Understanding Heritage: Perspectives in Heritage Studies 9783110308389, 9783110308303

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Heritage Studies

Heritage Studies

Editor Marie-Theres Albert Advisory Editorial Board: Christina Cameron, University of Montréal/Canada, Claire Cave, University College Dublin/Ireland, Magdalena Droste, Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus/Germany, Jennifer Harris, Curtin University, Perth/Australia, Ana Pereira Roders, Eindhoven University of Technology/The Netherlands, Birgitta Ringbeck, Federal Foreign Office of Germany/Germany, Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/USA, Jutta Ströter-Bender, University of Paderborn/Germany

Volume 1

Understanding Heritage

Perspectives in Heritage Studies

Editors Marie-Theres Albert, Roland Bernecker, Britta Rudolff

This volume is based on a former series in World Heritage Studies. Volume 1: Nature and Culture – Ambivalent Dimensions of our Heritage, 2002 Volume 2: Constructing World Heritage, 2006 Volume 3: Training Strategies for World Heritage Management, 2007 Volume 4: World Heritage and Cultural Diversity, 2010 For further information please consult the following websites: http://www.tu-cottbus.de/interkulturalitaet http://www.tu-cottbus.de/gradschool/heritage-studies

Disclaimer The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of information contained in this volume as well as for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

ISBN 978-3-11-030830-3 e-ISBN 978-3-11-030838-9 ISSN 2196-0275 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de © 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Photo on the title page: © Hans-Joachim Aubert, 2000 Copyediting and proofreading: Caroline Lawrence, Jochen Dilly, Linda Needham Typesetter: Werksatz Schmidt & Schulz GmbH, Gräfenhainichen Printer: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Preface With the establishment of the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University, the UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies has created a new PhD programme with interdisciplinary structures which researches the challenges of globalization to the vast heritage of mankind. This programme offers research-oriented international and national students advanced training in the multifaceted field of cultural and natural heritage and in the context of the Memory of the World Programme. This PhD programme combines the disciplines which are traditionally involved in Heritage Studies, such as anthropology, archaeology, architecture, ethnology, monument preservation, ecology and art history with more recent interdisciplinary approaches which are generated from social sciences and Cultural Studies for the construction of Heritage Studies. The German Commission for UNESCO has accompanied the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University from the beginning. It accompanies it with the same dedication with which it accompanied the master’s programme World Heritage Studies since 1999 and still accompanies it today. Insofar it is my pleasure to contribute to this publication, which is the first publication of the IGS Heritage Studies, as editor and to write this preface. This publication is the product of a research colloquium which was initiated in 2011 already and which was conceived and conducted by PhD students of the programme. Further contributions stem from the International Summer Academy of the IGS which in July 2012 started a research colloquium intended for continuation throughout several years. I was able to participate in both events as a speaker as well as a panelist and thus experience personally how great the need for research in Heritage Studies is and which innovative approaches are generated and discussed in the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University. This publication is the first in a series of five additional publications which aim to engage in the vast field of Heritage Studies as a whole. Here the aim is, first of all, to present some of the relevant constructions of heritage in order to make the manifold levels of meaning of the concept accessible to the heritage community. Therefore, this book with the title Understanding Heritage – Perspectives in Heritage Studies is to be understood as an introduction to the heritage discourse. On the one hand, authors who establish the framework for the diversity of the concept because of their varying disciplinary and institutional backgrounds are given a forum. On the other hand, the presented perspectives point toward the fact that the discourse of Heritage Studies is only at the beginning. I wish all our readers deeper insight into Heritage Studies, interesting findings and questions which lead further. February 2013, Roland Bernecker

Preface The year 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and the 20th anniversary of UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme. Through these, the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2013, and the relatively recent Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005), UNESCO has established a comprehensive range of standard-setting tools which provide a worldwide reference for the appropriate management of heritage and the promotion of creative industries. These normative instruments address, each in its own way, the challenges which have arisen from the social and cultural transformations ignited by globalization. At the same time, they provide a framework to promote intercultural dialogue, respect for cultural diversity and mutual recognition, thus contributing to the core mandate of UNESCO to “construct the defences of peace in the minds of men”, particularly at times of economic and political crises. Since its inception, the UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies at the Brandenburg University of Technology (Cottbus, Germany) has concentrated its attention on the nexus between heritage conservation and the broader societal, economic and environmental challenges associated to globalization. Based on the long experience gathered through its Master’s programme in World Heritage Studies and drawing on the great number of its alumni, the Chair launched, in 2010, a PhD programme that seeks to explore in particular the potential of the UNESCO cultural Conventions and Memory of the World programme to foster dialogue and mutual understanding, as a fundamental component of sustainable development. In this context, International summer schools for young researchers are organized under the leadership of the UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies, leading to the publication of the innovative knowledge they generate as part of a series under the topic of “Heritage Transformation Processes and Human Development”. It is my pleasure, therefore, to present the first volume of this series, resulting from the Summer School of the International Graduate Heritage Studies held in 2011, which is entitled “Understanding Heritage: Perspectives in Heritage Studies”. February 2013, Francesco Bandarin

Scientific Peer Review Committee The editors of this book were supported by an independent Scientific Peer Review Committee composed of recognized experts in the field of heritage research. We therefore wish to thank Kristal Buckley, Klaus Hüfner, Chérif Khaznadar, Joseph King, Caroline Robertson-von Trotha, Mario Santana-Quintero and Andrea Witcomb. The committee reviewed, evaluated, ranked and rated research papers based on internationally established procedures and guidelines.

Contents Prefaces – V Roland Bernecker, Secretary-General of the German Commission for UNESCO Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture The Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies: The Need for a Holistic Understanding of Heritage (2012) – 1 Introduction – 3 Marie-Theres Albert Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections – 9 Marie-Theres Albert A Shift of Paradigm in Interpretation and Identification – 19 Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse: Towards a New Paradigm – 21 Neil A. Silberman Learning to Engage with Human Rights in Heritage  – 35 William Logan Cultural Landscape Theory and Practice: Moving from Observation to Experience – 49 Julian Smith Concepts and Developments over the Course of Time – 67 The Shift towards Conservation: Early History of the 1972 World Heritage Convention and Global Heritage Conservation – 69 Christina Cameron, Mechtild Rössler UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape – 77 Michael Turner Managing Change: Integrating Impact Assessments in Heritage Conservation – 89 Ana Pereira Roders, Ron van Oers

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 Contents

Understanding Heritage – Beyond the Construction of Meanings – 105 The Concept behind the Word: Translation Issues in Definitions of Heritage – 107 Mathieu Dormaels The Absence of Presence: Museums and the “Performance” of Identity in a Caribbean Context – 117 Alissandra Cummins Materializing the Immaterial: On the Paradox of Medializing Intangible Cultural Heritage – 135 Thorolf Lipp Heritage in Transition – Challenges of New Media – 153 Documentary Heritage, Digital Technologies and the Dissemination of Knowledge – 155 Anca Claudia Prodan Studying Heritage in the Digital Era – 169 Gertraud Koch Meaning of the Internet for the Intangible Heritage Convention – 183 Alice Halsdorfer Notes on Contributors – 193 Index – 199

The Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies The Need for a Holistic Understanding of Heritage (2012) The Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies was passed by the participants of the “International Summer Academy: Constructing Heritage in the Light of Sustainable Development” from July 9 to July 21, 2012. The International Summer Academy was the contribution of the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The participants included diplomats, UNESCO experts, research chairs and young researchers on the topic of heritage. The Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies strives to contribute to raising awareness for heritage as a key factor in sustainable human development and to express a broad international consensus for the need for research on heritage transformation processes under the condition of globalisation. Research is the proper domain of universities and the Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies therefore stresses the importance of the universities’ contribution. Since 2010, the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University has furthered the commitment of Brandenburg University of Technology to excellence in practical and theoretical research on heritage. Five consecutive International Summer Academies in the framework of the International Graduate School: Heritage Studies at Cottbus University are intended to develop a comprehensive understanding of heritage and to foster and deepen the academic discussion on current issues in Heritage Studies. The present Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies is the outcome of the first International Summer Academy. Recognising the efforts of UNESCO to raise awareness worldwide regarding the significance of heritage, most notably through the development of international standard-setting instruments such as the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the 1992 UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, the 2001 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the 2003 Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage and the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Acknowledging that at different governmental levels, as well as in academic environments and among civil society, there exist multiple understandings of heritage and diverse means to enable its study, protection and management, Considering that the processes of globalisation, though enhancing intercultural exchanges, may also trigger irreversible impacts on heritage,

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 The Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies

The assembled participants declare: The introduction of study programmes in Heritage Studies worldwide and a growing number of scientific journals focusing on heritage issues respond to the need of positioning heritage as an inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary nodal point of research. In this regard, Heritage Studies represents a platform that brings different disciplines together and creates links across different fields. The study of heritage should identify holistically the diverse tangible and intangible aspects of heritage and their interrelationships. The field of Heritage Studies encompasses diverse disciplines that approach research questions from different angles. In consideration of the increasing complexity of the globalized world, applying different theoretical perspectives and research methods in isolation is no longer adequate. Inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches are essential in order to understand and deal with heritage processes and manifestations. The contribution of natural, social and technical sciences, as well as humanities and the arts, fosters a holistic vision of heritage within the multi-faceted field of Heritage Studies. There is an urgent need for dialogue between academic and non-academic stakeholders with regards to the identification and communication of heritage. Universities play a prominent role in the development of practices and material innovations, as well as theoretical approaches, which provide the basis for decision and policy making. Intercultural dialogue on heritage understanding is key to mutual respect and appreciation of different “heritages” and values through processes of contextualisation and negotiation. The heritage of humanity has to be understood as a crucial factor in the processes of identity formation and as a fundamental resource for human development. The participation of communities in all heritage processes is essential. Globalisation, which impacts heritage through processes such as increased migration, urbanisation, commodification, growth of tourism and the acceleration of communications, has to be reflected in a comprehensive approach to Heritage Studies. The holistic understanding of heritage reflected in the Cottbus approach to Heritage Studies shall contribute to making heritage fruitful in contexts of human development.

Introduction Marie-Theres Albert The preservation, collection and valorization of cultural and natural heritage, as well as its presentation and transmission throughout all social strata, are important tasks for present and future generations. This is the essence of the Preamble to the 1972 World Heritage Convention, celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012. It is the most successful of all UNESCO Conventions, because through its implementation the world community has been able to identify heritage as an asset that should be preserved for following generations, and to manifest this significance in both the public and private consciousness. Additional UNESCO instruments that deal with the constructs of heritage in connection with sustainable development are the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) and the Memory of the World programme established in 1992. The 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention was a worthy occasion to celebrate its success and to identify the challenges which have arisen over time, as well as determine opportunities for the future. The greatest success of the Convention is without doubt that it has helped the protection of tangible cultural heritage, with nearly 1,000 sites gaining global acceptance. In addition, widespread publicity has resulted in a shift of meaning concerning the understanding of culture, in that the intangible aspects of cultural heritage have begun to be recognized and their potential in the shaping of identity identified and formalized in the 2003 and 2005 Conventions. Through global acceptance and implementation of these instruments, social awareness has grown concerning the potential of heritage in all its aspects and understanding of heritage as a source for continuously developing identities has been transformed since the 1970s. The importance of the shift in the meaning of heritage for the development of society, including the necessary awareness and strategy for sustainable development with World Heritage in the 21st century, is the launch point of our publication Understanding Heritage: Perspectives in Heritage Studies. The endeavour to understand heritage is based on a hermeneutically founded epistemological interest in the broadest sense. This is the fifth volume in the series of World Heritage Studies published under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies in cooperation with the German Commission for UNESCO. However, with this publication and its sequels we wish to emphasize new aspects in discussions concerning heritage, as this is also the first volume to be produced in association with De Gruyter academic publishers, thus potentially reaching a wider audience. Based on the World Heritage Convention and the Intangible Heritage Convention, the first four volumes dealt with the global chal-

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 Introduction

lenges of the possibilities and limitations of implementing the Conventions within societies. The first of these, published on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention in 2002, addressed the question of understanding culture and nature on which the Convention is based. The authors focused on whether the international community during the thirty-year experience with the Convention was able to broaden the dichotomy of culture and nature, according to the Western Enlightenment, to embrace other cultural and philosophical traditions. The second volume centred on the different aspects of heritage. It was published in 2006 and thus could incorporate first experiences concerning aims and content of the Intangible Heritage Convention. Under the heading Constructing World Heritage we remained however within the realm of World Heritage categories. We differentiated them by looking at each under the category of cultural landscapes in close relation to tangible and intangible heritage as well as to new management technologies. The third volume was the result of a research project dealing with capacity-building as part of the management of World Heritage, so the contributions focus on this topic. The theme of the fourth volume, published in 2010, is whether and how the World Heritage Convention was able to meet the requirements of global challenges and cultural diversity. The fourth volume in particular provides a link to this publication as we free ourselves from the narrow sense of the Convention, and instead incorporate specific aspects of globalization such as cultural and natural diversity and migration. In contrast to the first four volumes, this publication deals only in part with the re-evaluation of the Conventions and their potential to effectively protect heritage and use it in a sustainable manner. In this volume we take a new approach. We discuss heritage in the context of the many developments with which it is confronted and find the answers to challenges. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to examine the many aspects of heritage. For example, we intend to study its paradigmatic aspects. Which are the epistemological positions within the scientific discourses on heritage and what is our position? The aim is to examine the challenges to heritage in the face of globalization through a disciplinary and an interdisciplinary approach, and to provide an epistemological foundation. With these and further questions we intend to position Heritage Studies as they have been developed at Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus within the international scientific discourse. As a result of our International Summer Academy, held on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, we pursue the question of whether and how heritage is constructed within the context of the UNESCO Conventions. This concerns the fields of cultural sciences, social sciences, geology, law, construction history, art history, urban planning and ecology. We assume that through this approach we will broaden the political practical discourses with which UNESCO and its Advisory Bodies are mainly concerned, by adding academic and systematically structured discourses.

