofar as they

fit such grounds.

However, the report goes further to suggest that there might be an inherent tension

between universal value and representation. Accordingly, representation constitutes a

risky evolution away from “obvious value,” because the focus on “representation carries

the risk of positive discrimination.”132 It argues that the pursuit of representation “led to

the inscription on the List of categories of increasingly diversified sites, in particular as

regards culture in a concern to cover the widest possible examples and span of heritage,

and not only the culture of quintessential excellence” (Ibid: 63). The auditor observes that

132 A similar view is put forth by a civil servant in an interview. S/he defines the grounds of the Convention as follows: “It is a very simple concept, a very convincing concept that there is this heritage of outstanding universal value, which needs to be preserved by the whole of the international community.” In response to the question of representation, s/he remarks: “I also correct colleagues when they say each country needs to have a World Heritage site etc. This is total nonsense. The Convention does not say that. It is a very legal instrument that protects sites of outstanding universal value, and only that heritage is to be preserved under the 1972 Convention.” (Interview conducted on 4 April 2017).

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this tension between excellence and representation is reproduced in the Operational

Guidelines, which affirm the importance of OUV, whereas the OUV criteria themselves

have begun to refer to less strict notions such as “important exchanges, outstanding

examples” (Ibid.: 15). Based on these observations, the Audit points to the need to

interrogate the viability of continuing with the Global Strategy and its compatibility with

the objectives of the Convention. It recommends refocusing nominations on the most

outstanding properties,133 observing that “it would appear indispensable to return to a

more selective approach for cultural properties, in conformity with the spirit and the

provisions of the 1972 Convention” (Ibid.: 45). Towards this aim, the report proposes the

production of scientific analysis grids for cultural heritage, akin to those produced for

natural heritage. This proposal, of course, sounds remarkably like the attempt at a Global

Study, pointing us to the limits of hindsight as the desire to globally govern culture as

universal and universalizable continues to result in similar proposals. Alternatively, the

Audit recommends, the Convention can be revised to clearly acknowledge its geopolitical

rather than scientific-technical nature.

What the report calls indispensable –a refocusing of the Convention on its original

conceptions of value – the foregoing analysis has pointed to as impossible within a

changed historical-political context, marked by a different understanding and role of

culture on the world stage. At the same time, however, the External Audit makes clear the

deep tensions that exist between this original conception and the aspiration to

representation. Representation of something like plurality inevitably brings into view not

only different sites but also different conceptions of culture that produced and valorized

these sites. 134 These might, in turn, depart from the particular points of view that

constitute the putatively universal approach to cultural excellence.

133 As part of this refocusing, the Audit suggested that there should be other recognition mechanisms for sites that do not have OUV. In an interview, a civil servant echoed this as a problem in the case of cultural heritage: “Not everything needs to be World Heritage. For natural heritage, you have seven other biodiversity conventions, and a number of programs such as Biosphere Reserves or Geoparks. You don’t have this on the cultural side, [it’s] as simple as that. This is why you have such a demand for world heritage listing.” (Interview conducted on 4 April 2017). However, the current drive for the inscription of sites of memory, called divisive sites by the regime (see Chapter 5), despite the existence of alternative and more appropriate recognition mechanisms suggests that what is at stake is not simply a lack of alternatives but rather demands for recognition as part of the world cultural order through this regime. 134 In fact, the Audit observes that there are divergent priorities between the sites that states put forth for nomination and the emphases of the thematic studies conducted by experts.

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How were the External Audit’s recommendations taken up? During the

subsequent years, the findings of the Audit have been invoked during criticisms of the

politicization or geopoliticization of the regime, and in support for calls for a return to its

letter and spirit. The next chapter evaluates in further detail the continued adherence to

the regime’s original conceptions by a group of states, as it is expressed in tandem with

support for international expertise as the proper scientific-technical grounds of

evaluation. These expressions also express a continued support for OUV as the regime’s

value grounds (see Chapter 4).

Beyond these invocations, an open-ended working group was established to

evaluate and operationalize the External Auditor’s recommendations. This working group

designated the Auditor’s recommendation to refocus nominations on the most

outstanding properties as a high priority, but operationalized it as not inscribing sites for

which statements of OUV are not finalized – which correspond to sites that have been

referred or deferred by the Advisory Bodies (UNESCO 2012a: 9). This operationalization

urges for compliance with the scientific-technical bases of the regime, but it does not

adopt the Auditor’s suggestion that these sites should not have been nominated and

leaves open the possibility that their value can still come to be recognized. At the same

time, the working group designated ensuring the compatibility of the Global Strategy

with the objectives of the Convention as a low priority. In doing so, it sidelined the

discussion of the constitutive tension between the Convention’s original aims and the

pursuit of representation towards potentially dispensing with the Global Strategy.

An extensive discussion of the Audit report took place as part of the 18th General

Assembly of the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention in 2011. Importantly,

this General Assembly meeting followed the 2010 World Heritage Committee meeting,

understood as the session that went off the rails.135 In the 2010 Committee meeting, not

only were multiple expert evaluations overturned, but the rationales for objections

included personal visits by ambassadors to the sites as proof of sites’ value (UNESCO

135 Another civil servant offers a slightly different view of this meeting: “he 2010 World Heritage Committee meeting was at a time, when politics became more to the forefront. A minister became chair of the World Heritage Committee, instead of an expert who attended the Committee [meeting] and knows how it is run. So there were other political agendas. On the other hand, it has to be said that 2010 was the last time they had a joint decision on Jerusalem for a long time, which illustrates that diplomatic skills are also required to running these debates.” (Interview conducted on 4 April 2017).

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2010b: 560, 575, 592 and 593). Consequently, a group of delegations tabled a motion

against the geopoliticization of the Convention. The General Assembly came on the heels

of this Committee meeting and included interventions by Delegations of Estonia, Italy

and United States, Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe, which spoke against this trend

(UNESCO 2011e: 21-23). While, like the External Auditor’s report, the participants left

undefined what they meant by geopoliticization, the Delegation of Chile provided an

example of the behaviors at work: citing visits to nominated sites as the grounds for their

universal value (Ibid.: 22). Based on the Auditor’s report, France and Belgium pledged to

return to the fundamentals of the Convention (Ibid.: 24). At the same time however,

Barbados emphasized the importance of the Global Strategy, and the need for a balanced

and credible World Heritage List, and India asked that world heritage remain an inclusive

process (Ibid.: 25 and 26). In parallel, some delegations asked for the simplification of

“outstanding universal value,” for a geographical list of experts to be made available, for

dialogue with Advisory Bodies and the transparency of evaluations (Ibid.: 21-27).136

This discussion seems at first to indicate a departure from the trends analyzed

above. An alternative interpretation, however, is as demonstrating how contentious

participation unfolds as a process of change. The practice of some ambassadors citing

personal visits as proof of value is recognized as a flagrant disregard of the regime’s

official and unofficial codes of conduct in a way that defending the inclusion of a site

through the representativity of the List is not. While both moves can be understood as

geopoliticization through an epistemic approach, because they disregard the primary

importance of outstanding universal value, only the former is found to be crossing the

line from a political standpoint. It is then that states, and importantly those previously

critical of OUV and its exclusions, intervene by tabling motions. Second, these limits are

underlined alongside continued reminders that the original terms of the regime need to be

transformed. Such transformation comprises the renegotiations and re-substantiation of

OUV. Lastly, this moment suggests that the retreat of the hegemonic universal does not

leave us simply with a collection of national interests. Rather, these interests, which have

136 A minority of comments also mentioned the need for capacity-building for states that are not represented on the List, arguing that this lack of representation is not grounded in a lack of sites with OUV, but rather “in an inability to prove the outstanding universal value,” on account of lack of capacity (UNESCO 2011e: 21-27).

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always been part of the regime, are structured by global political negotiations towards

new perceptions of legitimacy, including their acceptable discursive formulations.

6. Universal Value Strikes Back II: Haunting/Structuring Plurality

If the regime’s conception of universal value is challenged through claims of plurality

and representation, the universal and the plural also exist in a more complex relation

because of the undergirding dynamics of recognition demands on the world stage. This

world stage has been ordered through universalist conceptions of culture, which continue

to cast a hierarchical shadow, either in substantive vestiges or the stigmas they have

produced (Zarakol 2010). Thus, the universal haunts and structures this plurality in a two-

fold manner: 1) as that against which plurality is staked. It is, therefore, partly formative

of how and why the plurality is put forth. 2) as that from which recognition is demanded.

Let me illustrate with a recent inscription on the World Heritage List, indicative of this

complex relationship, and marking the limits of the political uptake of plurality.

The Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road System was nominated by Argentina, Bolivia,

Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The nomination file went through the Upstream

Process, which is intended for more difficult nominations (see Chapter 4). The site was

inscribed in 2014. As the name suggests, it is a road system, which was used to connect

the territories under the rule of the Incan empire and which stretches across the territories

of six contemporary sovereign states. The nomination file is a microcosm of the

hegemonic, counter-hegemonic and liminal threads I have been putting forth. The Road

System was produced through and to further the Incan civilization’s imperial expansion.

Its construction was made possible by political and economic consolidation. It aimed to

further extend this reach by allowing mobility, especially that of labor (Nomination File

No. 1459, 2014: 1129). On the other hand, this civilization is defined through diversity

and uniqueness. The nomination emphasizes that the terrain connected by the Andean

Road is one of great cultural and natural diversity. This diversity is held together by the

Andean worldview, epitomized in the “construction of a singular universe called

Tawantinsuyu” (Ibid.: 1131). This worldview is defined by “the values and principles of

reciprocity, redistribution, duality and a decimal organization system” that precede the

“violence, disease and cultural transformation” brought on by the Western invasion. At

the same time, however, the nomination file remarks that the Western invaders admired

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the Road System. This points to the fraught dynamics of both claiming uniqueness and

wanting recognition from (previously) hegemonic actors, whose acknowledgment of

cultural value continues to hold import. The nomination file also remarks that the Andean

worldview marks, to date, the physical and symbolic value of the Road. The value of the

Road System, therefore, needs to be understood, ultimately, through this persistent

worldview. It is at the intersection of these complex and contradictory threads that

recognition on the world stage is demanded, not only for this site, but through the site, for

its nominators for their integrative, diverse and long civilizational lineage.

The statement of the site’s value and significance, penned by Advisory Body and

adopted upon inscription, reproduces some of the narratives of the nomination dossier.137

The site’s brief description is “an extensive Inca communication, trade and defence

network of roads.” Like the nomination dossier, it remarks that “several local

communities … continue to safeguard associated intangible cultural traditions including

languages.” 138 The site’s narrative of value refers to “the integration of prior Andean

ancestral knowledge and the specifics of Andean communities and cultures,” “the Inca

civilization based on the values and principles of reciprocity, redistribution and duality,”

and the “Andean cosmovision, which is unique in the world [and] applies to all aspects of

everyday life.” The Incas are positioned as a civilization with a unique vision of the

world, through which socio-political relations are organized, and which is reflected in the

production of the Road System. In line with the reconciliatory and productive emphases

of the regime, this description is focused on principles of reciprocity, redistribution and

duality. Elements such as imperial consolidation through labor mobility, mentioned in the

nomination file, are not included in this statement. Similarly, there is no mention of the

Western invaders – either in their admiration of the site or in relation to the broader

destruction that they brought. Thus, the contentious elements of this recognition demand

which interpellate a former hegemony are written out of the final statement of the site’s

significance.

137 As Chapter 5 will show, such congruence is not always the case. In this chapter, I compare the Andean Road System to earlier nominations by the same countries. For further illustration of the changing understanding of culture at work, another useful comparison is with the evaluations of Inca and Aztec sites in the early phases of the regime, which rest on socio-political organization and hierarchy rather than uniqueness and plurality. 138 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1459.

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What, then, are the possibilities and limits of plurality as put forth by a

nomination like the Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road, the politics of global culture it reflects

and that are (re)produced through its inscription? It puts forth the existence of multiple

universes, with attendant understandings of how the world works and the organization of

relations within that world. Reflective of the limits of civilizational politics (Chapter 1), it

stakes its strongest claims to diversity on the global level, from which it demands a

certain kind of recognition. While it gestures to the inside of Andean culture and

cosmology as diverse, it also posits it as a singular universe. Further, the nomination is

limited by its continued adherence to civilizations, as grand social, economic, political

and cultural organizations, as the basis of this co-eval recognition. In doing so, it

reproduces civilizational grandeur as that which is recognizable beyond its immediate

domain. This grandeur might not be in the form of a Cathedral or the ruins of a Roman

amphitheater, but its recognizability is asserted through imperial encounters with

Europeans. These claims, therefore, are shaped in important part by the civilizational

hegemony that has previously ordered the world stage. What is at work, then, is a

narrative of value, which is at once testament to civilizational politics as the grounds of

co-evality claims against a singular-civilizational conception, but one that is also haunted,

informed and shaped by it.

Fraught as it may be, this relation between the “local/plural” and the “universal,”

is not identical to its original organization by the regime. The contours of this shift can be

sharpened in comparison to two sites previously nominated by countries that are amongst

the nominators of Qhapaq Ñan. In 1983 four Jesuit missions in Argentina and Brazil were

inscribed on the List, to be expanded to five in 1984. The sites’ official statement of

outstanding universal value begins with a brief description as “impressive remains,”

characterized “by a specific layout and a different state of conservation.” 139 The

statement proceeds to the universal value of the missions as “illustrat[ing] a significant

period in the history of Argentina and Brazil,” and as “testament to Jesuit evangelization

efforts in South America.” Another Jesuit mission, nominated by Bolivia, was inscribed

in 1990. These missions are of “Christianized Indians,” and architecturally reflect the

139 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis: San Ignacio Mini, Santa Ana, Nuestra Señora de Loreto and Santa Maria Mayor (Argentina), Ruins of Sao Miguel das Missoes (Brazil)” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/275/.

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marrying of “Catholic architecture with local traditions.” 140 Their universal value

includes the “adaptation of Christian religious architecture to local conditions and

traditions.” In these cases, the sources of value are located in the universal understood as

an architectural style and a world historical moment. The local enters this picture, not as a

source of value but rather as the location where the universal touches down, adapts itself,

and in its adaptation proves its versatility. It is an articulation of a dominant culture that

universally extends influence on terrains that are seemingly culturally void before its

arrival and that instead present it with a set of local material circumstances.

Thus, this shift is at once critical for the grounding of the regime and the cultural

governance it undertakes, and also not a pure and consolidated transition from universal

to local. Rather, it reconfigures the relations between the two, and in doing so partially

pluralizes, and re-substantiates the meaning of universal itself. The universal that

emerges from this process is a fraught signpost, home to lingering and new hierarchies,

and desires for transformation, hinged partly, but not only, on alternative claims to

civilizational prowess and cultural greatness.

This receding universal, and the multiplication of cultural claims have raised

concerns about the emergence of national interests on the regime’s center stage (Askew

2010, Meskell 2015). Askew points to nominations such as the Imperial Citadel of Thang

Long, nominated as a center of Vietnamese political power, to argue that states pursue the

magic listing of world heritage to further national identities. Meskell contends that the

regime failed to inspire the transnational identifications with heritage sites, and it is now

marked by gridlock. Such observations often place the burden on the Global South or the

newly rising powers as pursuing agendas that counter the spirit of the Convention.

However, we would be hard pressed to argue that nominations in previous periods were

put forth on solely altruistic grounds. Such pursuit, however, did not have to directly

contradict the regime’s grounds, since the sites at stake were congruent with the

particular sources of value that constituted the putative universals of the regime. Thus,

the international and the national could be pursued in tandem with one another, much like

France’s claims at the London meeting establishing UNESCO that its cultural orientation

140 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/529.

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has always been universalist (Chapter 1). At the same time, I have argued that the pursuit

of this universal was also political, both in its grounds and its consequences (Chapter 2).

If both of these are true, we need to think differently about what is emerging on

the stage of the world heritage regime with this pluralization without overlooking the

ways in which state interests have been part of it. There is, I have argued, a strong

political demand for recognition on the world stage on a plurality of cultural terms,

defined alternatively at the local and subnational, national, and regional levels. These

demands are not only directed at the international level, but they are also shaped and

structured by its past and present hierarchies, and importantly, its changing cultural

politics. Thus, they are internationalized demands and identities. To give a few examples,

claims to Japanese industrialization are constituted by a long history of orientation

towards and hierarchical relations with Europe and the West (see Chapter 5), the Citadel

of Thang Long makes its claim to political power through and against a history of

imperial occupation, and the Konso cultural landscape in Ethiopia,141 posits isolation

from world-history’s universal and progressive march as allowing for the preservation of

traditional irrigation methods and local engineering knowledge that can offer a globally

recognizable value in a time of ecological breakdown.

7. Value, Spirit, Constitutive Tensions: The (Changed) Convention and World-

Making

If global governance is not a direct and simple reflection of the distribution of power and

interest or the mere coordination of such interest, but rather entails the substantive

constitution, molding and ordering of political realms, then shifts in the ideational

grounds of governance regimes are integral to how and to what end they govern their

object. This insight fits within the theoretical approaches of constructivist and critical

scholarship to global governance. However, as I pointed out in the first section of this

chapter, less explored are incomplete shifts that unfold in and through plurality. I have

focused on world political shifts, and specifically plurality at the domain of the world

order, to trace the challenges it poses to universal grounds of governance. This plurality,

141 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining,” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1484. For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long – Hanoi,” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1328. For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Konso Cultural Landscape, see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1333.

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my analysis suggests, constitutes a particular force: not content with the previously

hegemonic ordering of cultural value, wanting recognition from it, and without an

alternative universal, actors remain oriented towards and contentiously participate in the

governance regime. Such contentious participation challenges and transforms the terms

of the regime, 142 without however, resolving its contradictions or dispensing with

universal value entirely. I have also gestured to possible value grounds of the regime as

inductive-emergent, rooted in claims to plurality, which are themselves shaped and

structured by the past and present role of culture in the world order, and negotiated

between actors that subscribe to pluralization and those who hold onto a universal

conception of cultural value. In this last section, I bring these threads together to bear on

what is often called the spirit of the Convention – its aim to foster a shared humanity and

international cooperation around these sites to ask how the regime’s original vs. partially

transformed bases relate to this spirit.

The deviations from the letter of the Convention have resulted in debates about its

spirit and goals.143If the regime’s goals, understood in practical-policy terms, are the

identification, valorization, and protection of cultural heritage for future generations, the

spirit of the Convention is the production of these generations as the protectors and

inheritors of this heritage. Put another way, the spirit of the Convention entails nothing

less than the production of a particular cultural history of humanity, and a humanity that

identifies with this heritage. Both the goals and the spirit rely on and seek to foster

international cooperation. Christina Cameron’s keynote speech at the Kazan meeting

pointed to this relation between the regime’s grounding value and its goals, asking if

having a threshold for outstanding universal value mattered. She answered her own

question: “intellectually, yes. But it depends on the definition of outstanding universal

value. The heart of the Convention is about protection and international cooperation.

How deep does the Committee wish to go in protecting heritage sites? If deeper, then it is

inevitable that the definition of outstanding universal value will continue to drift towards

142 In fact, the ICOMOS paper, presented to a high level panel discussion convened by Irina Bokova, contended that “the conceptual expansion of the heritage field and of the Convention specifically have exceeded the original intent” (ICOMOS 2012: 9). 143 An interviewee, for example, reflects that all the changes within the regime “bring us to basics about what is the World Heritage Convention, what is it set up to do, what does it define, and what does it mean that something is supposed to be of common importance to the whole of humanity?” (Interview with an expert conducted on 16 March 2018.)

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sites that are ‘representative of the best’” (UNESCO 2005d: 7). Broadening international

cooperation, then, might require broadening OUV. My focus in this section is on the

spirit of the Convention, which I understand as a productive power that acts in and on the

world towards the production of a shared humanity and its cultural history.144

These key stakes of the Convention turn up in Committee meetings, expert reports

and in my interviews. In the Committee meetings, they are expressed when state

delegations take the floor after the inscription of their sites on the World Heritage List,

and acknowledge it as their inclusion in the world cultural order, such as recently

expressed by the Delegation of Indonesia, on Bali’s inscription as signaling “the

acknowledgment of its culture as part of the culture of the world” (UNESCO 2012b:

145). They emerged in my interviews, when I asked a civil servant, who contended that

the Convention was a victim of its own success, why the regime could become successful

to begin with: “Any state party around the globe understand[s] the importance of

preserving its own culture.. [and] the fact that all the state parties are interested in

conserving their own sites and at the same time let them be known by the rest of the

world.” 145 But an even more poignant articulation of such stakes emerged in two

ICOMOS reports: As a result, the world’s history, so far as it is related to heritage resources, is gradually being rewritten. There is now a possibility for a broader basis for the critical assessment and re-reading of the world’s cultural universe. (UNESCO 2007a: 18, emphases mine) The Convention is also challenging us to rewrite the history of the world’s art, architecture and urban planning, as well as technology.. While world heritage has thus challenged us with the great diversity of heritage and values, sometimes royal and spectacular, sometimes more simple and vernacular, it has also shown that these properties have something in common in being expressions of the creative spirit, efforts and memory of humanity (UNESCO 2008a: 4, emphases mine).

Both excerpts post-date the Kazan meeting and grow out of the negotiations analyzed in

this chapter. But they move beyond the debates on amendments to OUV criteria or their

144 I have analyzed these articulations as part of the regime’s genesis in Chapter 2. A more recent articulation, which emerged from the series of meetings on the Future of the World Heritage Convention, and put forth as its 2022 vision is: “international cooperation and shared responsibility through the World Heritage Convention ensures effective conservation of our common cultural and natural heritage, nurtures respect and understanding among the world’s communities and cultures, and contributes to their sustainable development” (UNESCO 2011e: 2). 145 Interview with a civil servant conducted on 15 March 2017.

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clearer understanding as ways of addressing these negotiations. Instead, they insert the

regime in the broader world, and foreground its relation to this world as not reflecting an

already existing cultural universe and its history, but rather as writing it, and ultimately,

as having to concede some of the co-authorship to the existing cultural worlds. This

recognition re-inflects the regime’s oft-stated aims of identification and conservation of

world heritage sites as political acts of authorship, rather than simple exercises in

scientific-technical diagnosis. With these articulations, we return to the crux of the

relationship my theoretical framework posits between the world order and global

governance: particular domains of the world are ordered through governance regimes,

which mold actors and foster forms of desired behavior but also produce these domains

and order the standing of actors within them. This relation is taken up by political actors

for its reproductive and transformative possibilities. The latter entails renegotiations that

can produce a different ordering of the same domain with consequences for the standing

of actors within it.

If such world-making is grounded in OUV, which emerges out of a particular

conception of culture, challenges and changes to OUV based on alternative

understandings of culture (aim to) transform this world-making. The nomination of

“iconic sites,” easily recognizable within the remit of the regime’s original value,

followed the contours of a particular cultural universe, traced through its Greco-Roman

imperial-cultural history, with Africa and the Mesopotamian Middle East standing at

different dawns of humanity’s history, and spreading to the new world through European

“discoveries,” alongside appearances of the great civilizations such as the ancient

Egyptians that made their mark on the annals of archeology and art history. The remaking

of this universe, instead, has introduced pre-colonial and indigenous sites, sites that

harken to histories of national liberation, and other histories of technological, cultural and

knowledge production. These sites have been put forth through a mix of their own terms,

signaled through specificity and uniqueness, and the universals that still circulate within

and beyond the regime.

Furthermore, if the writing of these histories are indeed the stakes of the regime,

then we’d be hard pressed to argue that states are misappropriating it by demanding

particular kinds of inclusion. Instead, they are acting precisely on the regime’s inclusion

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and recognition stakes at a world political time when their salience is heightened. In

doing so, they push to the limits some of the constitutive contradictions of the regime.

Ultimately, this is the tension or contradiction of how a humanity, with which the

international community is expected to identify across time and geography, can be

constructed on the grounds of an exclusive universal. This contradiction is pushed to its

limits at a world political time when putatively universal cultural claims are recognized

for their undergirding particularity on the one hand, and when cultural inclusion and

recognition is demanded politically on a plurality of terms on the other.

The question, then, becomes whether an inductive value will provide better

grounds of mutual understanding and cooperation. Part of the answer resides in the

comparison with its alternative. Plurality and representation sit in tension with

universality (taken at its own claim as objectively existing, objectively recognizable, and

not the hegemonic instantiation of a particular). This tension raises the question of how

do we get from here (plurality) to there (universality). For ICOMOS, this has entailed a

recognition that there is no absolute universal, combined with the insistence that it is

possible to achieve best approximations of such value. My analysis suggested instead that

at a time of non-hegemony, when the deductive bases of the previous universal are

contested for their particularity, an inductive approach is better suited to questions of

shared value. Such induction would take as its grounds the negotiations between

participants in the regime, with their overlapping and divergent approaches to cultural

value, rather than thinking of these as deviations. Put differently, rather than sidelining or

occluding, it recognizes the world-making role of governance: that there is no

outstanding universal value in nature, but it is made and remade through political and

epistemic communities as they negotiate questions of cultural heritage and value at

particular historico-political moments. Such an approach is also about a

reconceptualization of cooperation. Here, it is worthwhile quoting at length from an

interview with a civil servant, whose articulation was excerpted to provide the epigraph

of this chapter: UNESCO was created 70 years ago on a wonderful idea that you need to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men through culture, education etc. Then we tended to become a cultural organization, focusing on culture for its own right, its own sake. So we set up our conventions for the protection, the safeguarding, we have our lists, which is of course a very noble cause and a very

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necessary one. And why are we doing this in the context of a UN agency?.. Ultimately, we are doing this because we wanted to foster mutual knowledge, tolerance, recognition, dialogue, respect.. And now, I think, the past couple of years are bringing us back to our basic roots and are pointing us in the original direction.. But I think now what is necessary is to deliberately search for the messages that would contribute to our ultimate goal… To deliberately ensure that each community’s cultural heritage receives its part of attention… And I think that implementing it seriously could be a wonderful opportunity to give UNESCO a new relevance and a new credibility. And my personal opinion is that the issue of OUV is not so critical. What is important is that we can contribute to bringing people together around what they consider shared value.146

This excerpt is key in how it ties together the normative and practical threads and stakes

at work. It is oriented strongly towards the spirit of the Convention, interpreted as the

production of shared understanding and peaceful global relations. However, the practical

pursuit of the regime, s/he indicates, departed from or lost sight of this spirit on account

of the way in which it pursued its goals as culture for its own sake, which proliferated

through a series of measures akin to Barnett and Finnemore’s pathologies of bureaucracy

(2004: 34-41).

Importantly, what allowed for this path to persist was a world political time that

did not foreground questions of global peace and implicate culture in them. Conversely,

at a time when global peace seems more fraught, and culture is foregrounded in some of

those conflicts and understood as having a constructive role to play, the pursuit of the

regime – its letter – needs to change, based on a return to its spirit as the production of

mutual understanding and cooperation. Such rethinking might demonstrate that,

especially at a time when culture is an axis of salient plurality, a governance strategy of

building an international community around an elite list of sites, grounded on and

reproducing cultural hierarchies, cannot point the path towards mutual understanding or

cooperation – if it ever could. 147 Thus, if the aim is to foster shared understanding, OUV

is not so critical. Rather, as the path forward, s/he gestures towards what “they” consider

shared value, which can emerge from diverse and contentious engagements with the

regime.

8. Conclusion: Theoretical, Normative and Broader Implications

146 Interview conducted on 6 April 2017. 147 It is important, however, to heed Ian Clark’s (2013) poignant argument that regimes of governance inevitably distribute costs and benefits in uneven ways and create new vulnerabilities, not only by how they substantiate policy areas but also by virtue of demarcating them.

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If the last chapter covered a more chronological path, from the foundation of the regime

in a permissive and hegemonic context to the first articulations of these shifting grounds,

this chapter has traveled a theoretical and analytical arc, tracing three key stipulations of

my theoretical framework: that the world order and global governance stand in a

recursive relation to one another, that ideational divergence in the former is consequential

for the ability of the latter to generate shared value, and that given this recursive relation,

actors continue to participate in governance at a time of plurality to transform its terms,

and thereby the ordering of the governance object and their place in it. I began with the

articulations of these broader changes within the regime, distinguishing between political

and epistemic grounds and uptakes. I argued that the political uptake of plurality,

grounded in world political changes, presents a particular challenge to the regime’s

putatively universal value. I analyzed this contentious participation through a series of

interventions and policy discussions that took me deep into the empirics of the regime,

and ultimately to an inductive-emergent form of value. This value stands in contrast to its

original deductive-universal formulation, and involves the negotiation of past hierarchies

and present global cultural politics in and through the terms of the regime. The last

section of the chapter took a step back to reconnect these negotiations to the world-

making stakes of the regime, partially transformed through this encounter with cultural

diversity.

In the process, the chapter raised normative questions that it has not fully

answered. These concern the politics of plurality, whether it is grounded in a multiplicity

of cultural chauvinisms parading as counter-hegemonic and diverse, and what it might

mean to move this plurality towards pluralism. The answer I started to give to these

questions began with the recognition that some of these problems are not new, and that

the international or universal recognition of nationally valued cultural sites has long been

part of the regime. Thus, the regime has not entered a new phase of granting international

recognition to cultural nationalism. However, we might still be worried about the

disappearance of the universal as the language that seemingly moved away from the

national, and the foregrounding of particularity as reproductive of it. Even though

plurality is posited at levels that range from the local to the regional, it does include the

national. However, this is a national that is oriented to the international, either through its

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hierarchical positioning in past international cultural politics or its current desire for

recognition. Both of these implicate the world order and its governance, in the formation

and intensification of demands for cultural recognition on the global political stage.

This is, therefore, not a story of politics happening to the regime, but world

heritage being stuck between its politics, grounded in a different global-historical context,

and a changing cultural politics that impresses itself upon the regime. The important

normative question becomes whether, in addition to being more plural, such politics is

also more pluralist – understood as openness to engagement and criticism across

(claimed) cultural specificities. My answer to this question is that it can be. This

possibility resides in the non-hegemonic terrain opened up by a waning universal, and the

insertion into this terrain of diversity and plurality as approaches to cultural value. This

creates the conditions of possibility for cultural claims and counter-claims to be made by

a multiplicity of actors, including civil society and grassroots organizations. I engage

further with these dynamics in Chapter 5 through South Korean objections to Japan’s

nomination narrative of the Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites. It is these objections, and

not the positive evaluation of the site by experts, that pushed the site’s narrative of value

towards multiplicity.

