Suchergebnisse

" Best known for its World Heritage program committed to "the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 as an intergovernmental agency aimed at fostering peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding. Its mission was inspired by leading European intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, and Aldous and Julian Huxley. Often critiqued for its inherent Eurocentrism, UNESCO and its World Heritage program today remain embedded within modernist principles of "progress" and "development" and subscribe to the liberal principles of diplomacy and mutual tolerance. However, its mission to prevent conflict, destruction, and intolerance, while noble and much needed, increasingly falls short, as recent battles over the World Heritage sites of Preah Vihear, Chersonesos, Jerusalem, Palmyra, Aleppo, and Sana'a, among others, have underlined. A Future in Ruins is the story of UNESCO's efforts to save the world's heritage and, in doing so, forge an international community dedicated to peaceful co-existence and conservation. It traces how archaeology and internationalism were united in Western initiatives after the political upheavals of the First and Second World Wars. This formed the backdrop for the emergent hopes of a better world that were to captivate the "minds of men." UNESCO's leaders were also confronted with challenges and conflicts about their own mission. Would the organization aspire to intellectual pursuits that contributed to the dream of peace or instead be relegated to an advisory and technical agency? An eye-opening and long overdue account of a celebrated yet poorly understood agency, A Future in Ruins calls on us all to understand how and why the past comes to matter in the present, who shapes it, and who wins or loses as a consequence. "--

AbstractThis article charts one episode in the history of archaeological field science following the end of World War II and its place within a nascent military‐industrial‐academic complex. It is an account of how archaeological innovation was tied to, and developed directly out of, US nuclear ambition and the leveraging of "peaceful" atomic research as well as American Cold War collaborations with European allies that successfully combined science, exploration, and culture for mutual benefit. The period covered is one of the most generative moments in the development of instrumentation and subsurface techniques, involving two mid‐century men who realized the potential of atomic applications in archaeology. Carlo Lerici, an Italian engineer and industrialist, and Froelich Rainey, director of the Penn Museum, were both men of science, culture, and industry. Their collaboration brought together governments, corporations, and universities to develop pathbreaking experimentation across laboratories and fieldsites. My aim is to reveal the connectivity between these disparate arenas and to underscore that such endeavors are anything but new; rather, nuclear science, tech companies, private foundations, and philanthropists, coupled with the activities of the military and intelligence community, have a deeply entrenched history in archaeology.

AbstractThis article examines the trajectory and fate of Delhi's Imperial Capital Cities nomination, submitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2015 for inscription on the World Heritage List. I employ the dossier and events surrounding its withdrawal to reveal the political imbrications of urban conservation, international institutions, neoliberal governance, and colonial histories. First, I underscore the prominence of India as a member of the World Heritage Committee and its efforts to secure an increasing number of UNESCO properties. Second, I situate the dossier within the ambit of neoliberal governance that recalibrates and promotes urban heritage preservation, while similarly encouraging development and economic growth. Building upon this point, I consider how sustained government efforts to reframe Delhi as a "global city," coupled with the identification of Delhi's imperial capitals with Mughal and British rule, resulted in the dossier's withdrawal. Third, the episode reveals tensions in this specific political moment over contemporary perceptions of imperial occupation and "foreign" empires, which plagued the dossier from the outset and continue to reverberate today. Finally, there are lessons to be learned for urban heritage in India and Asian heritage in general, outside the narrow purview of European cities, so many of which are already listed as World Heritage.

ABSTRACTArchaeological materialities and imaginaries have been deeply entwined in colonial rivalries and struggles for self‐determination that have lasting legacies across the Middle East. Neoimperial ambitions and conflict over territory, religion, oil, and antiquities have similarly been accompanied by heritage claims and the rhetoric of high cultural humanism. Throughout the twentieth century, foreign occupation and military adventurism emboldened archaeological elites, including Hogarth, Kenyon, Lawrence, Woolley, and Bell, to implement expansive new designs for a one‐world archaeology. Whether situated in London or Jerusalem, Western archaeologists were instrumental in the colonial carve‐up that extended to historical sites, concessions, collections, and even the creation of new states, often working through international agencies, such as the League of Nations and UNESCO, under a banner of salvage and uplift. The connected histories of archaeology, espionage, and the end of empire have cast a long shadow, prompting deeper analysis of archaeologists' role as participants and beneficiaries. It is thus timely to reconsider disciplinary histories and interventions—from the colonial era through two World Wars to recent regional conflicts with the attendant international responses—and to interrogate archaeology's century‐old ambitions and practices that are replicated in new technics of "oversight." [espionage, war, archaeology, military‐industrial‐academic complex, Middle East]