Introduction 

 5

For many years the striking imbalance between Europe and the rest of the world of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List has been a problem. For this type of political problem there are political solutions. For example, the Global Strategy which has existed since 1994 asks the international community to take a step back in its national and nationalistic endeavours and instead to support the global common interest. In this publication we examine why such political requests have had little success until now. We seek the answers that demonstrate the contradictions within the Conventions as well as in their interpretation and implementation. And in particular we seek to examine the solutions proposed for the problems identified. For example, the unequal distribution of World Heritage sites will have to be addressed, as will the question of how the criteria for the nomination of sites can be given adequate contemporary interpretations. It is important to analyse the factors of cause and effect with regard to the relative failure of the Global Strategy and to develop alternatives. Likewise, we will have to determine concepts for sustainability in the protection and use of heritage that are more than mere populist demands. In particular concerning the debate on the sustainability of heritage for future generations, all the realistic options and limits of approaches will have to be examined and thus also paradigmatically motivated. This includes studying the specific effects of globalization. In relation to the International Summer Academy, we have studied the impact of migration on changing heritage in developing societies, as well as the effects of climate change on man and nature. Both topics will be taken up again in subsequent publications, as well as the influences of migration and climate change on for example urban or rural spaces, and thus on tangible heritage itself. This means that henceforth we will study the transformations of human heritage and therefore take a new approach to understanding heritage, its sustainable protection and use. This publication is the first to emerge from a series of colloquia and academies which we launched at Cottbus in 2011 and plan to continue. The title, Understanding Heritage: Perspectives in Heritage Studies, points to some of the fundamental constructs of heritage. It includes further positions such as those of the 2012 Cottbus Declaration on Heritage Studies: The Need for a Holistic Understanding of Heritage. We intend to present existing perspectives – although non-exhaustively – and to establish a framework that will structure our aims and epistemological interests and facilitate the understanding of heritage as a complex phenomenon, organized here in four chapters. The first chapter deals with the paradigm change which can be observed within the context of interpretations and identifications of heritage. In the second chapter we examine the concepts of heritage and their transformations over time. The third chapter aims at clarifying the fact that the construction of the meaning and importance of heritage is subject to the interpreter’s position and affiliation. In the fourth chapter we present the impact of new media on heritage and the associated transition processes.

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 Introduction

The various contributions may be summed up as follows: The first chapter is mainly concerned with A Shift of Paradigm in Interpretation and Identification. Based on the overall interest in knowledge, the articles focus on the interaction between heritage and people, the significance of heritage, and the possibility of rendering heritage discourses more inclusive. In his article Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse: Towards a New Paradigm, Neil A. Silberman argues for a paradigm shift in the way interpretative discourses about heritage are created. The more people can be actively involved in discussion, debate and consensus-building, the more legitimate the insights. Silberman thus proposes heritage interpretation to shift from a didactic, one-way communication of information to a collaboratively and continuously created public discourse. In Learning to Engage with Human Rights in Heritage, William Logan traces and discusses the impact of the increasing shift towards a human rights-based management approach in the field of heritage. Since the 1972 World Heritage Convention, activities, definitions and discussions have increasingly expanded, especially with the introduction of the category of intangible heritage. Logan argues for the maintenance of strong partnerships between heritage stakeholders, as these are vital for the success of the heritage enterprise which faces various challenges, ranging from the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the conception of heritage strategies, the education and training of heritage professionals, to critical reflection of the various institutional frameworks. In Cultural Landscape Theory and Practice: Moving from Observation to Experience, Julian Smith traces the development of “cultural landscape” as a UNESCO category and a current paradigm shift which increasingly replaces a one-sided conservation approach with a holistic approach. He argues for the necessity to see landscapes not as static, physical places, but to consider their cultural and historic dimensions. This proposed “ecological” worldview is contextual, multilayered and interdisciplinary. The second chapter Concepts and Developments over the Course of Time assembles articles which deal with fundamental changes of perspective of heritage over time. The focus is on the transformations that heritage is subjected to in the context of globalization. This chapter also deals with the dynamics of the World Heritage Convention and how its interpretations can be fitted into the twenty-first century. Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler trace the emergence and development of tools for heritage conservation in their article The Shift towards Conservation: Early History of the 1972 World Heritage Convention and Global Heritage Conservation. Describing Periodic Reporting as an integral part of heritage management today, the authors believe that the World Heritage Convention was the starting point for the eventual advent of international standards of heritage conservation practice. Michael Turner discusses changes in heritage management of urban spaces in UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. Redefining cities as living cities, taking into account intangible heritage and not only cultural and natural

Introduction 

 7

values, but also social, economic and physical values can lay the foundation for an integrative and interdisciplinary approach, as proposed in the UNESCO Recommendation. In Managing Change: Integrating Impact Assessments in Heritage Conservation, Ana Pereira Roders and Ron van Oers introduce impact assessment as a tool which helps to determine the future effects of development alternatives on World Heritage properties. It is thus helpful for deciding which course of action in a given situation best serves the goal of heritage conservation. The third chapter Understanding Heritage – Beyond the Construction of Meanings deals with different constructs of the meaning of heritage. The contributions show how diversely heritage is constructed and how culturally, socially, regionally and/or disciplinarily generated meanings of heritage can vary. In his article The Concept behind the Word: Translation Issues in Definitions of Heritage, Mathieu Dormaels discusses the term “heritage” at a linguistic level. Faithful to the tenets of speech acts theory, he states that heritage is not intrinsic but is created by being named as such. He thus points out the importance of giving thought to the contexts as well as (implied) linguistic meanings of utterances. Alissandra Cummins discusses the practices of Caribbean museums and their inadequacies in The Absence of Presence: Museums and the “Performance” of Identity in a Caribbean Context. As former colonies, the Caribbean countries struggle to this day with social and institutional structures which omit much of the once-subjugated people’s history and voices. Museums thus need to contend with new ways of representing and preserving intangible heritage. In Materializing the Immaterial: On the Paradox of Medializing Intangible Cultural Heritage, Thorolf Lipp discusses intangible heritage with regard to the conflict between preservation and global dissemination on the one hand and preservation of authenticity on the other. He suggests creating spaces where intangible heritage can be experienced in direct person-to-person communication. Museums may thus evolve from merely displaying ethnographic objects to becoming intercultural meeting points. The fourth chapter Heritage in Transition: Challenges of New Media assembles reflections on the impact of digital technologies on the experience and safeguarding of heritage. While offering a multitude of new possibilities, the increasing presence of digital technologies warrants careful analysis and possibly updates and modifications to existing UNESCO documents and practices. UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme seeks to preserve documentary heritage. In her article Documentary Heritage, Digital Technologies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, Anca Claudia Prodan claims that it receives less attention than other UNESCO programmes, hoping to rectify this by outlining its functions and potential achievements, all of which have not yet come to pass due to relative negligence and ignorance of the diverse mechanisms which have been implemented in the programme.

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 Introduction

In Studying Heritage in the Digital Era, Gertraud Koch discusses the impact of digital media technology on the field of heritage, which allows people to create and disseminate media in addition to merely passively consuming. New forms of media are themselves also producers and shapers of cultural production and cultural change, she argues, so that cultural products and the media that disseminate them can be said to influence each other. The effects and implications of the internet for heritage are discussed by Alice Halsdorfer in Meaning of the Internet for the Intangible Heritage Convention. Claiming that the internet does not merely distribute knowledge but also creates it, she proposes adjustments to the Convention.

References Albert, M.-T., Bernecker, R., Gutierrez Perez, D., Thakur, N. and Nairen, Z. (eds). 2007. Training Strategies for World Heritage Management. Frankfurt am Main, Germany, IKO – Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation. Albert, M.-T. and Gauer-Lietz, S. (eds). 2006. Perspektiven des Welterbes / Constructing World Heritage. Frankfurt am Main, Germany, IKO – Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation. German Commission for UNESCO/Brandenburg University of Technology. (eds). 2002. Natur und Kultur. Ambivalente Dimensionen unseres Erbes. Perspektivenwechsel / Nature and Culture. Ambivalent Dimensions of our Heritage. Change of Perspective. Bonn, German Commission for UNESCO. Offenhäußer, D., Zimmerli, W. Ch. and Albert, M.-T. (eds). 2010. World Heritage and Cultural Diversity. Bonn, German Commission for UNESCO.

Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections Marie-Theres Albert The claim of Heritage Studies to have a disciplinary status is relatively new. It continues the thematic, political and in part already disciplinary discourses that the very diverse heritage community has been conducting since the adoption of the UNESCO Conventions for the protection of the heritage of humanity. The discourses vary depending on affiliation, membership and interest. For example, as early as the 1980s and 1990s, political positionings of national or international development organizations were published within this context. They focused on the potentials with which cultural heritage is believed to be endowed for the shaping of a sustainable future (Fabrizio, 1995). Significant theoretical work, which reflects the possibilities and limitations of the protection and use of heritage, was – until today – the position as expressed by Lourdes Arizpe concerning the “global cultural commons” (Arizpe, 2000) or by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimlett with the title Theorizing Heritage (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1995). Publications focusing on the theory are also the insights of Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and John Carman, published in 2009 under the title Methods and Approaches of Heritage Studies (Carman and Stig Sørensen, 2009). Newer works from the broad epistemological field of anthropology include publications by Helaine Silverman (2010) or Lynn Meskell (2011), as well as books by archaeologist Laurajane Smith such as Intangible Heritage (2009) or Uses of Heritage (2006), which are influenced by archaeology and a postcolonial point of view. In recent years, study programmes addressing different aspects of, for example, Heritage Studies, World Heritage Studies or Museum Studies have been established through the education-policy ambitions. Under the label Heritage Studies, research was carried out in these study programmes in the context of the required disciplinary and interdisciplinary orientation of the curricula. In addition, the theoretical works of the above-mentioned classics were employed as well as extensive approaches from Social Studies and Humanities (Dicks, 2000; Castells, 1997; Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983). Ultimately, the demand for a practice-oriented approach led to an integration of the relevant UNESCO Declarations and Conventions into particular focus of study programmes, and were positioned for each of the respective profiles of such a study programme. The Master’s programme World Heritage Studies, which we introduced in 1999 at Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus, developed from a demand by experts for the protection and use of World Heritage.