The challenges posed by ideational plurality to the possibility of global

governance has implications beyond the world heritage regime. In terms of the possibility

of governance amidst plurality, what is at stake in not a simple fracturing into a

multiplicity of national interests, but rather the renegotiation of the world order as the

stage that continues to orient a plurality of actors while no longer being able to bind them

through hegemonic consensus. In this context, governance regimes become arenas where

previously settled objects – that is policy domains – are renegotiated, with the possibility

of new shared scripts. For its defenders or from the perspective of its heyday in the

1990s, these processes might confirm the retreat of liberal global governance. And they

do. But such contestation and renegotiation continue to be oriented towards and haunted

by the internationals of the past and present. Furthermore, as Chapter 5 on divisive sites

will make clearer, these inductive negotiations of divergent value are not to be dismissed

as consolation prizes but should be attended to as significant political negotiations at a

time of unraveling hegemony.

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Chapter IV: Pluralizing Culture, Contested Expertise and Amalgam Authority

Having analyzed how the changing global politics of culture in a pluralizing world order

produce a renegotiation of the world heritage regime’s object of governance, in this

chapter I turn to the consequences of this pluralization for the exercise of authority within

the regime and for the regime’s perception as authoritative. I argue that these challenges

are substantive and methodological, and concern the regime’s original conception of

authority as the as the independent adjudication of universal value by international

experts. At the same time, alternative actors, sources, and relations of authority emerge

through these challenges or in response to them. The international authority that emerges

from these contestations is not identical to its original conception, nor is its authority yet

reconsolidated. However, similar to the last chapter, I conclude that there is a qualified

way in which this authority is more plural. At the same time, I note that these

contestations of authority and emergent repertoires have broader implications insofar as

international expertise has been a key element in liberal global governance.

1. Introduction: Two Entry Points to the Regime’s Challenges of Authority

The approval or sanction of international experts, affiliated with the Advisory Bodies is a

key dynamic of the authoritative production of world heritage as the translation of

cultural value into putatively universal expressions. International experts are integral to

the two-fold conception of authority that grounds this chapter. Based on their competence

in the fields of knowledge that provided the sources of OUV, international experts were

designated to evaluate whether nominated sites possessed universal value and constituted

world heritage. International experts were the proper authorities of evaluation on these

substantive grounds, but also because of their scientific-technical and rigorous procedures

of evaluation. In turn, this scientific evaluation of universal value would constitute the

regime itself as authoritative.

The process through which experts exercised this substantive and procedural

authority remained largely unchanged until 2016:148 The states nominate sites within their

148 There have been previous amendments to the nomination and evaluation deadlines. And until 2006, the evaluation reports of the Advisory Bodies were submitted to the Bureau instead of the Committee. However, in terms of the authority boundaries between the states and experts, the process remained the same.

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boundaries for consideration as world heritage. Once prepared by a state, the nomination

file crosses to the domain of international experts, who conduct independent evaluations

based on desk studies and site visits. The goal of the evaluation is to determine if the site

possesses outstanding universal value, and whether such value is adequately reflected in

the nomination file. This evaluation can produce one of four decisions (non-inscription,

deferral, referral, inscription), 149 which is communicated to the World Heritage

Committee and the nominating state ahead of the annual Committee meeting. The final

decision on the site’s inscription is taken at the annual meeting by the Committee based

on the nomination file and its evaluation report. The Committee can ask both the

nominating state and the Advisory Body questions during the discussion of the file.

International experts and expertise, as the actors and sources of authority within

the regime, that have been receiving greater resistance since the mid-1990s, resulting in

worries about the authority of the regime itself. A key manifestation of this resistance is

the number of expert evaluations that are overturned or amended by the committee

members; a process that has been dubbed the politicization of the regime. 150 This

concrete manifestation also provides my first entry point into the question of authority,

signaling that something has changed in the perception of or relation to international

expertise as the proper authority.151

149 The Advisory Bodies evaluate both the site and its particular framing. They might decide that the site has potential universal value, but this is not yet demonstrated in the file. If the evaluation decides that the site has universal value and that it has been properly demonstrated, the Advisory Bodies provide their own language of how the site meets the ‘OUV’ criteria, which becomes a part of the site’s statement of outstanding universal value.150 A first and numerical cut into this pattern is through the percentage of amended expert evaluations. For instance, in 1984, this was 13% and in 1985, 7%. Conversely, the percentages for the period after 1995 include: 23% (1996), 27% (2000), 57% (2010 and 2011), 56% (2012), 20% (2013), 68% (2014), 50% (2017) and 41% (2018). The percentages above refer only to cultural heritage sites, and I have calculated them by comparing the Advisory Body evaluation reports, which provide one of four possible decisions (inscription, referral, deferral, non-inscription), with the Committee’s final decision. They are different from the Secretariat’s numbers, announced each year at the conclusion of the annual meeting since 2008, as these also include natural heritage sites. Like the Secretariat’s tally, however, mine counts any kind of amendment as 1, rather than weighting them differently based on the range of the shift (referral to inscription vs. deferral to inscription). Even so, it is demonstrative of a shift. However, these ranges are also important. In 2018, two recommendations for non-inscription were overturned and the sites were inscribed. This sidelines Advisory Bodies further than, for example, a change from a referral to an inscription. It skips over desk studies and site visits that would be undertaken following a substantially revised dossier. However, important as these patterns are in pointing to a change, they become meaningful through an analysis of their substance, which is what this Chapter does. 151 This change is manifested in meeting records, articulated by my interviewees, and confirmed by the extant scholarship (Brumann 2014b, Meskell 2015, Cameron and Rössler 2016). The literature and my

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My second entry point is a recurrent distinction I encountered in the multiple

interviews I conducted with international experts affiliated with the two Advisory Bodies

– ICOMOS and ICCROM – and civil servants at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre: that

while the regime has become politicized, politics has always been part of it. First, a few

general remarks about these two groups of actors. Together, the international experts and

civil servants152 represent the neutral and technical elements of the regime via scientific

knowledge and bureaucratic acumen respectively.153 Such hermetic categorization actors,

as it was adopted by the epistemic communities literature, has been challenged by more

recent scholarship, which points to civil servants and experts as actors who struggle to

establish, maintain and expand their authority (Haas 1992, Adler and Haas 1992, Barnett

and Finnemore 2004, Boswell 2009, Boswell 2017, Littoz-Monnet 2017a, 2017b and

2017c). Similarly, my interviews revealed these actors as strikingly complex, if not at

times contradictory, in their commitments and engagement with the regime.154 On the one

hand, they are astute observers of states as political actors and in their political

interviewees trace its emergence to mid-late 1990s. In their semi-official historiography of the world heritage regime’s early years, Cameron and Rössler interview “pioneers” of the Convention, some of whom locate this dynamics of politicization with the early 1990s. Cameron and Rössler themselves mark the 1980 nomination of the “Old City of Jerusalem” by Jordan as an important moment of politicization. However, in this case, an extraordinary committee meeting was held to deal with the nomination. In his interview with the authors, Bernd von Droste, who joined UNESCO in 1973 and became the first Director of the World Heritage Center after its establishment in 1992, notes: “This debate on Jerusalem was of course fully politicized and we had all of a sudden a change in the Committee, namely ambassadors, because the experts saw that they could not really handle the question” (Cameron and Rössler 2016: 169). However, with most accounts dating politicization to the 1990s, it seems that the nomination of Jerusalem’s Old City did not set off the process of change that marks today. The ability to contain the fallout from this nomination lends support to the argument that if culture is not a global axis of demand-making, the regime has greater chances of managing such contestations, translating them into its own terms or casting them as exceptions. 152 Sending traces the emergence of the figure of the international civil servant as co-terminous with the changing organization of the international sphere, shifting from a domain of diplomatic inter-state relations to one that is substantively organized and regulated. International civil servants, appointed for lengthy durations and with sufficient salaries to ensure their immunity to political pressure, emerged to comprise the impartial bureaucracy of this international order (2015: 40-45). In the case of the world heritage regime, this role is undertaken by UNESCO’s World Heritage Center as the regime’s Secretariat. 153 While the World Heritage Centre does not have an evaluative role, they are a part of the exercise of authority in the regime and the construction of the regime as authoritative. Substantively, this is grounded in the knowledge of the Convention, but it is a predominantly procedural authority, where the Centre is responsible for policy coordination and implementation. This is not to vacate procedural elements of substance, but to the extent that the Centre does not adjudicate universal value, its activities have come under less criticism and participants regularly express appreciation of its annual progress reports. For a full list of the roles of the Intergovernmental Committee, Advisory Body and the Secretariat, see the Operational Guidelines, available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/. 154 These constitutive contradictions are similar to ones that Michael Barnett analyzes as integral to international humanitarians as actors who are at once attentive to questions of exclusion and hierarchy and unable to see they ways in which they are implicit in or generative of it (Barnett 2011).

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engagement with the regime. They negotiate these aptly. At the same time, however, they

continue to be convinced, for the most part, that the undergirding idea of the regime –the

identification and preservation of outstanding heritage sites– and their contribution to it

are inherently apolitical. As put by one of my interviewees: “There are politics of

politicians and politics of professionals, which is not addressed yet and needs to be

addressed seriously.”155

For the purposes of this chapter, I turn to these interviews to provide my second

entry point into authority, and the dubbing of authority challenges within the regime as

politicization. When asked if they agree with the observation that the regime has become

politicized, multiple interviewees began with the acknowledgment that politics has

always been a part of world heritage. Such acknowledgment invoked states as the source

of such politics, recognized it as an inevitable by-product of the need to involve them in

the regime, and articulated its remit as a range of standard state interests: tourism income,

appeasing local constituencies such as strong mayors, or the prestige that accrues from

world heritage status.156 For one respondent such politics is “quite normal,” “in any

international relations fora.”157 Another respondent points not to the inevitability, but the

necessity of the states to the functioning of the regime: “We need the experts but we also

need the states. Otherwise if a site is inscribed and it goes down the drain with its state of

conservation, who is in charge? I cannot approach an NGO, and say please, get your act

together and save the site, I need the state. This is an international legal instrument

155 Interview with an international expert conducted on 6 March 2017. 156 Interviews conducted with civil servants on 11 July 2016 and 15 March 2017 and with experts on 23 March 2017, and 16 March 2018 put forth similar conceptions of states as interested in economic gain, and motivated by domestic political dynamics. Conversely, one interviewee recognized that national identity or social cohesion can play a role in the decision to nominate sites, another remarked that what’s at play is “a hugely politicized regionalized or nationalized identity,” whereas two experts pointed to changes in cultural politics and new representational demands, and the changing understanding of cultural heritage (Interviews with international experts conducted on 7 March 2015, 6 March 2017, 2 May 2017 and 16 March 2018). My argument suggests that the audience of these recognition demands are not only national, and that the world stage plays a significant role as the audience and the structuring force of these demands. The conception of states as strategic actors also raises the possibility that challenges to expert evaluations are put forth through geopolitical alliances. Meskell (2015) makes this argument through an analysis of the voting patterns by BRICS countries in the regime, underlining active participation by BRICS members, especially in the cases of overturned evaluations. However, undercutting her analysis, she also notes that in a world political context of multiple axes of alliance, nominated sites might generate support on the basis of regional, geopolitical or religious lines. Rather than taking stock of the different ways in which such lines might form, I trace the recurrent substance of it. 157 Interview with a civil servant conducted on 15 March 2017.

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ratified by States.”158 Alongside cognate literature (i.e. Neumann and Sending 2010), this

dissertation approaches states in global governance not simply as principles but also as

actors who are molded as responsible to behave in desired ways. Thus, states are not only

needed, but they also need to behave in particular ways. Lastly, a third respondent

explains: “Anybody who says this convention is not a political convention is

misunderstanding [it] – the Committee is made up of States Parties, political actors. The

beauty of this Convention is.. they wrote into the Convention the advisory role of what

are meant to be non-political, neutral, professional advisors. [There is] always going to be

a bit of a play off – that is healthy – or that can be healthy. [The question is] where is the

pendulum at any given point in time.”159

If the first entry point signaled that something has changed in the authority

relations within the regime, the second entry point takes us further in what this change is

and what it is not. What is at stake is not the entrance of politics into the regime, from

which they were previously absent. Rather, my interlocutors use the language of balance

to describe the changes that produce an authority challenge in and to the regime, and that

are designated as politicization rather than politics. This metaphor of balance gets us

away from thinking in terms of an absence or presence, and rather in terms of a

negotiation.

In moving towards my argument, I take up another set of language, proposed by

the scholarship on Science and Technology Studies (STS), to further elucidate the

balance that is disrupted and why such disruption is consequential to authority. This is the

language of co-production and boundaries. Boundaries refer to what counts as science

and scientific at any given point, as discursively constituted by scientists. These

boundaries separate science from other kinds of knowledge and establish proper scientific

158 Interview with a civil servant conducted on 4 April 2017. For a more critical take on this, see the interview conducted with Francesco Francioni, a professor of international law, who attended the World Heritage Committee meetings between 1993-1998 and acted as its chairperson in 1997. Francioni calls this institutional set-up “the original sin” of the Convention, which prevents an “epistemic community” from having the last word (Cameron and Rössler, 2016: 165). In contrast, von Droste, the first and former director of the World Heritage Centre, recognizes that “the final purpose of the Convention is to conserve sites and you can only conserve that in a dialogue, in cooperation with the country” (Ibid.: 172). 159 Interview with an international expert member conducted on 7 March 2017. Jean-Louis Luxen, the three term Secretary General of ICOMOS between 1993-2000, agrees that what is at stake is a question of a balance, and “a delicate equilibrium” (Cameron and Rössler, 2016: 173). Luxen also dates politicization as beginning in the 1990s.

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knowledge as credible (Gieryn 1999: 183-233). As I argued in Chapter 1, claims of

politicization hinge on particular designations and a separation of heritage, understood

through its scientific-technical conception, and politics. Heritage is a domain that is

shaped by concerns for sites and their preservation, whereas politics is designated by the

pursuit of things such as interest and prestige. There is, seemingly, no overlap between

the two. My interviewees further elucidate these dynamics in labeling the time of stable

boundaries, with mutually understood separation of politics and heritage concerns as “the

presence of politics.” Politicization, thus understood, entails not the simple emergence of

political concerns onto the scene, but the renegotiation of these boundaries.

This is when co-production becomes illustrative. If boundaries separate experts

from other actors and constitute them as authoritative through this separation, co-

production links them with political actors. Prominent STS scholars have focused on the

co-production of the social and natural worlds (Jasanoff 2004a: 10-12, 2004b: 15-17),

whereas others posit a relationship of co-production between expertise and political

authority (Carson 2004: 181-2016, Dear 2004: 206-225, Dennis 2004: 225-254, Ezrahi

2004: 254-274). What is at stake in co-production is a shared rationality between the two

domains, which allow for common conceptions of social order, and the mutual

recognition of authority within this order, based on this shared rationality. Allan (2017b)

put co-production to work in theorizing the emergence of global governance from the

negotiations of states and experts, who co-produce an object such as the environment, as

a governance domain. In the case of the world heritage regime, the co-production at work

in the early implementation of the regime, unfolded through and reproduced the broad

agreement on a rationality of cultural value as universal and amenable to scientific-

technical adjudication. Around this shared rationality, states and experts could be placed

into bounded domains of authority, as territorial homes and responsible sovereigns for

nomination and protection; and as the international authorities tasked with adjudication of

value. However, the lack of shared rationality to ground such co-production presents a

challenge to the previously set boundaries of authority, including the role of experts and

expertise, and produces what has been called politicization, which is not the emergence

of politics onto the scene of the regime, but rather its encroachment in a realm that was

previously understood as belonging to expert authority.

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My argument in this chapter is based on an analysis of the World Heritage

Committee, General Assembly and Bureau meeting reports between 1994-2018,160 my

attendance at the 2018 World Heritage Committee meeting and 11 open-ended interviews

with 10 international experts and UNESCO civil servants.161 As I show through an

analysis of the substance of these challenges, local value and representation are two

recurring themes in the disagreements with expert evaluations. At the same time, these

challenges put forth local experts as the proper authorities for the adjudication of cultural

value, demand new relations with international experts that would re-bound the realms of

the political and scientific, and foreground new sets of procedures for the proper exercise

of authority. In the process, they reveal the intricate connections of the two component

parts of authority (who and how), with their constitutive grounding (what).

In putting forth this argument, the chapter proceeds as follows. In the next section,

I locate the question of authority within the broader arc of my argument, and situate my

argument within the global governance scholarship on authority, which provides

alternative explanations and cognate theorization. The third section analyzes the

challenges to international experts and expertise through concerns of local value and

representativity. The fourth section presents defenses of international expertise put forth

by some participants in the regime. The fifth section analyzes the alternatives that emerge

at the intersection of the continued defense of and resistance to international expertise.

160 In analyzing the meeting minutes, I bracket a post-2010 dynamic generated by the inclusion of management plans as part of the sites’ evaluation of OUV. This has meant that sites, which were evaluated as fulfilling the OUV criteria, were referred or deferred for not having adequate management plans in place. It has resulted in assertions by nominating states that they have devised management plans, or the intervention by other delegations that such plans can be adopted post-inscription (Meskell 2012). The amendment of these decisions by the Committee shows that the attempt to deepen the reach of the regime at a point when its foundations are renegotiated results in further challenges to its exercise of authority. I focus, instead on the challenges to expertise grounded on articulations of pluralizing cultural value as these push back on its sources of authority. 161 I exclude from the scope of this chapter interviews conducted with World Heritage Center personnel, who are part of regional units, focused on particular sites. Instead, I use material from interviews with civil servants involved in central and policy-making units. My interviews with experts are included without exception. In interviews with experts and civil servants, two sets of questions aimed to capture these dynamics of change and challenge. The first set asked whether different participants (i.e. states, experts, civil servants) share an understanding of the regime. This question explores not only divergences of understanding, but also how such divergence is perceived by experts, partly indicative of their understanding of states as political actors. The second set asked the interviewees if they agree that the regime is being politicized, if so, why and what might be a potential solution. I also followed up with a question on what they, or the institution they are affiliated with, were doing to mediate, manage, or ameliorate it.

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2. Global Governance and Authority: What, Who and How

This chapter approaches the question of authority and global governance as two-fold.162

The first is authority within global governance, and the second is the global governance

regime itself as an authority. These two dimensions are, of course, closely connected:

governance regimes put in place particular actors and relations of authority, which in turn

and through proper exercise, constitute the regime as authoritative. Like others, I

understand authority as a social relation (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 20, Avant et. al.

2010: 9-10, Sending 2015: 7), based on the recognition of a party as authoritative and a

subsequent deference to their decisions. At the same time, however, as evidenced by the

STS literature, authority relations are not only between super-ordinates and subordinates.

Rather, they can involve actors who are authorities in different domains. Thus, the

particular constitution of the object of governance becomes key to parsing proper actors

and relations of authority. Authority, then, is a social relation of deference in relation to

an object and as enabled by its shared understanding. This shared understanding positions

certain groups of actors as authorities in relation to the object. In turn, the proper exercise

(how) of authority by the right actors (who) to the object, reproduces the regime itself as

authoritative.

Let me first illustrate what this conception of authority means in the case of the

world heritage regime. Chapter 2 argued that the genesis and early implementation of the

162 I limit my engagement to texts that work with social approaches to global governance. I do not review the asocial approaches (realism and neoliberal institutionalism), as they conceive of institutions primarily as agents (where states are principals), rather than authorities. However, an important caveat is in order. While asocial approaches do not think of regimes and institutions themselves as exercising power and authority, they conceive of them as power-laden realms, in which states pursue their national interest based on power. Conversely, some of the social approaches to governance have marginalized the question of power in global governance, positing regimes as do-gooders that promote beneficial, liberal, progressive universal norms (Barnett and Duvall 2005). The scholarship I engage with in this chapter departs from this liberal-optimism, in their attentiveness to the productive power of international institutions in molding participants or in the hegemonic exercise of authority at the detriment of plurality. I also do not review broader approaches to the question of authority within international politics, such as Hurd (1999) and Lake (2010). Lake puts forth a social contract theory of authority, which emerges in global politics when order is promised in exchange for compliance. This conception doesn’t attend to the ideational-institutional authority that international institutions and regimes exercise. Hurd approaches authority as legitimate power, which produces compliant behavior. The thrust of Hurd’s argument is to position legitimacy as a third mechanism of compliance alongside coercion (realism) and self-interest (neoliberal institutionalism). The definition of authority as legitimate power, however, leaves open the question of how power becomes legitimate in the first place. In tracing this to ideational consensus within the world order or to authority struggles over governance objects, the literature I engage with goes further in analyzing the grounds, stakes and limits of authority in global politics.

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world heritage regime was at a time in which the participants shared a broad agreement

on the object of their governance – that is cultural heritage –as universal and

universalizable. Within this shared understanding, states were recognized as sovereign

authorities that could nominate sites and that should be responsible with their proper

protection. Experts, on the other hand, were the authorities that evaluated these

nominations based on their acumen in the relevant fields of knowledge production. Such

evaluation was independent, objective and scientific-technical. On the one hand, the

boundaries of the state nomination and the expert evaluation were clearly marked. On the

other hand, they were co-constituted by a shared rationality of cultural value as universal

and universalizable. The inscription of world heritage sites that emerged from this

process, which involved the right actors and procedures, constituted the regime as an

authoritative adjudicator of global cultural value.

This configuration acknowledged states as the proper authorities for the

nomination and protection of sites, the experts as the authoritative adjudicators of

universal value, and ultimately certain sites as universally, objectively and apolitically

valuable across time and space. At the same time, the expert evaluations, which took sites

out of the national-political realm and stamped them as universally-scientifically

valuable, presented the possibility for national-politically understood sites to be claimed

as internationally significant. When the common conception of the object held, the

domains of authority were separated, and this possible production of internationally

valued national sites did not challenge the grounding conceptions, their pursuit and

ultimately, the authority of the regime as a mechanism for the identification and

protection of world heritage.163 Instead, they were tit-for-tats or politics as usual. To the

contrary, divergent understandings of the object (what) have been presenting a challenge

to the actors (who) and the proper procedures (how) of authority within the regime,

ultimately bringing into question its authoritative governance of culture on the world

stage.

163 For a prescient analysis of how the “civilizing mission” of UNESCO’s world heritage regime was taken up by the states, see Falser 2015: 1-35 and 279-347. While Falser focuses predominantly on the domestic element of this civilizing mission-cum-nation building, I am interested in the world political dynamics of recognition and co-evality that are staked through cultural heritage sites.

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This problematic of authority intersects with my theoretical framework at a few

key moments. The genesis of a global governance regime as authoritative is grounded in

world political dynamics, as Chapter 2 has argued. These include a permissive political

context and ideational convergence. The exercise of authority within the regime, in turn,

is reproductive of the hegemonic conception of the object within and beyond the regime.

Within the world heritage regime, it bolstered the epistemic authority of experts through

the evaluative role they play and also as the experts are tasked with or take the initiative

to produce benchmarks, best practice reports and guidelines that produce further

authoritative knowledge on the object of governance, and reproduce their status as

authorities over it. Beyond the regime, such exercise of authority reproduced the

undergirding conception of culture by producing a List of globally recognized sites. The

proper exercise of authority within the regime also undergirds its authoritative ordering of

cultural heritage on the world stage as credible and apolitical. In turn, and as this chapter

argues, changes in the world order in relation to the object of governance produce

challenges to both authority within the regime, and the authority of the regime.

How does my framework compare to the relevant scholarship? Two key

approaches to the question of authority can be parsed as ideal-typical and processual. The

ideal-typical approach identifies existing and broadly accepted types of authority, which

are traced to modern society and liberal global politics rather than to the object of

governance at hand (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 5). The analysis of authority proceeds

with an enumeration of these ideal-types, such as institutional, delegated, expert,

principled and capacity-based authority, which are attached to actors (Avant et. al. 2010:

11-14), and/or to the governance regime. The “how” component is similarly traced to the

legitimate procedures of exercising authority within modern polities. Most prominently,

Barnett and Finnemore (2004 and 2005) have centered bureaucracies as the legal-rational,

and widely accepted procedures of authority.

This framing of authority, traced to existing stocks deposited in particular figures

and procedures, does not connect it strongly to the object (“what”). However, Barnett and

Finnemore recognize the key import of shared ideas of a social good in the constitution of

international institutions themselves as authorities (2004: 162). Zürn’s recent account

similarly starts with shared ideas as the grounds of authority, by which he only means

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consensus on the global governance of an issue as evidenced in the establishment of

institutionalized authorities (2018: 65). To remain authoritative, however, the authority of

these institutions have to be legitimately exercised (Ibid.) Thus, global governance

regimes emerge as authoritative at the intersection of consensus around their substantive

bases in the realm of global politics, and remain as such by virtue of the proper exercise

of authority by actors and through procedures widely acknowledged as legitimate.

In turn, the dynamics of challenge and change to IO authority include pathologies

of bureaucracy (i.e. its inherently expansionary character, its insularity and attendant

inability to learn from its mistakes, a universalism that is inattentive to differences of

context, and excessive proceduralism), the relation between different governors, output

performance, and the illegitimate exercise of authority. For Barnett and Finnemore, and

Zürn the question is one of boundaries: either bureaucracies overstep the boundaries set

in their mandate or global governance regimes overstep their technocratic legitimation

narratives by exercising political authority (2004: 34-41, 2018: 77-84). Avant et. al.

foreground the plurality of authority sources. In doing so, they note, crucially, that

conflict of authority can arise from different conceptions of the governance issue – for

example, the economic-expert approach of IMF and World Bank to questions of poverty

are different from the moral approach of NGOs and advocacy groups (2010: 22).

These approaches overlap in part with my framework. Authority relations are

established as bound, and changes in those boundaries pursued by one set of actors is

likely to cause consternation in others, especially if such change encroaches upon their

domain. However, Barnett and Finnemore do not explore the broader question of

authority boundaries, and focus on a dynamics of bureaucratic pathology and

expansionism. Avant et. al.’s articulation also overlaps with my framework, which posits

authority challenges as located in disjunctive conceptions of the object of governance.

However, I do not attach these different conceptions to kinds of actors – i.e. the

economists having a rational-expert approach vs. NGOs having a moral approach. Rather,

I begin with the shared or divergent rationalities of the object to analyze how these

conceptions place different actors in relation to one another, constitute them as

authoritative, and result in re-negotiations of these relations.

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How would these approaches account for the world heritage regime’s authority

challenges? Zürn’s explanation of authority challenges as arising from overstepping

scientific-technical legitimation narratives would not be able to account for the way in

which authority challenges arose within the world heritage regime even though its

exercise of authority remained constant. However, Zürn also describes international

authority as a reflexive rather than internalized authority, grounded on epistemic

constructions and continually subjected to scrutiny. Thus, and in some tension with his

key claim regarding authority challenges, Zürn also posits that the “questioning of

authority involves epistemic challenges to the dominant knowledge order” (2018: 47). If

this is the case, however, there are no immutable and natural benchmarks to determine

where technocratic authority ends and political authority begins. To the contrary, these

emerge in relation to conceptions of the object and can change when they are challenged.

My framework provides a more coherent approach to this key element of authority

challenges. Barnett and Finnemore might contend that the bureaucratic universalism of

the world heritage regime, which attempts to identify, valorize and conserve heritage

without attentiveness to local circumstance is at the root of the challenges. However, such

bureaucratic universalism was not always challenged, and the substance of its challenges

are intricately connected to changing conceptions of culture. Lastly, Avant et. al. might

account for the current contestations of authority as arising out of the different

approaches of governors to cultural heritage based on the kinds of actors they are.

However, what is key, rather, is that a shared conception of the object could hold together

different approaches, and also accounts for why governors can at times find agreement

despite their divergences, and not at others. I contend that while a shared understanding

of the object can hold together different orientations towards it, such as prestige (states)

vs. conversation (heritage experts), divergent understandings result in authority

challenges that render these different orientations fraught.

The processual approach critiques the ideal-typical one as describing rather than

explaining authority (Sending 2015: 16). It posits instead that the genesis of global

governance is a struggle for authority over the definition of its object (Ibid.: 4. See also

Corry 2013 and Allan 2017b), which can take place between political and epistemic

actors, and involve multiple groups that qualify as the latter. Regimes that emerge from

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these struggles position particular actors and their terms as authorities and as

authoritative. Actors who are subordinated as a consequence continue to seek

recognition, but do so within the terms of the governance field (Ibid.: 26). Such

recognition seeking can change the authority positions of actors within the field, but it is

also reproductive of its constitutive terms and thus possibly of extant authority

positions.164

While the processual approach does not begin with already existing stocks of

authority and attends to the mutually constitutive relation between the production of

authority and global governance, it also emphasizes that the implementation of

governance regimes reproduce hegemonies. In Sending’s account, regimes are insular

Bourdieusian fields, where authority contestation can change position of actors within the

regime and/or reproduce terms of authority. The terms of the field also filter and frame

exogenous change (2015: 28). This account does not provide an answer to the question of

when the field’s terms are reproduced and when they might be transformed through

authority struggles within the field. Sending’s empirical investigation suggests that such

change of terms can come at the intersection of increased unpopularity of policies

combined with the opening of a field up to outside intervention (2015: 103-125). Allan’s

account provides three sources of change that can open governance objects up to

renegotiation: technology, state of knowledge and state of the world. The second and

third are epistemic and political change respectively, and political change includes

increased salience of the policy domain (2017b: 139).

My account differs from and contributes to Sending’s by positing a particular

divergence as key to understanding whether governance and its hierarchies will produce

inclusion or recognition demands. It also explores empirically and analytically what

Allan posits only theoretically. My analysis of authority challenges of the world heritage

regime contributes to this scholarship key dynamics of how such renegotiation, rooted in

world political dynamics, unfolds as it pluralizes the conception of the governance object,

and as it is negotiated within the regime’s existing authority structures and relations.

164 I have adopted the terminology of inclusion for the struggles that take place within the regime’s terms, and recognition for demands that challenge not only the actors’ place in the regime but also the terms that produce these hierarchies. I realize that the two are not neatly separable or pure in practice. However, they point to different political dynamics and hold significance beyond their theoretical distinguishability.

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Lastly, unlike this scholarship which focuses predominantly on the “who” of authority, I

also bring in the procedural dynamics (how).

To sum, my framework is in conversation with and contributes theoretically and

empirically to this cognate scholarship. Like the processual approach, I foreground the

object of governance as key to the designation of certain actors as proper authorities. But

I also bring into view the importance of proper procedures and relations for the exercise

of such authority. In this dual substantive and procedural focus, I veer closer to the

constructivist approaches, with one foot each in “who” and “how” questions. The

contribution I make to the latter is foregrounding plurality within the world order as a

problematic of governance in general. This foregrounding leads me to analyze how

plurality becomes an authority challenge – via shifting conceptions of the proper actors

and procedures of authority and rebounding the domains of authority in relation to the

object. At the same time, I excavate repertoires of what alternatives of authority might

look like in this context.

