Part II

The Politics and Governance of Heritage

UNESCO has been a target of extensive criticism about its World Heritage listing, as Chapter 7 illustrates. William Logan draws upon experiences as both a leading scholar of heritage studies and senior figure within the international heritage community, to provide a realistic assessment of the role UNESCO plays within global heritage governance. He emphasises the limitations of UNESCO as an intergovernmental organisation, bound by institutional pressures, and unable to effectively enforce policy. He points out that UNESCO is subject to the pressures of its member states and that the vast majority of obligations regarding heritage management should, in fact, reside with states parties. Using examples from East and Southeast Asia, Logan illustrates how the manipulation of the World Heritage nomination process creates real difficulties for enforcing agreed upon heritage regulations. As he suggests, this greatly complicates the management of World Heritage properties throughout Asia and becomes the subject of ongoing negotiation.

In Chapter 8, Jiawen Ai deals with the some of the entanglements of cultural heritage in China today. Working within a political science perspective, Ai looks at how the Chinese Communist Party has positioned itself vis-à-vis heritage since the crack-down on protestors at Tiananmen Square in 1989. She argues that the CCP has changed its approach to heritage and has been actively shaping the role of the past in China. The author, drawing upon analysis of statements and actions by leading party officials, shows how heritage is being re-worked as part of a multi-pronged strategy to fill the vacuum created by the diminishing interest in Marxist values, and to enhance China’s soft power on the international stage.

In contrast, Georgina Lloyd provides a detailed overview of the legislation for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in Asia. As she states in Chapter 9, over the past decade there has been a growing recognition of the threats posed to ICH in Asia. Lloyd’s chapter considers the mechanisms in place to manage intangible cultural heritage and discusses the challenges and complexities of regulating the intangible. One of the critical issues in the management of ICH is the involvement of local communities, especially when they are the bearers of culture. Lloyd examines how participatory approaches fit within existing legal instruments.

Birgit Bräuchler’s discussion of traditional justice mechanisms in Chapter 10 is based upon a number of years of anthropological fieldwork studying solutions for conflict resolution in eastern Indonesia. The author sees traditional justice mechanisms as part of the intangible cultural heritage of many societies, and as such potentially useful for dealing with tension and conflict. Bräuchler uses detailed case studies from Timor Leste and the Moluccas to demonstrate how traditional ‘peace tools’ have been used to reconcile communities after conflict. Crucially, her work shows the difficulties of positioning traditional conflict resolution methods within formal peace processes and international human rights initiatives.

In Chapter 11, Alexandra Denes focuses on ethnic Khmer in southern Thailand to illustrate the role cultural heritage plays in shaping political identities. There has been growing tension in Thailand between the urban elite and the rural hinterland and between the ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ shirt protestors engaged in a struggle for control of the government. This spilled over into a cross-border conflict with Cambodia, geographically centred on the UNESCO World Heritage site, Preah Vihear. Denes looks at the politics of identity and revival amongst the Khmer speaking Thais, and how they are positioning themselves in a country that is simultaneously asserting claims over Khmer heritage sites in Cambodia and subordinating the Khmer identity of communities in southern Thailand.

The theme of contestation continues in Michael Dove’s chapter, which uses a political ecological approach to understand core periphery relationships in Indonesian Borneo. Accordingly, Chapter 12 addresses the flow of forest products from the jungle interior to main population areas. Dove challenges the common misconception that forest communities contribute to the degradation of the environment through mismanagement of natural heritage resources. He posits that the main threats to natural biodiversity lie in the exploitation of metropolitan elites, who extract valuable forest products at the expense of forest-dwelling communities.