Abstract:Between the 1960s and 1980s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched a number of international salvage campaigns at the behest of its member states, the most notable being the Nubian Monuments Campaign. Saving ancient monuments and discovering archaeological sites in Egypt and Sudan was viewed as a landmark in twentieth-century heritage conservation and international co-operation; it was never to be repeated again. Requests for assistance continued, yet the campaigns were configured as conservation missions rather than integrated field projects. In retrospect, this action delimited UNESCO's goals to bridge education, science, and culture and, ultimately, impacted the potential of cross-cultural dialogue and partnerships afforded by archaeological field research. This article focuses on UNESCO's International Campaign for the Safeguarding of Moenjodaro (1974–97) and traces the role of experts, both archaeological and hydrological, within UNESCO's mission. It uncovers the organization's handling of the monumental challenges and long-term effects of a multimillion-dollar salvage effort. In doing so, the article reveals the early role of prominent archaeologists Mortimer Wheeler and John Otis Brew, the ideological shift at UNESCO from archaeological research to monumentality and preservation, and the tensions that emerged as world heritage was reimagined.

The title, States of Conservation, deliberately references the two "states" that now occupy critical yet oppositional nodes within UNESCO's 1972 Convention and its conservation agenda. It recalls the State of Conservation (SOC) reports commissioned by the World Heritage Center in conjunction with its Advisory Bodies that relay the condition of World Heritage properties to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. But more critically, "states" here also refers to the most powerful, emergent players in World Heritage Site inscription and protection processes—the States Parties of the 1972 Convention. Many researchers have debated the merits and consequences of World Heritage. While this work remains critical, my own contribution specifically traces the international political pacting, national economic interests, and voting blocs through which particular states increasingly set the World Heritage agenda and recast UNESCO as an agency for global branding rather than global conservation. I contend that as the rush for World Heritage inscription increases and economic and geo-political pacting between nations intensifies, the resources, concerns, and commitments for conservation of sites already inscribed potentially declines. The politics of inscription has now spilled over into the politics of conservation and endangerment. But whereas the former seeks international status and socio-economic benefits through global branding, the latter may jeopardize protection of those same sites through the unhindered interventions of conflict, mining, exploitation, and other infrastructural developments. Whether describing World Heritage, the environment, or manufacturing, denationalized economic life goes hand in hand with renationalized political life. I draw World Heritage case studies from around the world, with a particular focus on the Historic District of Panama—one example of what happens with the cutting of conservation, and concomitantly communities, from the Convention.

AbstractIn December 2000, a World Indigenous Peoples Forum was held in conjunction with the 24th session of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in Cairns, Australia. Representatives from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand harnessed the momentum of these events and their location to propose the formation of a new committee, the World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE). The initiative was taken in response to concerns voiced by indigenous peoples to their lack of involvement in the development and implementation of laws, policies, and plans for the protection of their knowledge, traditions, and cultural values, which apply to their ancestral lands, within or comprising sites now designated as World Heritage properties. This article traces the fate of that proposal and underlines the intransigence of sovereign states during those short-lived discussions. It goes on to suggest alternate routes for indigenous representation and recognition within the World Heritage system.

This paper discusses the efficacy of applying a framework of universal human rights to resolve heritage conflicts. It considers the pitfalls and potentials in particular heritage settings for both archaeologists and the constituencies we seek to represent. A distinction is made throughout the paper between invoking universal human rights, as opposed to other rights or claims more broadly. Specifically, I ask what does the mantle of universal human rights bring to heritage? What additional work might it perform, and who wins and loses when archaeologists elevate cultural heritage to this arena of urgency? If archaeologists want to pursue this route, what steps might they take to be conversant with human rights and, more importantly, effective in practically implementing that knowledge? I then describe the situation in post-apartheid South Africa—a nation that has arguably crafted the world's most liberal constitution, yet in reality faces numerous challenges to instrumentalizing human rights. In terms of South African heritage rights, the archaeological site of Thulamela is offered as an example of conflict resolution at the local level by briefly examining the role of archaeologists and several connected communities each vying for access and ownership of the site. Following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum I suggest that heritage practitioners might be more effective and ethically responsible by being attendant to pragmatic approaches that enhance human capabilities and human flourishing.