Before moving onto the analysis, a final word on the role of experts and expertise

in liberal global governance is necessary. Whether they adopt an ideal-typical or

processual approach, the key texts I have engaged with in this section focus on experts

either as holders of knowledge-based and/or moral authority or as actors deeply

immersed in competitive processes of defining governance domains. I have also noted in

Chapter 1 that liberal global governance has relied on expertise to constitute itself as

authoritative on grounds of putatively apolitical, objective and scientific-technical

pursuits of common goods. In the process, expert knowledge has produced a plethora of

best practices, benchmarks and performance indicators that have ranked the world across

issue areas. These rankings are, at their core, translations of a multiplicity of local

contexts into the terms of a putative universal, whether it concerns a rule of law culture or

the cultural heritage of humanity. These practices not only rank-translate the world into

the terms of a universal, but also require that the world translate itself to be recognized as

equal. Thus, contestations of expert authority indeed involve “epistemic challenges to the

dominant knowledge order” (Zürn 2018: 47). Insofar as expertise has been a main carrier

of liberal global governance and because challenges within the world heritage regime are

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grounded in a pluralizing world order, they have broader implications for who can

exercise governance authority in a pluralizing world order and how.

3. Plurality, Representation and Contested Expertise

I have identified the key changes to global cultural politics as a new emphasis on

plurality, and culture-cum-civilization as the basis of world political co-evality. Chapter 3

examined how these changes bear upon the regime’s grounding conception and attendant

universal value. It also illustrated, through the Qhapaq Nan Andean Road System, how

these changes are reflected in the kinds of sites that are put forth for nomination and for

which international experts are expected to produce authoritative evaluations. I turn now

to how these changes impact the exercise of expertise.

Picking up on this thread of the challenges presented by the changing site

nominations, an expert interviewee posed a question s/he would go on to answer: “How

can something that is intrinsically local be of global value?” 165 Heritage sites, s/he

explained, are intrinsically local because they were built at a particular time for a specific

population and reflect a certain set of values. In responding to her question, s/he

continued: “In a way we have always done that. It was accepted that [with] something

like the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids you could immediately understand their global

value. And with these other properties that are coming forward now, that are less well

known, it is not so easy to say whether or not they have global value.”166 Two elements

of this reflection are significant. The first is the choice of examples. On the one hand, the

expert points to India and Egypt as potential ‘locals’ that need to be translated into the

‘global,’ and not, for example, the Acropolis in Athens or Florence in Italy. On the other

hand, both are monumental structures that have taken their place in the annals of world-

civilizational and art histories. This allows for the immediate recognition of their value,

within the regime’s conception of culture and universal cultural value. In fact, both sites

were early inscriptions on the World Heritage List, in 1979 (Pyramids) and 1983 (Taj

Mahal) respectively. In line with the regime’s production of world cultural heritage

during this period (see Chapter 2), these monumental structures are described as

165 Interview conducted with an international expert on 16 March 2018. 166 Ibid.

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testament to brilliant civilizations. 167 Unlike the narrative of Qhapaq Ñan, with its

emphasis on the unique, the singular, and a cosmological vision of the world, in these two

cases, “the world” and “the planet” are invoked as singular and convergent; producing

and produced through universally recognized civilizations traversing world history.

The second important element of the expert’s reflection is the interplay between

the passive and active voices. The collective subject of the expert’s statement is active in

two cases: “we have always done that” and “you could immediately understand their

value.” These active uses correspond to moments of certainty about what the Convention

does and how: it inscribes as universal that is (also) local when we understand it

immediately. The passive tense points to what makes this certainty possible and what is

not always acknowledged as playing this role. The phrases “it was accepted” and “less

well known” raise the question of the subject. Who accepted that sites such as the Taj

Mahal and the Pyramids were of global value? And conversely, by whom are the new

sites coming forward less well known? Chapter 2 has demonstrated what adjudication

resembled when cultural value was hegemonically understood as universal and

universalizable, resulting in the nomination and evaluation of sites of “evident value.”

The less-well known sites are, presumably, well-known and valued by those who

nominate them. This leaves the international experts, and possibly other political actors,

as those for whom the sites are less well-known. As they possess the evaluative authority,

it is the former’s knowledge that becomes consequential to the recognition of a site’s

universal value. For the experts, this might be a straightforward lack of knowledge. For

example, an excavation can lead to the unearthing of an archeological site, such as

Gobeklitepe,168 that changes the understanding of the link between the emergence of

religion and settled societies. Once known, in the sense of coming into awareness, such a

site is easily recognizable to and through existing epistemic frameworks, even as they

challenge some of its conventions and improve its existing knowledge. Sites might also

be less well-known because they do not fit these epistemic domains, as evidenced by my

interviewee’s remark that the global value of recently nominated sites are not always easy

167 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/86. For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Taj Mahal” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/252. 168For the site of Gobeklitepe see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572.

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to pronounce. Thus, even as this sites come into awareness and become better-known,

they remain unrecognized within these epistemic frameworks as globally valuable and

significant.

This question of the local, and its translation into the universal, are taken up

differently by political actors in their objections to expert evaluations. The Delegation of Japan expressed its opinion that the evaluation of this property by the Advisory Body showed that ICOMOS does not understand local culture. It asked ICOMOS how intangible associations of people to their surroundings could be proved, and what the applicable methodology for doing so would be. (UNESCO 2007b: 164) [The Delegation of Brazil] referred to page 7 of ICOMOS’ evaluation stating that “knowledge of the Konso landscape comes from oral traditions.. but so far no reliable dates have been obtained.” The Delegation of Brazil pointed out that it was a methodological mistake on how to approach a cultural site. It asked whether one should consider that oral traditions were not a source of reliable information. It felt that there was a tendency for evaluations of cultural properties to be biased. (UNESCO 2011d: 235)

The nature of earth[en] architecture is that it will be different from place to place, so this is also the case. (Delegation of Jordan, UNESCO 2010b: 588)

In each case, the challenge to the Advisory Body’s evaluation is grounded in this

pluralizing understanding of culture, and posits the expert evaluation as inadequate at

best and biased at worst. Substantively, they point to a lack of understanding on the part

of the Advisory Body on the relevant sources of cultural value. Methodologically, they

contend that the evaluative tools of the Advisory Body do not fit the changing nature of

heritage, such as demanding proof for intangible associations (Japan and Brazil), or

expecting the architecture to manifest in standard rather than varied forms (Jordan).

These longer articulations stand against a broad background of briefer evocations. For

example, in discussions of the nomination of At-Turaif/Saudi Arabia, Bahrain pointed out

that the heritage interpretation practices criticized by ICOMOS are in conformity with the

regional cultural context, and Jamaica pointed out the importance of recognizing

indigenous cultures and their knowledge in the evaluation of the Persian Qanat, for which

Lebanon also urged for the recognition of geo-cultural specificities (UNESCO 2010b:

559 and 586, UNESCO 2016: 140-144). Similar to the longer articulations, these

substantive challenges foreground the local context of value and interpretive practices,

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indigenous cultures, geo-cultural specificities and diversity. Furthermore, New Zealand

proposed that heritage value might not be amenable to determination by scientific

methods, Barbados opposed the logic of an Advisory Body evaluation through alternative

(indigenous, traditional, or historical) sources of knowledge, and Algeria challenged the

categorical approach and philosophy of ICOMOS to heritage (UNESCO 2005e: 27,

UNESCO 2010b: 650-651, UNESCO 2012b: 12, UNESCO 2013a: 156). These criticisms

similarly concern the limitations of the evaluative tools of Advisory Bodies in relation to

particular values of culture.

The challenges posit the local as the source of value and as not necessarily

amenable to capture through the universal and universalizing languages and methods of

international experts.169 The descriptions of value and significance for the sites that get

inscribed after these interventions are similarly testament to the fracturing value at play.

The At-Turaif district is inscribed as an example of the Najdi architecture that is specific

to the center of the Arabian Peninsula,170 and the Konso cultural landscape notes the

particular engineering knowledge of the community that developed in relation to the

particular environmental conditions.171 In the case of the Konso cultural landscape, and

similarly in the Persian Qanats, it is local ingenuity and traditions that allow for cultures

169 Some of the contrast between inclusion and recognition demands are set up over the arc of my argument, between Chapter 2 and this chapter. In Chapter 2, I analyzed the Global Study as a qualitatively different approach to inclusion at the time of a hegemonic-universal. This approach to inclusion called upon experts to broaden their domain of knowledge. It did not put forth alternative actors and sources of authority. While becoming more subdued, this thread has not disappeared, and its continued expression further clarifies the shift that I trace. To illustrate, I turn to the Lebanese Delegation’s “strong recommend[ation] to ICOMOS, [that] if it did not want to be labeled as a Eurocentrist, to extend the methods applied to Europe to the other regions and to carry out a relevant study in countries like China, India or Japan” (UNESCO 2008b: 176). What gave rise to the delegation’s intervention was a global mapping exercise undertaken by ICOMOS towards improving the representativity of the List. The criticism of Eurocentrism, understood as an epistemological focus on the cultural region of Europe, was echoed by the delegations of the United Kingdom, France, Saint Lucia and Benin (Ibid.: 176-177). The demand made by Lebanon was for the extension of expert attention to areas of the world beyond Europe. In this iteration, Eurocentrism is defined as the problem of an exclusive or disproportionate focus on a geographical area, and the solution lies in the extension of the Advisory Body’s focus to other areas of the world. Such broadening is envisioned as taking place through an extension of the same methods and the production of further studies. In other words, recognition is demanded within the original terms of the field. The challenge put forth by Lebanon is therefore qualitatively different from the ones posed by Brazil and Japan, which point to the misfit between the existing methodology and a plurality of understandings of culture and cultural value. 170 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “At-Turaif District in ad-Dir’iyah” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1329. 171 For the statement of outstanding universal value for “Konso Cultural Landscape” see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1333. The Batanes Cultural Landscape of the Philippines was referred in the 2002 session. To date, it has not been inscribed.

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and civilizations to be established and to flourish. Both sites, therefore, invoke categories

of the universal such as civilizations, traditional human settlements and land-use, while

introducing to these terms specific and unique manifestations that are not immediately

recognized.

At the same time, the local that is invoked in the objections is bound at very

different scales. In the case of the Konso cultural landscape, the local is a village. The

discussions on the Persian Qanat or the At-Turaif, on the other hand, take the Middle East

as a geo-cultural region, and as such the “local context.” One way of understanding this

local is as a placeholder or signpost for the plurality of substance that emerges once the

universal conception of value recedes from the center (UNESCO 2001: 60, UNESCO

2005e: 28). We can take this analysis further. What is shared by all these scales of the

local is that they constitute the universe of value. This universe, in turn, can include

things such as intangible and spiritual associations – conceptions of cultural value

without which certain regions of the world, especially Africa, – would disappear from the

map of world heritage (UNESCO 2001: 59). The local, then, is not only a new conception

of cultural value but a way of putting on the world stage the remainders of the universal.

Both iterations of the local speak to what I have called the changing global politics of

culture, in which there is a pluralization of the conception of culture and cultural value,

and where this plurality becomes the grounds of demand-making for equal recognition

and inclusion within the world cultural order.

The second set of challenges to the authority of experts center on invocations of

representativity. States have made the case for the inclusion of a number of properties,

which were evaluated by ICOMOS as not (yet) fulfilling the criteria for inscription, on

grounds that their inclusion would contribute to the List’s representative credibility,

and/or towards the goals of the Global Strategy. The debates on the Pyu Ancient Cities,

nominated by Myanmar and inscribed in 2014, are illustrative of the forms these

arguments can take. The ICOMOS evaluation of the site, presented in summary form

during the committee discussion, concluded that while the site had potential OUV,

corresponding to criteria (iii) 172 and (iv), 173 such value had not yet been fully

172 Criterion (iii): bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.

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demonstrated and that there were outstanding questions of authenticity and integrity

(ICOMOS 2014b: 176-182). Based on this evaluation, the ICOMOS report called for the

deferral of the nomination, which requires substantive revisions to be made by the

nominating state. The Delegation of Malaysia was the first Committee member to take

the floor, after the ICOMOS presentation. The Delegation’s remarks, as reported, began

as follows:

“A lot is known about Angkor Wat and Borobudur but not enough about their antecedents. It indicated Pyu Ancient Cities filled that gap being the earliest example of Buddhist monuments and the Pali text, language and art in South East Asia. It said it had carefully looked at nomination… It called for the site to be inscribed .. and said it did not merit the report given by ICOMOS” (UNESCO 2014b: 165, emphases mine).

The Delegation invoked the lack of knowledge about early Buddhist monuments and put

forth the nomination as rectifying this lack. This intervention is within the remit of the

epistemic approach to plurality in suggesting that it is the lack of knowledge that results

in the non-recognition of the value. The intervention also employs the language of the

Global Strategy and its goals of filling gaps on the World Heritage List. The grounds of

the Delegation’s disagreement with the Advisory Body evaluation are, therefore,

compatible with the reconciliation that the regime has sought to strike between universal

value and representativity.

Conversely, “Japan supported the site’s inscription, acknowledging the symbolic

importance of the site as it would be Myanmar’s first World Heritage site,” (Ibid.: 165)

and the Delegation of Senegal “mentioned the importance of the inscription of this site

for the people of Myanmar, which would be the first site of the country inscribed on the

World Heritage List, but also a contribution to the overall strategy towards a more

balanced list illustrating the World Heritage diversity” (Ibid.: 166). These articulations

posit representativity as a value in itself and as an alternative grounds on which

inscription decisions can be made. In doing so, they exceed the epistemic compromise

between universal value and representativity, which has been a key part of the Global

Strategy (Chapter 3), and which received its final articulation with the 2002 Budapest

173 Criterion (iv): be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.

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declaration that described the World Heritage List as “a representative and

geographically balanced testimony of cultural and natural properties of outstanding

universal value.”174 In this compromise, OUV sets the grounds and limits on which

representativity can be pursued. The interventions by Japan, Senegal and other similar

ones,175 conversely, take representativity as the grounds of inscription at the detriment of

universal value, if necessary.176

The interventions on behalf of representativity employ the terminology of

“credibility,” which links the exercise of authority within the regime with the authority of

the regime itself. Credibility, as already and officially invoked by the regime, has been

pursued as a strategic goal that since 2002, and in connection to both representativity and

universal value. However, invoked as part of the push for representative inscriptions,

credibility works differently than its official adoption. This push is grounded in an

understanding of the object of governance as intricately connected to recognition on the

world stage. It posits this understanding as an alternative grounds for the proper exercise

of authority. Such exercise of authority produces a World Heritage List that is credible

and, in turn, constitutes the regime itself as a credible authority, because it is able to

represent the diversity of the world’s cultural heritage. This conception of the proper

exercise of authority stands in contrast to the regime’s original approach. Grounded in an

understanding of cultural heritage as universally recognizable and valuable, the original

approach posited the proper exercise of authority as scientific-technical evaluations of

174 See https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1217/. (Accessed on 20 May 2019). 175 Similar arguments have been put forth for the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests in Kenya and the Jantar Mantar astronomical observation site in Jaipur, India. In the case of Jantar Mantar, the Delegation of South Africa argued that the inscription of the observatory would add “credibility to develop a more representative list” (UNESCO 2010b: 606). In the case of the Kaya forest, the interventions supporting inscription referred to the Global Strategy, and the remarks made by the Delegation of Kenya after the inscription framed it as “an indicator for the Committee’s will to correct the imbalances of the past.” (UNESCO 2008b: 220-222 and 223) This is an evidently political approach, grounded in both representation and the rectification of past exclusions. Importantly, these include exclusions produced by the past governance of culture, within and beyond the regime. 176 This does not mean that interventions grounded in representativity cannot also invoke OUV. For example, as part of the discussions on outstanding universal value, the Delegation of Egypt “recalled that more than 40 States Parties possessed no world heritage properties and proposed that the current ways of applying the concept of outstanding universal value be continued at least until those State Parties each had a world heritage property.” (UNESCO 2005e: 32) However, while invoking it, this intervention acknowledges that concerns of representativity require a particular application of OUV, which might not be part of its original conception and which might significantly empty it out of this original meaning, without formally dispensing with the concept.

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this value towards a World Heritage List of truly deserving properties. In turn, the regime

would be a credible authority for the adjudication and protection of such properties.

These substantive challenges have a procedural counterpart, which moves the

focus from the “who” to the “how” of authority. To start with the more straightforward

elements, the procedural challenges to the exercise of expert authority have included

demands for increased transparency (UNESCO 2004c: 119, 2004b: 15 and 70, 2012b: 12-

15). For example, in their contribution to a 2012 high level panel discussion on the future

of the regime, India and Brazil expressed concerns for transparency and openness, asking

for the standards that are applied to the intergovernmental committee, especially with the

decision to live-stream its sessions, to be extended to the expert bodies as well (UNESCO

2012c: 41 and 82). These sentiments were echoed in the contributions of the UK and

Germany to the same meeting, with the note from the German Delegation stating that

“the decision making process of ICOMOS is not transparent” (Ibid.: 73 and 148). These

demands for transparency fit within the procedural repertoires of liberal-modern polities.

However, within the regime they also signal a subtle but important shift. The original

procedural emphasis of the regime was on the independence of expert evaluations, rather

than their transparency. This places the burden on states, as powerful and interest-driven

actors, against which the independence of scientific-technical actors and processes need

to be protected. The calls for transparency, on the other hand, posit experts as akin to

states: they are similar kinds of actors whose deliberations and decisions must be

transparent. This demand moves away from the conception of experts as a community

driven by scientific-technical and objective commitments and towards their

understanding as figures who need to give a public account of their evaluation.177

At the same time, there have been requests for a different set of relations with

Advisory Bodies, articulated as demands for dialogue. These demands for dialogue

challenge the boundaries between the political and technical authorities within the

regime, especially as they reflected in the evaluation process. As explained above, the

evaluation has been a process in which, once nominated by states, the sites entered the

177 This emphasis on independence fits Haas’ conception of epistemic communities, whereas the positioning of experts as actors that need to give an account of their exercise of authority aligns with the more recent literature that posits epistemic actors as political, strategic, and seeking authority and influence (for example, Sending 2015, Littoz-Monnet 2017c).

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realm of expert authority. There was no communication during this process, and the

Advisory Body shared its recommendation with the nominating state as well as the

members of the Committee prior to that year’s annual meeting. The separation marking

this process was criticized as causing misunderstanding of the nomination file and faulty

evaluations by the Advisory Bodies (UNESCO 2012b: 14 and 28, UNESCO 2013b: 43-

45). Dialogue was demanded as necessary to further communicate the value of the sites

and to respond to the concerns of international experts before the conclusion of the

process. The demand for dialogue arises out of and points to a context where the sites that

come to the attention of the regime are not recognizable to all participants, given a

number of divergences laid out over the course of this dissertation. In turn, it produces a

demand for a change of the boundaries between the domains of expert and state authority,

which had been set in a previous time when there was a shared rationality and co-

production of the object of governance.

I have so far has argued that the challenges to international expertise, as the

authority grounds of the world heritage regime, are rooted in a changing politics of

culture. These shifts result in divergences within the regime, mainly but not only,

between some political actors and experts, where the former challenge the evaluations of

the latter, based on cultural plurality and representation. Such challenge is substantive

and procedural. It casts the ideational and methodological approaches of international

expertise as at best inadequate and at worst biased, and demands a new set of relations

with the Advisory Bodies. I have also begun to indicate that this challenge implicates the

regime’s authority as a whole. This raises the question of what, if any, alternative actors

and procedural configurations emerge from these challenges. However, to answer that

question, we first have to turn to the continued defense of the regime’s original

conception of authority, as the alternatives emerge from these encounters.

While I have positioned my argument as contributing to cognate scholarship, an

alternative argument is presented by my interviewees: that the regime has become a

victim of its own success.178 This is an argument I have engaged with in Chapter 1. It

deserves a short reiteration here, as it relates to the objections to the regime’s scientific-

technical bases. The claim here is that as the regime grew in international prominence, its

178Interviews conducted with an expert and a civil servant on 7 March 2017 and 15 March 2017.

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reputational gains increased such that the states’ desire for these gains lead them to

undermine the foundations of the regime. My framework does not neglect this increase in

prominence, but allocates a key role to the changing global politics of culture in

accounting for why the regime became prominent and why its reputational gains are not

sought by keeping it exclusive, as in the early implementation, but rather by references to

cultural particularity and representation.

We can now add to this initial response. Undoubtedly, the regime has contributed

to its own woes, but not through its success as understood through this narrative. Rather,

the regime has contributed to its woes by the hierarchies produced by its early

implementation on the one hand, and the attempt to ameliorate these by opening up to

plurality while seeking to keep this plurality contained on the other hand. One

interviewee, thus contends that the objections to expert decisions stem partly from unmet

expectations.179 These unmet expectations refer to the regime’s inability to deliver on its

Global Strategy. As the (perceived) gatekeepers to inscription on the World Heritage List,

the experts have become directly associated with this failure and with the production of a

prominent and an exclusionary List of humanity’s heritage.180

A moment of observation from my attendance at the 2018 Committee meeting

demonstrates the implications of such association. Over the course of this meeting,

Tanzania and Uganda had criticized Advisory Body decisions on conservation for being

consistently unfavorable to the African region. During the 9th day of the Committee

meeting, which stands between the previous days’ discussions and the last day of

finalizing decision wordings, Norway took the floor to deliver an intervention on the

regime’s foundations in universal value and expertise. If the meeting records give the

substantive gist of these interventions, and the online streaming – in effect since 2012 –

allows one to hear the subsequent applause, sitting as an observer at a Committee

179 The interviewee identified the faulty nomination process as the other part of the problem, referring to the procedure where states invest in nomination dossiers without any indication on their feasibility for inscription. Interview conducted on 6 March 2017. 180 Here, the “outcome and performance” mechanism proposed by Avant et. al. has explanatory power. However, the scholars posit this as a disjuncture between what the governors promise to do and what they actually deliver. The dynamics at world heritage are different, insofar as the List was always intended to be selective, and its selectivity is now objected to via demands for representativity. As one of my interviewees put it, it is the problem of demanding inclusion from a mechanism that was always meant to be selective. (Interview conducted on 2 May 2017)

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meeting shows that this applause is not evenly distributed. While some Committee

members and observers extended their support by applauding, others remained silent.

Uganda’s intervention into this thread was as follows: “If we have to stick to objectivity

and scientific standards, and not necessarily deviat[e] from recommendations we have to

find a way of enhancing dialogue with the Advisory Bodies. Many times the work of the

Committee is taking the direction because of the unfairness in the recommendations…

Short of that, we are going to keep discussing and taking the same direction, until I don’t

know [when]..”181 This intervention met with approving nods from the Delegations of

Zimbabwe and Tanzania, which had previously withheld applause. The intervention

points to how, as the expert realm continues to and/or is perceived as producing decisions

and evaluations that disadvantage parts of the world (either excluding them from world’s

common heritage or positioning them as inadequate conservers of it), there is a turn to

other realms – such as the political – through which these concerns of representation and

co-evality are expressed and can be met because the conception of culture within the

political realm allows for it. This is not produced by the success of the regime as such,

but wanting recognition from an ever more prominent list intensifies these dynamics.

4. In Defense of International Expertise

The calls for the credibility of the regime, understood as adherence to the expert

evaluations of OUV, have been expressed almost ritualistically since the 2010 Committee

meeting that “derailed” (Chapter 3). These interventions begin as early as the opening

remarks of UNESCO’s Director General, who articulates the importance of credibility

through a mix of normative and pragmatic elements, such as the reputation of the

Convention, its effectiveness, and the broader context of cultural heritage destruction

which require the Convention to be at its best to speak out against it as a principled,

moral actor (UNESCO 2012a: 4, UNESCO 2013a: 245, UNESCO 2014b: 119). These

remarks invoke expertise, research and impartiality as the grounds of credibility. 182

181 42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 03 July 2018, recording available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/42com/records/?day=2018-07-03 (1:09:32’-1:11:00’).182 See for example, two interventions by UNESCO’s former Director General Irina Bokova: “UNESCO’s strength does not lie in its financial nor material resources – it lies in our collective commitment to uphold the highest standards. In recent years, a number of developments within the inscription process have weakened the principles of impartiality at the heart of the Convention. This is not acceptable. It is my responsibility to ring the bell” (UNESCO 2012b: 245) and “Let us be clear, these questions are posed, because a number of developments have come together to weaken the basic principles enshrined in the

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Subsequently, the Chairperson expresses the hope, as part of their opening remarks, that

the 10 days of meetings ahead will follow the letter and spirit of the Convention

(UNESCO 2011d: 3, UNESCO 2013a: 233, 2018: 7). Further on, and before they present

their site evaluations, the Advisory Bodies emphasize their adherence to rigorous

scientific standards (UNESCO 2008b: 56, UNESCO 2010b: 87 and 112, UNESCO

2012b: 89). Over the course of the Committee meeting, the Secretariat intervenes to

recall relevant rules and precedents. Since 2008, the Secretariat has also been presenting

a numerical overview of the decisions adopted, and the number of times the Committee

overturned the Advisory Bodies evaluations on the last day of the meeting. Similarly,

over the course of the 10 days, concerned states make pre-prepared or on the spot

interventions when Committee decisions depart from Advisory Body

recommendations.183

The Secretariat’s interventions focus on rule-following. 184 Two civil servant

interviewees note that as members of the Secretariat, their ability to intervene in the

regime’s implementation is limited to reminders of rules and proper procedures.185 One

of my interviewees described these interventions as follows: “We try to, as much as

possible within our own means, to keep the credibility of the whole system. We know

that once credibility is lost, everything is lost. We try to keep reminding that to State

Convention. If we fail to address them the credibility of the Convention will be thrown into doubt… [The Convention’s] supreme moral authority .. depends on “expertise, integrity, credibility, research, excellence.” (UNESCO 2014b: 249) 183 There is also precedent for such discussions to follow in concentrated form after the presentation of the “Reports of Advisory Bodies.” The 2012 discussion of ICOMOS’s report is a good demonstration of it. Here, the challenges included interventions by Mexico (calling for a more respectful approach between Advisory Bodies and States Parties, and more proactive analysis of new nominations in line with the Global Strategy), Colombia (supporting Mexico and India, and calling for more transparency in the evaluation process), South Africa (asking for more transparency and better communication), India (criticizing the categorical statements of Advisory Bodies as impolite, asking to avoid centralism in evaluation, and for more transparency and dialogue), Mexico (declaring that some expert reports include impartialities), France (asking for more transparency from experts), and Algeria (asking for reflection on methods, means and programs referring more broadly to the funding shortages at UNESCO). Conversely, Senegal pointed out the importance of advisory missions and capacity building, and Switzerland recalled that the Advisory Bodies are the stabilizing element of the Convention (UNESCO 2012b: 11-15). 184 As part of this overview, the Director of the World Heritage Center added that departures from Advisory Body decisions create additional work for the Committee, since they entail the inscription of properties for which management plans are not fully in place, and which return to the Committee as state of conservation reports much earlier than they would have, if the inscription followed proper procedures (42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 03 July 2018, recording available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/42com/records/?day=2018-07-03 (37:21’-41:20’). 185 Interviews conducted on 15 March 2017 and 4 April 2017. One interviewee noted that they also try to talk to delegations to make them aware of the consequences of their decisions.

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Parties whenever the occasion presents. Sometimes if we have a technical intervention,

we may do [so] during the Committee meetings… And really we try to make sure that all

the existing rules are followed at least.”186 Stronger interventions with a UNESCO title

are made by the Director General. Until her succession by Audrey Auzolay in 2017, the

former Director General Irina Bokova regularly took the floor to point out the

significance of the credibility of the Convention, rooted in its scientific-technical bases

(UNESCO 2012b: 249, UNESCO 2013a: 245, UNESCO 2014b: 249-251). Similarly,

Auzolay began her remarks at the opening reception of the 2018 Committee meeting by

noting the utmost importance of the credibility of the Convention, for which all parties

are responsible and which requires the implementation of the Operational Guidelines.187

Made at a higher level, these interventions also focus on rule-following, but they

foreground concerns about the authority of the regime as a whole, and connect this

concern to the regime’s ability to act in and on the world as a moral force.

In their interventions, which usually take the form of pre-prepared statements

presented prior to the discussion of site nominations, the Advisory Bodies emphasize the

rigorous scientific bases of their evaluations and their adherence to OUV. The following

presentation given by IUCN, on behalf of the three Advisory Bodies, to the General

Assembly of States Parties to the Convention is representative in its emphases: I wish to emphasize that sound science is central to the Convention. The operational guidelines oblige us to be objective, rigorous, scientific and consistent. We would not be doing our job if we were not willing occasionally to deliver difficult and even unpopular advice to this Committee. We consider this exemplary principle of separating technical from political conventions, vital, for this convention to remain credible. We are proud that the World Heritage Convention entrusts this responsibility to our networks and us. We also realise the need to provide better and earlier advice to governments who are looking for the support of the Convention to lead to more successful nominations and to more effective conservation and management. (UNESCO 2010b: 27, emphases mine)

The statement is a succinct summary of the conceptions grounding the scientific

evaluation of universal value. They are echoed in my interviews with experts as well,

who point to professional principles as a constant guiding thread, including in the

186 Interview with a civil servant conducted on 15 March 2017. 187 42nd Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, Bahrain, 23 June 2018, Opening Reception, Reconstructed from research notes.

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emergent practices of dialogue I analyze in the next section. Much like the excerpt’s

positioning of difficult and unpopular advice as a necessary outcome of proper scientific

evaluation, my interviewees remark that no rigorous evaluation can result in a hundred

percent approval as its outcome.188 The experts also recognize, in public statements and

in my interviews, the frustration that states might experience as a result of a negative

decision on a nomination file. Having expressed such recognition, however, they waver

on the potential way forward. A strong reaction is to argue that if states want their

nominations to be inscribed without fail, they need to dispense with expert evaluations all

together.189 Another response has been openness to providing earlier advice and engaging

in dialogue, which has resulted in a change in the evaluation procedure as well as the

initiation of the upstream process, both of which I analyze in the next section.

Importantly, ICOMOS has also responded to the substantive challenges to its

evaluations by pointing to the pluralizing sources of knowledge it draws from in its

evaluations. ICOMOS presentations regularly reference its “global multidisciplinary and

multicultural network of experts” (UNESCO 2011d: 16-21, UNESCO 2012b: 13,

UNESCO 2014b: 12-14). The experts comprising the evaluation panel number in the 40s

and they are chosen with consideration for the site nominations on the docket that year.

ICOMOS’ presentation of its approach is supported by an interviewee, who is not

affiliated with the Advisory Body: “So is ICOMOS with a European bias? I would be

careful to say it at this point in time. Certainly, their panels are quite diverse now.”190

However, s/he adds: “But those biases exist in many different ways and many different

levels and in each one of us also. I am biased also because of my background and my

studies and my interests. We look at things in different ways and there is also

professional bias too, to be honest with you.” 191 Put differently, the epistemic approach,

which seeks to render a pluralized conception of culture amenable to review through

centralized benchmarks and scientific study constitutes the limit to ICOMOS’ response to

188Interviews with experts conducted on 23 March 2017 and 2 May 2017. 189 Interview with an expert conducted on 16 March 2018.190 Interview with an expert conducted on 7 March 2017. 191 Interview with an expert conducted on 7 March 2017.