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 Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections

How it all began When we began in the winter semester 1999 with the MA programme, we had developed a curriculum, which at that point in history was unique considering its depth and also its broad basis. The focus of this study programme was the World Heritage Convention. The aim was to qualify the students in many different ways concerning cultural and natural World Heritage. For this, we had to develop a broad spectrum of disciplinary and interdisciplinary, as well as epistemological and methodical, approaches to the understanding of heritage and the preparation for teaching, learning and research. In this respect, with the development of the World Heritage Studies curriculum, we were challenged to systemize the different theoretical and practical approaches within one teaching and learning concept on the level of an MA study programme. Furthermore, we had to take into consideration that our alumni would be judged whether and how far they would be capable of professionally implementing an internationally recognized political-cultural aim, the protection and use of cultural and natural World Heritage. Therefore, the study programme could not, as was usually the case, be derived from one or several disciplines, neither could the aims and methods be established based on these disciplines. Learning objectives on the basis of knowledge elements were defined for the curriculum of World Heritage Studies, which were regarded as necessary for the successful implementation of the World Heritage Convention by the alumni of the study programme in their different professional positions and functions. At the initial stage, the aim of the programme was to impart knowledge through the approaches and methods of, for example, archaeology or monument preservation, architecture or urban planning, management or Cultural Studies. In addition, the students were to be enabled to reflect and use the knowledge from various disciplines for the protection and use of heritage. Although the curriculum of the study programme changed, augmented and reduced several times over the years, the programme has remained until today. In this respect, with World Heritage Studies at BTU Cottbus we have established a study programme, which from the outset was set up on an interdisciplinary basis, and which therefore also contributed to the further development of a holistic research area of Heritage Studies. From today’s perspective, we may note that the basic concept of the World Heritage Studies curriculum has proven itself. Also, we may note at this point that for the students further and more profound epistemological and methodical inputs would have been more helpful. The partially very praxeological orientation of the study programme did not enable students who had not during their Bachelor’s studies begun to think metatheoretically, to think on a scientific abstract level.

Classics of the heritage discourse 

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Classics of the heritage discourse As mentioned above, social and cultural scientific studies on the topic of heritage already existed before any study programmes were established. Although these studies were not developed within the context of the UNESCO Conventions, they have still critically accompanied the social interpretations and adoptions of the concept heritage that are linked with the Conventions, above all the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. They have shaped the construct¹ of heritage in the context of a holistic understanding of heritage, and have determined heritage itself as a dynamically created phenomenon. Aspects of Heritage Studies were and are presented and discussed particularly by historians, such as Lowenthal (1985) or Hobsbawn and Ranger (1983) or by geographers such as Ashworth and Larkham (1994), Ashworth and Howard (1999) and Aplin (2002). Others such as Harvey (2001), Larkham (1995) or Smith (2006) argued according to the respective discipline but from a point of view developed by members of Cultural and/or Postcolonial Studies. Also international journals – such as the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, Journal of Material Culture, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Journal of Cultural Heritage and International Journal of Cultural Property – have raised awareness of heritage among many communities. A complex understanding of heritage could be disseminated through various topics, such as Heritage and Identity, Heritage and Multiculturalism, Expressions of Intangible Heritage, Tangible Heritage and Spaces, Legal Aspects of Heritage or Heritage and Local Communities, as well as Management of Heritage. At the same time, theoretical constructions were broken down into fields of application through an immense number of case studies. Case studies have become an infinite pool of knowledge for Heritage Studies, reflecting the diversity of existing cultures and the different aspects of their heritage. Thereby also general preservation strategies with regard to particularities could be modified. On the other hand, the boom of the heritage communities’ interest in details has pushed back the interest in holistic, complex and above all comprehensive knowledge. The atomization of heritage was accompanied by atomizing scientific expertise. Nevertheless, nearly all authors of Heritage Studies share a common position. In each of the disciplinary standpoints the early authors anticipated both the economic developments and also their Eurocentric explanations for the objected “lack of cred-

1 In this text the term “heritage” as a construct is grounded on a constructivist approach to the phenomenon heritage. The aim is to emphasize the many different meanings of the use of the term and/or the concepts of heritage, and to illustrate the challenges of interests for a systematization that are linked through Heritage Studies. The approach of Heritage Studies in this context aims at doing justice to the diversity of heritage in its nomination and listing processes just as much as the diversity of interpretations of the concept of heritage in theoretical debates. In this respect, the term “construct” is to be understood as a means to indicate that heritage is in various discourses a construct.

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 Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections

ibility” (Albert, 2012) of the World Heritage List but they did not go further, although already in the initial stage of listing World Heritage, between 1978 and 1995, it had become clear that the world was not at the centre of the Convention and its discourse, but Europe (von Droste, 2011). It could no longer be denied that for most Europeans, heritage had changed from being a good to a product and finally to a commodity and a commodity, by nature, could not be valued under cultural aspects, but instead under economic criteria. As Eurocentrism was so evident in all its facets, as well as its causes and effects, particularly regarding the change of what heritage signified, it is difficult to comprehend why in the early Heritage Studies publications hardly any cause analyses or action strategies were developed for dealing with clearly misguided developments, specifically of the 1972 Convention. This is surprising, because sustainability or participation, which today are necessary within the World Heritage context, were already determined in the 1980s and 1990s for the use of cultural goods, particularly in the context of development policy (Taylor, 2012). This also concerns the concepts of “capacity-building” and “empowerment” as tools for sustainable development, which since the Brundtland Report in 1987² have determined the discourse. Particularly the ideas of recently deceased Nobel prizewinner Elinor Ostrom about the Commons, which had developed in these years, could have been taken up and implemented (Ostrom, 1990). The idea of Commons is that scarce resources such as air, water and the heritage of humanity should not be regarded as private or public goods, but as common goods, and that they should be treated as such. The community of politically mature citizens are responsible for common goods. Their responsibility is also that these goods should be maintained for the following generations. This concept therefore requires sustainability as well as empowerment. Unfortunately the idea of the Allmende³ had become alienated by the image of the meadow which had been overgrazed by a large number of sheep. Ostrom’s original idea was however, to place heritage under the care of politically mature and responsible citizens, and can be regarded until today as fundamental for the protection of heritage and is therefore in itself sustainable. As already noted, although the above-mentioned early authors of Heritage Studies recognized nature, content and the extent of the economic interest in heritage that is linked with the changes in meaning in heritage constructions, they did not, however, determine any strategies for an innovative way of handling these newly assigned meanings and functions of heritage. It did not correspond with the scientific self-image of the former heritage community to develop possible ways of solving problems. From today’s perspective on former times and the disciplinary and episte-

2 The Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission), Our Common Future, was published by Oxford University Press (UK) in 1987. 3 Here to be understood as Commons in the sense of collectively owned land.

Classics of the heritage discourse 

 13

mological backgrounds of these communities, it is evident that possible solutions to identify problems were judged to be practice-oriented, which for most of the members of this community did not represent any direct gain in knowledge. They were interested in knowledge obtained in an abstract and metatheoretical way. This self-image continues to exist in present positioning. Well-known protagonists of Heritage Studies still understand their assignment as an analytical one, and to bring up a painful or uncomfortable subject, instead of being more practice-oriented. They differ from those experts that are members of the so-called authorized discourse of the various UNESCO heritage communities. They identify with those that belong to the non-authorized discourse and organize themselves – paradigmatically motivated – in new communities such as the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. With positions such as Heritage has to be understood as social and cultural process (Smith, 2006, p. 44) they remain true to themselves. It should be noted that through their statements they take up the cultural and development theory positions of the 1980s and 1990s. They interpret heritage as a social and cultural process and thus refer back to development potentials which are immanent to every heritage. “Heritage is not a ‘thing’, is not a ‘site’, building or other material object. … these things … are not themselves heritage. Rather, heritage is what goes on at these sites, … Heritage, I want to suggest, is a cultural process that engages with the present, and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this process” (Smith, 2006, p. 44).

In other words, with the construction of heritage as a cultural and social activity, the phenomenon of heritage is transferred from a tangible and static object to a dynamic process. Instead of the object, the process is understood as the constituting part for the shaping of identity. This occurs on the basis of experience and of awareness-shaping. From the epistemic theoretical perspective, a change of paradigm has taken place from an identity that is immanent in an object and therefore static, to an identity that continuously develops and therefore also constructs heritage in a dynamic manner. In my opinion, this change of perspective in Heritage Studies should be followed. On the other hand, the concept is not broad enough where it analyses and interprets the effects of globalization on heritage, effects of migration, climate change or modernization nearly completely with the approaches of Cultural or Postcolonial Studies. As important as these approaches were in cultural, social, political sciences and history at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, so important I believe it is today, that the representatives of these studies confront present developments and position themselves on a broader disciplinary and interdisciplinary level. This would also require a social dynamic in every learning process which they themselves had demanded. These and other considerations should be integrated in future developments of Heritage Studies.

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 Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections

Aims of Heritage Studies How should Heritage Studies be positioned within the scientific discourse to identify them as a relevant paradigm for heritage topics? Which leading interests and methods should Heritage Studies use in order to do justice to the complete range of the heritage phenomenon? Which disciplinary, inter- and/or transdisciplinary discourse should be integrated into Heritage Studies to enable them to develop and provide professional solutions to globalization challenges? And finally, how should be established the link between theory and practice to provide answers to real social challenges? Beginning with this publication, in the course of the next few years these and additional questions should be further reflected upon and as far as possible answered. This is not about the setting of norms or about finding the truth. But it is about determining the phenomenon of heritage in its facets and dynamics. With this also the central paradigm of this constructed approach has been expressed. Heritage Studies are understood to be the scientific confrontation with transformation processes, to which heritage is subject in the face of globalization. A further aim of Heritage Studies should be to augment the understanding and perception of heritage beyond the usual tangible and intangible connotations of the term heritage within the UNESCO context. Heritage today, more than ever, is understood for its relevance to human development. As such, the protection and use of heritage is conceived as a potential that shapes identities and builds peace. For this reason also, the protection and preservation as well as the use and application of heritage will have to do justice to the criteria of sustainability and sustainable development. Protection and utilization require the comprehensive individual and socially responsible action of all the stakeholders involved in these processes. Responsible action of people or groups implies their knowledge and awareness concerning the significance of heritage for the shaping of the future. And this in turn can only be achieved if all stakeholders are involved in the protection and use of heritage. Heritage Studies in this manner are also positioned on an epistemological level in this outlined transformation process. They are understood as a critical discipline which determines its research questions and topics on an inter- and/or transdisciplinary level, but which explicitly derives them from the demands that the changing reality of life has on a daily basis and for all the peoples of the world. This consists of positioning the epistemological interest in the context of the diversity of our world. It also means reflecting the cultural diversity of the world through the approaches and methods of Heritage Studies, without becoming arbitrary, and finally it means developing strategies for the future for a sustainable way of dealing with heritage. In other words, it is not about an abstract gain in knowledge, but explicitly about paradigmatically creating a concept of Heritage Studies for human development. UNESCO itself has the best examples of this. Not only do the founding documents of UNESCO aim at the creation of responsible awareness and action with an interest in peacefully shaping the future, so do all Conventions and strategies which have been

Aims of Heritage Studies  

 15

adopted during the past, almost seventy years of the Organization’s existence. Also those Conventions and strategies aim to thematically deal with the protection of the tangible and intangible, as well as the natural and documentary heritage of humanity in all its diverse representations. Heritage Studies need to do justice to these normative demands and develop strategies for their sustainable implementation. With such UNESCO programmes in mind as the Millennium Goals, Resolution 65/166 concerning Culture and Development or the label World Heritage and Sustainable Development: The Role of Local Communities, which was established on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, placed new demands on Heritage Studies. They have discarded the former epistemological interest which had focused on Eurocentric and tangible heritage as well as the traditionalistic ideas of the community of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The future of Heritage Studies is to research in what way heritage transformation processes can be utilized for human development. Table 1 provides an overview of how this can be achieved systematically. Table: Structure of paradigmatically based research system for Heritage Studies Overall objectives of Heritage Studies

Overall conditions for development

Heritage transformation processes and human development.

Impacts of globalization on heritage: migration, sustainability, climate change, participation, empowerment, diversity, etc.

Constituent components of heritage

Corresponding sciences and approaches of research

Culture, nature, diversity, tangible and intangible heritage, etc.

Humanities, natural and social sciences, structural sciences and engineering.

