UNESCO and the global responsibility for heritage preservation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Under the aegis of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, heritage preservation has gained considerable public visibility, but it has also become gridlocked in multilateral diplomacy. This thesis examines the history and challenges, of implementing, within UNESCO, the ideal of international fiscal responsibility for the preservation of the world's heritage. With the popular success of the World Heritage List and a growing global economy of international tourism, the original aims of the Convention have been misplaced. Conceived as a program of international collaboration for the protection of heritage of significance to humanity, World Heritage has been transformed into an international certification scheme, subject to the selfish ambitions of UNESCO's Member States. I expose the divide between the goals of the Convention and the national politics that rule the decisions of its governing body, the World Heritage Committee. My archival and ethnographic analysis goes beyond snapshots of the current political and financial challenges confronting World Heritage, instead tracing their development over time. Adopting a diachronic view and following the money, I deconstruct the idea of sudden crisis and show how that theme is a tactic used to mask recurring missed opportunities and repetitive patterns. My work shows the gradual unfolding of bureaucratic decisions, buried in documents, that pretend to take action but result in maintenance of the status quo. I reveal how inertia, more than natural disasters or conflicts, threatens the lofty ideals of the World Heritage Convention. The current political and financial difficulties within UNESCO also indicate the faltering of post-WWII ideals, integral to the UN and its specialized agencies, of an intergovernmental responsibility for rebuilding and rehabilitation . The events described in my study may serve as an object lesson for the multilateral agencies seeking to enforce collective responsibility for issues of global significance
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Liuzza, Claudia |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Meskell, Lynn |
| Thesis advisor | Meskell, Lynn |
| Thesis advisor | Hodder, Ian |
| Thesis advisor | Inoue, Miyako, 1962- |
| Degree committee member | Hodder, Ian |
| Degree committee member | Inoue, Miyako, 1962- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Claudia Liuzza |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Claudia Liuzza
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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