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substantive challenges to its authority, even as it seeks to open up its epistemic bases in

response to these challenges.192

Lastly, there are objections by a group of states to the practice of amending

ICOMOS’ evaluations. These objections call for a return to OUV and its evaluation by

experts as the regime’s proper grounds and credible implementation (UNESCO 2005e:

41, 2007b: 47, 2010b: 643, 2012c: 104, 2017: 16, 2018: 29 and 694). There is a way in

which these interventions, in their most regular form, correspond to a North/South

division. Such correspondence makes sense insofar as the particular sources of value that

become misrecognized as universal align with the former’s conceptions of culture.

However, other dynamics undercut this divide and point to complex negotiations of this

plural terrain as undertaken by all actors and not limited to objections by the global South

and defense by the North. A select number of Northern European states, such as Finland

and Norway, along with Switzerland, regularly make interventions on behalf of rule-

following. Others, such as France, who has expressed appreciation for expert reports and

the need to abide by them, has also pushed against these reports. At the same time, in

2012, a joint statement by Barbados, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Greece, Hungary, Nigeria,

the Netherlands and Slovakia asked for a return to the principles of the Convention, and

urged the Committee to “spread the message of the experts,” (UNESCO 2012b: 223) and

Saint Lucia has made multiple calls for the Committee decisions to be based on expert

foundations (UNESCO 2005e: 258, UNESCO 2011d: 23).

A few things need to be highlighted about the interventions of states on behalf of

the regime’s authority and its credible exercise. First, such interventions contribute to

keeping “OUV” in circulation and in tension with the pushback against it. Second,

however, they do not cast as illegitimate concerns of plurality and representativeness. At

the same time, they push further with criticisms of politicization than experts and civil

servants are willing to do publicly. Lastly, as the 2012 statement demonstrates, states

intervene to indicate when the renegotiation of boundaries between the political and the

epistemic spheres has exceeded what is understood as legitimate political concerns. These

192 This point has been argued at great length in Chapter 3, but the following excerpt from an interview with an expert can recapture it. In it, s/he recognized that the rigid, historical-typological approach to cultural heritage value has been dispensed with to point out that the new flexible approach to cultural heritage requires the development of frameworks and benchmarks for the adjudication of universal value (Interview conducted on 16 March 2018).

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interventions, therefore, unfold on the plural and unsettled terrain I have been charting.

They reproduce its fractures and point to possible points of convergence, such as new

boundaries and relations of authority that might produce a greater consensus, or at least a

better fit for this shifting terrain. It is to these emergent alternatives that I now turn.

5. Alternative Actors, Relations and Procedures of Authority

This chapter has analyzed the challenges to the exercise of authority within the world

heritage regime in tandem with shifting global cultural politics and as manifested in a set

of substantive and procedural criticisms of international experts and expertise. It then

reviewed the defense of this scientific-technical authority by the Secretariat, the experts

themselves and states. It is at this intersection that I turn to alternative actors, relations

and procedures of authority that emerge from these challenges and their negotiation. I

focus on local experts as a figure of authority, and a revised evaluation procedure as well

as the newly institutionalized upstream process as more dialogical processes. I contend

that these alternatives are not only demonstrative of divergences but can also provide the

possibility of their better mediation.

The figure of the local or regional expert has long been a part of the regime. They

were initially positioned as the actors that would be responsible for the protection of

world heritage sites on the ground. To this end, the World Heritage Fund allocated a

budget line for training aid and the initial years of the regime witnessed high demand for

it. These training programs took experts from, among other places, Tanzania, Ghana and

Tunisia for trainings in conservation and museology in the UK, architectural heritage

preservation in France, and architectural conservation in ICCROM, Italy.193 The training

courses aimed to equip local experts with the knowledge and skills of internationally

accepted conservation methods. Local and regional experts came to the limelight once

again with the Global Strategy (see Chapter 3). The early implementation of the Strategy

positioned local experts as possessing the best knowledge of the heritage sites in their

region (UNESCO 1995: 9). Through a series of regional meetings, international experts

193 Cultural heritage trainings were also held in Italy, Austria and Norway. Other recipients include experts from Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Haiti, Jordan, Honduras, Panama, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Senegal. For a table of trainings received by individual experts between 1979 and 1982, see “State of Implementation of technical cooperation granted under the World Heritage Fund as at 8 November 1982” (UNESCO 1982).

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communicated the expanded parameters of the regime to these experts, who were asked

to share examples of sites that might fall within the remit of OUV.

The current invocation of local experts by state delegations is qualitatively

different. We might suspect that “diffusion” of expertise, enabled by things such as

training seminars, is a part of this invocation, such as when Tanzania, Zimbabwe,

Senegal and Lebanon posited that expertise is not the prerogative of a particular region of

the world (UNESCO 2013a: 15-20). In an interview, an expert pointed to when there was

a geographic concentration of expertise in Europe, in contrast to today, when, “for

example, in Egypt there is a lot of good universities and experts in cultural heritage.”194

However, a focus on diffusion as undergirding the demand for the inclusion of local

experts misses an important dynamic. Diffusion would point to the universalization of

knowledge and methods, which would raise the question of why state delegations would

push for the inclusion of local experts, if they would produce similar evaluations of sites?

In fact, the invocations of local experts focus on the substantive differences

between them and their international counterparts. Such difference is expressed in the

negative through assertions that international experts affiliated with the Advisory Bodies

and chosen for desk studies or site visits might not possess the necessary skills for

evaluation, which require “appropriate cultural sensitivities,” “speaking the local

language” and “being aware of the local context” (UNESCO 1998a: 57, UNESCO

2008b: 147, UNESCO 2012b: 14, UNESCO 2013a: 185). In a positive framing, China

reflected early on “the important role of the national and local experts [in the monitoring

process], and their full involvement to better understand local and national knowledge,

practices and techniques” (UNESCO 1994c: 10),195 Barbados cited a study by their “own

expert group” to bring in historical, traditional or indigenous sources of knowledge

(UNESCO 2010b: 651), and Jordan similarly invoked a study carried out by a Jordanian

archeologist (UNESCO 2011d: 256). India, conversely, expressed satisfaction with the

use of regional experts for the past two years, while remaining concerned that these

194 Interview with a civil servant conducted on 6 April 2017. 195 During the same year, there was also demand for the diversification of courses, renewal of training packages and a focus on ethics and philosophy of conservation. These demands point to a time of epistemic unsettling, producing a desire to discuss ethics and philosophy of conservation – that is the epistemic basis on which the actions are undertaken, rather than the state of the art methods in stone conservation – the actions themselves (UNESCO 1994b: 34).

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experts’ comments were not incorporated in the final evaluation (UNESCO 2014b: 13).

These expressions point to local experts as possessing the necessary local and contextual

knowledge to be able to make value judgments. These value judgments, of course, are

proper vis-à-vis a conception of culture that is contextually constituted and valuable.

We might suspect that states want “local experts” to be included in the process so

that their nominations receive more favorable reviews. And indeed, the lack of

understanding attributed to international experts are associated with negative evaluations.

However, equating this demand with the politicization of a formerly neutral and rules-

based governance regime misses a key element, captured in a 2010 report by Jad Tabet, a

long-time expert member of the Delegation of Lebanon. Tabet’s report found that for the

2006-2008 period, experts from the Europe-North America region composed 59% of the

ICOMOS panel for the evaluation of world heritage sites , as compared to 19% from the

Asia-Pacific, 13% from Latin America-Caribbean, 8% from Africa and 1% from Arab

states (UNESCO 2011c: 41, fn 108). Put differently, the “international” experts have

always been “local” experts for some.

Thus, I do not argue that there are no politics involved in the push for local

experts, but rather that such politics cannot be understood as a transition from a technical

to a politicized regime. Rather, with the pluralization of cultural value, international

experts become perceived as inadequate in their sources of knowledge and tools. One can

think of this as a process in which the international experts are also revealed as “local” in

their sensibilities and familiarities, as waning hegemonies reveal the particulars that

undergird putative universals and constitute their limits. It is also on this grounds of

pluralization that the skills and knowledge of local experts in conservation methods as

well as their socio-cultural affinity and familiarity are foregrounded. Since these demands

by states remain as invocations of a figure rather than concrete examples, and the experts

that take part in ICOMOS evaluations are kept anonymous, clear distinctions of who

would qualify as a local vs. international expert, based on training, qualifications etc. is

not easy to make. What is clear, however, is that these groups are substantively set apart

through their ability to conduct evaluations based on their fluency in international-

knowledge vs. those that are contextual and not always formalized into epistemic

domains. At the same time, if substantive difference is foregrounded, this is accompanied

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by procedural similarities. The experts are invoked as carrying out or able to carry out

activities such as desk studies, site visits and evaluation of nominations. With this added

similarity, local experts are better understood as liminal figures straddling the boundaries

of the epistemic and political uptakes of plurality. They are likely to be aware of global

epistemic networks into which they are trained. But this is not the only grounds of their

training, knowledge and familiarity.

In fact, this liminality is not lost on international experts, who point to expert

members of state delegations as their preferred interlocutors in newly initiated processes

of dialogue. However, in their perception, local experts are not suspended between

different sources of knowledge, but rather between their epistemic grounding and their

embeddedness in local political circumstances. 196 It might be the case, then, that

international experts need to further allow for how these alternative sources of knowledge

might interact with and at times contradict knowledge that is understood as universal, and

make room for the possibility that local experts are not simply stuck in their local

political circumstances but identify with such circumstance. Ideally, this would produce

reflection by international experts on the ways in which they too are embedded in their

local, which has been able and willing to posit itself as universal.

For the states, the ultimate test would be whether they abide by the decisions of

local experts, and if not, what would be the grounds of such objection. Until then,

however, there is the question of why states push for local experts rather than challenge

the claims to international expertise as such. This brings us to the limits of the shifting

global politics of culture, concerning its challenges to old hierarchies and the new ones it

generates. In positioning local experts as alternatives to an exclusive universalism, this

juxtaposition does not go far enough in demonstrating the fictitiousness of this universal,

and it potentially establishes an authentic particular in contradistinction to it. I say

potentially, insofar as these demands remain at the level of invocations and do not yet

attach to particular actors, who have been brought into the regime as local experts. Thus,

while local experts emerge from this context of plurality, their ability to mediate it would

depend on their recognition as liminal actors with dual fluencies with the potential to

196 Interviews conducted with international experts on 23 March 2017 and 2 May 2017.

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reveal new overlaps between divergent conceptions of culture in circulation within the

regime and thus facilitate the re-bounding of the domains of expertise and politics.

The boundaries of expert authority are also challenged through demands for

dialogue.197 These demands resulted in a change to the evaluation procedure in 2016,

which involves the addition of an intermediary step. Since then, based on its initial

evaluation of the nomination dossier, ICOMOS sends an interim report to the States

Parties, asking for clarification and/or additional information (UNESCO 2017: 32), and it

meets with the nominating state. One expert identified these meetings as a chance to

make sure “they are understanding the nomination correctly,”198 and to get a better sense

of the local conditions and constraints. While it is too early to tell if this new process will

change sedimented challenges to expert authority, it has resulted in multiple expressions

of appreciation by States Parties during the presentation of the Advisory Body reports in

2017 (UNECO 2017: 28-34).

A longer standing procedure is the Upstream Process, which was launched with

pilot projects in 2010 and officially integrated into the Operational Guidelines in 2015.

The World Heritage Center describes the Upstream process as aimed at responding to

challenging nominations, whereas Advisory Bodies and States Parties define the goal as

decreasing the number of unsuccessful nominations.199 The Upstream Process is expected

to achieve these goals through the provision of advance support in the form of advice,

consultation and analysis to the states by the World Heritage Center and the Advisory

Bodies. The process, therefore, focuses on and responds to the relational challenge of

authority to ameliorate the substantive one. The 2016 report on the ten pilot studies

launched within the Upstream Process noted mixed levels of success, with three

inscriptions, five sites advancing at various paces through the process, one phased out

197 A procedural demand, focused on the authority of states, was made by India to overturn the provision prohibiting states from speaking on behalf of their nominated sites. This rule allows states to take the floor only in response to specific questions from the Committee. It resulted in practices such as Committee members inviting the nominating states to comment on the Advisory Body evaluation. India’s push for the removal of this rule was articulated in terms of enabling the more transparent running of the regime, accompanied with the remark that some level of advocacy is a normal part of all UN institutions (UNESCO 2013a: 34 and 173, UNESCO 2013b: 37). 198 Interview with an international expert conducted on 2 May 2017. 199 The Advisory Bodies insist that the process is not a guarantee of inscription. Rather, it allows the provision of new forms of advice to states earlier on in the nomination process (UNESCO 2011b: 2, 2014a: 1, 2015b: 1, 2016b: 1).

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nomination and one nomination where, after the state changed their pilot site upon

ICOMOS’s evaluation, no further progress was observed (UNESCO 2016b: 1-3). As

previously mentioned, the Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road is one of the sites that went through

this Upstream Procedure, and it has been presented as a good practice.

In practice, the Upstream Process is simple: states fill out an application for the

site that they would like to be considered for it. They are encouraged to initiate the

process as early as possible and to preferably receive Advisory Body before the

nomination file is prepared. The file prepared after such input is submitted for evaluation,

like all other site nominations and goes through the same procedure. At the same time,

there is ambiguity to this process. A set of concerns focus on the extension of Advisory

Body authority, as articulated by Senegal’s objection that they should not be supervising

the preparation of files and that their tutoring should not be compulsory. In response,

ICOMOS pointed out that the process is voluntary and Namibia underlined, as a former

recipient of upstream advice, that the Center and the Advisory Body provided fair advice,

did not exceed their functions, and offered guidance rather than instructions.

Another, and more regularly expressed hesitance concerns the doubling role of

Advisory Bodies as “judge and jury,” or “player and referee.” This has been expressed as

a potential conflict of interest by Germany, Portugal, India, Senegal, China and

Algeria.200 For instance, Algeria inquired whether an Advisory Body can give a negative

evaluation on a nomination for which it has provided consultation. At the same time, the

United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Lebanon, Indonesia, Switzerland, India, Mexico and Japan

have expressed support for the upstream process as a positive development for

nominations.201 Lastly, in my interviews, one civil servant and one expert noted the

tendency of the states to approach the Upstream Process as a guarantee of inscription.

200 For the debates on the “Progress Report on the Upstream Process” during the 36th Committee meeting see: (UNESCO 2012b: 232-235). For the debates on the Upstream Process within the framework of the Global Strategy during the 38th Committee meeting see: (UNESCO 2014b: 98-105).201 These expressions are part of the debates during the 36th and 38th Committee meetings, as cited in UNESCO 2012 and 2014. Indonesia reiterated that it had benefited positively from the process during the 41st Committee meeting (UNESCO 2017: 28). At the same meeting, Zimbabwe commended the upstream work carried out for sites in Togo and Kenya (Ibid.: 30). With the codification of the process into the Operational Guidelines, the positive evaluation of it has not subsided. However, there have been further interventions on the need to clarify its proper procedures, scope and priorities (UNESCO 2017: 359).

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These mixed reactions become meaningful if we position the Upstream Process

with regard to the two approaches to culture and the attendant relations of authority that

this chapter has explored. On the one hand, the Upstream Process takes into account the

states’ demands for increased dialogue, and extends the available expertise in a

consultative rather than evaluative capacity. This challenges the original boundaries of

authority: with states on the nomination side and experts on the evaluation side.

However, the Upstream Process does not obviate the evaluative element. It is, thus,

neither the conception of a plural culture, to be evaluated on its own terms, nor the

independent expert evaluations of a putatively universal value. While this hybrid form

has generated confusion and discussion, it has also generated positive responses from

multiple actors. For states, the process can provide the opportunity to get expert advice

that might not be domestically available and that might be found as desirable or relevant.

It can also allow states to test the waters with Advisory Bodies before embarking on a

lengthy and costly nomination preparation process. For the Advisory Bodies, the process

gives the chance to comment on the sites before they become nomination files and to

dispel criticisms of misunderstanding or lack of communication.

6. Conclusion: Authority in and of World Heritage

I have argued that contestations of the exercise of authority within the world heritage

regime are connected to the changing meaning and role of culture in global politics. In a

context where the participants in the regime do not share a conception of the object of

governance and the ends to which it should be governed, international experts, who were

previously recognized as proper authorities, come to be seen as inadequate at best and

biased at worst. This has bearing on the ability of the regime to constitute itself as an

authority on the identification of universally valuable sites of human heritage that deserve

international cooperation for its protection.

If one follows the argument to this point, a few questions arise to which this

conclusion provides answers at different levels of conclusiveness based on the processes

at play. First, if and how have these emergent alternatives ameliorated the challenges of

authority within the regime? Second, what kind of an authority does the regime emerge

as from these challenges and transformations? Third, if global governance regimes are

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world order-making, what is the ordering produced by it? And fourth, what does this

mean for the possibilities of governance in a pluralizing world order?

The answer to the first question is the most provisional, since the new

mechanisms have been in place for only two Committee sessions and they face a long-

standing background of sedimented grievances, strained relations and changing global

politics. The 41st (2017) and 42nd (2018) Committee sessions included both expressions

of appreciation for the changed evaluation procedure and the Upstream Process,

alongside further demands for the inclusion of local experts, and changes to the

evaluation procedures on grounds of diversity (UNESCO 2017: 28-30, UNESCO 2018:

39, 45 and 59). The ensuing debates on the inscriptions also present a mixed picture. On

the one hand, a number of Advisory Body evaluations were amended – 50% and 41%

respectively (see footnote 2). On the other hand, the grounds for such amendment

involved fewer invocations of misunderstanding. An exception was the discussion of

ǂKhomani Cultural Landscape, nominated by South Africa, where multiple members of

the Committee, including the Delegation of Finland –well-known for letting its experts

take center stage during the discussions and for its interventions in support of the

scientific-technical basis of the regime– remarked that ICOMOS misinterpreted the

nomination file because it misunderstood the difference between the San and the

ǂKhomani San people (UNESCO 2017: 259-263). At the same time, during the 2018

meeting, expressions of grievance about misunderstanding and prejudice were attached to

the State of Conservation reports and the decisions to keep properties on the World

Heritage in Danger List (UNESCO 2018: 94 and 695).

Beyond this case, rather than focusing on misunderstanding on the part of

Advisory Bodies, the interventions combined arguments of representativeness and

multiculturalism, and a more recent thread of shared contemporary problems of

humanity, further reflecting the regime’s connection to the broader global political

moment. A striking example of this was Kuwait’s opening intervention on the discussion

of Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahsa Oasis, for which the Advisory Body had given an evaluation

of non-inscription. Starting its remarks with the assertion that “many countries do not

understand the vital importance simply because they have never historically faced harsh

climates or do not have such large desert areas to cross,” the Delegation concluded that

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the nominated site has OUV because it is “outstanding in its own survival through the

worst climate possible with dust and high temperatures; universal in giving life through

the numerous people and cultures who passed through for over a thousand years; values

in the antiquities that are still preserved” (UNESCO 2018: 388). The ensuing

interventions tied the oasis to unique, regional importance on the one hand, and

positioned it as globally comprehensible through the shared problem of climate change

on the other. What gave the site its OUV was this intersection: a traditional-sustainable

approach to a problem that is becoming global.

At the same time, the 2018 meeting produced heated debates in the case of

nominations from Europe. The next chapter turns in detail to one such nomination, as it

falls within the remit of divisive sites. Three other sites, nominated by Italy, France and

Germany, and receiving unfavorable decisions, also resulted in extensive debates. The

nomination by Germany, which had previously received two non-inscription evaluations,

was presented by ICOMOS without a recommendation. In all three cases, the Global

Strategy was cited by ICOMOS to note the over-representation of Roman towns (Nimes,

France), vineyards (Prosecco, Italy), and Christian architecture (Naumburg Cathedral,

Germany) on the List. The discussion on Nimes was short, with some support for its

OUV, comments on the site not being exceptional amongst Roman towns, and a decision

to abide by the ICOMOS’s deferral decision. The vineyards, conversely, led to a long

discussion, where the site’s value was grounded in the labor of farm workers, and the

spread of their practices through immigration. The site’s decision, subsequently moved

from non-inscription to referral. The key intervention in the case of the Naumburg

Cathedral, came from the Delegation of Zimbabwe, who argued that the lack of courage

shown in the implementation of the Global Strategy should not result in the non-

inscription of a site with OUV. While the Delegation of Germany thanked the committee,

both France and Italy expressed their dissatisfaction with the decision, contending that it

would not happen to other states (UNESCO 2018: 493-503, 506-522, and 566-583).

Since these dynamics are also novel, it is important to be cautious in drawing

further conclusions. But, a few initial observations can be made. First, plurality is not

something that only attaches to certain cultures that represent the “diverse” or “the local,”

but rather becomes a terrain on which all actors operate. Second, changing politics of

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culture are evidenced in the ways in which support was lent to the vineyards on grounds

of local traditions of labor and its immigration in contrast to the greater hesitancy around

a Roman town, reflective of the former hegemony. Third, and crucially, insofar as this is

a plural terrain that remains fraught between the terms of the previous hegemony and

emergent conceptions of cultural value, decisions that disregard one for the other will

raise objections from those who continue to subscribe to its terms. The states are as

complicit in this as the original ideational-institutional setup of the regime. Furthermore,

states are not only complicit because they subscribe to universalist conceptions of culture,

such as the case with France, but also because they remain haunted by this universal as a

stage of recognition in their counter-hegemonic politics of culture.

There is, of course, little that the reconfiguration of actors and relations of

authority within the regime can do by way of resolving these broader political tensions,

whatever such resolution might mean. However, pluralizing the actors and reconfiguring

relations of authority can ease some of the pressure on the exercise of authority,

especially in terms of its perception as biased. It will not bring discussions rooted in

different conceptions of culture to an end, but this might not be a bad thing in moving the

regime towards plural grounds. At the moment, the regime remains an authority that is

torn between its universalist and representational aspirations.

What is the ordering of cultural heritage produced by this authority? As Mechtild

Rössler, the Director of the World Heritage Centre, expressed in her concluding remarks

at the 2018 committee meeting, the World Heritage List began with the inscription of

iconic sites and moved onto a diverse list, with continued aspirations – including from

local communities (UNESCO 2018: 736). If the regime could at first authoritatively

(re)produce a cultural world, in line with the hegemonic cultural-history of civilizations,

the List no longer reads neatly. Rather, and as indicated in Chapter 3, it is a diverse list

structured by desires for particular kinds of recognition on the world stage, shaped by the

past and present politics of ordering cultural difference.

Once again, the normative question is whether this is a better governance of

global culture than before – especially if it is more inclusive, but the grounds of such

inclusion might be productive of new hierarchies or totalities? My answer is a qualified

yes, for reasons that will become clearer in the next chapter. It is a qualified yes, because

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this terrain of fractious plurality can allow for more actors to enter the world stage and for

debates that reveal and shift the contours of legitimate global cultural politics. It is a

qualified yes also because the previous decades of world ordering of culture have made it

a salient and contested domain, in which an international authority can provide the stage

for the negotiation of some of these grievances. These grievances, in turn would not

disappear, if the world heritage regime did. However, there is no guarantee that the

regime will negotiate and not leave unchanged or worse exacerbate these contestations.

Such possibilities are closely tied to the regime’s ideational-institutional infrastructure.

Lastly, if expertise has played a key role in constituting liberal global governance

as authoritative, this analysis has implications beyond the scope of the regime and for the

constitution of authority in divided global political contexts. In such contexts, a common

conception of an object of governance might not be easily emerging or a previously

existing script might be fracturing.202 An analytical shift from a categorical approach to

expertise, as a particular kind of authority, to the different object-rationalities at work

provides us with new traction. For instance, what is at stake might not be a categorical

lack of respect for expert authority, often traced to the political cultures of non-liberal

states and in contrast to the gravity of expert knowledge in Western liberal democracies.

Rather, what constitutes proper expertise in terms of knowledge sources and its relations

to other actors has varied across time, space and policy area. The analytic framework of

co-production can be expanded beyond experts and political actors to understand a

broader range of authority conflicts in and about global governance. My analysis suggests

that in cases where a common rationality is lacking, a continued push for a universal

script might be counterproductive, and result in further fractures of authority in and of

regimes. On the contrary, a pluralization of the sources of value can allow competing

conceptions to exist under the same broad signpost.

202 For instance, Hurrell (2007) describes environmental governance as an area that lacks a common script. One can also think of the post-1990s debates within the humanitarian sector, concerning its relation to the political sphere, as another instance where the shared script and its claims to the universal were unsettled (Barnett 2011).

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Chapter V: Divisive Sites and World-Historical Renegotiations

“Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogenous, empty time.”(Walter Benjamin 1942) “For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” (Walter Benjamin 1942)203 1. Introduction

In many ways, the 42nd World Heritage Committee meeting, held in Bahrain on 24 June-4

July 2018 was (what has become) business as usual. Numerous state delegations, expert

members of the three Advisory Bodies, the UNESCO Secretariat, and a large group of

academic, civil society and grassroots observers made their way to Manama for the 10-

day long meeting, which would take the implementing decisions of the regime. These ten

days included the recurrent discussions of the budget deficit, the objections by states to

their sites being placed on the World Heritage in Danger List, and the negotiation of

international experts’ evaluation of sites. At the same time, however, the discussion of

site nominations was marked by an adjournment decision on “The Funerary and

Memorial Sites of the First World War (Western Front)” submitted jointly by France and

Belgium. It was the ICOMOS evaluation that broke protocol and asked for postponement,

rather than giving one of its four categories of decisions. This was agreed to by the state

delegations following some discussion. ICOMOS’ request was grounded in two

concerns: the misfit of sites with divisive and negative memories with the spirit of the

Convention, and the precedent that the decision on the Funerary Sites would set for other

similar sites that are on the tentative lists of 10 states at the moment.204 This broader

background, against which the Advisory Body’s call stood, was manifested in two side-

events: the launch of the report “Interpretation of Sites of Memory,” commissioned by

203 Both excerpts are from Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. 204 As enumerated in the ICOMOS Discussion Paper “Evaluation of World Heritage Nominations related to Sites Associated with Memories of Recent Conflicts,” these are Cuito Cuanavale (Angola), Former Clandestine Centre of Detention, Torture and Extermination (Argentina), Taraffal Concentration Camp (Cabo Verde), the Landing Beaches of Normandy (France), Mamayev Kurgan Memorial Complex “To the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad” (Russian Federation), Genocide Memorial Sites: Nyamata, Murambi, Bisesero and Gisozi (Rwanda), the Walk of Peace from the Alps to the Adriatic – Heritage of the First World War (Slovenia), Canakkale (Dardanelles) and Gelibolu (Gallipoli) Battle Zones in the First World War (Turkey). (ICOMOS 2018b: 16-25).

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the World Heritage Center and funded by the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of

Korea, and the Nelson Mandela Centenary Celebration, which demonstrated the political

will behind the pending nominations of the African Liberation Heritage Sites. In both

events, ICOMOS raised the same concerns of the goals and spirit of the Convention.

These “divisive sites,” which present another and in some ways more recent,

challenge to the regime’s foundations, are the focus of this chapter. However, in grouping

and analyzing their significance, I approach these sites differently from ICOMOS. I do so

with the aid of an alternative terminology –dissonant sites– put forth by scholars in the

fields of heritage management and archeology. Especially as explicated by Meskell

(2002), this designation points to how particular sites and the narratives attached to them

become dissonant in relation to dominant identity constructions. The identity construction

of concern to me is that of the world order. This informs the cases that I focus on: the

Hiroshima Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome, the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site (hereafter

“Bikini Atoll site”), the African Liberation Heritage Sites, and Sites of Japan’s Meiji

Industrial Revolution. The first two sites challenge the narrative of nuclear peace – that

the use of atomic bombs ended World War II and started an era of global peace

maintained through nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. The African Liberation

Heritage Sites unsettle the story of decolonization in general, and the end of the apartheid

in particular, as unfolding through demands for universal rights and freedoms and the

international community’s gradual but progressive recognition of the equal humanity of

all. At the same time, through this alternative account, they put forth different visions of

what makes international cooperation possible. The Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites

(hereafter “Meiji sites”) cuts at the question of order differently, by showing how the

waning hegemony of the world order’s ideational bases and the historiography that

undergirds it, result not only in global but also in regional renegotiations that are

structured by these broader dynamics. Importantly, however, this site also illustrates how

the regime might be able to facilitate such renegotiation.

These sites are not only dissonant with the order, but also push against the

regime’s aim of fostering peaceful global relations through a focus on progressive and

productive histories of humanity. This is the main tension identified by the ICOMOS

expert. However, I argue that the issue is more complex. On the one hand, as Chapter 1

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showed, world heritage sites have been connected to histories of socio-political

consolidation and attendant moments of violence, such as imperial wars. Thus, the World

Heritage List has rather focused on alternative histories of sites, in the process sidelining

or casting as productive histories of power and hierarchy. The first tension, therefore, is

the recognition demands made for precisely these histories. However, this too has

happened before, in the early nominations of the Island of Gorée and the Auschwitz-

Birkenau concentration camp. However, these sites were presented and inscribed as

exceptions and as testament to lessons learned and progress of humanity. Dissonant sites

and their narratives challenge such narrative casting, precisely because they challenge

existing ideas of such peace and progress. The third tension, in turn, points to the intricate

connection between the dominant historiographies of the order and the regime’s

aspiration to a shared humanity. A focus on reconciliation and progress around these sites

through putative universals ends up reproducing the order’s historiographies and

marginalizes other narratives, insofar as such universals share ideational grounds with

historiographies of the order. This includes, not the least, ideas of a liberal-progressive

history of humanity and the belief in interdependence and cooperation as the path to

global peace. The sites that are dissonant with the order’s historiographies, therefore,

present a different kind of challenge to the regime’s universalist grounds.

To build this argument, I compare my cases with the inscriptions of the

Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)

(hereafter “Auschwitz-Birkenau”), the Island of Gorée, and the suspended nomination of

the Funerary Sites. This comparison demonstrates that at stake with dissonant sites is not

only their connection to recent conflicts, but how they narrate such conflict, and whether

such narration allows them to be incorporated within the universal arc of progress and

gradual reconciliation. However, once again, the link is not unidirectional. If these sites

challenge the dominant histories of the world order, their emergence on the stage of the

world heritage regime are grounded in shifts within that order. In turn, they demonstrate

how the aspiration towards a universal history of humanity is at best inattentive to and at

worst reproductive of the hierarchies of dominant narratives. Again, the question

becomes whether the alternative narratives that unsettle hegemonic world histories are

themselves more inclusive or plural. With the caveat that we need to attend to the relation

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between historical injustices and plurality, I argue that the pluralizing terrain on which

these recognition demands are made allows for multiple narratives to make it to the stage

of the regime, and push back on the exclusions of newly emergent histories.