Interest of knowledge

Corresponding epistemologies

Assessment, development and implementation of the immanent potentials of heritage for sustainable and human development.

Constructivist, hermeneutic, empirical, critical and analytic or poststructuralist approaches.

Realization

Corresponding methods

Construction of corresponding, disciplinary and interdisciplinary research approaches.

Text analysis and interpretation, qualitative and quantitative empirical research, structural and natural research methods.

Justice can best be done to the complex object by a deductive method where contents are put into a direct relationship with the aims and transformations of heritage which are shaped by globalization. The purpose of determining the concept of Heritage Studies in the interest of human development is therefore normative. But it does not identify what is understood to be human development. This will have to be determined while Heritage Studies position themselves. But for this it is necessary that heritage research will have to undergo a change in perspective. Until now, the perspective

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 Heritage Studies – Paradigmatic Reflections

of Heritage Studies was focused on the object, and the change will mean to focus instead on humans and their environment. It is important to identify all those social and cultural ideas, performances and practices that help people to locate themselves politically and socially, economically and culturally, in order to create and protect a sense of identity. Already the pioneers of Heritage Studies had envisioned in their perceptions of heritage both its meaning for contemporary and for future generations. I believe it will not be difficult to conceptualize and position Heritage Studies for holistic processes of human development with the cognitive interest mapped out above.

References Albert, M.-T. 2012. Perspectives of World Heritage: towards future-oriented strategies with the five ‘Cs’. In: M.-T. Albert, M. Richon, M. J. Vinals and A. Witcomb (eds), Community Development through World Heritage. Paris, UNESCO, pp. 32–38. (World Heritage Papers 31). Aplin, G. 2002. Heritage: Identification, Conservation and Management. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Arizpe, L. 2000, Cultural heritage and globalization. In: E. Avrami and R. Mason (eds), Values and Heritage Conservation: Research Report. Los Angeles, Calif., The Getty Conservation Institute, pp. 32–37. Ashworth, G. J. and Howard, P. 1999. European Heritage Planning and Management. Portland, Ore., Intellect Books. Ashworth, G. J. and Larkham, P. J. (eds). 1994. Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe. London, Routledge. Carman, J. and Stig Sørensen, M. L. (eds). 2009. Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches. London, Routledge. Castells, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell. Dicks, B. 2000. Heritage, Place and Community. Cardiff, UK, University of Wales Press. Fabrizio, C. 1995. The Cultural Dimension of Development: Towards a Practical Approach. Paris, UNESCO. Harvey, D.C. 2001. Heritage pasts and heritage presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4. London, Routledge, pp. 319–338. Hobsbawn, E. and Ranger, T. (eds). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. 1995. Theorizing heritage. In: J. Lawrence Witzleben (ed.), Ethnomusicology, Vol. 39, No. 3. Champaign, University of Illinois Press, pp. 367–380. Larkham, P. J. 1995. Heritage as planned and conserved. In: D. T. Herbert (ed.), Heritage, Tourism and Society. London, Mansell. Lowenthal, D. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Meskell, L. 2011. The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa. Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell. Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Silverman, H. (ed.). 2010. Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and Exclusion in a Global World. New York, Springer US. Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage. New York/Oxon, Routledge.

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Smith, L. and Akagawa, N. (eds). 2009. Intangible Heritage. London, Routledge. Taylor, P. 2012. Das Gemeinsame Erbe der Menschheit: Eine kühne Doktrin in einem engen Korsett. In: S. Helferich and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (eds), Commons: Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat. Bielefeld, Germany, Transcript Verlag, pp. 426–433. Von Droste, B. 2011. The concept of Outstanding Universal Value and its application: from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to the 1,000 World Heritage places today. In: A. Pereira Roders and R. van Oers (eds), Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 1, No. 1. Bingley, UK, Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 26–41.

A Shift of Paradigm in Interpretation and Identification

Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse Towards a New Paradigm Neil A. Silberman Heritage interpretation – the constellation of communicative techniques that attempt to convey the public values, significance and meanings of a heritage site, object or tradition – is central to understanding the wider characteristics of heritage itself. Indeed, the practice of heritage interpretation, in its broadest definition,¹ has been traced back at least 4,000 years (Dewar, 2000). From the time of the Egyptian exile Sinuhe’s twentieth century BCE travel journal through the Land of Retenu (Baines, 1982); through Herodotus’s sometimes dubious fifth-century BCE accounts of ancient Near Eastern signs and wonders (Thomas, 2002); to Pausanias’s second-century CE travel guide to the ancient shrines of Greece (Alcock and Cherry, 2001); through the pilgrim guides and guidebooks of the Middle Ages (Moerman, 1997; Osterrieth, 1989); to the itineraries and tutors’ lectures of the Grand Tour in the Age of Enlightenment (John, 1985), a changing array of interpreters and guides has continued the practice of explaining and reflecting on the significance of historic monuments and landscapes around the world. In the nineteenth century, with the first waves of mass tourism, the role of the guide-interpreter became more specialized and professionalized (Erik, 1985). Whether attached to a specific site (and eventually trained and licensed by national governments), these professionals, serving as escort and interpreter for a group through a full itinerary of heritage attractions, were recognized as authoritative sources of information, alongside other media such as maps, directional signs, and Baedekers and Blue Guides (Koshar, 1998). Yet in whatever form the interpretation was conveyed to the tourist or reading public – and whether regarded as reliable, bogus or boring – it was primarily a form of monologual narration that was meant to proceed unidirectionally from the guide to the audience. The classic modern work on the techniques of this profession, Interpreting Our Heritage by the US Park Service official Freeman Tilden, has been, since its first publication in 1957, the most important single source of the philosophy of heritage

1 As defined in the ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (ICIP, 2008, p.  3): Interpretation comprises “the full range of potential activities intended to heighten public awareness and enhance understanding of cultural heritage site. These can include print and electronic publications, public lectures, on-site and directly related off-site installations, educational programmes, community activities, and ongoing research, training, and evaluation of the interpretation process itself.”

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 Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse

interpretation, both cultural and natural (Tilden, 1957). It has been praised, updated, analysed and itself reinterpreted over the last fifty years. At the heart of Tilden’s theoretical vision were his six guiding principles, each of which stressed the unique role of the heritage interpreter in connecting the visitor with the heritage.² Artfulness, spurring the imagination, and targeting the audience were the central factors. Later followers of Tilden expanded the number of principles (Beck and Cable, 1998), but the goal of instrumental emotional discourse from an interpreter to listeners remained the same. It was the communication not only of information, but also of an ethical order in which the conservation of heritage became the end of a presumably inevitable behavioural chain (Ham, 2007a). “Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection” was Tilden’s much quoted dictum (1957, p. 38), which has served as a guiding motto of the interpretation enterprise and the worldwide profession it has spawned. At its heart, this approach to heritage interpretation is more methodology than theory; it is a method of face-toface communication in which the content of the interpretation is less important than the skill with which it is conveyed. Facticity is perhaps its single normative element; appreciation of a site’s value, authenticity and significance were its intended effects. Yet as David Uzzell has noted (1998), this traditional view of heritage interpretation unquestioningly assumes the audience’s basic openness to being persuaded. If performed with enough verve and ingenuity, interpretation, it is implied, will have its intended effect. The audience is assumed to be distinct only as individuals, whose “personality and experience” are the targets of interpretation’s direct relational appeal. The epistemic content of the interpretation – its view of historical “truth” – is seen as relatively unproblematic, derived from the factual perspectives of historians, architects and archaeologists. Yet the technique of influencing the heritage public to respond to scientifically based information with emotion as well as action closely resembles the techniques of public health, environmental and advertising campaigns (Ham and Weiler, 2003). Interpretation is seen as an action designed to promote public appreciation for the importance of heritage, its vulnerability, and the necessity

2 – Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile. – Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based on information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation includes information. – Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical, or architectural. Any art is to some degree teachable. – The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation. – Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part, and must address itself to the whole person rather than any phase. – Interpretation addressed to children (say, up to the age of 12) should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

From monologue to public participation  

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for its conservation, as carried out by the official stewards of the locality or the state. But increasingly, heritage is not seen as an undifferentiated resource, nor are its official stewards always regarded as impartial guardians of a shared heritage (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). In cases of heritage disputes in zones of ethnic combat or interstate rivalry, a Tildenian conception of “heritage” as an unalloyed good that can be unproblematically interpreted to increase public support for conservation flies in the face of seemingly irreconcilable conflicts over what heritage is significant and how it should be interpreted. Tilden’s six principles of interpretation fail to address adequately the challenge of definitively interpreting conflicting perspectives. Among the many examples that could be cited are the contested history of Jerusalem (Silberman, 2001), the political controversies over the Kasubi tombs in Uganda (Kigongo and Reid, 2007), the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan (Colwell-Chanthaphonh, 2003), the cultural affinities and territorial significance of the Preah Vihear temple on the border of Thailand and Cambodia (Meyer, 2009), or the conflict between Hindus and Muslims over religious primacy at Ayodhya in India (Bernbeck and Pollock, 1996). These are only the most famous examples of interpretive conflict, for in our era of “place branding”, identity politics, territorial disputes and tourism-based economics, the control of heritage sites and objects has become a bone of contention between regions, localities, diasporic communities and nation-states all over the world. Questions of urban renewal, gentrification, demographic dispossession, sovereign claims to the repatriation of plundered or looted relics – and more sensitively – the control of human remains found at archaeological sites, all pose even more complex challenges to conventional ideas of conservation and the possibility of a “universal” method of interpretation that will mobilize support for it (Silverman and Ruggles, 2007). As this chapter suggests, the changing social, economic and symbolic value of heritage requires a new theoretical paradigm to replace, or perhaps place in a new context the long-cherished concepts of Tilden. Indeed, as Uzzell suggested, heritage interpretation “is stuck in a rut where the how has become more important than the why” (1998, p. 12). The answer to the “why” question, I believe, lies in heritage interpretation’s wider social function – not merely as an effective communication medium, but as a deeper reflection on the rights and proper role of the non-expert public in shaping an ever evolving vision of the past.

From monologue to public participation Carefully prepared texts and scripts are omnipresent in heritage interpretation – ranging from simple informational panels, to vivid storytelling, to character-based interpretation, visitor centre videos, carefully designed interpretive trails, to elaborate (and costly) virtual environments. Although the interpretive media in use at

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 Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse

various sites may dramatically differ in complexity or sophistication, the process that most of them embody is consistent with the traditional monologual approach: a unidirectional presentation of carefully selected and arranged information derived from an expert source, meant to be accepted by the public as authoritative. Particular interest has been shown for analysis of the cognitive impact of various interpretation programmes (e.g. Ham, 2007b). Through questionnaires, interviews and tests designed to measure the factual recall and emotional satisfaction of visitors (particularly schoolchildren), investigators have begun to analyse what goes on at the other end of the communicative chain. As mentioned above, there is more at stake today than generalized public education and the cultivation of support for conservation. In addition to political issues of identity and ethnic legitimization, public reactions to interpretation have important economic consequences in the so-called “Experience Economy,” where heritage sites are often developed as revenue-generating entertainment venues (Silberman, 2007). The answers to certain questions quite unconnected with historical significance or Outstanding Universal Value can determine whether a ticketed site will succeed or fail: is it fun? Do children as well as adults enjoy it? Was there enough to see and do there? Would you recommend it to friends? With international development agencies encouraging hard-pressed regions to take advantage of their heritage resources as engines of development (Cernea, 2001), the artful simulation of sanitized authenticity attractive to tourists has often become an end in itself. It may be useful to examine the processes of interpretation more deeply – both those of the professional interpreters and of the members of the public that interpret what they say. Ablett and Dyer (2009) have proposed the use of hermeneutics (the study of the principles of literary, philosophical, and social interpretation) in order to understand its functioning within the heritage field. Going beyond conceptions of one-way, instrumental communication, of “getting the (scientific) message across,” the hermeneutic approach posits two additional interpretive actions that occur simultaneously: (1) the engagement of professional interpreters with their audience in order to “relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor” (Tilden’s first principle); and (2) the audience members’ active efforts from their own perspective to interpret what an interpreter is saying about a particular heritage object or subject – and how it adds, meshes, or clashes with their personal understandings of human nature and history (McIntosh and Prentice, 1999). This is far different from the communications theory perspective, in which the audience is understood as a passive receptor and an interpretive presentation is deemed to be successful when the audience has “correctly” understood what the interpreter was trying to say. It is rather a simultaneous occurrence of two interpretive activities that both have their roots in contemporary social perceptions of class, race and culture and each has its distinct cognitive significance. Each party to this interaction, both interpreter and listener, tries to fill in the gaps and unspoken assumptions of the other, to call to mind issues of significance that the other has ignored or

Heritage and the public sphere 

 25

omitted, and above all, to use both external information and internal interpretation to produce a convincing picture of a particular aspect of historical reality. Moreover, in each these simultaneous acts of interpretation, the epistemology may be entirely different. For professional interpreters, the basis for their “Authorized Heritage Discourse” (Smith, 2006) may be the historiographical orientation of aesthetics, nationalism, nostalgia, environmentalism or chronological progression, seeing time as a sequence of readily identifiable eras, which are linked to narratives of progress, increasing complexity, or alternating flourit and decline (Silberman, 2010). For any particular visitor or community member, the epistemological and even ontological framework for understanding a heritage site may be different – drawn from unquestioning acceptance of academic authority, ethnic pride or resentment, class consciousness, religious beliefs, folk traditions or inherited family memories – seeing the past as an undifferentiated, deep well of experience and symbols of the “once upon a time” (Robb, 1998). These distinctive modes of interpretation are not exclusive alternatives but are all interwoven components of the complex ideation of sociocultural life. All have their value. Empirical facts have value in cataloguing, typologizing and evaluating hypotheses. Personal or group attitudes towards certain evocative symbols or associations can offer powerful emotional bases for action and expressions of solidarity. Put simply, public interpretation can be an activity where all these distinct modes of cognition are encouraged to be openly expressed and reveal themselves to each other, each enriching all the others with unexpected understandings and insights about the significance and value of heritage.