This chapter, then, operates at the space between the two epigraphs by Benjamin.

The “present” at stake is that of the world order, which grows out of its past, constructed

through a selection of events and their particular narration that ground, legitimize and

construct the identity of this order as peaceful and liberal. I add to this close relation the

question of the future. Not only is the present in an intricate relation to what it considers

as its past, shifts in this present result in renegotiations of the past, which reframe the

present towards other future possibilities. The planned nominations of African Liberation

Heritage sites, for example, return to events of political imprisonments, pan-African

struggles and solidarities and tie these to possibilities of cooperation. This recasts the

present, not as a progressive expansion of rights but rather as the aftermath of contentious

struggles, where the latter rather than the former have made cooperation a possibility. If,

as the second epigraph suggests, such images were previously threatened with

disappearance because they were not recognized by the present, their excavation make a

claim on the present. The regime intervenes in this moment through its method of

universal history. Such method is additive as it collects events across time and space to

construct a long, historical arc of humanity. This addition, however, takes place under the

shadow of the present and its dominant narratives. Thus, as the armature of universal

history proceeds to fill what it posits as homogenous, empty time, it in fact reproduces a

time bound by the narratives that determine which pasts are relevant, near, distant and

ultimately, passed – and why.

The chapter proceeds as follows: First, I turn briefly to the discussions of

dissonant heritage to outline a key concept for this chapter’s analysis. This conceptual

discussion points not only to how sites become dissonant, but also the strategies

employed by the authors of dominant identity narratives to deal with them. Second, I

review the inscriptions of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Island of Gorée, and the

discussions around the Funerary Sites to show how sites with painful memories can be

inscribed on the List under a specific set of circumstances. This recognition, in fact,

marked the framing of the Funerary Sites, and its defense by France and Belgium during

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the Committee meeting. Third, I analyze the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which

constitutes the first dissonant site on the List, as evidenced by the dissociations of the

United States and China. At the same time, the limits of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial

as an alternative universal become evident through my next case, the Bikini Atoll Site,

which puts the “remainders” of the nuclear peace narrative on the stage. The fifth section

turns to the African Liberation Heritage Sites, to demonstrate that these contentions are

not limited to the narrative of nuclear peace or to the Asia-Pacific region. Sixth and last, I

analyze the debates around the Meiji sites, nominated by Japan and contested by South

Korea for its exclusion of the Korean forced labor. I include this case to further

demonstrate the relation between the world order and the emergence of these alternative

historical claims, but more importantly, also to analyze what might be a possible and

desirable role for the world heritage regime in this changing context.

2. Dissonant Sites, and the Re-adjudication of the Past/Present/Future

As Chapter 2 pointed out, world heritage is grounded in a progressive and reconciliatory

history of humanity, manifested in outstanding civilizational-cultural production, and

adopted in contradistinction to nationalistic histories of conflict. The oversight of conflict

or competing narratives is not accidental or incidental to this historiography. Rather, it

manifests the conviction that the world history of a shared humanity can be fostered

through focusing on accord, rather than engaging with histories of discord. Chapter 2 has

flagged some implications of this focus, reiterated above, as histories of hierarchy and

conflict that undergird monumental cultural production have been rendered secondary to

the inherent value of these awe-striking sites. The sites in focus here challenge such

interpretive framing, as they foreground contentious histories.

Whereas the world heritage regime has focused on the production of a reconciled

universal, scholarship in the domains of heritage management and archeology has

analyzed the dissonance that surround and become manifested through heritage sites. The

concept received its seminal treatment in Tunbridge and Ashworth’s Dissonant Heritage:

The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (1996). The authors begin by

positing heritage as a product of the present –understood from today’s conditions – and as

defined by a legatee – all heritage belongs to some and as a result not to others (1996: 6).

They locate dissonance in this question of legatee, and thus, as inherent to heritage.

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However, they distinguish between this inherent and mundane form of dissonance and

other, more critical forms tied to political transitions and histories of atrocity. The

examples include the dissonance of colonial heritage in postcolonial contexts and the

Soviet heritage in post-Soviet countries (Ibid.: 84, 94-128 and 223-263). This account

points to the mammoth – if not impossible – task that the world heritage regime set for

itself in transporting sites that are inherently tied to a time, place and people to the

domain of the global by re-inscribing their value, significance and in fact, their legatee, as

universal. Furthermore, the distinction that the authors make between mundane and

critical kinds of dissonance get us closer to understanding why this attempt becomes

more explicitly fraught in certain cases.

Having established these links between heritage and the renegotiation of the past

from a changed present, the authors partially change track in their discussion of

dissonance reduction. They propose two potential management strategies as “inclusivity”

and “minimalism” (Ibid.: 21 and 271). Minimalism limits heritage to sites that can

generate shared understanding, i.e. only natural heritage in the case of postcolonial

Africa, whereas inclusivity makes room for divergent interpretations. We might think of

the former approach as coming close to what the world heritage has been attempting to

do, not only through focusing on sites with positive memories, but also emphasizing

positive aspects of sites.205 The latter is what the regime has been haphazardly moving

towards, and what needs to become a purposeful approach. Alongside these two

proposals, and constituting the partial track change, Tunbridge and Ashworth emphasize

market segmentation as a possible path to assuaging this dissonance, grounded on the

approach to heritage as driven primarily by touristic consumption demands (Ibid.: 23 and

271). The universalism of the heritage regime, however, creates a counterforce against

the release of pressure that such fragmentation can provide – and, we might add, the

nomination of sites for international recognition also forgoes this route.

In “Negative Heritage and Past Mastering,” Meskell (2002) sharpens the political

crux of dissonant heritage. Meskell defines what she calls negative heritage, and what I

205 As the Interpretation of Sites of Memory Report analyzes, there are sites on the World Heritage List, which were not nominated for their memorial aspects, and for which the inscription as world heritage has resulted in insufficient attention to these aspects as part of the site’s significance (International Coalition of Sites of Conscience 2018: 21).

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will call dissonant heritage following Tunbridge and Ashworth, as sites that evoke

painful memories and sites that do not fit within a dominant project of identity

construction (2002: 564 and 571). Thus, if Tunbridge and Ashworth distinguish between

inherent and divisive dissonance, Meskell opens up conceptual space to think about

negative sites in a two-fold manner. This helps further parse the categorization ICOMOS

operates with and the one that I foreground. For ICOMOS, divisive sites are negative

sites primarily in the first sense: they are sites of (recent) conflicts, which are connected

to negative memories of loss and destruction, perceived differently by the parties

involved. But ICOMOS’s response to these sites also invokes the second sense, by

pointing out that their nomination challenges the grounds of the regime: its process of

constructing an identity of shared humanity. However, the inscriptions of Auschwitz-

Birkenau and the Island of Gorée, suggest that something else it at work. My usage of

dissonant sites foregrounds the second meaning. These are sites that have negative

memories attached to them. However, the dissonance arises when this loss is and is

framed through a narrative that is in tension with the dominant identity project. Here, the

dominant identity project can be understood as that of the world order and the world

heritage regime, where the former identifies itself as maintaining peace and prosperity,

and the latter constructs the social fabric of these relations through a particular

conception of shared humanity. Thus, it is sites that challenge the dominant identity

projects associated with the world order that present greater trials of dissonance.

These sites, Meskell points out, raise the question of past mastering: “what is to

be done with dissonant heritage, heritage that does not conform to prevailing norms or

sites that are inherently disturbing?” (Ibid.: 566) She points to a range of responses that

are adopted by way of such mastering. These include eliding, reinterpreting or physical

erasure, when the dissonance cannot be rehabilitated or accommodated. Eliding

overlooks the existence of such sites, reinterpreting tries to bring them within the remit of

prevailing norms by re-narrating their significance, and lastly, physical erasure includes

acts such as the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan (Ibid.). Within this

range, the world heritage regime engages in a mix of elision and reinterpretation. It

focuses on both positive sites and reinterprets sites’ significance by foregrounding the

positive and productive rather than the negative and destructive. Another key interpretive

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strategy of the regime is to inscribe negative sites as exceptional, and to emphasize

themes of progress and reconciliation. In contrast to the strategies she enumerates,

Meskell points to the Australian Burra Charter, as a heritage approach that recognizes

conflicting cultural values, considers ceding control and ownership in particular instances

– especially when the legatees express past or present marginalization and injustice, and

as one that engages with the coexistence of different viewpoints towards a possible

resolution of conflict (Ibid.: 570). As the case study of the Meiji Sites demonstrates, this

is the direction to which the world heritage regime has recently moved, albeit partially

and haphazardly.

To sum, the identity construction of concern to me is that of the post-World War

II order as one that has pursued and maintained peace and prosperity. Recently nominated

sites, which are dissonant with this narrative, bring into purview events that have been

marginalized from such historiography. These alternative histories do not act as

retrospective amendments but challenge the self-description of the order, and implicate

its possible futures. On the stage of the regime, these sites and their narratives, implicate

its ideational configuration, focused on a progressive universal history to generate mutual

understanding and peaceful relations. As they challenge the regime’s ideational bases,

these sites also facilitate the emergence of new approaches, such as the Sites of Memory

report, which carry the possibility to better engage with this divergent plurality.

On the one hand, then, these dynamics are similar to those posited throughout this

dissertation: The source of contestation within the regime is located in the pluralizing

world order, which pushes against its erstwhile universalist bases. Such contestation

produces new mechanisms that parallel this pluralizing terrain. However, these sites also

begin to challenge what has been held constant throughout this dissertation: that there is a

– one – world order. At the same time, they point to a different and possibly desirable

role for the regime in the future negotiation of these different orders and their

cultural/historical hierarchies.

Before I analyze the cases, three short caveats. First, the kind of plurality at stake

in this chapter is of a different kind. The recognition of the Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road’s

co-evality with the Palace and Gardens of Versailles does not necessarily pose a

challenge to the value of either site as a cultural product. Dissonant heritage, however,

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involves narratives that challenge one another, such that recognizing one would require

re-thinking another. Relatedly, power and hegemony are differently implicated. The

hegemonic approach to cultural and civilizational production the previous chapters

focused on were grounded in European conceptions, histories and attendant epistemic

frameworks. While challenges of plurality revealed the limits of these frameworks, they

did not claim these sites to not be of value or to stand in mutually exclusive contrast with

other conceptions. Thus, while there has been a pushback against the ideational

hegemony of this conception of culture as the only grounds of adjudicating and

recognizing cultural value, this pushback is not against its continued existence as one

among others. In contrast, as the dissonant narratives in this chapter posit the limits of

one another, they implicate both the competing and hegemonic narratives and their

holders.

Second, I shift my optics from culture to history in this chapter. But this shift

comes with an important overlap. At stake in cultural heritage is a historical culture and a

cultural history. Thus, this is a shift in emphasis between the two component parts rather

than a shift between concepts. This shift in emphasis becomes more consequential in

relation to the relevant changes in the world order. In this chapter, these are the

historiographies through which the world order has made and remade itself, legitimating

its hierarchies in the name of peace and security. They point to the costs, consequences

and remainders of such peace and security, bringing us closer to the raison d’etre of the

order as the regulation of global politics towards peace and prosperity. At the same time,

and pointing to the ways in which culture has become an important axis of demand-

making, some of these sites express their historical grievances through the lens of cultural

hierarchies.

Third, not all divisive sites that pass through the world heritage regime implicate

the world order and its waning hegemonies. Nor are they all negative sites as categorized

by ICOMOS. Sites such as the Old Town of Jerusalem as nominated by Jordan or the

Preah Vihear Temple that crosses the Cambodian-Thai border were brought forth for

inscription to side-step or gain leverage over unresolved questions of sovereignty. These

sites do not fit into the pattern that I analyze here. However, they similarly sit at the crux

of contested narratives, this time of sovereignty, that turn to cultural histories to stake

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claims to the present and challenge others’ claims. This shared element is not accidental.

While questions of culture and cultural history are often sidelined in International

Relations scholarship, the critical literature on heritage has long approached it as nation-

making, and more recently, as world-making. The analysis of the emergence of these

dissonant sites on the world heritage stage, therefore, needs to attend to the substantive

renegotiations that give rise to and unfold through them.

3. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Exceptions that Fit the Order

Despite the Convention’s goals, sites with painful memories have been a part of the

World Heritage List since its early days. This section analyzes two such sites: Auschwitz

–Birkenau and the Island of Gorée, which were inscribed within the first two years of the

regime, to argue that the current worries about divisive sites are located at the intersection

of the changing character and narrative framing of these negative sites, against the

background of their increased numbers. The section concludes with the case of the

Funerary Sites, which shows that the ways in which these sites can be made to fit the

World Heritage List was not lost on the participants.

Island of Gorée was nominated by Senegal and inscribed among the first ten

properties on the World Heritage List in 1978. The nomination file defined it as a site of

“the meeting of two civilizations,” and “an event unprecedented in the annals of

mankind: the Negro slave trade with all its suffering, heartbreak and death.”206 The

nomination file’s justification of the site’s outstanding value stated that “the Senegalese

authorities’ interest in the island is not prompted by a wish to linger over a past that is

buried forever, but by a determination that the Island of Gorée shall typify the black

man’s suffering throughout the ages, like so many other unhappily notorious places,

where blindness and hatred reigned in the bygone days.” 207 The section concluded:

“Basically, however the action we are taking to preserve Gorée is prompted by

humanistic considerations. Gorée has been the scene of bitter encounters between men,

and present-day Senegal would like to make of it a sanctuary of reconciliation between

men – through dialogue, the exchange of noble ideas and forgiveness.” Thus, while

Senegal nominated a site associated with negative memories, the events that produced the

206 Republic of Senegal, Nomination of “Island of Gorée” for inclusion on the world heritage list, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 26., 1978: 11. 207 Ibid.

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memories were presented as bygone; testament to progress of humanity. At the same

time, the state expressed its intention to pursue further reconciliation through this site.

The nomination, therefore, fit within the regime’s armature of universal history as

corrigible. At the same time, it did not create dissonance with prevailing norms, as part of

the dominant identity construction. In this case, this is the norm that slavery is

unacceptable. In other words, while some might continue to hold onto racist hierarchies

in their approach to humanity, any dissonance that the site’s narrative might generate for

them is beyond the realm of concern. Dissonance becomes an issue when it challenges

prevailing norms, or reveals divisions within a previously assumed normative

convergence.

There is no separate ICOMOS evaluation for the site. Instead, included in the

overview of all nominations for the year, a brief note remarks that while the nomination

lacked photographic and cartographic documentation, it was “found to meet the criteria

for cultural properties.”208 The site’s statement of value and significance was adopted in

2010, and defines it as a “reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for

reconciliation.” The Island is described as a pilgrimage destination, and a “foyer of

contact between the West and Africa,” where dialogue between cultures takes place

through confronting the “ideals of reconciliation and forgiveness.” 209 Thus, the

inscription narrative of the site continues to thread closely to the themes of reconciliation,

dialogue and forgiveness, which were offered by the nomination dossier and which fit

within the regime’s aspirations.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was nominated in 1978 and inscribed in 1979. Its deferral for

a year was arose from an early regulation, which stipulated that states can only nominate

two sites per annum. The historic center of Krakow and the Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal

Salt Mines, nominated by the Polish People’s Republic, were inscribed in 1978, and

Auschwitz-Birkenau was included in the List a year later. To the extent that Auschwitz-

Birkenau’s inscription created debate, it was because unlike the Island of Gorée, which

based its value partly on the architecture of the slave-traders’ quarters,210 the Camp’s

208 ICOMOS Evaluation, Island of Gorée, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 26, 1978. 209 Ibid. 210 The nomination file for Island of Gorée noted that “over and above this historical aspect, the island of Gorée has considerable architectural interest” (1978: 11).

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materiality did not possess aesthetic value that could be presented alongside its historical

import (Meskell 2018: 149-150).211 The nomination submitted by the Polish People’s

Republic under what Tunbridge and Ashworth have called the Soviet memory regime,

built the historical significance of the site in a three-pronged narrative: its status first as a

work camp for Polish political prisoners, its subsequent transformation into an

extermination camp for Jews, and its liberation by the Red Army.212 The justification of

the site’s universal value built on this narrative, with an emphasis on the suffering and

resilience of the camp’s inmates. It noted that the on-site Museum, by virtue of its

activities, “makes an important contribution to the struggle for world peace and

security.”213

The memory regime around the site has not remained stable since its inscription,

and this change is reflected in the retrospective statement of universal value adopted in

2016. The original ICOMOS evaluation marked the site as the largest cemetery in the

world, and as elucidating, as an exemplar, an essential aspect of Hitlerism. The

evaluation noted that “its organizers are in the hope that this project, supported by such

terrible proof, will contribute to the maintenance of world peace.”214 Thus, the inscription

of the site was understood as contributing to world peace, based on how the memory

regime around Auschwitz-Birkenau was constructed, as evidenced in the activities such

as dialogue and scientific study. The retrospective statement of value redefines the site’s

significance as the principal camp established by the Nazi Germany to “to implement its

Final Solution policy, which had as its aim the mass murder of the Jewish people in

Europe.” This narrative of significance continues to recognize the use of the camp for

Poles and Soviet Prisoners of War, and also names Roma and Sinti –previously

211 Ultimately, however, both sites were inscribed only on criterion (vi), which attaches their universal value to their associational, and not architectural, attributes. 212 Republic of Poland, Nomination of “Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp” for inclusion on the World Heritage List, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 31. 1979: 4-5. Tunbridge and Ashworth argue that Auschwitz’s historical narrative as pursued by the Polish authorities during the Cold War was shaped by the Soviet memory regime, emphasizing the anti-fascist struggles of WWII (1996: 122-128). In 1992 new archival research was undertaken, which became the grounds for the re-narration of Auschwitz as a site that, while originally aimed at Polish political prisoners, ultimately became a site for the Jewish Holocaust, where 90% of the prisoners were Jews. The site has been frequently visited by Israeli expert delegations to discuss narrative framing and artifact presentation. 213 Nomination File No. 31., 1979: 7.214 ICOMOS Evaluation, Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 31. 1979: 2.

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unmentioned groups of inmates. The emphasis is on the racist and anti-Semitic ideology

of Nazism and that 90% of the victims of the extermination camp were Jews. In this re-

inflection, the site continues to be defined as a monument to “one of the greatest crimes

ever perpetrated against humanity” and “to the strength of the human spirit,” as well as a

site from which to learn of the “threats and tragic consequences of extreme ideologies

and denial of human dignity.”215

While its narrative of significance has been re-inflected, the inscription of

Auschwitz-Birkenau has continued to be understood as exceptional and as having a

“symbolic status as a monument to all victims.” Michel Parent’s report presented to and

adopted by the 1979 Committee session noted: “In order to preserve its symbolic status as

a monument to all the victims, Auschwitz should, it seems, remain in isolation. In other

words, we recommend that it should stand alone among cultural properties as bearing

witness to the depth of horror and of suffering, and the height of heroism, and that all

other sites of the same nature be symbolized through it.” (UNESCO 1979b: 21).216 This

exceptional status of the inscription continues to resonate, as an expert explains during

our interview: “Well, Auschwitz is a very special case and at the time of its inscription it

was seen as one site that could reflect negative values, if I can put it that way. As a site

that showed the negative side of history rather than the more positive side that is usually

associated with world heritage. And the Committee was very clear at the time that it

didn’t see that the inscription of Auschwitz meant a plethora of similar sites coming

forward. So it was almost like a dead-end route, expanding [the List] in one direction but

at the same time cutting it off.”217

Tying this inscription to threads I analyzed in Chapter 2, Meskell writes:

“UNESCO was, after all, born of war and established in the wake of conflict with the

dream of overcoming future conflict. From that perspective, European properties such as

215 See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31 (Accessed on 11 March 2019). The new statement of OUV was adopted in 2007. 216 In a 1997 interview with the World Heritage Journal, following the inscription of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, then Director of the World Heritage Center Berndt von Droste explained that “the framers of the Convention intended to use the provision [that allows for the exceptional use of criterion vi on its own] only once – to add the Auschwitz Concentration Camp onto the List (“A Potent Symbol,” UNESCO World Heritage no. 86, 1997: 23) 217 Interview with an expert conducted on 16 March 2018. Concomitant with the focus of this chapter, s/he added: “But it might not have succeeded because there are quite a lot of sites on tentative lists now that are also representing or reflecting conflicts of one sort or another.”

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the Historic Centre of Warsaw and Auschwitz-Birkenau are deeply symbolic sites that

not only demonstrate human resilience to overcome the brutality of war but also enshrine

something of UNESCO’s own story” (Meskell, 2018: 150). In terms of the analysis

developed here, Auschwitz-Birkenau could be accommodated within the regime’s bases

as a necessary exception because it spoke to a broader moral and normative order, which

extends beyond the regime and sits at the origins of the post-WWII order-making to

which it seeks to contribute. As in the case of the Island of Gorée, those who fall outside

the normative consensus on the meaning and significance of the genocidal violence that

took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau are beyond the realm of the pale. At the intersection of

these threads, Auschwitz-Birkenau becomes not a dissonant site, but rather an exception

that acts as a reminder of the depths to which humanity can fall and the need to keep

working towards peace by overcoming bigotry.

The “Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War (Western Front)”

nominated by Belgium and France aimed to insert itself in the path for inscription opened

up by properties such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Island of Gorée. The serial

nomination, which extends across the boundaries of the two countries included 139

component parts, testament to the cult of burial that emerged out of the mass deaths of

World War I. As the site has not been inscribed, its nomination file is not publicly

available. However, its description as part of the tentative lists of France and Belgium, as

well as the ICOMOS evaluation of the site provide important clues on its narrative

framing. The tentative lists define World War I as a major break in the history of

humanity, which caused unprecedented human loss as the first industrial and total war.

This resulted in practices such as individual, rather than mass, burials of soldiers and

plaques that alphabetically list the soldiers whose bodies could not be recovered. These

indicate, the tentative lists propose, a recognition of the individual soldiers and their

equality in death. The significance of this practice, therefore, is as a civil and humanist

cult that invites recollection, and subsequently conciliation and peace.218 Like Auschwitz-

Birkenau, the nomination file roots itself in a violence and destruction that was

218 For the Funerary Sites as included on the Tentative Lists see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5886/ (Belgium) and https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5884/ (France).(Accessed on 12 March 2019).

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unprecedented (at the time).219 Its framing harkens close to that of the Island of Gorée in

emphasizing the possibility for the rediscovery of humanity through this inhumane

moment, and grounds this rediscovery in similar humanistic concerns and conciliation

possibility.

The ICOMOS evaluation, presented in its written report and orally communicated

during the committee meeting, begins with a regular technical evaluation, focused on the

correspondence between the selected components and the site’s narrative of significance,

and the link between this significance and the OUV criteria. The report discusses

reservations about the selection procedure at length. It provides a history of

communication with the nominating states on the subject. Its evaluation of the site’s fit

with OUV criteria departs from its regular protocol, and reads: “ICOMOS doubts that

providing a dignified burial to each and every soldier fallen in combat might be seen as

an achievement to be commemorated on the World Heritage List. ICOMOS considers

that this nomination raises some fundamental questions on whether this theme can be

seen as suitable for World Heritage listing” (ICOMOS 2018: 144). At the crux of

ICOMOS’s adjournment call are these fundamental questions, rather than whether other

funerary sites reflect the cult of the individual soldier better or whether it matters that the

United States had already started individual burial practices during the Civil War and the

United Kingdom during the Boer War. These concerns are reiterated in the presentation

ICOMOS made to the Committee: “this nomination raises fundamental issues in relation

to the purpose and the scope of the World Heritage Convention and its appropriateness

regarding commemorating properties related to conflict or war” (UNESCO 2018: 467). In

underlining the fundamental character of these issues, ICOMOS recalled the reservations

that had been raised during the inscriptions of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and

the Hiroshima Peace Memorial: each site was inscribed as exceptional, but the reflections

they provoked were never undertaken. Lastly, the ICOMOS representative pointed out

that the decision to be taken in the case of the Funerary Sites would set a precedent for

further cases.

219 Ibid.

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Subsequently, 10 committee members took the floor. In a discussion guided by

Western and European delegations, the adjournment decision was adopted. 220 The

reasons given for supporting the ICOMOS proposal was that this was a delicate issue,

which required further debate and research before a discussion on inscription could be

held at the Committee level. Norway and Hungary echoed that the site presents

challenges to the bases of the Convention, and Hungary proposed a subcategory on the

List for memorial places, reflecting the increased trend. The interventions of Brazil,

Angola, Kuwait and Bahrain focused on the procedural aspects of the nomination and its

adjournment, while India intervened to express discontent on the inadequate

acknowledgment of soldiers from the subcontinent that fought in WWI (UNESCO 2018:

467-473). Taking the floor after the adjournment decision, Belgium and France expressed

their great disappointment. Each emphasized that the site was not divisive, and intended

to demonstrate the opposite – the possibility that memory can be reconciled (Ibid.: 483-

484)

What can we make of the nomination and evaluation of the Funerary Sites? In

terms of its referent event and the narrative framing, the Funerary Sites did not present a

foundational challenge to the regime. It was attached to a moment of violence that has

been interpreted as testament to the destructive potential of competing nationalisms, and

the nomination’s framing emphasized reconciliation that can emerge out of the

destructiveness of this moment. This was further highlighted in the commentary of the

nominating states. The ICOMOS evaluation report also reveals the willingness on the

part of France and Belgium to take into account the Advisory Body’s suggestions and to

revise the nomination rationale accordingly (ICOMOS 2018: 136-155). At the same time,

the Advisory Body’s recurrent references to the problem of setting a precedent lends

further support to the import of the broader context. In other words, even if questions are

raised by the Funerary Sites, what exacerbates these questions is the new trend of

including sites of recent conflict on tentative lists. This development, in turn, pushes

against the regime’s erstwhile strategy of inscribing these sites as exceptional.

ICOMOS’s category of negative sites, thus, not only attends to this pattern but it is also

220 I understand the conspicuous silence of African Delegations, such as Zimbabwe and Tanzania, who have otherwise been vocal participants in the 2018 meeting to unfold against the background of the pending nominations of the African Liberation Heritage Sites.

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produced by it. The conception of dissonant sites, conversely, distinguishes between

negative sites to account for the ways in which some of them could be inscribed as world

heritage. Lastly, however, ICOMOS’s category is a productive one, which begins to

inform a more expansive understanding of divisive sites and the challenges they pose to

the regime, resulting in evaluations such as the adjournment decision.

4. End of the Cold War and a Counter-Universal

Unlike the early nominations of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Gorée, the Hiroshima Peace

Memorial/Genbaku Dome made it to the stage of the world heritage regime at a different

world political time. The site nomination was submitted by Japan in 1995 and inscribed

in 1996. The Cold War had ended, and given rise to a strong thread of optimism that the

world order could be expanded, consolidated and deepened. In hindsight, it has been a

complex period of expansion and deepening, resulting in transformations and reactions,

and shifting axes along which new and enduring global hierarchies have been produced

and contested. Concerning the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the end of the Cold War also

ushered in a rethinking of the continued possession of nuclear weapons, including a

greater visibility of ‘other’ histories of the weapon, beyond one that unleashed global

peace perpetuated through deterrence (Okamoto 1997: 41, Taylor 1998: 332-335 and

352).

Some of these changes had already been manifested domestically in the U.S.

through a planned Smithsonian exhibit that challenged the established memory regime on

the use of atomic weapons. The “Enola Gay” exhibition, which created controversy in the

U.S. in 1993, had intended to display the rehabilitated fighter plane that had dropped the

atomic bomb over Hiroshima along with photographs and artifacts from the Hiroshima

Peace Museum. These photographs and artifacts would interrupt the U.S. practices of

representing and memorializing the bomb, which excluded the bodies of its victims

(Taylor 1998: 334-337, Beazley 2007: 44). The exhibit drew strong protests from veteran

groups and resulted in a Senate resolution urging the exhibit to “reflect appropriate

sensitivity toward the men and women who faithfully and selflessly served the United

States .. [and] avoid impugning the memory of those who gave their lives for freedom”

(quoted in Beazley 2007: 44). As a result, the exhibit was re-curated to emphasize the

scientific-technical pride that the workers and the experts took in the restoration of the

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aircraft, the photographs of the hibakusha221 were reduced in number, and the crimes

committed by the Japanese military in the Asia-Pacific war were narrated at greater

length (Taylor 1998: 341-351). Thus, if the curators of the exhibit took up the changing

world politics to challenge the extant memory regime, the protests resulted in upholding

this hegemonic memory by altering the exhibit’s narrative and content. Such upholding

would not prove as easy in the international realm.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome is the skeletal remains of the

Industry Promotion Hall, which had, prior to its destruction, been “a quintessential sign

of Japan’s early-twentieth-century imperial modernity” (Yoneyama 1999: 2). Designed

by a Czech architect and completed in 1915, “it served as a public space where crafts and

commodities from Hiroshima’s environs, as well as from different regions throughout the

empire were brought in and displayed” (Ibid.). We might think of it as Japan’s own world

exhibit, towing the line of the day’s imperial cultural politics (Chapter 1). The structure

was also at the hypocenter of the explosion of the bomb, which destroyed most of the

building, but left intact a few walls along with the frame of its dome. The name Genbaku

Dome, which translates into the Atomic Bomb Dome, refers to the structure of these

remains. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the city was torn between two strong

desires: mourning the destruction through memorializing the ruins or rebuilding. At this

time, the objections to the preservation of the Dome included the argument that

conservation of relics is a Western tradition (Shipilova 2014: 197). Thus, while annual

commemoration and peace festivals in Hiroshima began to be organized as early as the

first anniversary of the bombing, the ruins were kept hesitantly. It was only in the 1980s

that consensus emerged on the desire to preserve the Dome, followed by a 1989 national

fundraising campaign for its physical consolidation and the Dome’s subsequent inclusion

in the national register of historical monuments (Yoneyama 1995).

At the level of world heritage, the site was added to Japan’s tentative list in 1993.

The tentative list described the Genbaku Dome as “a graphic depiction of the tragedy of

mankind’s first employment of nuclear weapons” and as “a monument for all mankind, a

symbol of appeal for perpetual peace and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons on

221 Hibakusha are survivors of the atomic bomb, which translates into those who were exposed to the bomb.

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earth.”222 The nomination dossier was submitted soon after in 1995, and consists of four

somber volumes of black folders. The folders include extensive excerpts from the

relevant legislation for historical monuments, the management plan for the site,

photographic documentation of the Dome through time, as well as pamphlets and

booklets produced by the Hiroshima Peace Museum and local civil society organizations.