Heritage and the public sphere Where should such dialogues – or “polylogues” – of differing sources of information and conceptions of value take place? During a tour? Outside the site? At home? In public planning meetings? On historical TV documentaries or in special-interest internet sites? In discussions of historical novels, films or video games? I would suggest that we look beyond the sequestered world of official commemoration techniques and administration to consider heritage interpretation to be a profoundly important public activity. Its place in public discourse is no less important than other debates about social policy, development issues or immigration restrictions – all of them based on an evolving consensus of past, present or future “national character.” For if cultural heritage is indeed “unique and irreplaceable property” of great importance “for all the peoples of the world” (UNESCO, 1972, Preamble), it should be a serious subject for informed debate and reflection in the public sphere. By “public sphere” I mean a place of popular deliberation, not to be confused either with the public institutions of government or public places such as parks, highways or sidewalks where there is rarely organized discussion of important issues – except in times of demonstrations and protests, where those who see themselves as

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 Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse

ignored or aggrieved make their angry voices heard. The public sphere is that arena of debate and discussion where ideas and perspectives are exchanged and consensuses arrived at between nominal equals – the most basic constitution of democracy. In this, I follow the social philosopher and political theorist Jürgen Habermas, who has recognized the importance of the public sphere as a place of democratic deliberation and has traced its history from the Middle Ages to the present day (Habermas, 1991; Calhoun, 1992; and for a good general introduction, Goode, 2005). Habermas’s historical analysis has great relevance for heritage interpretation and heritage practice in general, as it is interwoven both in the physical monuments of “officialized” public representation and in the ways in which the public relates to them. For Habermas, the great monumental ecclesiastical and royal structures (some of which that comprise early inscriptions on the World Heritage List) represent a public sphere in which there was no discussion, but rather faced the mass of subjects with ideological “shock and awe”. Power and powerlessness were quite clear-cut; the justification of power was inscribed on the landscape in those monumental forms. Then, according to Habermas, in the early modern period, with the gradual disintegration of the absolutist state and the rise of a “middle class” of economically entrepreneurial merchants, and eventually manufacturers, a new kind of public sphere arose (Habermas, 1991, pp. 14–24). In the smoky urban coffee shops, scientific societies, literary journals, and in the pages of newspapers and other novel journalistic publications of the bourgeois intelligentsia of the Age of Enlightenment, a new kind of public sphere arose. Neither part of the state, nor private possession of any individual, this widely dispersed, mediated conversation offered a forum for free and often spirited debate and discussion on important matters of the day, on evolving technologies and their social and economic impacts, on visions of the future, and shared creative expressions of identity and political philosophy that – at least in Habermas’s initial estimation – prepared the ground for the first modern Western deliberative democracies.³ In time, however, the very qualities that Habermas most prized in this first modern public sphere – the ability of individuals to participate in its free-flowing discourse, without the quality or power of their ideas to be directly linked to their social rank – was transformed and eventually extinguished with subsequent political developments (Habermas, 1991, pp.  181–220). Put briefly, as the absolute state withered away to be replaced by the bureaucratic nation-state in the late eighteenth century, the voluntary public sphere of deliberative discourse was transformed into the formalized structures of representative democracy, with the public deputizing full-time parliament members to carry on the public deliberations for them. And finally, according to Habermas, with the decline of widespread public engagement in

3 For a convenient review of the critiques of Habermas’s evaluation of the freedom and openness of this original public sphere, noting particularly its class, gender, and textual-rhetorical biases, see Goode (2005, Chap. 2).

Heritage and the public sphere 

 27

political discourse and the rise of consumer-oriented societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, representative democracy became largely procedural, with the voting public choosing between competing candidates as they might choose between competing consumer products. Advertising, public relations, and subtle appeals to emotions and to personal fears and biases brought on what Habermas considered a period of re-feudalization in which the “public sphere” evaporated. The public passively consumed (like they consumed other mass-produced products) the legitimizing self-representations of economic and political elites. My purpose in bringing up the Habermasian idea of the “public sphere” is not so much to testify to its historical accuracy or to its contemporary political implications as to note how the extent of public debate and discussion in particular periods may have a far-reaching effect on the functioning of a democratic society. More than that: the withering of public participation in deliberation on important issues of collective identity, policy and planning leaves power almost entirely in the hands of vested interests and technocratic “expertise” (on this issue, see also Scott, 1999; Mitchell, 2002). What makes this heuristic model of the public sphere especially relevant to heritage interpretation is that a similar trajectory of public participation seems to be evident in the history of official heritage. From an initial stage of statist self-legitimation through the designation of national shrines and monuments to a presumably compliant citizenry (e.g. Dietler, 1994, among many other examples), came a period in which a non-governmental “public sphere” emerged, devoted to learned, reflective discussion of the ethics and philosophy of conservation and commemoration. The leading figures, including Ruskin, Viollet le Duc and somewhat later Riegl, were based in architecture and academia, rather than being direct spokesmen of the government (Jokilehto, 1986). Without unduly emphasizing this similarity of trajectory to that of Habermas, it might also be said that the following period was one of governmentalization – a kind of representative regime in which functionaries in government ministries and bureaucratic departments enacted the scholarly consensus through the fashioning of legislation and adopting certain criteria of value and conservation practices (Fowler, 1987; Delafons, 1997; Kohl, 1998). This can be seen especially in the twentieth century with the regularization of antiquities and monument services and the formulation of international charters and conventions that enshrined expert opinion as authoritative. Lastly, and more recently, with the neoliberal wave of economic restructuring throughout the world, heritage has become an increasingly commodified resource. As “driver of development” it must increasingly lure visitors with extravagant site design and entertaining multimedia attractions. In most cases in the “Experience Economy” the heritage client does not contribute to the formulation of national memory or the determination of social significance except by passively choosing the sites to visit and thereby boosting their international visibility and revenue (Hewison, 1987; Lowenthal, 2002; Outka, 2009).

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 Heritage Interpretation as Public Discourse

Why is this narrative of particular relevance to heritage interpretation? It is relevant because it traces the degree and extent of fundamental interaction between the public and “heritage,” not merely the effectiveness of information transfer to them. Indeed the most important element of Habermas’s analysis of the public sphere and his later classic discussion of communicative action in society is that the greater the sphere of discussion, debate and the possibility of consensus-building, the greater the legitimacy the collective will possess. And at a time when conflicts of heritage values were becoming increasingly evident – and they were being answered primarily by technologies of ever more powerful one-way communication and ever more superficial and passive consumption, it was clear that the basic theory and method of heritage interpretation inherited from Freeman Tilden needed to be thoroughly rethought.

Interpretation as process not product The policy initiative that led to the formulation and eventual ratification of the ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (ICIP, 2008) emerged at a time when digital technologies – particularly visualization and interactive multimedia applications – were becoming recognized as the cutting edge in interpretive outreach (Addison, 2001; Arnold et al., 2008; Kalay, 2008). It was also a time when the Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS, 1999) and other policy documents such as the Council of Europe’s “Faro” Framework Convention (Council of Europe, 2005) were establishing the principle of public rights and responsibilities in the conservation and interpretation of heritage sites. These two elements – the increased and far more powerful dissemination of heritage information and the enhanced role of all stakeholders in creating as well as consuming it, created the conditions for a new approach to interpretation within wide sectors of the international heritage community. Up to that time, the focus on public communication within ICOMOS and other international heritage organizations had been rather vaguely defined by a variety of terms including “presentation”, “interpretation”, “popularization”, “public education”, “outreach”, and even “vulgarization” (ICIP, 2008: Preamble) that all implicitly retained the idea of one-way communication with the non-expert public from a privileged source of authority. Increasingly, the worldwide neoliberal economic restructuring was requiring heritage places to become self-sufficient; the source of “authority” was becoming a demand for revenue generation through tourism. The new digital technologies all too often were used to attract visitors through novel and entertaining presentations, often of questionable value for reflecting upon or even learning about the past (e.g. Krösbacher and Ruddy, 2006). The result was an attempt to reach an international consensus on a new code of practice for interpretation at cultural heritage sites. The ICOMOS Interpretation Charter attempted to facilitate wider collaboration between communities, interested individuals and heritage professionals in the plan-

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ning, expression and continuing revision of interpretation – taking full cognizance of the new technologies as well as the new imperative of community accountability. Thus widened access, diversified information sources, inclusiveness in content, planning for sustainability and public participation in economic benefit were among the central principles of the Charter.⁴ Its aim was to replace the exclusive authority of the professional interpreter with a collaboration of stakeholders, including new people, new voices and new themes into the interpretive discourse. Professional interpreters would, of course, not disappear from the heritage landscape, but their emphasis would be primarily on the transfer of empirical information – or even the emotional “provocation” to elicit interest and support outlined by Tilden. It was rather the engagement of local and associated communities in interpretation as expressions of local and regional identity and empowerment as participants in collective reflection. Innovative programmes framing heritage as a platform for contemporary debate and discussion had proved successful at contested sites and “sites of conscience” (Sevcenko, 2002; Malan, 2008), but here the aim was more general – to widen heritage interpretation of all sites from a transmission of specialized knowledge by specially trained interpreters to places of the (re)creation of collective memory in which many perspectives, subjectivities, identities and values could be freely exchanged. In our mediated, consumption-oriented era, sites of heritage have all too often become themed places of entertainment, with nostalgia as their chief commodity. And it was a kind of impossible restorative nostalgia, in which the visitor, in an unwitting acceptance of von Ranke’s historical essentialism, came to see the past “as it really was” (Rüsen, 1990). The Charter – and the paradigm of heritage interpretation it embodies – does not merely assume that the tangible and intangible inheritance from past generations has an unambiguous, self-evident significance. They are seen instead as “vessels of value” (Araoz, 2011) in which the values they contain sometimes clash, combine, evolve or are newly created through the experiences and perspectives of members of contemporary society.

4 The seven main principles of the ICOMOS Interpretation Charter are: Principle – Access and Understanding; – Information Sources; – Attention to Setting and Context; – Preservation of Authenticity; – Planning for Sustainability; – Concern for Inclusiveness; – Importance of Research, Training, and Evaluation.

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Interpretation as public discourse The 2008 ratification of the ICOMOS Interpretation Charter was a step towards opening up interpretive practice; other important steps, in the form of community-based heritage projects have arisen in many parts of the world.⁵ Participation in heritage conservation and interpretation is increasingly seen as an aspect of civic engagement rather than (or as well as) continuing education or tourist development, especially where frameworks for long-term community planning of heritage sites are in place. There is a growing realization that heritage is not simply a top-down conservation effort, or a potentially lucrative resource to be exploited for short-term economic gain. Twentyfirst-century heritage interpretation must be an informed and inclusive group activity, and expression of evolving community identity, facilitated by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Moving from passive consumption of prepared presentations to enactment of identity and connection, this new form of heritage interpretation breaks through the confines of the tour and the site to become a form of discourse within the wider community. This collaborative approach neatly parallels the definition of the 2003 UNESCO Intangible Heritage Convention as seeing its substance being “transmitted from generation to generation … constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provid[ing] them with a sense of identity and continuity” (UNESCO, 2003, Article  2.1). Heritage interpretation is becoming performative rather than strictly didactic; the lecture and the museum exhibit now stand on an equal footing with the historical reflections and ever-renewing performative self-representations of hybrid memory communities (Silberman, 2012). This sense of identity and community cannot be imposed through outside instruction, nor can a body of value-neutral facts, dates and figures, conveyed by a specialized interpreter provoke and inspire visitors or local residents to see heritage sites as “vessels of value” and that are more than just statically conserved relics. Interpretation must abandon a purely curatorial perspective to recognize, in the words of the novelist William Faulkner, that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Faulkner, 1959). Collaboration in the development, design and interpretation of a heritage site must incorporate values – almost always a range of differing and sometimes conflicting values – through which the connection of all members of the community to both past and future are expressed. Here indeed is the shortcoming of Tilden’s basic instrumental approach to interpretation, in which the elements highlighted by the interpreter are to be understood, appreciated and protected by the audience. What happens in the cases of conflicted understandings not of facts but of values or legitimate differences of perspective? This is why Habermas’s concept of communicative

5 For a wide sampling of case studies and theoretical developments in community-based heritage, see the special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1–2.

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action in the public sphere has enormous potential in reshaping the character of interpretation of heritage. It is a paradigm of interpretation as a shared – and ongoing – public activity, in which many voices are heard. Much remains to be developed in this new approach to heritage interpretation as public discourse – not the least of which is the change from passive consumption to active creation, with heritage sites and museums becoming memory institutions, not only vacation attractions or weekend entertainment venues. This chapter has attempted to demonstrate that public discussion in the public sphere as a deliberative discourse of collective identities, social norms, and of the possibility of individual freedom from the weight of heritage – rather than following a guided tour – offers itself as a new interpretive paradigm. Freeman Tilden’s oft-quoted motto about understanding, appreciation and support for officialized commemoration (quoted above; 1957, p.  38) embodied the major challenge of interpretation throughout the ages: the commemoration of other eras, other forms and other cultures as static monuments resistant to the passage of time. Yet in our age of mass movements, social upheavals, diasporas, indigenous populations and globalizing economics, Tilden’s motto needs to be replaced by a new one that reflects the ongoing paradigm shift: “Process, not product; collaboration, not ‘expert-only’ presentation; memory community, not heritage audience.” This new paradigm of interpretation, based on Habermas’s ideal of rational public discourse leading to social consensus and collective action, can offer a path forward towards renewing rational, non-dogmatic public discussion about how heritage sites can help us to understand how we arrived in our present often-conflicted social, economic and political situations – and where we should go from here.

References Ablett, P. G. and Dyer, P. K. 2009. Heritage and hermeneutics: towards a broader interpretation of interpretation. Current Issues in Tourism, Vol. 12, pp. 209–233. Addison, A. C. 2001. Virtual heritage: technology in the service of culture. In: Proceedings of the 2001 Conference on Virtual Reality, Archeology, and Cultural Heritage, pp. 343–354. Alcock, S. E. and Cherry, J. F. 2001. Pausanias: travel and memory in Roman Greece. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Araoz, G. 2011. Preserving heritage places under a new paradigm. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 1, pp. 55–60. Arnold, D., Geser, G. and Kaminski, J. 2008. EPOCH research agenda for the applications of ICT to cultural heritage. Budapest, Archaeolingua. Baines, J. 1982. Interpreting Sinuhe. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 68, pp. 31–44. Beck, L. and Cable, T. T. 1998. Interpretation for the 21st Century: Fifteen Guiding Principles for Interpreting Nature and Culture. Urbana, Ill., Sagamore Pub. Bernbeck, R. and Pollock, S. 1996. Ayodhya, archaeology, and identity. Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, pp. S138–S142. Calhoun, C. 1992. Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

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Cernea, M. 2001. Cultural heritage and development: a framework for action in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC, World Bank Publications, Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C. 2003. Dismembering/disremembering the Buddhas. Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 3, pp. 75–98. Council of Europe. 2005. Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention). http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/199.htm (accessed 2 February 2012). Delafons, J. 1997. Politics and Preservation: a Policy History of the Built Heritage, 1882–1996. London, Taylor & Francis. Dewar, K. 2000. An incomplete history of interpretation from the Big Bang. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 175–180. Erik, C. 1985. The tourist guide: the origins, structure and dynamics of a role. Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 12, pp. 5–29. Faulkner, W. 1959. Requiem for a Nun: a Play from the Novel by William Faulkner. New York, Random House. Fowler, D. D. 1987. Uses of the past: archaeology in the service of the state. American Antiquity, Vol. 52, pp. 229–248. Goode, L. 2005. Jurgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere. London, Pluto Press. Habermas, J. 1991. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Ham, S. H. 2007a. From interpretation to protection: is there a theoretical basis? Journal of the Association for Heritage Interpretation, Vol. 12, pp. 20–23. Ham, S. H. 2007b. Can interpretation really make a difference? Answers to four questions from cognitive and behavioral psychology. Proceedings of the Interpreting World Heritage Conference. Vancouver, Canada, pp. 25–29. Ham, S. and Weiler, B. 2003. Interpretation is persuasive when themes are compelling. Interpret Scotland, Vol. 8, p. 3. Hewison, R. 1987. The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline. London, Methuen. ICIP. 2008. ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation. http://www. international.icomos.org/charters/interpretation_e.pdf (accessed 2 February 2012). ICOMOS Australia. 1999. The Burra Charter: the Australia ICOMOS charter for places of cultural significance. Burwood, Australia, International Council on Monuments and Sites. John, T., 1985. The grand tour: A key phase in the history of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 12, pp. 297–333. Jokilehto, J. 1986. A History of Architectural Conservation: The Contribution of English, French, German and Italian Thought towards an International Approach to the Conservation of Cultural Property. York, UK, Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies. Kalay, Y. E. 2008. New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage. London, Taylor & Francis. Kigongo, R. and Reid, A. 2007. Local communities, politics and the management of the Kasubi tombs, Uganda. World Archaeology, Vol. 39, pp. 371–384. Kohl, P. L. 1998. Nationalism and archaeology: on the constructions of nations and the reconstructions of the remote past. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 27, pp. 223–246. Koshar, R. 1998. “What ought to be seen”: tourists’ guidebooks and national identities in Modern Germany and Europe. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, pp. 323–340. Krösbacher, C. and Ruddy, J. 2006. Authenticity and the use of multimedia in cultural tourist attractions – a contradiction. In: K. Weiermaier and A. Brunner-Sperdin (eds), Erlebnisinszenierung Im Tourismus. Erfolgreich Mit Emotionalen Produkten Und Dienstleistungen. Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag, pp. 195–210.

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Lowenthal, D. 2002. The past as a theme park. In: Theme Park Landscapes. Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Publications, pp. 11–23. McIntosh, A. and Prentice, R. 1999. Affirming authenticity: consuming cultural heritage. Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, pp. 589–612. Malan, A. 2008. Contested sites: negotiating new heritage practice. Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 24–25, pp. 17–52. Meyer, S. 2009. Preah Vihear reloaded – the Thai-Cambodian border dispute. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Vol. 28, pp. 47–68. Mitchell, T. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press. Moerman, D. 1997. The ideology of landscape and the theater of state: Insei pilgrimage to Kumano (1090-1220). Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 24, pp. 347–374. Osterrieth, A. 1989. Medieval pilgrimage: society and individual quest. Social Compass, Vol. 36, pp. 145–157. Outka, E. 2009. Consuming traditions: modernity, modernism, and the commodified authentic. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Robb, J. G. 1998. Tourism and legends archaeology of heritage. Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 25, pp. 579–596. Rüsen, J. 1990. Rhetoric and aesthetics of history: Leopold von Ranke. History and Theory, Vol. 29, pp. 190–204. Scott, J.C., 1999. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Sevcenko, L. 2002. Activating the past for civic action: the international coalition of historic site museums of conscience. The George Wright Forum, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 55–64. Silberman, N. A. 2001. If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem: archaeology, religious commemoration, and nationalism in a disputed city, 1801–2001. Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 7, pp. 487–504. Silberman, N. A. 2007. Sustainable heritage? Public archaeological interpretation and the marketed past. In: Y. Hamilakis and P. Duke (eds), Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics. One World Archaeology. Walnut Creek, Calif., Left Coast Press, pp. 179–193. Silberman, N. A. 2010. The Tyranny of Narrative: History, Heritage, and Hatred in the Modern Middle East. http://works.bepress.com/neil_silberman/24 (accessed 2 February 2012). Silberman, N. A. 2012. Heritage interpretation and human rights: documenting diversity, expressing identity, or establishing universal principles? International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, in press. Silverman, H. and Ruggles, D. F. 2007. Cultural heritage and human rights. Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. New York, Springer, pp. 3–29. Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London, Routledge. Thomas, R. 2002. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Tilden, F. 1957. Interpreting our Heritage: Principles and Practices for Visitor Services in Parks, Museums, and Historic Places. Chapel Hill, N.C., University of North Carolina Press. Tunbridge, J. E., Ashworth, G. J. 1996. Dissonant Heritage: the Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester, UK, Wiley. UNESCO. 1972. Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf (accessed 25 March 2012). UNESCO. 2003. Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage. http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0013/001325/132540e.pdf (accessed 2 February 2012). Uzzell, D., 1998. Interpreting our heritage: a theoretical interpretation, in: Contemporary Issues in Heritage and Environmental Interpretation, D. Uzzell and R. Ballantyne (eds). The Stationery Office, London, pp. 11–25.

Learning to Engage with Human Rights in Heritage William Logan A number of scholars and educators have been arguing for some time that cultural heritage should not be seen merely as a technical matter or from a narrow visitor management point of view. Rather, it should be understood as cultural practice and a form of cultural politics dominated by ruling regimes and social groups in which decisions are made about the future of and access to scarce resources (see, for example, Byrne, 2008; Harvey, 2001; Logan, 2000, p. 11, 2007a; Smith, 2006). Some of us have sought to push this approach further by arguing that Heritage Studies should take on the protection of human rights as a core consideration in the processes of heritage identification, inscription, conservation and interpretation (see Logan, 2006, 2007b, 2008, 2012a; Silverman and Fairchild, 2007a, 2007b; Langfield et al., 2010). This article builds on these previous works to explore what the shift to a rights-based management approach in the World Heritage system might mean for the stakeholders in the heritage protection enterprise as they learn to meet this challenge and find ways to support people’s right to access, enjoy and maintain cultural heritage. Reaffirming the need to maintain a strong relationship between theory and praxis, I draw into the discussion heritage practitioners, decision-makers in governments and government agencies, scholars and educators. Of these, the principal emphasis is on the last two, seeing the scholars and educators as having a fundamentally important role in developing a critical understanding of the cultural heritage concept, how heritage is created, used and misused, and how conservation approaches and programmes sit within the broader context of community attitudes and aspirations and governmental responsibilities. A distinction is made between teachers in universities and trainers offering short courses more focused on specific employer needs. While it is clearly important I do not deal with heritage education in primary and secondary schools here, and have written about it elsewhere (see Logan, 2012b). I focus on World Heritage and refer to both tangible and intangible aspects, showing how current moves to establish a rights-based approach to the management of World Heritage sites connects with moves elsewhere in global governance, most notably in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Expanding ‘heritage’ and early educational responses UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention (UNESCO, 1972) was radical for its time in envisaging heritage as both natural and cultural and bringing these two forms together