There is also the nomination form itself, filled out with information on the site’s history

and the justification of its universal value. This justification adopts and expands the

tentative list’s framing, stating that the Genbaku Dome “stands as a permanent witness to

the terrible disaster that occurred when the atomic bomb was used as a weapon for the

first time,” that the Dome is the only structure that can convey a physical image of the

tragic situation after the bombing, and that “the Dome has become a universal monument

for all mankind, symbolizing the hope for perpetual peace and the ultimate elimination of

all nuclear weapons on earth.” 223

The ICOMOS evaluation notes that while the site did not have aesthetic value, its

overriding significance resided in what it represented. This was immense destruction, on

the one hand, and “the hope for continuation in perpetuity of the worldwide peace the

atomic bomb blasts of August 1945 ushered in,” on the other.224 While the destructive

impact of the bomb is recognized in terms similar to those of the nomination dossier, the

narrative of what followed after and whether this is worldwide peace, are interpreted

differently by the nomination and evaluation narratives. The evaluation also provided the

following language for the site’s correspondence to OUV criterion (vi): “The Hiroshima

Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome, is a stark and powerful symbol of the achievement of

world peace for more than half a century following the unleashing of the most destructive

force ever created by humankind.”225

The Bureau of the World Heritage Committee postponed the discussion of the site

to an extraordinary session in November 1996, and ultimately decided to present it to the

Committee meeting with a positive decision that endorsed the ICOMOS evaluation. The

222 Republic of Japan, “Tentative List,” in Nomination of “Hiroshima Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome” for inclusion on the World Heritage List, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 775. 1996: i.223 Nomination File no. 775, 1996: 23. 224 Accessed as part of: Hiroshima Peace Memorial/Genbaku Dome, UNESCO Fontenoy Archives, Id No. 775, 117. 225 Ibid.

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U.S. Delegation, which had previously tried to stop the inclusion of the site on the World

Heritage List through diplomatic efforts (Beazley 2007), dissociated itself from the

inscription decision through an intervention that is attached verbatim as an annex to that

year’s meeting report. The intervention begins by affirming that the two countries are

“close friends and allies” who cooperate on domains of security, diplomatic and

economic affairs. Such cooperation, the intervention elaborates, is undergirded by

personal friendships between the citizens. Nevertheless, the United States “cannot

support its friend in this inscription” for two reasons. The first is a lack of historical

perspective, which is critical because “the events antecedent to the United States’ use of

atomic weapons to end World War II are key to understanding the tragedy of Hiroshima.”

The second is that the inscription of war sites is outside the scope of the Convention –

resulting in the U.S. delegation urging the Committee to address the question of their

suitability. (UNESCO 1997a: 196).

What can we make of the nomination of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, its

evaluation by ICOMOS and the American dissociation? The Dome was nominated in the

context of global political shifts, and their recasting of the nuclear weapons. In the

context of this changing present, Japan put forth an alternative history, pushing for a

different interpretation of the present and a desirable future. In this alternative history the

end of World War II was not the beginning of an era of global peace. Rather, it

demonstrated humanity’s destructive capacity. Its aftermath was one of lingering effects

of this destruction226 and its continued possibility. Thus, the era of global peace had not

come and could not come until nuclear disarmament.

This dissonant framing sits uneasily with hegemonic narratives on the use and

continued possession of nuclear weapons in relation to the making and maintaining of the

world order and global peace, and with the regime’s universal historiography of progress.

It points to a negative memory in humanity’s history from which we have not moved

forward – and in not having moved forward, we have also not achieved world peace. The

post-WWII order has not established peace and security, but rather postponed them. The

ICOMOS evaluation attempts to suture these two narratives by underlining the

226 This connection between the past and present, or rather the ongoing nature of the event and its non-confinement to the past, is further reinforced by nomination file that remarks that the aftereffects “continue to plague the survivors of Hiroshima” (Ibid.: 9-10).

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destructive force of the bomb and its lingering detrimental effect, while also embracing

the language of a global peace unleashed. The American intervention, in turn, roots itself

in this dual dissonance. First, it posits that the historical context, leading up to and

explaining the use of atomic weapons is missing, proposing that certain contexts can (and

do) make sense of the use of such weapons. This aligns with the hegemonic narrative of

the bomb’s use, legitimated through acts of order-making and maintaining, and that

stands in contrast to the call for their abolishing, which implies that no context can justify

their use. Second, the American intervention points to the misfit of the site with the

Convention’s scope. However, as the last chapter has analyzed, the early inscriptions to

the List include multiple military structures as well as triumphal arches that

commemorate victories. If these structures can be explained by pointing to the more

distant histories they invoke, Auschwitz-Birkenau brings us to the same historical period

as the Genbaku Dome, suggesting that it is not simply war fighting at stake, but rather

their dissonant accounts, which cannot be easily managed within the armature of

universal history.

The retrospective statement of universal value for the site, adopted in 2014,

operates between the two narratives of peace. The description states: “Not only is [the

Hiroshima Peace Memorial] a stark and powerful symbol of the most destructive force

ever created by humankind, it also expresses the hope for world peace and the ultimate

elimination of all nuclear weapons.” The site’s correspondence to criterion (vi) is

articulated as “the achievement of world peace for more than half a century following the

unleashing of the most destructive force ever created by humankind.”227 Unequivocal on

the extent of the destruction and destructiveness of the atomic bomb, the language of

inscription wavers between the hegemonic narrative of a peace that has been achieved

and the nomination’s notion of a peace that remains as an aspiration. At the same time,

the dissonance provoked by the site’s nomination is reflected in the decision, taken after

Hiroshima Peace Memorial’s inscription, that criterion (vi) should only be used in

tandem with other OUV criteria, which would stem the emergence of other nominations

that foregrounded similar memorial elements (Rico 2008: 346).

227 Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775 (Accessed on 11 March 2018).

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If the nomination narrative of Hiroshima unsettles the hegemonic-universalist

narrative of global peace, it does so through an alternative universal, which comes with

its own elisions and limits. Neither the nomination dossier nor the resulting inscription

specify the actor that used the bomb. Rather, they posit humanity as the universal subject,

who developed and used the destructive weapon and who is hoping for its elimination.

Importantly, however, such elision, which fits within the universalist framework of the

world heritage regime, precedes the site’s nomination. It is a narrative of “nuclear

universalism” that developed in the context of Japan’s post-war occupation by and

subsequent close strategic relation with the United States (Yoneyama 1999: 13-26). It is a

narrative that comes in variants: a focus on the bomb as the object of destruction and

blame, a theological narrative of purification, and importantly, a thread that foregrounds

Japan as the only country that experienced the use of the atomic bomb and thereby with a

special role to warn others of its dangers (Ibid., Orr 2001: 1-14, Grey 2002). Differing in

their substantiation of the impact and meaning of the bomb, these narratives share a

humanist universalism, which posits humanity as the subject that is ultimately threatened

by nuclear weapons.

The U.S. reaction to the inscription suggests that the elision of the particular

subject that used the bomb was not enough to eliminate dissonance. At the same time,

this nuclear universalism obscures the bomb’s other particular victims. Such obscuring is

not a direct exclusion insofar as neither the nomination nor the inscription name the

Japanese – and name only them – as the victims of the bomb. The casting is in universal

humanist terms. However, such universalism obscures and reproduces hierarchies. As

Yoneyama’s poignant analysis shows, a key occlusion of this nuclear universalism is

Korean victims, whose presence in Japan was tied to a violent, imperial history, and who

were forced to work in Hiroshima at the time under Japan’s National Mobilization Act

(Yoneyama 1999: 151-187). As this narrative of nuclear universalism moves between

Hiroshima as the location of the bomb’s use and humanity as the level at which the

possession of nuclear weapons poses a threat, it glosses over its particular victims, who

are neither Japanese nor identical parts of this humanity. This is similar to the dynamics

previous chapters have analyzed, in which the universal value ascribed to some sites by

the regime allow them to be claimed as internationally recognized national sites. Thus,

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the universal does not necessarily make the national disappear, but rather sanctions its

participation in a world cultural order.

Similarly, the Genbaku Dome inserts Japan in this history of humanity through a

moment of immense destruction, and in doing so recognizes its suffering. However, it

reproduces –by not challenging– Japan’s internationalized narrative’s elisions in relation

to its Others. Some of these dynamics were brought up by China’s intervention, similarly

reproduced in an annex, which pointed to the loss of life and property suffered by other

Asian countries during World War II and objected to the inscription of the site at a time

when “there are still few people trying to deny this fact of history” (UNESCO 1997a:

196).228 This comment did not aim to justify order-making violence, but pointed to how a

partial recognition of the broader context of violence around the atomic bombing of

Japan can allow for the further denial of this context by representing a part as the

universal whole. As the case of the Meiji Sites demonstrate, however, as multiple

histories continue to be negotiated in a pluralizing world, it also becomes harder for these

alternative accounts to establish themselves hegemonically.

5. Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site: Putting the “Remainders” on Stage

Like Japan, the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) has had a long-standing relation with

the United States. It has also been on the receiving end of U.S. nuclear weapons. Unlike

Japan, however, the RMI has remained a small island-nation with no army of its own,

militarily and economically dependent on the United States. Since the signing of the Free

Compact Agreement in 1994, the RMI is no longer a U.S. trusteeship. However, it

continues to allow American military access to the islands that comprise the Republic in

return for the provision of security and economic aid. The Republic of Marshall Islands’

nomination narrative of the Bikini Atoll as world heritage is testament to how nuclear

tests for “the good of mankind” were made possible through this highly unequal

relationship. It also puts the remainders of this mankind on stage without relying on a

228 In fact, some of this history is presented in the nomination file, albeit through a different interpretative emphasis: “Japan was engaged in warfare with China in the late 1930’s, and after the outbreak of World War II in 1941 the fighting spread throughout the Pacific theater and in various parts of Asia. Eventually, Japan came under counterattack by the Allied forces, and in 1945 the widespread U.S. bombings of the Japanese mainland and the fall of Okinawa signaled the country’s imminent defeat.” (Nomination File no. 775, Fontenoy Archives, 1996: 9).

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nuclear universalism, thus illuminating the limits of inclusion of dissonant sites through

the ICOMOS evaluation.

Among the islands that comprise the RMI, the Bikini Atoll is better known in

global politics. During the Second World War, the Atoll was “liberated”229 from Japanese

military occupation and became a U.S. trusteeship. A year after the end of WWII, the

residents of the Atoll were evacuated to allow for the U.S. to carry out a series of nuclear

tests between 1946-1958. During this period, a total of 66 test explosions took place on

and around the Bikini Atoll and the neighboring Enewatak Atoll. Among these, two big

operations left their enduring mark on the land and history of the Atoll: “Operation

Crossroads,” which included the testing of two bombs (Able and Baker), and the “Bravo”

test of the first thermonuclear bomb. Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable, due to the high

levels of radiation found in the soil, preventing the consumption of food grown on the

island, and its population remains as “nuclear nomads,” spread between parts of the

Marshall Islands and Hawaii.

The continued attempts of the Marshallese in general, and the Bikinians in

particular, to seek compensation from the United States for the past and enduring injury

caused by nuclear tests,230 have been described as a David and Goliath story of “a tiny

population seeking recompense and compensation from a global superpower” (Brown

2013: 37). The nomination and inscription of the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site in 2010 is

reflective of this attempt to seek recompense. However, rather than the bilateral pursuit of

justice, such as financial compensation demands and cases filed at American courts, the

nomination places Bikini Atoll on the world stage, provides an alternative narrative of its

evacuation, and aims to keep this past and the continued plight of the Bikinians visible.

This alternative history demonstrates dissatisfaction with the hierarchies that resulted in

the Island’s evacuation and its use as a test site.

The history of the Atoll’s inclusion on the World Heritage List goes back to its

inclusion in the 2007 ICOMOS report on cultural landscapes in the Asia-Pacific, before

its 2010 nomination. Part of the Global Strategy, the report is penned by Anita Smith, an

229 This is not to undermine the brutality of the Japanese military occupation of the Bikini Atoll and other Pacific Islands but rather to point to the real limits of what such liberation meant for the Island and its population as evidenced in their subsequent displacement for nuclear tests. 230 The most recent case is the filing of a suit at the U.S. courts by the RMI in 2008.

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anthropologist who has written on the colonial and nuclear histories of the Pacific Islands

(see, for example, Smith 2007). Smith’s focus is the challenge of how the heritage of this

web of islands, at once diverse and connected, can be represented within the value bases

and requirements of the world heritage regime. The document also provides brief case

studies of sites that can potentially fit within the scope of world heritage. This includes

the Bikini Atoll as an associative landscape: a typology recognized by the regime (Smith

and Jones 2007: 86-87). A brief case study, written by a second author, describes the

significance of this landscape, starting with the United States’ point of view: the

destruction of “symbolic vessels of a defeated enemy” and “demonstrat[ing] the

capability of atomic weapons” against naval vessels (Ibid. 86). It compares the Atoll’s

history to other instances of “mass sinkings of fleets,” and concludes: “The people of the

RMI and Bikini in particular were removed from these islands so that the tests could

proceed. Today their descendants are determined that this aspect of the imperial and Cold

War programme represented at Bikini should not be forgotten” (Ibid.: 87). Thus while the

case study recognizes the meaning of the Bikini Atoll for the descendants of the

evacuated Bikinians, and their ongoing efforts to keep the memory and their continued

displacement in circulation, it attaches the narrative of world heritage significance to a

different history. Some have analyzed this case study as an invitation by ICOMOS for the

submission of this nomination (Brown 2013: 36). While its inclusion in this Global

Strategy document indeed positions the site as possessing potential universal value, my

concern is with the narrative of such value, in relation to world historical accounts and

the regime’s universal history.

The 292-page nomination file for the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site, complete

with annexes of relevant protective legislation, photographs of the Atoll through time and

a management plan for its continued preservation, starts with an image of the explosion

caused by the Baker test in 1946. It is a big cloud, with a crown-like shape on top, and

suspended over the water, making the battleships beneath it look miniature. On each side

of the image are two quotes. The first quote is by Commodore Ben Wyatt, the military

governor of the Marshall Islands responsible for the Bikini Atoll’s evacuation, describing

the tests as “for the good of mankind and to end all wars” (RMI 2010: i). The second

quote by Einstein, declares in relation to the same tests that “mankind’s destiny is being

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decided” (Ibid.: 1). These two quotes are followed by a third and fourth: A quote from the

report of the Operation Crossroads’ Joint Chiefs of Staff declares that “until such a peace

[maintained through international cooperation based on common agreement and

understanding] is brought about, this nation can hope only that an effective deterrent to

global war will be a universal fear of the atomic bomb.” (Ibid.) And beneath it, the

Russell-Einstein Manifesto, asking: “shall we put an end to the human race; or shall

mankind renounce war?” (Ibid.). This opening, with the image and the quotes, connects

Bikini Atoll to the universalist contours of nuclear history. The image, despite the unique

crown shape over it and the ocean beneath, is very similar to the representations of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions through the so-called mushroom cloud. The quotes

point to the already rehearsed tension between claims of the good of humanity and threats

to it through nuclear possession.

The rest of the nomination strikes a more fraught relation to universal history,

hegemonic or alternative. The universal structures the nomination file as a signpost for

the international from which recognition is demanded. This is indicated most clearly in

the cover letter penned by Hon. Juda, senator for the People of Bikini. Officially

endorsing the nomination, Juda writes that “as a world heritage site, Bikini Atoll will

remind all of us, around the world, of the need for global peace and the elimination of

weapons of mass destruction” (Ibid.: 7). This statement replicates the alternative nuclear

universalism of Japan, in which humanity is the subject of both the memory and the

continued threat of weapons of mass destruction.

However, the nomination pushes against this universal story of mankind through

the framing concept of nuclear colonialism, which emphasizes the constitutive

hierarchies of humanity that produced the Atoll as a place, which could be evacuated for

nuclear testing. Through the heuristic of nuclear colonialism, the file underlines that the

choice of Bikini as a test site relied on its representation as “terra nullius” – barren,

uninhabited and distant from the home, that is the U.S., population (Ibid.: 49). This

erasure of the life-world, the file contends, is manifested in the renaming of the Bikini

and Enewetok Atolls as “Pacific Proving Grounds,” “a name that removed any

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connotation that this was a real place and a real home for real people” (Ibid.). 231

Secondary literature, cited by the nomination file confirms the multiple hierarchies

undergirding this selection: in addition to fulfilling physical criteria, such as having

predictable winds, the test site would need to be in an area controlled by the United

States, and be uninhabited or have a small population that could be easily relocated –

cooperative and unlikely to cause trouble. (Weisgall 1994: 31). It was under this nuclear

colonialism that the Bikini Atoll was chosen as the test location and that the Bikinians

were relocated and exposed to radiation.232

The file puts forth the required justification of the site’s universal value as

follows: 1) a nuclear test site that can hold multiple meanings: the dawn of the nuclear

age, the start of the Cold War, the loss of a homeland for the Bikinians, source of illness

for the inhabitants of nearby islands, and symbolic of the experiences of other victims of

nuclear tests, and 2) as the site that has given rise to ubiquitous symbols, from the

swimsuit to the Godzilla, and to a renewed impetus for global anti-nuclear movements.

This justification of value nests the tests’ meaning for the Bikinians within a global

231 One can contrast this narrative with the coverage of the nuclear tests by the New York Times, the one press outlet quoted in the nomination file. In the lead-up to Operation Crossroads, Bikini and its inhabitants are featured rarely, and when they are, the Island is described as remote, isolated and barren, the natives as small in number or as having gladly agreed to leave their home (New York Times 1946c, New York Times 1946d, New York Times 1946f, Rooney 1946, New York Times 1949, New York Times 1951, Sulzberger 1973, Cf. New York Times 1946e and New York Times 1947). The focus is on the Operation itself, featured as a great experiment that would determine the future of warfare, including the possible obsolescence of the navy (New York Times 1946a, New York Times 1946b, Shalett 1946a, Shalett 1946b, New York Times 1946g, New York Times 1954a). The coverage in the aftermath of the tests describe it as “awe-inspiring, fantastic, spectacular,” and “a landmark in the history of civilization” (Associated Press 1946, New York Times 1946h, Baldwin 1946, New York Times 1946i, New York Times 1946j, New York Times 1946k, New York Times 1946l, Baldwin 1947, New York Times 1956c). Such coverage was briefly interrupted by the Marshallese complaint to the UN Trusteeship Council in year. The complaint began with an expression of appreciation of the U.S. as the most benevolent benefactors of the Island to date (New York Times 1954b). It focused on the danger of miscalculation in the tests and the increased number of people removed from their land (Ibid.). The U.S. swiftly responded with an acknowledgment of the moderate tone of the complaint and emphasized that the tests are undertaken only in the interest of general peace and security (Ibid.). Going further, scientific studies of the bomb’s impact on living beings are reported (Odmundsen 1964, Sullivan 1968). The first “voice” of the Bikinians appears in 1975, as a rare glimpse into a different narrative of the displacement: “they had all the power. We were in fear” (Nordheimer 1975: 70. See also Wilford 1977). With the end of the tests, Bikini mostly disappears from the news, with exceptions during a temporary return and re-evacuation of the Islanders in 1978, the compensation negotiations in the lead-up to the Free Compact Agreement of 1994 (Trumbull 1982, New York Times 1983), and a 1988 cleanup operation (Wilford 1988). Against such casting, the nomination presents a challenge to the forgetting of the events at Bikini, to their portrayal as a scientific experiment concerned with global peace and security, and to their departure as willing. 232 The file also notes the exposure of other Marshall Islanders and the U.S. military personnel to radiation.

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history. It holds onto both the global/shared, and the local/particular histories and

significance of the site, without smoothing over the hierarchies between the two. This

relation is also manifested in the remarks of the Marshallese Delegation after the

inscription of the site, which noted that the site is “testimony to the dawn of nuclear age,

the start of Cold War and the era of nuclear colonialism.” It continued: “Inscription on

the World Heritage List will help the world to remember the story of Bikini Atoll and my

hope is that it will be a way for my people to reconcile with their own difficult past”

(UNESCO 2010b: 620). The remarks of the Delegate point to the grounds on which the

story of Bikini Atoll need to be remembered (nuclear age, Cold War but also nuclear

colonialism) and the stage at which such remembrance needs to take place (the world),

for the Bikinians to reconcile with a difficult past that is theirs in ways that are

irreducibly global and particular.

The ICOMOS evaluation found the comparative analysis, historical background

and the justification of value provided by the nomination file as appropriate. At the same

time, it distanced itself from the terminology of nuclear colonialism by placing it in

quotes and casting it as a neologism (ICOMOS 2010: 146). The evaluation also pointed

to the subsequent nuclear tests undertaken by the Soviets and the “balance of terror” as

missing from the historical narrative. The site’s inscription took place after a brief

discussion, with the participation of Australia, Barbados, Bahrain, Switzerland, Mali,

Nigeria and Egypt. 233 Among the speakers, Egypt expressed doubts on the site’s

inscription, citing potential danger from the radioactive remains on the island to tourists.

Switzerland, conversely, noted the importance of remembering “dark and violent” times

in humanity’s history and remarked that they were convinced of the nomination on

account of its connection to the anti-nuclear movement and through it to global peace. In

line with the ICOMOS evaluation, the official statement of value for the site dropped the

terminology of “nuclear colonialism” and included the language of race to develop

weapons of mass destruction. However, it retained the recognition of the particular

injuries by noting “the consequences of the nuclear tests on the civil populations of Bikini

233 The members of the Committee at the time were: Australia, Bahrain, Barbados, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Iraq, Jordan, Mali, Mexico, Nigeria, Russian Federation, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates.

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and the Marshall Islands, in terms of population displacement and public-health

issues.”234

The dissonance raised by the Bikini Atoll nomination was reduced and managed

by the ICOMOS evaluation, which moved it away from the language of nuclear

colonialism and inserted it into a global history of nuclear armament race. This narrative

has been analyzed as one “that privilege[s] the global story of bomb testing over the local

one of a lost homeland” (Brown 2013: 36). Indeed, the nomination file’s assertion that to

understand the extent of the loss, one needs to understand the history and traditional life

of Bikinians and their connection to the place (RMI 2010: 29) is missing from the

inscription narrative. Yet, even as it focuses on this global history, unlike the universal

narratives of the “mankind” and its good, whether in the use or elimination of nuclear

weapons, the inscription of Bikini Atoll points to the “remainders” of this universal –

those from whom sacrifice is demanded in the form of displacement and exposure to

harm.235 It demonstrates other existing frames and languages of understanding global

histories at the intersection of the local/particular and the international, which get

sidelined by the concerns of producing a smooth universal. Such sidelining, in turn, is

reproductive of hegemonic narratives of inevitable arms races, on which global peace

was staked and preserved. The epistemic molding of plurality, therefore, is not one that

necessarily and always gets us away from languages of competing nationalisms towards a

shared universal, but it also sidelines the languages of local and particular, which seek

redress from global histories of hierarchy and injury justified in the name of order-

making and maintaining.

6. African Liberation Heritage Sites: From Human Rights to Other Internationals

The African Liberation Heritage Sites have not yet been submitted as a nomination. They

have, however, been placed on the regime’s agenda, through their inclusion in the

tentative lists of South Africa and Angola, as well as the organization of events such as

the Nelson Mandela Centenary at the 42nd Committee meeting. In this tentative stage, the

234 For the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site’s statement of outstanding universal value, see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1339 (Accessed on 13 March 2019). 235 In fact, Brown notes that the status of world heritage has been creatively used by Bikinians to continue to draw attention to their history and present plight, in their own terms. For example, the official website for the Bikini Atoll opens with the world heritage emblem, informing visitors of this prestigious status, which is subsequently linked to the narrative of the lost homeland.

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serial site provides key insights. First, it shows that world historical renegotiations are not

limited to the Asia-Pacific region or to nuclear weapons. Second, as the serial nomination

includes but extends beyond Robben Island, inscribed as world heritage in 1999, it shows

how the historical significance of the events attached to these sites are framed differently

from the present.

The African Liberation Heritage Sites are conceived as a serial nomination, which

is in various stages of preparation by multiple members of the Southern African

Development Community. Among them, South Africa was the first to place the future

nomination on its tentative list in 2009, followed by Angola in 2017.236 South Africa’s

tentative list item “Liberation Heritage Route” comprises 13 component parts. This

includes Robben Island, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List, with its official

narrative of value as witnessing and symbolizing the triumph of freedom, democracy and

the human spirit over oppression and racism.237 This narrative fits within the emphases of

the regime’s universalist history of humanity and its progress, while also recognizing that

the “inhuman Apartheid regime was rejected by the South African people.” The

Liberation Heritage Route inserts this rejection in its broader context of struggle within

and beyond South Africa. Within South Africa, it brings into view the homes and

detention centers where African National Congress (ANC) leaders were imprisoned.

These work within a similar symbolic terrain as Robben Island: non-violent political

activism and its suppression by the apartheid regime. However, the Liberation Heritage

Route also includes the Hector Peterson Memorial, Sharpeville and the Avalon Cemetery,

which put on the table mass protests undertaken by students and “combatants of the

struggle,” who were not imprisoned but shot and killed. Their stories, therefore, cannot

end with releases into freedom as testament to the progressive history of the international

community. Lastly, the Route includes sites associated with Steve Biko, which connect

the struggle with the black consciousness movement, and Robert Sobukwe, the founder

236 For the Liberation Heritage Route on South Africa’s tentative list, see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5459/ (Accessed on 14 March 2019). For the Cutio Cuanavale, Site of Liberation and Independence on Angola’s tentative list, see: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6252/ (Accessed on 14 March 2019). 237 See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916 . (Accessed on 14 March 2019)

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and first president of the Pan-African Congress, gesturing to other solidarity networks of

the anti-apartheid struggle.238

The justification of the Route’s universal value moves between a framing similar

to Robben Island’s inscription narrative, and newer grounds of value that the additional

components invoke: namely, the international association of the anti-apartheid struggle

with universal human rights and the armed struggles of anti-colonial resistance. This is

expressed most clearly in the articulation that the United Nations designated the apartheid

regime’s rights violations as crimes against humanity, and “the struggle against Apartheid

became a universal struggle for Human Rights,” but this struggle took a “liberation” form

when adopted by the Organization of African Union.239 This culminated in the liberations

struggles that encompassed most countries in Southern and Eastern Africa. Thus, this

account does not refuse the attachment of the anti-apartheid movement to a global human

rights narrative, nor does it deny the contribution of the mobilization of a conscientious

international community to the anti-apartheid struggle. However, the account embeds the

anti-apartheid struggle in a history and a different international of pan-African struggles,

rooted in distinctive ideational grounds, such as the black consciousness movement.

In tandem with dynamics explored across the arc of this dissertation, the

significance of the Liberation Route is put forth in tension and conjunction with the

“universal,” where the universal signals hegemonic narratives and a stage of recognition.

In including the Route as part of its tentative list, South Africa recalls a Draft UNESCO

Resolution on African liberation heritage, sponsored by nine African countries, which

defines it as “a common heritage of shared global values,” aimed at “promot[ing]

dialogue amongst nations and cultures,” developing “a culture of peace,” and

“contributing to the memory of the world.” This liberation heritage, therefore, is not to be

regionally shared and celebrated, but it should become part of the broader stories of

humanity. This draft resolution not only foregrounds the global aspirations of this

pending nomination, but also connects them to the goals of the World Heritage

Convention of fostering mutual understanding, dialogue and peaceful global relations.

238 This pan-African character is also attached to the University of Fort Hare, defined as the first Black University where “most political leadership of both South Africa and Africa were educated” (https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5459/, Accessed on 14 March 2019.). 239 Ibid.

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The memory that would be fostered by the site, in turn, stands at the intersection of

hegemonic narratives of a liberal-progressive history of human rights and others that

interrupt this story through bringing in alternative solidarities and struggles.

The interruptive nature of these historical amendments are spelled out more

explicitly in “Cuito Cuanavale: Site of Liberation and Independence,” included on

Angola’s tentative list in 2017. If we place it within the historical arc provided by South

Africa’s Route, Cuito Cuanavale corresponds to the entry of the OAU into the fray and

the broadening of the universal human rights movement into regional liberation struggles.

The struggle is, once again, against the racist –and this time also expansionist– South

African regime. It is defined as “one of the most violent military battles in all latitudes of

the African continent,” which has “enter[ed] the annals of the glorious history of the

Angolan people.”240 This articulation of a violent battle and a glorious national history

pose a stark and dual contrast to the regime’s goals of a peaceful universal history: it

emphasizes national pride and a moment of violence.

What complicates this interpretation is the framing of the battle in internationalist

terms and as providing the condition of possibility for mutual understanding and peace.

The triumph of the battle is accredited to “Cuban, Angolan and internationalist fighters,”

pointing to ties of solidarity that are not captured by the international community, which

coalesced around the United Nations. The site is further described as corresponding to

OUV criterion (iii), a unique or exceptional testimony of a cultural tradition or

civilization, as “the most brilliant contemporary expression of international solidarity.”241

What is at work is not (only) a national glorification that contrasts with a universal

history, but (also) a different conception of the international and its political solidarities.

At the same time, the peace, freedom and independence, which followed this war, are

posited as opening “the era of cooperation and coexistence” at the level of southern

Africa. In this formulation, freedom and independence do not emerge from cooperation

and coexistence, nor are they incidental to it. Rather, they need to be in place to allow for

cooperation. This formulation reverses and reveals what is taken for granted by the liberal

international world order’s contention that peace and prosperity will follow from

240 See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6252/ (Accessed on 14 March 2019). 241 Ibid.

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continued cooperation and interdependence, without attending the terms on which they

take place – concerning constitutive hierarchies, exclusion and injustice.

The reception, “Nelson Mandela Centenary Celebration” was held on the evening

of July 1st 2018. The two figures honored by the celebration were Nelson Mandela,

already linked to the World Heritage List through the inscription of Robben Island, and

Albertina Sisulu, a South African anti-apartheid activist and a post-apartheid Parliament

Member. However, the speeches made by the South African, Tanzanian and Angolan

officials marked Liberation Heritage Sites as the focus of the event, and the event as

indicating the political will behind their pending nomination. As part of a series of

speeches that underlined the desire for world recognition of this heritage, the South

African official noted that an interface is needed between African routes to independence

and world heritage, since the nomination introduces change, and change requires

management.242 Thus, while South Africa’s tentative list describes the Liberation Route

as already connected to the List through key terms of the regime such as culture of peace

and memory of the world, this speech recognized that a gap exists between the Liberation

Sites’ positioning of these concepts, and their understanding within the remit of the

regime.

These gaps were evidenced in the speeches of two experts, affiliated with

ICOMOS and ICCROM respectively. The ICOMOS expert began her remarks by

acknowledging the changing approach to heritage in the last 25 years, as a move beyond

monumental and intrinsic approaches to value, resulting in the inclusion of non-

monumental sites and places that are valued by the communities on the List. This positive

development, she noted, has presented challenges to the Convention. Having laid this

framework, the expert moved onto the adjournment decision taken in relation to the

Funerary Sites, and urged the states to make use of this decision to further reflect on the

Liberation Heritage Sites, which –while “extremely inspirational” and pursued with a

strong momentum– are “not easy to relate to the Convention.” The ICCROM

representative, who took the podium afterwards, began by noting that the inscription of

Robben Island had been the strongest feeling he experienced in his long years of working

on world heritage. Noting the importance of liberation heritage to this part of the world,

242 Reconstructed from research notes.

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he pointed to other international instruments – Intangible Heritage, Memory of the

World, Sites of Memory – that might be better suited for the inscription of these sites.

The experts’ interventions mark the bounds of the regime’s conceptions of mutual

understanding and the contours of its universalist history of progress. They also,

inadvertently, draw a line in the sand, separating forms of struggle valorized on the global

stage and others that are labeled as divisive. Not surprisingly, these conceptions are

congruent with the ideational bases of the world order in its pursuit of peace and

prosperity, the progressive historiography of this pursuit, and the self-identification of a

liberal and peaceful order that emerges from them. At these intersections, the Robben

Island falls on the right side of this line. The response to the broader group of Liberation

Heritage Sites, indicates which elements and narratives of this struggle make the cut for

world recognition and which fall on the other side of the line. The latter include

alternative solidarities and international imaginaries that extend beyond the struggle for

human rights, and point to the need to create conditions of independence and freedom on

which cooperation and interdependence can be built. Similar to the case of the Bikini

Atoll, in its congruence with the ideational bases of world-ordering, the universalist

historiography of the regime sidelines these other narratives of the international.

7. Sites of Meiji Industrial Revolution and Multiple Narratives

This chapter has analyzed a recent pattern of nominating sites that push against the

hegemonic narratives of the world order and the regime’s reconciliatory-universalist

bases. These cases point to the ways in which the regime attempts to reduce dissonance –

namely, inscription as exceptional, narrative reframing and most recently the suspension

of evaluation until further scientific study. The case of the Meiji Sites suggests that an

engagement with, rather than sidelining of contentious plurality, is a more feasible and

desirable path forward in the changing global political context. This case also

demonstrates, through an ICOMOS discussion paper and a World Heritage Center

commissioned paper on Sites of Memory, that such engagement can unfold through two

questions: what do contested narratives mean for world heritage, or what does inscription

as world heritage mean for these sites? It is the latter question that provides the grounds

for a better engagement with the challenges at stake.

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The Meiji Industrial Revolution Site dossier, a 3120-page file, carefully prepared

with detailed boundaries of the site’s 27 component parts in 11 different locations

concentrated in southwest Japan, an extensive management plan and a meticulous history

of Japan’s industrialization between 1850s-1910, was submitted for nomination in 2014.

The nomination pitched the site’s value as the first transfer of industrialization to a non-

Western country, adapted to the culture and needs of Japan. This narrative aligns with the

pluralization that was the focus of Chapter 3, rather than the adaptation of universal

values and themes to local conditions that marked the regime’s earlier implementation

(Chapter 2). In the storyline traced between 1850-1910, Japan is an active agent of its

industrialization, which begins with indigenous trials, gets assistance from Western

experts and expertise, and culminates in “full blown industrialization .. achieved with

newly-acquired Japanese expertise and the active adaptation of Western technology to

best suit Japanese raw materials, economic needs, and social traditions, and through the

development of distinctly Japanese company structures” (Japan 2014: 245). The

industries fully developed through these processes are coal and steel. The distinct

company structures are grounded in the social fabric and cultural traditions such as that of

the samurai, ordered by the Meiji reign to give up their sword. Subsequently, the file

explains, they became businessmen and marked emergent companies with their cultural

and organizational practices (Ibid.: 246-247). Demanding recognition as the first non-

European country to industrialize, this nomination is, thus, at once a claim to global co-

evality with the industrialized nations of the West, and a desire for prestige that can be

understood within the terms of Japan’s internationalized national identity.

The ICOMOS evaluation concurred with Japan’s framing narrative for the most

part, noting that it is “undoubtedly the first non-European country to industrialize.” It also

affirmed 2/3 OUV criteria claimed by the nomination file: the adaptation of technology

that enabled Japan to become a world-ranking nation was produced by exceptional

interchange, and it constitutes a unique achievement in world history that can be viewed

as an Asian cultural response to Western industrial values (ICOMOS 2015: 93).

Recommending the site’s inscription on the World Heritage List, the evaluation

expressed two reservations: the need to develop an interpretive strategy demonstrating

how all “23 components in 11 sites and 8 areas” relate to the site’s value and narrative,

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and the need to reflect on the relation between cultural traditions and industrialization. In

elaborating the second reservation, the report stated that industrial sites are no longer

glorified for their progress. Rather, they are narrated along with the attendant social

upheaval. It gave the example of the displacement of agricultural populations to work in

expanding towns and cities in 18th century England (Ibid.: 94). At the intersection of

these two reservations, ICOMOS made the recommendation for an interpretive strategy

that allows “for an understanding of the full history of each site” (Ibid.: 103). This

recommendation would become an accidental pivot point for negotiation and agreement

between Japan and South Korea on the site’s other histories.

The Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution do not fit the categories of divisive,

negative or dissonant sites. The memories are not attached to conflict, nor does the site

stand at cross purposes with the histories of the world order. To the contrary, it could

easily fit within the remit of a progressive expansion of technology, refracted through a

lens of multiculturalism, and ultimately able to accommodate more contemporary

concerns about industrial transformation that depart from its earlier wholesale

glorification and attend to its socially unsettling elements. However, the site’s nomination

aroused strong objections from South Korea, resulting in a negotiation that involved the

two countries as well as the broader structures and actors of the regime.

The crux of the South Korean objection was the exclusion of Korean forced labor

–used in 7/23 component parts– from the nomination dossier. Japan had conceivably tried

to preempt this reaction by bounding the temporal scope of the nomination to 1910,

which is two years before the end of the Meiji reign and the year of Japan’s annexation of

the Korean peninsula.243 This timeline also precedes the use of Korean forced labor on

these sites under the National Mobilization Act of 1938. Unlike the case of the Bikini

Atoll nomination, where ICOMOS brought in the nuclear arms race, which post-dated the

displacement of Bikinians, the Advisory Body did not draw attention to this oversight.

This temporal bounding, however, was not enough for the separation of these

components from their histories of forced labor. Key among these seven components is

243 Meskell argues that Japan was motivated solely by national interest, and quotes a lunch conversation with a Japanese diplomat who states that they “do not fear UNESCO” (2018: 152). However, the decision to cut-off the nomination at 1910 instead of 1912, which is the end of the Meiji reign, as well as the Japanese declaration after the inscription suggests that this posturing does not tell the whole story. Others also emphasize the international orientation of the nomination dossier, as I do (Mizuno 2017, Trifu 2018).

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the Hashima Island, also known as Gunkanjima (Battleship) Island, given its elongated

shape and the concrete wall built around it. Hashima Island was one of Japan’s two

underwater coal-mining locations until its closure in 1974. Between 1938-1945, Korean

and Chinese forced laborers were recruited under the Military Mobilization Act and sent

to work on the island, alongside Japanese workers. On the island, their residences were

separated, and they have been documented to be malnourished, un/derpaid and

overworked. 244 This history is not included in the nomination file’s description of

Hashima Island or in the remaining parts of the 3120 pages. 245

First, let me place the site within broader renegotiations of memory regimes in

East Asia as intricately connected to shifts in the world order. At the time of the site’s

nomination, forced labor had not been a topic of debate and negotiation between Japan

and South Korea. Instead, the two countries had held contentious talks on divergent pre-

WWII histories in the case of so-called comfort women, who were forced into sexual

slavery by the Japanese army. China, Japan and South Korea had also initiated

collaborations on history textbooks (Goh 2013: 175-202). These activities point to a

broader terrain of renegotiation that is neither bilateral, nor limited to the Meiji Sites. Goh

attends to the post-Cold War renegotiations of what she calls the “East Asian memory

regime” in the final chapter of her book The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy

and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia. In the book, Goh adopts a fairly conventional

approach to the East Asian order, starting with chapters that focus on power, conflict and

the economy. However, while it is placed as the last chapter, this memory regime is

nevertheless framed as inextricably connected to questions of justice and the possibility

of a post-Cold War regional order. Goh contends that the fracturing of the regional

memory regime is tied to changes in the broader order, including, importantly, the end of

the Cold War. She traces how the dominant post-WWII narrative cast Japan as having

engaged in a misguided military-imperialist adventure propelled by an elite clique, which

came to its definitive end with the American bombing, occupation and demilitarization of

Japan. These events returned Japan to the fold of international society and to its liberal-

244 On this island, 1,299 Korean and Chinese workers died between 1925-1945 from a range of causes related to their working and living conditions (Dixon et. al. 2016: 173). 245 Korea is mentioned in the nomination file as part of the comparative analysis and as a late industrializer. The dossier also notes that “Japan annexed Korea in 1910” (Japan 2015: 305).

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democratic potential (2013: 164). This hegemonically pursued narrative marked the

limits of regional justice demands and reconciliation possibilities, including matters of

“the second Sino-Japanese war, Korea’s subjugation under Japanese colonialism, and the

wider regional dynamics of resistance, challenge and decline entwined in the transition

away from the older Sinic order” (Ibid.: 160).

Undoubtedly, the renegotiation of this memory regime is not only marked by the

end of the Cold War and the obsolescence of strategic imperatives that helped shore up

these histories. They also unfold in a context where the other two actors, China and South

Korea, have become more powerful (Yoneyama 1999: 5, Dixon et. al. 2016). Without

dismissing the greater visibility this can bring to other histories, but also recalling how

previously marginal histories can be brought forth not only by rising actors but also by

small island states such as the Republic of Marshall Islands, my aim is to foreground the

thread that has been running through this chapter: heritage is a conduit through which the

past can be renegotiated from a changing present. Consequently, heritage-related

projects, including inscriptions of world heritage sites have come to play a key role in

such regional and global politics of renegotiation (Winter 2015 and 2016, Nakano 2018,

Huang and Lee 2019). At the same time, the case of the Meiji Sites allows a further

analysis of these dynamics. The waning hegemony of the order’s historical narrative not

only brings forth histories of hierarchy and exclusion that undergird demands for

(narrative) justice and recognition, but it does so along a plurality of axes, which

challenge the emergence of alternative hegemonies. As Goh points out, the negotiation of

these plural demands are not incidental but rather integral to the possibility of alternative

orders or the coherence of the extant one(s).

The South Korean Delegation initially tried to block the inscription of the Site as

long as it included the 7 component parts, later changing this strategy to pushing for the

recognition of the site’s multiple histories. What followed were a series of talks, mediated

by the Chairperson of the World Heritage Committee, which preceded and bled into the

2015 Committee meeting. The Committee’s discussion of the nomination was postponed

by a day when an agreement between the two delegations broke down. However, on 5

July 2015, the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution was inscribed on the World

Heritage List. In a departure from the regular procedure, the site was not opened up to

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discussion by the Committee. Rather, ICOMOS presented its evaluation and

recommendation for inscription, followed by Japan’s remarks indicating that it is: prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites, and that, during World War II, the Government of Japan also implemented its policy of requisition. Japan is prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of [an] information center (UNESCO 2015: 222).

Despite the interpretive dancing that followed these remarks,246 and the mixed progress

on the inclusive interpretive strategy,247 these remarks constitute the first international

acknowledgment by Japan of Korean forced labor.248 At the same time, they have kept

the need for a more inclusive interpretative strategy on the Committee’s agenda since the

site’s inscription, including after Japan’s submission in 2018 of a lengthy document

outlining its interpretative strategy.

We might interpret this episode as a divergence of interests between the two

states, with the governance regime fostering a compromise that provided gains for both

parties: inscription for Japan and acknowledgment for South Korea. However, this

interpretation would miss the key political stakes that have been foregrounded throughout

this dissertation. Approaching this contestation as competing national interests overlooks

the broader dynamics that undergird this divergence and bring it to the world heritage

regime for transnational recognition. These are the dynamics of a pluralizing terrain of

the world order. Understood as such, the debates around the Meiji Industrial Revolution

246 The key semantic gymnastics here was on the part of Japan, who distinguished forced labor vs. forced to work. Grounded in Japanese, this distinction was aimed mainly at a domestic audience. However, it was picked up by international media (Yasunori 2015: 1). 247 In 2018, Japan submitted a 864-page State of Conservation report, centered mainly on the interpretive strategy. In the report, the focus is predominantly on the original recommendations of ICOMOS for the narrative integration of each component into the site’s OUV. However, the strategy also promises to undertake research on workers, including on “Koreans in Japan before, during and after the War, including research on the policy of requisition of Korean workers” (Japan 2018: 49 and 51). More dissonant to the declaration of the Japanese Delegation after the site’s inscription is the following language: “Government of Japan implemented its policy of requisition of workers under the National Mobilisation Law during World War II, and that there were a large number of those from the Korean Peninsula who supported Japanese industries before, during and after the war” (Ibid.: 51, emphasis mine). My interviewee called this a “distortion of language,” and pointed to it, along with the Japanese decision to build an information center in Tokyo instead of near the relevant sites, as the two outstanding grievances on their Delegation’s part. 248 It has, furthermore, resulted in the mobilization of South Korean civil society towards such acknowledgment. While it is beyond the scope of my dissertation, such activism nonetheless suggests that “inscription was the beginning of heritage politics from below.” (Nakano 2018: 60).

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Site point to the possibility that these contested histories are not necessarily descents into

competing nationalisms but concern questions of justice intricately connected to global

histories. At the same time, these negotiations extend beyond political pact-making based

on discrete interests (Huang and Lee 2019: 146). Rather, they concern the renegotiation

of intersubjectively acknowledged and contested social meanings. The negotiation around

the Meiji Sites also suggest that in this plural terrain, it is not only the old hegemonic

narratives that are challenged, but also the emergence of new ones. It is a dynamic that I

have been gesturing towards, and one that finds its concrete manifestation in the case of

the Meiji Sites, where the hegemonic thrust of Japan’s claim to civilizational co-evality is

undercut by a contending narrative of the underbelly of this civilizational prowess. These

dynamics also suggest that the regime needs to develop further mechanisms for engaging

with this plurality on ethical, political and pragmatic grounds, given the impossibility of

holding them at bay through “reconciliatory universals.”

As the case of the Meiji Sites suggests, most of the productive mechanisms for

engagement with plurality emerged accidentally and haphazardly. The ICOMOS call for

a comprehensive narrative was not intended to bring in histories of Korean forced labor,

but instead aimed for the inclusion of the social upheaval that accompanies

industrialization. It could, however, be used as the hinge for research and

acknowledgment of the history of forced labor attached to these sites. Similarly, it was

the recognition that stopping the nomination might not be possible that steered the South

Korean Delegation towards the strategy of plural narratives, resulting in its sponsorship

of the commissioned study on Sites of Memory. This commissioned study, in turn, raises

the question of what world heritage inscription means for these sites. It posits that the

inadequate recognition of a heritage place as a site of memory – such as the inscription of

the Meiji Site only as testament to Japan’s industrialization – can result in the insufficient

treatment of these contentious or difficult historical aspects in the interpretation of the

site’s value and significance. At the same time, the report acknowledges that international

recognition of sites of memory, or sites with elements of memory, will bring into view a

range of viewpoints (International Coalition of Sites of Conscience 2018: 21). Thus, it

urges for inclusive interpretative frameworks that utilize multidisciplinary research, local

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and external reviewers, material and oral historical evidence to build interpretations that

engage with and include the multiplicity of perspectives (Ibid.: 27).

At the same time, in reflecting on these trends, ICOMOS has also produced a

discussion paper on divisive sites. As foreshadowed at the start of this chapter, the

ICOMOS discussion paper pivots from the challenge that the sites present to the world

heritage regime. However, it would not be fair to cast the ICOMOS discussion paper as

unconcerned with the sites’ narratives. In fact, the discussion paper points out that

because the world heritage designation fixes the site’s value at the time of its inscription

and designates a conservation strategy based on this fixing, it is ill-fitting for post-conflict

sites and their dynamic memory regimes. However, not only have such sites been

accommodated within the remit of the regime, the changing memory regimes around

them have been accommodated by practices such as amending the names of sites, or

updating statements of universal value.

In turn, the commissioned report falls short in its adoption of the recommendation

that the nominations of properties with potential divisive memories are allowed some

lapse of time – proposed as 50 years or 2 generations after the events (International

Coalition of Sites of Conscience 2018: 29). The case study that initiated the report

demonstrates that at stake is not a passing of time that can be safely measured by decades

or generations: Japan’s employment of Korean forced labor ended in 1945. Put

differently and in terms of the first epigraph of this chapter, one cannot conceive of these

divisive pasts through a homogeneous, empty time that is the armature of universal

history and historiography. Time does not pass by way of units that are qualitatively

empty and quantitatively equal, whether measured in years or generations. Rather, what

can be relegated to the past, whether such relegation proves durable and what never

becomes passed unfold in relation to substantive projects of historiography, which are

unsettled through changing presents, and enduring justice and recognition demands.

8. Conclusion

The analytical threads that this chapter traced follow from the broader theoretical arc of

the dissertation and the impact of the pluralizing world order on the universalist bases of

the regime. However, the chapter has focused on a more contentious plurality, insofar as

the particular and putatively universal, or hegemonic, historical narratives analyzed in

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this chapter constitute challenges to or limits of one another. At the same time, my

analysis ended by pointing to better approaches to this contentious plurality that are

resoundingly similar to the conceptions that emerged from earlier chapters: an approach

to value and meaning as plural rather than universal, and an engagement with rather than

sidelining of plurality through the involvement of multiple authors. In positing these as

better approaches, this chapter has also contended that the universal is not only

inadequate in responding to such plurality, but that it moves beyond contention by

reproducing hierarchies. In this case, these are hierarchies of world order-making, insofar

as the universal adopted and pursued by the regime is congruent with the ideational bases

of the order, on how to get from here to there – to peace and progress. Thus, while these

new histories do come with their own hierarchies and exclusions, making room for

plurality is a better engagement with them than a universalist attempt at reconciliation.

The next chapter will conclude this dissertation by a comprehensive discussion

not only of the possibility, but also the desirability of something like the global

governance of culture, especially in the context of a pluralizing world order. In moving

towards that discussion, it is important to note that the challenges presented by the cases

analyzed in this chapter to the dominant histories of the world order push against the idea

–in theory and in practice– of a single world order. They suggest that despite its dominant

iterations, and attendant institutional frameworks and governance, the order is always

multiply constituted, in the perception, if not in the engagement of the participants. Such

multiplicity is not new per se, but it does gain a new kind of significance as the ideational

bases of the world order are contested, and result in transformations consequential to its

governance and reproduction. This raises two conceptual questions, flagged in a different

form in Chapter 1 and to which I return in the conclusion: Does it still make sense to talk

about this order in singular forms –if it ever did? Does it make sense to still think of the

present time as the continuation of the post-WWII order? And, ultimately, how to

conceptualize change not only in but also of a pluralizing world order.

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Conclusion

This dissertation opened with debates on the future of the world order and its governance,

rooted in worries about the diffusion of power and ideational pluralization, to delve deep

into the negotiations of universal value and expert authority within the world heritage

regime. In doing so, it did not disconnect from these bigger questions insofar as the

negotiations of the regime’s original grounds of universal value and international

expertise arise out of the changing meaning and role of culture within the world order.

This connection also remained firmly in place through my central theoretical proposition

that the world order and global governance are intricately connected in a recursive

relation. In this conclusion, I begin by synthesizing the arguments developed across

Chapters 2-5 of the dissertation and reiterate the contribution this dissertation makes to

the scholarly debates on the future of the order and its governance. Next, I point to further

avenues of research that are opened up by the theoretical framework and empirical

analysis of this dissertation. I conclude with a discussion of not only the possibility, but

the desirability of the global governance of culture in a pluralizing world order.

1. Recap: Argument and Contribution

In pursuing the question of the possibility of global governance; that is what it can mean,

be and do in a pluralizing world order, I have argued that the renegotiations of the world

heritage regime’s original ideational-institutional constitution arise out of the pluralizing

meaning of culture in the domain of the world order, as an axis of demand-making. This

pluralizing ideational domain has pushed against the regime’s singular-universal

conception of its object and the pursuit of its governance through and towards similarly

universalist means and ends. The institutional set-up of the regime, which was intended

to guarantee the apolitical and objective nature of this pursuit through a reliance on

international expertise has similarly come under stress. These challenges, however, have

proposed or resulted in the production of new approaches to shared value and expertise

that reflect this changing terrain. Thus, while plurality does not mean the impossibility of

governance, it does mean its significant transformation, ideationally and institutionally,

through contestations and renegotiation grounded in a plurality of ideas about what the

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object at hand is, the grounds of its governance, and the world that is to be fostered

through such governance.

I have built this argument across the arc of my chapters. Chapter 1 laid out my

theoretical framework, which foregrounds the relation between the world order and

global governance institutions and regimes, where both order and governance are defined

as ideationally-socially constituted. In this relation, governance regimes put the order to

work in particular areas. In doing so, they produce hierarchies between states in relation

to the object at hand and on the world stage. At the same time, regimes also provide

opportunities for a less hierarchical inclusion if states act as good citizens of the world

order through participation in global governance in desired ways. Given this relation,

plurality within the order has a significant impact on governance regimes’ ability to foster

shared value, exercise authority and be perceived as authoritative. However, in a context

of plurality where the hegemonic conceptions are under stress but a new hegemonic

alternative has not emerged, participants engage with existing institutions and regimes

through what I have called contentious participation. Contentious participation brings

onto the stage of existing regimes and institutions alternative conceptions of the object as

the grounds on and ends towards which its governance should unfold. Such renegotiation

progresses at the intersection of new and old terms, and results in the emergence of

partially transformed conceptions of the object, potentially shared values pursued in

relation to it, as well as amalgamated actors and relations of authority.

This chapter also put forth an overview of culture as a domain of salient plurality

within the world order, which draws directly from my theoretical framework. The key

claim here is that the renegotiation of the world heritage regime should be understood in

historical-political terms rather than essentialist ones that posit culture as a domain of

inherent plurality and cast these negotiations as a foregone conclusion. Rather, the

cultural contestations that impact the world heritage regime emerge at the intersection of

the changing meaning and role of culture on the world stage, and the past and present

governance of culture as universal. I identify civilizational co-evality and

multiculturalism as the two global politics of this plurality.

Chapter 2 traced the emergence of the world heritage regime to a permissive

political context and a time of ideational convergence. It also analyzed the regime’s early

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implementation, when this hegemonic convergence around culture and cultural value was

at work in the kinds of sites that were nominated by states, the evaluation these sites

received from the Advisory Bodies, and the response of the states to such evaluation. One

of the aims of this chapter was to set a contrast with the later implementation of the

regime, towards supporting the claim that a historical-political change is at work. This

chapter connected the emergence of UNESCO to post-WWII order-building efforts,

which tasked the organization with fostering the social fabric on which peaceful global

relations and international cooperation could be pursued. The institution employed

liberal-modernist notions of science, education and culture towards promoting this

convergent and peaceful humanity. The world heritage regime, in turn, was not only in

ideational congruence with these aims but also arose from the global political context of

the Cold War, and through an international safeguarding campaign interpreted as

demonstrating the possibility of culture to constitute the basis of international cooperation

at a time of economic-ideological polarization. The early implementation of the world

heritage regime is demonstrative of the key role ideational hegemony played in its global

governance of cultural heritage, and what this hegemony produced by way of world-

ordering. In terms of the global governance of cultural heritage, it allowed for an easy

recognition of so-called universal value, obviating the need for the adjudication of

plurality. At the same time, it produced a World Heritage List, which depicted a cultural-

historical arc of humanity with a clear center of gravity in Europe, with exceptions for

other “great civilizations,” the beginnings of this arc in the Middle East and Africa, and

its subsequent imperial travels to the “new world.” The questions of adjudication in this

period were tied mainly to the increased volume of nominations, and interpreted by states

and experts alike as a problem that could be epistemically resolved, by a comprehensive

geographical-temporal study of civilizational production. Thus, I argued that hegemony

not only sidelines the question of plurality but it also recasts it, in this case as a problem

of further knowledge production.

Chapter 3 focused on the renegotiations of the regime’s conception of culture as

universalizable and its governance of cultural heritage on grounds of a universal value.

These renegotiations, it contended, began in the mid-1990s, and are regularly connected

to invocations of changes in the world. These invocations are substantively under-

262

specified but directly implicate the regime’s original ideational-institutional set-up. In

recognizing the substantive vagueness of this invocation, I distinguished between

political and epistemic approaches to and uptakes of plurality, grounded in overlapping as

well as divergent changes in the world, and introducing different sets of transformative

demands. The epistemic changes are grounded in the relevant domains of knowledge

production, such as anthropology, which began to conceive of culture in more dynamic,

people-based and vernacular terms rather than the static, material-based and monumental

conceptions of domains such as art history. The political changes, on the other hand,

similarly emphasize plural and subjective notions of culture, but tie these to demands for

recognition and redress for past exclusions. I argued that while an epistemic engagement

with plurality seeks to combine substantive openness with a methodological-epistemic

universalism, political uptakes of plurality point to concerns of particularity and

representation, which challenge such universalist grounds. These challenges and their

renegotiation have partially transformed the regime’s approach to cultural value from a

universal-deductive to an emergent-inductive one.

Chapter 4 raised the question of what these changes mean for the exercise of

authority within the regime, and for its constitution as an authority on the global

governance of culture. It made a two-fold cut into authority: the increasing objections to

the evaluations of international experts, and the distinction that the experts and civil

servants made between the presence of politics in the regime (always) and a dynamics of

politicization (recent). Based on these, I argued that what is at stake is a renegotiation of

the proper actors and relations of authority based on the changing global politics of

culture. The chapter analyzed two sets of challenges to international expertise: one set

focused on “local” meaning and values as the proper grounds of adjudication, pointing to

international experts’ shortcomings, and a second set foregrounded representativeness as

an alternative grounds of evaluation, with implications for the kind of authority the

regime can be – i.e. a governance of cultural value based on representation, where the

site’s value is identified by its legatees. I demonstrated the continued support for

international experts and expertise as expressed by civil servants, experts themselves, and

a group of states. I analyzed the alternatives that emerge at this intersection of challenges

and continued adherence to show that they foreground local experts, as actors who have

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contextual knowledge of the sites, and produce evaluation procedures that are more

dialogical with blurred or porous boundaries between the expert and political domains.

These negotiations of value and authority within the regime have not been settled,

and it remains to be seen whether some of the recently adopted mechanisms can mediate

the more fraught elements, such as states contending bias on the part of experts and

others accusing some states of politicizing the Convention. In some ways, however,

Chapter 5 presented the most “forward looking” part of this dissertation. Switching gears

slightly, this chapter focused on the recent trend of nominating dissonant sites, which

challenge both the progressive histories of the world order as building and maintaining

peace and security and the universalist historiography of the regime with a congruent

progressive bent. The chapter linked the increasing numbers and changing narrative

framing of these sites to the waning historical hegemony of the order, and the

concomitant emergence of marginalized histories of global politics. It argued that while

the regime’s strategy of eliding these sites through a focus on progressive and productive

history has been supplemented by narrative reinterpretation and exceptional inscription,

the quantitative increase and qualitative shifts challenge both strategies. The 2018

decision to adjourn the evaluation of all sites related to memories of recent conflict

foregrounds the quantitative increase. However, we need to attend to the qualitative

change to understand the world historical renegotiations at play, and the challenges that

they present to the congruence of the regime and the world order on the production of

peaceful global relations through a progressive historiography, pursuit of universal goods,

and institutional interdependence. Furthermore, like Chapter 2 with its emphasis on the

hierarchies of governance produced by a hegemonic conception of universal value,

Chapter 5 demonstrated how an insistence on universals reproduce victorious histories

and the marginalization of other narratives. It concluded by proposing that, even though

what is at stake is a more fractious plurality with these contentious sites, it is nevertheless

a similar set of concepts and mechanisms that can help their mediation: an emphasis on

plural narratives and multiple interpretations, constructed through the involvement of

multiple actors and their bases of knowledge and meaning-making.

The primary contribution my dissertation makes to debates on the future of the

world order is foregrounding the relation between order and governance and proposing

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contentious participation as a mechanism of transformation of existing institutions and

regimes, and through them world-ordering of particular domains. This shifts the focus

away from the wait for a next great power war as when the order will change, and urges

attentiveness to ongoing transformations. However, it does not cast such transformation

as an unraveling or fragmentation, but rather points to the way in which it emerges out of

the histories of existing orders, ideationally and institutionally. On the one hand, this

makes the international a more contentious domain than fragmentation or non-

engagement would produce. On the other, such contention is historical and political,

which means it is meaning-laden rather than structural-deterministic. Thus, it would

behoove us not to think historically and politically about it, including analyses of the

ideational-institutional structures that exacerbate these contentions, and others that might

better fit the demands of a pluralizing world order.

In relation to the scholarship on world orders, then, my framework aligns with a

growing domain-based approach, which recognizes the uneven pressures and

transformative dynamics within the order. My framework traces these pressures to the

plurality of conceptions concerning the object of governance – the grounds on and the

ends towards which it should be governed as part of order-making. By shifting my

empirical focus to global governance, I contribute to the world order scholarship

dynamics and mechanisms of how plurality unfolds in transforming existing institutions

and regimes, as a third alternative to receding governance in plural domains or parallel

institution building. This opens up new theoretical possibilities to explore the future of

the world order, and its emergent transformation, which I take up in the next section.

In relation to the scholarship on global governance, I contribute to the social

approaches, which hinge on the key role played by shared meaning in the constitution –

that is genesis and implementation– of global governance regimes. I propose that the

addition of hegemonic to intersubjectively shared meaning allows us to make sense of

how seemingly shared meaning comes to be contested and also how such contestation

does not take place through ruptures. While hegemony generates shared meaning, its

work is never complete, because it never exhausts all possible conceptions,

identifications etc. However, because it is hegemonic, it becomes intersubjective in the

sense that it is known and understood, even if not accepted. Hegemonic meaning

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therefore suggests that the social is constituted by shared meanings, not only in the sense

of such meaning finding consensus among participants, but also in the sense that meaning

is socially intelligible and contested through this legibility. Thus, such contestation

unfolds at the intersection of the hegemonic terms and emergent alternatives, and

provides an important avenue for thinking about global governance in the context of

plural meanings.