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into a single normative statement and protective system. In the ensuing forty years both the community and professional views of what constitutes cultural heritage has broadened in many countries. Educational programmes have responded to this conception of heritage and its value for contemporary society. Several important shifts can be discerned. Moving from a mid-twentieth-century focus on iconic monuments and archaeological sites, the criteria adopted for evaluating cultural nominations to the World Heritage List encompassed values that enabled the inscription of a wider range of places, such as vernacular building ensembles, historic towns and villages, and designed parks and gardens. In 1993 cultural landscapes and their associative values were added, while the last decade has seen a greater emphasis on the intangible values of places and debate about the addition of historic urban landscapes. Another major trend has seen heritage discourse and practice move from a narrowly technical focus to a more ethics-based approach. The World Heritage system has moved to a values-based approach to managing heritage places and increased weight has been put on associative values, especially of indigenous communities. Questions about “Whose heritage?” and “In whose interest is a place being inscribed?” have been given higher priority, as has the development of more inclusive heritage registers. Heritage professionals often stray into projects, particularly as short-term consultants in countries and cultures that are not their own, where they deal with heritage that is of great significance to local people without realizing the political character and social implications of their interventions. It is essential for practitioners to understand the broader economic, political and social context in which their work sits. They also need to recognize that there can be many motives behind official heritage interventions, that such action is sometimes made primarily to achieve political goals, and that this can sometimes undermine rather than strengthen cultural diversity and human rights. One of the achievements of the global debates of the 1990s was recognition that wide variations exist in the way that heritage is understood from one region to another and from one culture to another, and that variation is part of the world’s rich and creative cultural diversity. The Nara Conference on Authenticity in November 1994 had a major impact on heritage conservation theory and practice, concluding as it did that the ways of conserving heritage should be in accord with local ways of understanding heritage. This widening is seen in the debates about philosophy and practice in the key global heritage organizations – UNESCO, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) – and is now reflected in the programmes taught and the research undertaken in educational and training institutions at the national and global levels. Initially education and training providers responded to the global conservation effort spearheaded by UNESCO by creating a series of specialist courses, some dealing with the conservation of monuments and sites and drawing heavily on the disciplines

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of archaeology and architecture, others focusing on science- and laboratory-based materials conservation, and yet others on museology or public history (Logan, 2010). In the 1970s and 1980s ICCROM in Rome and the University of York (United Kingdom) were key training institutions, drawing students from around the world. During the 1980s and 1990s, other universities moved into the heritage field and courses were developed that, in relation to heritage places, shifted from technical restoration to focus on broader planning and management issues, often connected to economic development through tourism. Within the last fifteen years the increasingly holistic conception of heritage has led to a new batch of courses drawing together at least heritage places and museum studies and beginning to focus on intangible heritage and traditional knowledge systems. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and, more recently, the United States, Heritage Studies has emerged as a new interdisciplinary area in its own right bringing together history and geography, architecture and archaeology, economics and town planning, anthropology, ethnology and folklore studies, art history and museum studies and with strong emphases on the interconnections between philosophy, theory and practice.

UNESCO, World Heritage and the universities UNESCO’s connection with universities has a long and honourable history, dating back to the appointment of former Oxford scholar, Julian Huxley, as its first Director in 1946 and continuing with the regular commissioning of university scholars such as Claude Lévi-Strauss to write key reports. Almost thirty years later, the World Heritage Convention when it was adopted in 1972 called on States Parties in Article 5 to ‘foster the establishment or development of national or regional centres for training in the protection, conservation and presentation of the cultural and natural heritage and to encourage scientific research in this field’. Despite this clear request, little was initially done within the UNESCO system to develop mechanisms to link heritage and education (Logan, 2012b, p. 21). It has been academics themselves who, in universities around the world, have responded to the growing awareness of the need to protect World Heritage and have launched Heritage Studies programmes with a specialization in the study of the World Heritage Convention and related issues. Seven such university programmes are listed on the UNESCO website – three in Europe, two in Africa and one in each of Japan and Australia (see UNESCO, n.d.a). Other universities include World Heritage alongside studies that are more focused on heritage at national and local levels. Since the 1990s there has been a more concerted effort by the World Heritage Centre to influence curricula and bring students and teaching staff in schools and universities into actively supporting the World Heritage programme. In 1991 UNE-

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SCO’s General Conference decided to create a university network with two interlinking components: the UNITWIN programme under which universities agree to collaborate, usually across the North/South divide; and the appointment of UNESCO Chairs (UNESCO, n.d.b). The aim of both components is to facilitate knowledge and skills transfer and institutional capacity-building through training, research, information-sharing and outreach activities within UNESCO’s major programme areas of education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. At 14 October 2012 there were 715 UNESCO Chairs (UNESCO, n.d.c). Twenty-five of these are designated to the field of cultural heritage, although several of the earlier ones created in the 1990s appear to be now defunct. There are no Chairs in the natural sciences specifically focusing on natural heritage. Apart from a 10th anniversary meeting held at UNESCO Paris headquarters in November 2002, there has been little connection between the various UNITWIN programmes or the UNESCO Chairs. A number of other networks have tried to fill this gap but have also been less successful than hoped. The Forum UNESCO: University and Heritage (FUUH) network was established by UNESCO in 1995, initially under the management of the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain but now jointly managed by that university and the World Heritage Centre. The FUUH mission is broad and emphasizes supporting UNESCO action in favour of cultural and natural heritage protection, enhancement and conservation. FUUH is an informal network whose main collaborative activity has been the annual, now biennial international conferences it has run in thirteen university locations around the world (UNESCO FUUH, n.d.). Other networks have been established at the regional level. For example, in 2001 ICCROM joined forces with UNESCO’s Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture in Asia and the Pacific based in Bangkok to form the Asian Academy of Heritage Management (AAHM). This is a network of institutions, mostly universities, that offers professional training in the field of cultural heritage management (UNESCO Bangkok, 2011). Such training is seen to be critically important given the Asia-Pacific context of rapid environmental degradation, urban infrastructure development and mass tourism. Since 2008 the network has become more self-governing and its principal activity is a major regional conference held every one or two years. It is regrettable that within UNESCO the management of heritage is divided between six separate UNESCO conventions and their associated programmes and that this is being mirrored in many countries with regard to the management of national heritage. Similarly, administrative and programme divisions within universities continue to make it difficult to educate students across the range of disciplines needed to practise heritage conservation in a more holistic way, even to deal with natural and cultural values under the World Heritage Convention let alone work with intangible values, cultural expressions and heritage representation in museums or to deal with growing concerns about rights-based management, heritage sustainability, environmental degradation and the potential impacts of climate change.

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Heritage, human rights and rights-based World Heritage management One of the issues that has been instrumental since the 1990s in shifting the concept of heritage used in the World Heritage system is the need to enable the world’s indigenous peoples to have a meaningful role in determining how their heritage is identified and managed. This is a fundamental issue, of course, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile that were colonized by European settlers. It became a key concern in the World Heritage system following the introduction of the cultural landscape category in 1993. In particular, use of the third associative sub-category – defined as ‘cultural landscapes where the Outstanding Universal Value relates to the powerful religious, artistic, or cultural associations of the natural elements rather than material cultural evidence’ – meant working closely with indigenous peoples. But their involvement in the listing of new places on the World Heritage List and the management of places already inscribed has generally been limited. Criticism from indigenous peoples on this point came to a head at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Cairns (Australia) in 2000 where it was proposed that a new World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE) should be created to sit alongside the three Advisory Bodies named in the World Heritage Convention, ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN. I have outlined the WHIPCOE story in a recent paper (Logan, in press). The initiative failed and frontline indigenous action on heritage rights subsequently moved from UNESCO to UNPFII in New York. Nevertheless, the voice of indigenous people had been clearly heard within the World Heritage system. In 2003 the Dutch National Commission for UNESCO hosted a conference in Amsterdam on the theme Linking Universal and Local Values (de Mérode et al., 2004). An outcome of the conference was UNESCO’s adoption of the view that heritage protection does not depend alone on top-down interventions by governments or the expert actions of heritage industry professionals, but must involve local communities. UNESCO now routinely argues that it is imperative that the values and practices of the local communities, together with traditional management systems, are fully understood, respected, encouraged and accommodated in management plans if the heritage resources are to be sustained into the future (de Mérode et al., 2004, p. 9). Meanwhile, a number of international and national non-governmental organizations and other pressure groups around the world were joining forces with the UN to push for more decisive and concerted action in bring human rights into various forms of governance, planning and project implementation. This was kick-started in 1997 when the then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, launched a reform making human rights a “priority in every programme … and in every mission”. His call was taken up in 2003 when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) adopted a “Common Understanding” of a “Human Rights Based Approach” (Ekern et al., 2012). Applying such an approach means clari-

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fying the relationships between all the stakeholders in a project or a policy initiative in terms of their rights and duties and looking for ways to overcome the power differentials that might otherwise block the realization of rights. Thus neglecting to build schools, for example, is seen as a violation of the right to education for children; to build schools but forbid girls from attending is a violation not only of the rights of children but also of women. While Ekern et al. (2012, p. 217) see the appeal to human rights as being primarily aimed at assisting the state in question to remedy its policy shortcomings, there are occasions when shaming or sanctioning violating states may be required. Indigenous peoples have learned to use the language of rights effectively, as a useful part of their battery of political tactics to maintain their cultural heritage and control their own cultural development and one that is difficult to challenge. Their right was clearly reinforced by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which had been developed by the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs (UN, 2007). The continuing discussions at Forum meetings in New York have sought to elaborate on the key notion of “free, prior and informed consent” and to require its enforcement in various processes, including World Heritage inscription. The Forum’s Tenth Session in 2011 concluded that such consent is a right to be enjoyed by all indigenous peoples; it should be “given freely, without coercion, intimidation or manipulation (free); sought sufficiently at all stages, including from inception to final authorization and implementation of activities (prior); based on an understanding of the full range of issues and implications entailed by the activity, or decision in question (informed); and given by the legitimate representatives of the indigenous peoples concerned” (UNPFII, 2011a).

The work of the UNPFII ties in closely with that being done by Farida Shaheed, Independent Expert at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, who focused in 2011 on access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage as a cultural right (UNHRC, 2011; Logan, 2012a; Silberman, 2012). Ms Shaheed’s report was finalized in March 2011 and presented to the Human Rights Council, which at its 17th Session in June 2011 passed a resolution reaffirming: “while the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (UNHRC, 2011).

The Resolution also made clear that cultural rights are included within human rights and reaffirmed the Human Rights Council’s position that “States have the responsibility to promote and protect cultural rights and that these rights should be guaranteed for all without discrimination”.

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The UNPFII and UNHRC strategies resonate with efforts by the Advisory Bodies, notably the IUCN and ICOMOS, to move the World Heritage system towards a rightsbased approach to site management. The IUCN is already well advanced in developing such an approach to managing the natural and mixed World Heritage sites for which it has responsibility for advising the World Heritage Committee under the Convention (Oviedo and Puschkarsky, 2012). The IUCN experience offers a useful model for ICOMOS and ICCROM as they, too, move towards a human rights-based approach to the management of World Heritage sites in relation to cultural sites, cultural landscapes and historic urban landscapes. Some national divisions of ICOMOS, particularly the Norwegian, have been active in addressing rights concerns (Ekern et al., 2012). In March 2011 ICOMOS Norway hosted an international workshop in Oslo entitled Our Common Dignity: Towards a Rights-Based World Heritage Management’, the papers from which are now published in a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies (May 2012). ICOMOS Norway went on to convince the 17th triennial ICOMOS General Assembly held in Paris in late 2011 to request its Executive Committee to develop an “Our Common Dignity” initiative as a key activity in the ICOMOS 2012–14 Triennial Action Plan. In short, the application of human rights in the heritage field appears to be building up momentum as the World Heritage system takes on broader conceptions of heritage. An additional factor has been, as noted by Jukka Jokilehto (2012) in his contribution to the journal issue referred to above, the shift of focus in heritage discourse and practice over the last twenty years towards intangible heritage. In the global arena, this has directed attention towards the intangible values of places inscribed under the World Heritage Convention, while, from 2003, intangible heritage (seen as “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills”) has had its own convention under which representative items could be inscribed (UNESCO, 2003). However, even though, as “living heritage embodied in people”, the intangible form of heritage is the most directly connected to human rights principles and their abuse, the linkage is not clearly recognized by many cultural heritage practitioners, who continue to view their work merely as technical. Even human rights workers fail to make the connection, despite the abundance of opportunities around the world to witness people struggling to assert their cultural rights in order to protect their heritage and identity. There are many challenges to be met by heritage conservation policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and educators arising out of the extension of practice into the intangible cultural heritage field. How can local communities be more fully engaged in the decision-making processes from the outset? The recognition of human rights, “cultural rights” and community participation in planning and other forms of policy-making vary from country to country, regime to regime, totalitarian through to democratic. And even within the liberal democracies, community dynamics are far from perfect and local ambitions always need to be negotiated between various interests within the local community as well as against broader community, regional and national interests.