2. Avenues for Further Research

My theoretical framework and analysis point to further avenues of research. In the

domain of world heritage, these include continued research on newly initiated

mechanisms such as the amended evaluation process and the Upstream procedure to see

whether and how they are able to intervene in and mediate divergent conceptions. In the

case of contentious sites, new questions will arise depending on whether the regime will

decide to proceed with their inscription, and whether such inscription will push towards

universalist or plural grounds. The former will raise the challenge of sidelined

contentious narratives, whereas the latter will be a test of whether states that push for

plurality are open to pluralism, as their narratives are amended through other

perspectives. Lastly, while this dissertation has left the question of heritage destruction

and reconstruction beyond its scope, these issues of the universal vs. local meaning of

sites, and the symbolic location of heritage between the past, present and future will be

key areas of contention in the post-conflict reconstruction of world heritage sites, which

will bring together a range of international and national actors in places such as

Damascus and Aleppo. In fact, some of these tensions have already manifested

themselves in the reconstruction of the sufi shrines and mosques in Timbuktu, Mali,

which is considered as a success story and a model by UNESCO, and which was more

ambivalently received by the local community, who preferred the quick restoration of

their places of worship to lengthier procedures of documentation before reconstruction.

The debates I have traced in this dissertation can shed significant light onto what some of

the main tensions are likely to be, and what kinds of approaches might better fit the

divergent conceptions that will be at work.

Beyond the domain of world heritage, a productive avenue of research is whether

similar mechanisms of shared value, actors and relations of authority emerge in other

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global governance domains that have been undergoing various degrees of contestation

and transformation in connection with a pluralizing world order. This would allow for a

better understanding of what renegotiations are specific to the world heritage regime, and

which ones are emergent repertoires of value and authority that can better negotiate a

plural terrain. Among these, the challenges to international expertise have already been

noted in domains such as global environmental governance. The focus on local experts,

in turn, introduces liminal actors that can facilitate epistemic production by broadening

its bases and towards more inclusive formulations of governance. There is room for

further research in whether and how local experts are invoked in other contexts of global

governance, and how their inclusion might shifts the epistemic production that is

generative of governance. Lastly, while focusing on states and experts, I have noted that

the domain of world heritage is also populated by civil society and grassroots

organizations, which range from influential international ones to smaller local groups.

The predominance of well-funded, Western-based and liberal INGOs in global

governance has been noted by the literature. However, the dynamics of pluralization raise

the question of whether this extends to civil society engagement with global governance,

and if so, what the consequences are for the political, and what some have called moral,

negotiations that unfold within these arenas.

In the domain of the world order and its future, the mechanism of transformation I

posited raises a number of theoretical and analytical questions that point to important

avenues of further research. If what is at stake is not the transformation of an order

through a great power war, which renders defunct the previously existing ideational-

institutional bases of ordering global politics towards peace and prosperity, but rather

multifold negotiations that result in piecemeal and at times contradictory change, how

would we know when it no longer makes sense to talk about the post-WWII liberal

international order? Would we call what emerges from these renegotiations an

international order or multiple orders? These are questions for which my dissertation,

grounded in a single site, cannot provide an answer. Rather, it provides contentious

participation as a key dynamic that should be part of this thinking. Comparative analyses

of the negotiations of global governance domains can work towards inductively putting

together a more comprehensive answer. Another route, of course, would be to start from

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benchmarks of what the continued hold of the liberal international order might look like

in general, to analyze these in particular domains. Importantly, the dynamics of

contentious participation also suggests that while the principles of the liberal international

order might not have the same powerful and productive hold, their legacies continue to

shape global politics, including where and how counter-hegemonic engagements with the

order emerge. The possibilities and limits of the future transformations of this order

materialize at the intersection of the continued hold and/or symbolic legacies of

ideational-institutional hegemonies and counter-hegemonic engagements, which are

shaped by but not limited to these legacies.

3. A Final Note: From Possibility to Desirability

While this dissertation has made its normative stakes clear vis-à-vis the production and

pursuit of universals, grounded in and reproductive of hegemonies, it has engaged

analytically with the possibility of global governance in a pluralizing world order, by not

only pointing to the ways in which a singular-universal infrastructure is being challenged,

but also by examining the emergent alternatives. Thus, it has proposed plural approaches

to value and amalgam actors and relations of authority as possibilities of governance in

this context. Here, I conclude with a note that is concerned not with the possibility, but

rather the desirability of global governance in a context of ideational plurality.

Much of the scholarship on global governance, which is worried about its future,

has focused on its deficiencies, understood as the lack of adequate state cooperation on

matters of global concern, such as climate change. At the same time, however, critical

scholarship has pointed to its excesses, especially in the 1990s, including projects of

democracy promotion, good governance agendas and humanitarian interventions with

goals of restructuring states and societies. If we follow my framework, these perceptions

of excess and deficiency are themselves grounded in particular conceptions of the object.

This does not mean that there are no global problems for which coordination and

cooperation is necessary, but it is the script of the object that can make these into shared

problems, with a common understanding of the grounds and goals of governance. Put

differently, the normative question is not one of retreating from areas such as culture to

concentrate on the solution of technical problems, because the latter are also objects of

governance defined through particular hegemonic conceptions at the detriment of others.

268

Instead, the question is whether in having to give up claims to the universal, these objects

can be renegotiated towards more inclusive conceptions, which distribute costs and

benefits more evenly. The second question of desirability arises from the way in which

governance regimes have the dual-dynamics of reproducing existing hierarchies and

providing spaces for their renegotiation and transformation. As I have already noted, such

transformation can, in turn, be productive of new sets of hierarchies and exclusions.

I’ll answer this question in the context of the global governance of culture only.

As my analysis has argued, while the early implementation of the regime reproduced

long-standing civilizational historical hierarchies, its post-1990s implementation with the

contentious participation of a plurality of actors has resulted in a list that brings in other

cultural histories, such as indigenous and pre-colonial cultures. These renegotiations are

likely to continue on a more historical bent in the near future of the regime, putting forth

histories of humanity’s destructive underbelly, its struggles for liberation and equality.

A useful distinction to make at this point is that while the world heritage regime

has been, and in some ways continues to be reproductive of the hierarchies and their

contention, it is not (solely) productive of them. The East Asian memory regime has long

been bi and tri-laterally renegotiated, the Bikinians’ effort to keep their history of

displacement in circulation precedes the world heritage nomination, and the politics of

civilizational co-evality have emerged in arenas such as the United Nations General

Assembly. The crux of the desirability of the world heritage regime is, then, whether it

insists on universals that reproduce the hierarchies at stake in global cultural politics or

whether it can become an ideational-institutional space for their renegotiation towards

more inclusive conceptions of culture and narratives of history. This requires a

willingness to engage with, rather than sideline, these contestations, while also being

attentive to the voices such as those of the Republic of Marshall Islands, which stands

precisely at the intersection of the local and the global, without losing sight of either, and

which pushes towards the inclusion of “remainders” towards more just iterations of the

international. A world heritage regime, thus reconceived, might be not only possible but

also desirable. It would allow for an arena that is one-step removed from the most

fractious level of world order that unfolds between the proclamations of state leaders, but

which still facilitates important historical, cultural and political negotiations.

269

Such burden of reconception does not fall only on the practitioners of global

governance. The normative stakes of a transitional time are complex, not the least

because they are strung between lingering hierarchies of the old order and newly

emerging ones. Declaring the contestations of the existing ideational-institutional

frameworks of the order as unraveling or fracturing, and positing the new hierarchies as

more of the same (i.e. national interests of the newly powerful) misses important

substantive dynamics. First, while the liberal international might be waning for its

defenders, its hegemonies continue to loom large in the imaginations and global political

engagement of actors who were on the receiving end of it. What might seem as battling

ghosts from one side are long-standing legacies of socio-political hierarchies of the

international order from the other. Second, the assertions of the national on the world

stage are not independent of but rather structured by these legacies. They entail

intersubjective recognition of the ideational bases of global politics, one’s standing in it,

and resistance to both. We might add to this another element. The kinds of participation

that get labeled as nationalistic on the global domain are understood as such at least

partly because they depart from reigning norms of the international domain, and not

necessarily because it is more or less nationally oriented than the participation of states

whose pursuit of interests on the global arena can unfold through the ideational grounds

of the order i.

This is a fraught intersection where the challenges to the order are put forth

through subjects that have been internationalized in and through the previous hegemony.

At the same time, it creates possibilities of contentious participation. Lastly, if we are to

at least pause momentarily before adopting juxtapositions of liberal internationalism and

authoritarian nationalism (and the latter are in fact creating their own international

networks and solidarities), what becomes key is to not only think differently about these

dynamics but also to attend to the other voices in global politics. The question then

becomes whether our analyses fall into and reproduce these binaries, or instead also try to

excavate the other possibilities and voices that present themselves in moments of

transformation.

270

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Rand Corporation National Security Research Division. “Building a Sustainable International Order,” https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/international-order.html (Accessed July 3, 2019). ICOMOS. “International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter),” 1964, https://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf (Accessed March 5, 2019). ICOMOS. “The Nara Document on Authenticity,” 1994, https://www.icomos.org/charters/nara- e.pdf (Accessed March 5, 2019). UNESCO. “At-Turaif District in ad-Dir’iyah,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1329 (Accessed May 17, 2019). UNESCO. “Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940- 1945),” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31 (Accessed May 1, 2019). UNESCO. “Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1339 (Accessed March 13, 2019). UNESCO. “Budapest Declaration on World Heritage,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1217/ (Accessed March 20, 2019). UNESCO. “Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long – Hanoi,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1328 (Accessed May 15, 2019). UNESCO. “Cuito Cuanavale, Site de Libération et Independence,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6252/ (Accessed March 14, 2019). UNESCO. “Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/globalstrategy/ (Accessed June 15, 2019). UNESCO. “Gobeklitepe,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572 (Accessed May 17, 2019). UNESCO. “Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome),” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775 (Accessed May 1, 2019). UNESCO. “History of Humanity- Scientific and Cultural Development,” http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/general-and-regional- histories/history-of-humanity/ (Accessed May 15, 2019). UNESCO. “Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/529 (Accessed May 19, 2019). UNESCO. “Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis: San Ignacio Mini, Santa Ana, Nuestra Señora de Loreto and Santa Maria Mayor (Argentina), Ruins of Sao Miguel das Missoes (Brazil),” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/275 (Accessed May 15, 2019). UNESCO. “Konso Cultural Landscape,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1333 (Accessed May 10, 2019). UNESCO. “Liberation Heritage Route,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5459/ (Accessed March 14, 2019). UNESCO. “Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/86 (Accessed May 10, 2019). UNESCO. “Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1459 (Accessed May 17, 2019). UNESCO. “Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage,” November 16, 1972, http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=13087&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. (Accessed May 20, 2019). UNESCO. “Robben Island,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916 (Accessed March 14, 2019). UNESCO. “Sites funéraires et mémoriels de la Première Guerre mondiale (Front Ouest) (Belgium),” https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5886/ (Accessed May 1, 2019). UNESCO. “Sites funéraires et mémoriels de la Première Guerre mondiale (Front Ouest) (France),” https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5884/ (Accessed May 1, 2019).

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Annexes Annex I: Evolution of the OUV Criteria (1978 – 2016)

i ii iii iv v vi

1977

Represent a unique artistic or aesthetic achievement, a masterpiece of the creative genius;

have exerted considerable influence, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on subsequent developments in architecture, monumental sculpture, garden and landscape design, related arts, or human settlements;

be unique, extremely rare, or of great antiquity;

be among the most characteristic examples of a type of structure, the type representing an important cultural, social, artistic, scientific, technological or industrial development; or

be a characteristic example of a significant, traditional style of architecture, method of construction, or human settlement, that is fragile by nature or has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible socio-cultural or economic change;

be most importantly associated with ideas or beliefs, with events or with persons, of outstanding historical importance or significance.

290

i ii iii iv v vi

1978 -

have exerted considerable influence, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on subsequent developments in architecture, monumental sculpture, garden and landscape design, related arts, town planning or human settlements;

- -

be a characteristic example of a significant, style of architecture, method of construction, or form of town planning or traditional human settlement, that is fragile by nature or has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible socio-cultural or economic change; -

291

i ii iii iv v vi

1980 -

have exerted great influence, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture, monumental arts or town-planning and landscaping;

bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a civilization which has disappeared;

be an outstanding example of a type of structure which illustrates a significant stage in history;

be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement which is representative of a culture and which has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;

be directly or tangibly associated with events or with ideas or beliefs of outstanding universal significance (the Committee considered that this criterion should justify inclusion in the List only in exceptional circumstances or in conjunction with other criteria)

1983 - - - - - - 1984 - - - - - - 1987 - - - - - - 1988 - - - - - - 1992 - - - - - -

292

i ii iii iv v vi

1994 -

bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a civilization or cultural tradition which has disappeared;

be an outstanding example of a type of building or architectural ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history

be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement or land-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;

be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance (the Committee considered that this criterion should justify inclusion in the List only in exceptional circumstances or in conjunction with other criteria)

293

i ii iii iv v vi

1996 represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;

exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;

bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;

be an outstanding example of a type of building or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;

-

be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance (the Committee considered that this criterion should justify inclusion in the List only in exceptional circumstances or in conjunction with other criteria cultural or natural)

1997 - - - - - - 2002 - - - - - -

2005 - - - -

be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures) or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change

be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance (the Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria)

294

i ii iii iv v vi 2008 - - - - - - 2011 - - - - - - 2012 - - - - - - 2013 - - - - - - 2015 - - - - - - 2016 - - - - - -

295

Annex II: Properties Inscribed on the World Heritage List (1978 – 1993) 1978 Country Region Type Period (Historical & Art Historical)

Germany Europe Cathedral Classic and Byzantine Peru LAC Colonial City 16th century Poland Europe Historic Town Medieval & Early Modern Senegal Africa Slave trade 15th – 19th centuries Canada Europe European settlement 11th century USA Europe Indigenous civilization 6th – 12th centuries Ethiopia Africa Church (native) Medieval Poland Europe Industrial 13th – 20th centuries

1979 Egypt Arab Christian Holy City N/A Tunisia Arab Roman remains 3rd century Syria Arab Ancient City 3rd millennium B.C. Egypt Arab Ancient Civilization N/A Guatemala LAC Colonial town 16th century Tunisia Arab Roman remains 9th century B.C. Poland Europe Atrocity 20th century Bulgaria Europe Church Medieval Norway Europe Merchant Town 14th – 16th centuries France Europe Cathedral Medieval Gothic Ethiopia Africa Walled city 16th – 17th centuries

Ghana Africa Colonial (Trading Forts) 15th –18th centuries

Egypt Arab Old City 10th – 14th centuries

Yugoslavia (Croatia) Europe

Monumental (Palace and Church) Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance

USA Europe Freedom and democracy 18th century

Nepal AP Hindu and Buddhist Monuments 15th – 18th centuries

Bulgaria Europe Monumental (sculpture) 8th century

Tunisia Arab Old City 12th – 16th centuries Iran Arab Old Town 15th – 17th centuries

Egypt Arab Monumental (Ancient Civilization) 3000 B.C.

France Europe Abbey Medieval Gothic

Yugoslavia (Montenegro) Europe Commercial center N/A

Egypt Arab Monumental (Ancient Civilization) N/A

296

Yugoslavia (Croatia) Europe Merchant Town 13th century

France Europe Monumental (Palace and Parks) 18th century

Iran Arab Ancient City 518 B.C. France Europe Cave Art Prehistoric Italy Europe Rock Art Prehistoric Bulgaria Europe Church Medieval

Yugoslavia (Serbia) Europe Church and Monastery Hellenistic

Iran Arab Ancient City 1200 B.C. Bulgaria Europe Church 12th – 14th centuries Norway Europe Church Romanesque and Celtic France Europe Church Romanesque

1980 Ethiopia Africa Ancient City 1st – 13th centuries Algeria Arab Archeological Ruins 11th century Syria Arab Roman remains 2nd century Pakistan AP Archeological Ruins 3rd millennium B.C. Ghana Africa Lost civilization 18th century Pakistan AP Buddhist Ruins 1st century Italy Europe Church and convent 15th century Malta Europe Old Town 16th century Panama LAC Colonial (Military) 17th – 18th centuries Italy Europe Roman remains 500 B.C. – 18th century Poland Europe Historic Center 13th and 20th century Brazil LAC Colonial town 17th century Malta Europe Hypogeum Prehistoric Ethiopia Africa Fossil site Prehistoric Ethiopia Africa Fossil site Prehistoric Honduras LAC Mayan ruins 4th – 10th centuries Malta Europe Temples Prehistoric Cyprus Europe Ancient town 12th century B.C. Norway Europe Industrial town 17th century Syria Europe Roman remains 1st – 2nd centuries Pakistan AP Ancient City 5th century B.C. – 2nd century Ethiopia Africa Monumental remains Prehistoric

1981 France Europe Cathedral Medieval Gothic Guatemala LAC Mayan ruins 2nd – 8th centuries France Europe Roman remains Romanesque

297

France Europe Monastery 12th century Pakistan AP Military architecture Mughal Canada Europe Aboriginal Prehistoric – 19th century Pakistan AP Old City Mughal Morocco Africa Old City 13th – 14th centuries Jerusalem Arab Old City N/A France Europe Palace and Parks Renaissance France Europe Roman remains N/A Canada Europe Traditional settlement 19th century Tanzania Africa Merchant Town 13th – 16th centuries Germany Europe Cathedral Romanesque Germany Europe Palace Early Modern Baroque 1982 Sri Lanka AP Ancient City N/A Sri Lanka AP Ancient City N/A Libya Arab Archeological site Greco-Roman Libya Arab Archeological site Roman Libya Arab Archeological site Roman USA Europe Traditional settlement Pre-Columbian Algeria Arab Roman town 1st century

France Europe Industrial/Enlightenment 18th century

Italy Europe Renaissance city 15th – 16th centuries Brazil LAC Colonial city 16th century Algeria Arab Traditional settlement 10th century Haiti LAC Independence 19th century Cuba LAC Colonial city 16th century Yemen Arab Walled city 16th century Sri Lanka AP Sacred city 3rd century B.C.

Algeria Arab Roman town (military colony) 1st century

Algeria Arab Merchant Town Phoenician/Roman/Byzantine/ Indigenous

1983 France Europe Church 11th – 12th centuries Switzerland Europe Abbey 18th century Baroque India AP Fort Mughal

India AP Buddhist Cave monuments 2nd – 1st B.C.

Bulgaria Europe Ancient City Hellenistic Switzerland Europe Convent Carolingian and Romanesque Portugal Europe Port 15th – 19th centuries

298

Peru LAC Inca + colonial 15th – 16th centuries Portugal Europe Convent 12th century India AP Temples Hindu/Buddhist/Jain

Brazil and Argentina LAC

Colonial (Jesuit Missions) 17th – 18th centuries

USA Europe Colonial Fort 16th – 20th centuries Portugal Europe Monastery Medieval Gothic

Portugal Europe Monastery +maritime discovery 16th century

Berne Europe Old City 12th century Germany Europe Church 18th century Rococo France Europe Enlightenment town 18th century Bulgaria Europe Monastery Bulgarian Renaissance India AP Mausoleum 17th century 1984 Spain Europe Muslim residence 13th – 14th centuries Lebanon Arab Old City Umayyad Lebanon Arab Old City Phoenician/Roman Spain Europe Cathedral 13th – 16th centuries Gothic Lebanon Arab Archeological ruins Phoenician Germany Europe Castle 18th century Rococo India AP Monuments 7th – 8th centuries Spain Europe Historic Center 8th – 13th centuries Spain Europe Monastery 16th century Colombia LAC Colonial (Military) 16th – 18th centuries USA Europe Liberty 19th century India AP Temple (Brahman) 13th century Lebanon Arab Old City Phoenician/Roman Holy See Europe Sacred city Roman Spain Europe Architectural works 19th – 20th centuries 1985 Spain Europe Cave art Prehistoric Peru LAC Archeological site Pre-Columbian Turkey Europe Mosque and hospital 11th century Iraq Arab Walled City Hellenistic and Roman Turkey Europe Old City 6th – 16th centuries Brazil LAC Colonial city 16th – 18th centuries Canada Europe Fortified city 17th century Bangladesh AP Historic City 15th century Morocco Africa Old City 11th century Spain Europe Monuments Pre-Romanesque

299

Spain Europe Fortified city Gothic

Spain Europe Old town and engineering Roman and Gothic

Cyprus Europe Churches Byzantine Jordan Arab Caravan city Prehistoric Tunisia Arab Ancient City Phoenician and Punic France Europe Roman remains Roman Jordan Arab Palatial residence 8th century (Umayyad) Norway Europe Rock art Prehistoric Libya Arab Rock art Prehistoric

Benin Africa Royal Palaces (vanished civilization) 17th – 19th centuries

Bangladesh AP Buddhist ruins 7th – 12th centuries Brazil LAC Colonial (Sanctuary) 18th century (Rococo and Baroque) Spain Europe Christian pilgrimage Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque Germany Europe Church Romanesque Bulgaria Europe Funerary Tomb 3rd century B.C. 1986 Syria Arab Ancient city 2nd millennium B.C. – 12th century

United Kingdom Europe Colonial (Military) 13th – 14th centuries

Peru LAC Archaeological zone Pre-Columbian India AP Colonial (Church) Manueline, Mannerist and Baroque

United Kingdom Europe Castle and Cathedral 12th – 13th centuries

India AP Ancient City Mughal

Zimbabwe Africa Monument (Bantu civilization) 11th – 15th centuries

India AP Monuments 14th – 16th centuries Turkey Europe Archaeological site 2nd millennium B.C. Portugal Europe Historic Centre Roman – 19th century Spain Europe Historic City Roman – 16th century

United Kingdom Europe Industrial 18th century

India AP Monuments 10th – 11th centuries Zimbabwe Africa Archaeological 16th century Spain Europe Architecture Islamic and Gothic Yemen Arab Old City 7th – 8th centuries Spain Europe Old Town Roman/Islamic/Gothic/ Renaissance Libya Arab Old Town N/A

Germany Europe Monuments and Church Roman

300

United Kingdom Europe Sanctuary Megalithic

Yugoslavia (Serbia) Europe Monastery 12th century and Byzantine

United Kingdom Europe Park and Abbey 12th – 18th century and Victorian

Greece Europe Temple Corinthian and Doric 1987

Greece Europe Monument and spirit of democracy Greek Antiquity

Greece Europe Archaeological site Pan-Hellenic Oman Arab Military architecture 12th – 15th centuries

United Kingdom Europe Palace and Parks 18th century

Brazil LAC Modern (Urbanism) 20th century Hungary Europe Old City 13th – 19th centuries

Spain Europe Monuments (+colonial archives)

13th – 16th centuries, Gothic and Moorish

USA Europe Indigenous settlement Prehistoric

United Kingdom Europe Old City Roman

Bolivia LAC Colonial city 16th century India AP Rock art 2nd century B.C.

United Kingdom Europe Military architecture Roman

India AP Temples 12th century India AP Monuments and temple 7th – 8th centuries Germany Europe Merchant town 12th – 16th centuries

Mexico LAC Precolonial and Colonial City 16th century

Mexico LAC Precolonial and Colonial City N/A

Mexico LAC Colonial city 16th century China AP Palaces 15th – 20th centuries Morocco Arab Traditional settlement N/A China AP Mausoleum 2nd century B.C. China AP Cave art 4th century

USA Europe Liberty and enlightenment 18th century

Turkey Europe Ancient Funerary 1st century B.C. Hungary Europe Traditional settlement 17th – 18th centuries

United Kingdom Europe Palace and Church Medieval neo-Gothic

China AP Fossil site Prehistoric Italy Europe Cathedral complex 11th –14th centuries

301

Mexico LAC City and Park Pre-Hispanic Mexico LAC Archeological site Pre-Hispanic China AP Military architecture 2nd century B.C. Italy Europe Old City 5th –10th centuries 1988 * Oman Arab Archeological site Protohistoric

United Kingdom Europe Cathedral Romanesque and Gothic

Peru LAC Colonial convent 16th –18th centuries Mexico LAC Colonial town 16th century Tunisia Arab Old City 7th century Greece Europe Fortified city Medieval Gothic Tunisia Arab Fortified city 9th –10th centuries

Spain Europe Old city and University Romanesque, Gothic, Moorish, Renaissance, Baroque

Sri Lanka AP Colonial city and military architecture 16th century

Mali Africa Old Town 2nd century B.C. –16th century Greece Europe Monuments Byzantine and Roman Mexico LAC Old City Pre-Hispanic Sri Lanka AP Sacred City (Buddhist) N/A Greece Europe Sanctuary Greco-Roman France Europe Old City and Cathedral 19th –20th centuries Mali Africa Intellectual capital 15th –16th centuries

United Kingdom Europe Military architecture 11th –16th centuries

Cuba LAC Colonial city and industry 16th –19th centuries

Turkey Europe Archeological site Hellenic 1989 Greece Europe Archaeological site Medieval Byzantine Greece Europe Archaeological site Ancient Greek India AP Buddhist monuments 2nd century B.C. Portugal Europe Monastery 12th century Gothic 1990

Dominican Republic LAC Colonial City 15th century

Greece Europe Merchant town 3rd millennium B.C. –Paleochristian USSR Europe Old City 18th century Italy Europe Old City 14th –15th centuries

USSR (Uzbekistan) AP Walled City 19th century

302

Bolivia LAC Colonial (Jesuit Missions) 17th –18th centuries

USSR (Ukraine) Europe Cathedral 11th –19th centuries

USSR (Karelia) Europe Church 18th –19th centuries USSR Europe Old City 14th –17th centuries Greece Europe Monasteries Byzantine

Germany Europe Monumental (Parks and Palaces) 18th –20th centuries

1991 Germany Europe Abbey Carolingian Indonesia AP Buddhist temple 8th –9th centuries France Europe Cathedral 13th century Gothic Finland Europe Military architecture 18th century Sri Lanka AP Buddhist temple 3rd century B.C.

Mexico LAC

Historic Center (colonial and indigenous)

16th century, Renaissance and Baroque

Thailand AP Historic City 14th century Bolivia LAC Colonial city 16th century Thailand AP Historic Town 13th –14th centuries Mozambique Africa Colonial (Military) 16th century Finland Europe Old City 15th century France Europe Old City 19th –20th centuries

Spain Europe Military architecture and monastery Cistercian

Indonesia AP Temple 10th century Sweden Europe Royal Residence 18th century Brazil LAC Rock art Prehistoric 1992

Cambodia AP Archaeological site (Khmer) 9th –15th centuries

Thailand AP Archeological site Prehistoric France Europe Cathedral Gothic Albania Europe Archaeological site Greek and Roman Russia Europe Monastic settlement 5th century B.C. –19th century Mexico LAC Historic City Pre-Hispanic

Czechoslovakia Europe Historic Center 13th century, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque

Czechoslovakia Europe Historic Center 11th –18th centuries Czechoslovakia Europe Historic Center 15th century, High Gothic Russia Europe Historic Monuments 9th –14th centuries Algeria Arab Traditional settlement 4th century B.C.

303

Germany Europe Industrial 16th –19th centuries Poland Europe Old City 16th century, Renaissance Greece Europe Archaeological site Greek and Roman USA Europe Indigenous settlement 13th –14th centuries

Russia Europe Ecclesiastical monuments 12th –13th centuries

1993 Spain Europe Archeological site Roman

Russia Europe Monastery and military architecture 15th –18th centuries

Philippines AP Colonial (Church) 16th century, Baroque and fusion Sweden Europe Merchant town 9th –10th centuries Ireland Europe Archaeological site Prehistoric Japan AP Buddhist monuments 7th –8th centuries Romania Europe Church 15th –16th centuries, Byzantine Vietnam AP Feudal monuments 19th century Venezuela LAC Colonial port 16th century Sweden Europe Industrial 17th –18th centuries Japan AP Castle 17th century Uzbekistan AP Old city 10th –17th centuries Mexico LAC Colonial city 16th –17th centuries

Slovakia Europe Industrial and Renaissance town 16th century

Yemen Arab Traditional settlement 13th –15th centuries India AP Mausoleum 16th century

Paraguay LAC Colonial (Jesuit Missions) 17th –18th centuries

El Salvador LAC Archaeological site Pre-Hispanic

Slovakia Europe Castle and Military Architecture

13th –14th centuries, Romanesque and Gothic

Germany Europe Monastery 12th –16th centuries, Gothic Romania Europe Monastery 17th century

India AP Mosque and monuments 13th century

Mexico LAC Rock art 1st century B.C. –14th century Spain Europe Monastery 15th century

Italy Europe Church and Traditional settlement Paleolithic

Germany Europe Old Town and Enlightenment 10th –18th centuries

Romania Europe Fortified Churches 13th –16th centuries Slovakia Europe Traditional settlement 19th century

304

Regions:

AP – Asia and Pacific States Africa – African States Arab – Arab States Europe – European and North American States LAC – Latin American and Caribbean States In compiling this table, I have relied on the descriptions of sites as posted on the World Heritage List. They are, therefore, reflective of how the regime has valued these sites and not on a separate category of artifact types and periods. I have included art historical periods when they were available, and historical periods otherwise. The inconsistencies that emerge are reflective of the levels of familiarity – whereas European art historical traditions are divided into Baroque, Gothic, Renaissance, other sites are usually generically labeled as Islamic art, Buddhist art etc. If there were further specificity to these (ie. Umayyad), I have also included them in the table.

305

Annex III: Inscriptions on the World Heritage List by Region and Year

EUR LAC AFR ARB AP Total 1978 5 1 2 0 0 8 1979 18 1 2 12 1 34 1980 9 3 5 2 3 22 1981 9 1 2 1 2 15 1982 3 3 0 8 3 17 1983 13 2 0 0 4 19 1984 8 1 0 4 2 15 1985 13 3 2 5 2 25 1986 13 1 2 3 4 23 1987 15 8 0 2 8 33 1988 8 4 2 3 2 19 1989 3 0 0 0 1 4 1990 9 2 0 0 0 11 1991 7 3 1 0 5 16 1992 11 1 0 1 2 15 1993 15 5 0 1 7 28

Total 159 39 18 42 46 304

306

Annex IV: List of Interviews and Meeting Attendance Interviews Interview with a civil servant, 11 July 2016

Interview with a civil servant, 19 July 2016

Interview with two international experts, 26 July 2016

Interview with an international expert, 2 May 2017

Interview with an international expert, 6 March 2017

Interview with an international expert, 7 March 2017

Interview with a civil servant, 15 March 2017

Interview with an international expert, 21 March 2017

Interview with a civil servant, 29 March 2017

Interview with a civil servant, 4 April 2017

Interview with a civil servant, 6 April 2017

Interview with a civil servant, 28 April 2017

Interview with an international expert, 2 May 2017

Interview with an international expert, 16 March 2018

Meetings Culture in Crisis, Yale University, April 2016

ICOMOS International Scientific Symposium on Post-Disaster Reconstruction, October 2016

ICOMOS International Scientific Conference on Place of Memory: Protection, Conservation,

Interpretation, March 2017

42nd World Heritage Committee Meeting, July 2018