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Heritage, human rights and education Heritage is thus increasingly seen not merely as a reflection of the world’s rich and creative diversity but as the very underpinning of the cultural identity of peoples, and its maintenance is considered a basic human right. Heritage is essentially a mental construct, a set of values produced through socio-political processes reflecting society’s power structures. From this point of view, heritage conservation can no longer be seen just as a technical issue: it always involves fundamental philosophical and ethical questions and these must be incorporated into heritage courses in universities: Why are we doing it? Who for? Who said? Are the local people whose heritage is being “protected” involved? How does it fit with other human rights? How does it fit with social and environmental sustainability? This shift is already reflected in university courses where the close link between heritage and identity is central to teaching and research programmes, as, too, is the link between official heritage definitions and nation-building and the misuse of “heritage” in some countries to reinforce the power of political elites and dominant ethnic groups. This means that while there remains a very clear need to produce graduates with practical architectural and archaeological conservation expertise and heritage planning and management skills, the social sciences can add skills for analysing the social, political and economic context and for negotiating heritage conservation outcomes in situations where the identification, evaluation and interpretation of heritage items is contested between various groups within the community. The shift towards a more critical approach to heritage practice encourages educators, scholars and practitioners to consider the human rights implications of conservation interventions and to devise ways in which local people, including indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in particular, can be empowered to play a meaningful role in determining how their heritage is identified and managed. Practitioners in the field will need new skills in facilitating small group discussions, conflict resolution and in listening patiently and respectfully rather than assuming their specialist training gives them ready-made answers. This new approach has already encouraged a rich stream of research in universities and a number of books are now available that deal with the links between cultural diversity, heritage and human rights. Those by Silverman and Fairchild (2007a) and Langfield et al. (2010) have already been mentioned. Case studies are also starting to mount in number. Gro Ween (2012), for example, grounds the human rights argument and rights-based management approach in her study of the Sami minority in Norway. She focuses on process – how World Heritage sites are created, how their Outstanding Universal Value is articulated and how the Norwegian state’s interest in being represented on the World Heritage List weighs up against Sami interests and rights. She also shows how the Sami have used human rights arguments to their own advantage, here exerting their collective right to cultural identity to block Norway’s ambition to add another park (Tysfjord-Hellemo) to the World Heritage List.

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Bente Mathisen (2012) deals with a site on Africa’s east coast, the Ilha de Moçambique (Island of Mozambique), which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1991. This is a living site with a multicultural population. It has distinctive Portuguese and Indian architectural influences whereas the dominant intangible heritage today is Swahili. The two main settlements on the island reflect this divided social history, the monumental colonial buildings of Stonetown being seen as appropriate for World Heritage status although not part of the local community’s heritage, while the religious buildings and houses of Macutitown were considered too unsophisticated for the World Heritage List despite reflecting the cultural identity of the people (macuti: straw). The task has been to forge an inclusive heritage vision and collaboration between the various groups. Mathisen’s case study shows that the significance of a living World Heritage site cannot be fully understood and safeguarded without considering the interests, aspirations and priorities of all of its inhabitants. This is a fundamental message for those concerned about developing a rights-based approach to World Heritage site management. As Ekern et al. (2012, p. 218) note, this does not mean that the moral and political practices based on a notion of universal human rights are uncontested, nor that they are a panacea to all the world’s ills. Several fundamentally problematic issues require further consideration. Providing an embryonic research agenda, these include: – clarifying the relationship between individual and group rights; – finding ways to convince the many states that refuse – on the basis that human rights are a “Western invention”, promote individualism and are contrary to national values – to accept criticism framed in human rights language and to reform governing practices that violate human rights; – learning how to deal with those communities that practise rules that are discriminatory to women or children.

Emerging perspectives in heritage scholarship, education and training World Heritage education appears to have started moving in two directions – towards increasingly critical Heritage Studies on the one hand, and on the other hand, towards a greater emphasis on skills training designed to meet the World Heritage system’s functional needs. In a carefully managed education system both of these approaches should be able, of course, to co-exist so that students and researchers are able to ground theory in an understanding of practice. The signs are, however, that we may be moving towards a dual system based on conflicting rather than complementary approaches. In a sense the division is occurring as a result of problems in the World Heritage system, especially the proliferation of inscribed places with severe management and sustainability issues. There are now thirty-eight properties on the List of World Herit-

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age in Danger (UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2012) while 135 were subject to close scrutiny in 2011 by the World Heritage Committee (UNESCO, 2011a). The Committee’s attempt to contain the difficulties through its State of Conservation and Periodic Reporting mechanisms is not sufficient. There is a sense among some in UNESCO’s Cultural Sector of a need for training more focused on meeting the specific demands of World Heritage sites. But there is also a growing concern, expressed in the media and heritage conferences and publications, that the World Heritage List is becoming too long and serves nationalistic political and economic interests to the detriment of conservation and the vision of those who worked to create the World Heritage Convention and, indeed, the fundamental mission of UNESCO itself. Such concerns are unlikely to be the subject of short training courses but lie at the core of critical Heritage Studies. Moving in the opposite direction is a growing band of university teachers and researchers who see the need for considerable reform in the way that UNESCO and its World Heritage system operate (Logan, 2012c, pp. 114–116). An Association of Critical Heritage Studies was been established in June 2012 and an inaugural conference was held at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). To some scholars this is a dramatic and recent “paradigm shift”; to others it is another step in the evolution of Heritage Studies that has been taking place since the field emerged a half century ago (Logan, 2012d). No matter whether the change process is interpreted as revolutionary (paradigm turbulence and change) or evolutionary (transition), heritage is understood by all involved in “Critical Heritage Studies” as a cultural practice in which the dignity of human rights should be respected. Responding to site management concerns, the World Heritage Committee called on its Advisory Bodies to revise its 2001 training strategy. The new strategy was presented to the Committee at its 35th Session in 2011 (UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2011b) and is significant in moving beyond training to cover institutional capacity-building more widely. At the same time, the World Heritage Centre began encouraging the creation of a new set of training institutions known as the Category 2 Centres or “C2Cs”. While not legally part of UNESCO, the C2Cs are associated with it by way of formal arrangements approved by UNESCO’s General Conference. There are now twenty such culture-related centres, of which six focus on World Heritage. Many States Parties are keen to establish a C2C, which is in line with their responsibilities under the Convention, but they must guarantee funding, possess staff with sufficient experience and, perhaps most important, have a genuine commitment to making the C2C function effectively. The majority of strongest universities in the heritage field will be outside the “Category 2 family” that is being created. There is a concern that the C2Cs will be perceived as having UNESCO’s imprimatur but may not attain the same standards of teaching and research. The situation is exacerbated by confusion between the notions of education and training (Logan, 2010). These are two different processes and involve different agencies, universities focusing more on education while professional bodies, government departments and other units focus on training. University education is

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broad, questioning, liberating and improving. With regard to World Heritage, university teachers are not trainers merely serving the needs of the World Heritage system. Of course there is a necessity to provide such technical expertise, but they have also to engage students in the larger philosophical concerns, to inculcate in them an appreciation of ethical responsibility and to encourage critical analysis and debate. This must include maintaining a questioning stance towards UNESCO and its World Heritage programme.

Conclusion It is quite clear that the growth of the World Heritage system requires new responses, including a realignment away from serving the political and tourism interests of the States Parties and towards the original UNESCO mission of building bridges to peace (Logan, 2012c, pp. 125–127). It is perhaps unfortunate that, given the increasingly difficult situation in which UNESCO’s flagship World Heritage programme finds itself, exacerbated by another American funding embargo, World Heritage education and training seems to be moving towards a dual system comprising C2Cs and the rest. Promoting such a dual system seems to run against the advice of the Independent External Evaluation of UNESCO when it recommended five strategic directions, the fifth being to develop a partnership strategy that included renewing, not scaling down, links with and between institutes, programmes, universities and centres of excellence that can improve UNESCO’s performance (UNESCO Executive Board, 2010, p. 11). Critical Heritage Studies can provide an invaluable watchdog function, not only on the global heritage and human rights scene but also on the operations of UNESCO’s World Heritage system itself. Critical Heritage Studies can encourage UNESCO to live up to its own statements of principle. Relevant to the heritage and human rights nexus is the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), which asserts unequivocally in Article 5 that: “Cultural rights are an integral part of human rights, which are universal, indivisible and interdependent … All persons have therefore the right to express themselves and to create and disseminate their work in the language of their choice, and particularly in their mother tongue; all persons are entitled to quality education and training that fully respect their cultural identity; and all persons have the right to participate in the cultural life of their choice and conduct their own cultural practices, subject to respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

Being an intergovernmental organization, of course, there are many governance tensions within the World Heritage Committee that limit its ability to adopt a human rights-based approach to management. These include the fact that UNESCO Member States and those that have become States Parties to the World Heritage Convention ultimately operate according to their perception of their own national needs and may not give priority to tackling human rights violations, even if they even admit that

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such exist within their own countries (Logan, 2012c). Critical Heritage Studies has an important role to play in encouraging UNESCO to draw attention to the inconsistent position of countries that have signed up to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and yet fail to uphold the human rights of their citizens in the implementation of UNESCO’s cultural, educational and other programmes in their territories. At a time when both cultural heritage and human rights face challenges across the globe, the best way forward will be to maintain and strengthen partnerships between UNESCO, the World Heritage Committee, Advisory Bodies, universities and training institutions. UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee need strong educational and training institutions and teaching and research programmes encompassing new skills for new problems if the goal of capacity-building is to be achieved. This, after all, is one of the five Strategic Objectives of the World Heritage system, the so-called “5 Cs”: credibility, conservation, capacity-building, communication and communities. It is claimed that capacity-building is “the most cost effective means by which the World Heritage Committee can protect the Outstanding Universal Value and other values of World Heritage properties and ensure a mutually beneficial dynamic between heritage and society” (UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2011b, p. 4). Resourcing such capacity-building will nevertheless be difficult in today’s economic climate. But resources must be found, such is the essential role that education and training have to play in sustaining the global heritage and ensuring that heritage programmes move steadily towards rights-based management approaches.

References Byrne, D. 2008. Heritage as social action. In: G. Fairclough, R. Harrison, J. H. Jameson and J. Schofield (eds), The Heritage Reader. London, Routledge, pp. 149–173. de Mérode, E., Smeets, R. and Westrik, C. (eds). 2004. Linking Universal and Local Values: Managing a Sustainable Future for World Heritage. Paris, UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (World Heritage Papers No. 13). Ekern, S., Logan, W., Sauge, B. and Sinding-Larsen, A. 2012. Human rights and World Heritage: Preserving our common dignity through rights-based approaches to site management. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 213–225. Harvey, D. 2001. Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 319–338. Jokilehto, J. 2012. Human rights and cultural heritage. Observations on the recognition of human rights in the international doctrine. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 226–230. Langfield, M., Logan, W. and Nic Craith, M. 2010. Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights: Intersections in Theory and Practice. London, Routledge. Logan, W. S. 2000. Hanoi: Biography of a City, UNSW Press, Sydney, U. Washington Press, Seattle, Select Publishing, Singapore; 2010 published in Vietnamese as Ha Noi: Tieu Su Mot Do Thi, Hanoi Publishing House, Hanoi.

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Logan, W. S. 2006. Limiting the list: human rights and intangible cultural heritage. In: S. Silaphacharanan and J. W. Campbell (eds), Asian Approaches to Conservation: Research Conference Proceedings 3–5 October 2006. Bangkok, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 80–86. Logan, W. S. 2007a. Heritage education at universities. In: M.-T. Albert and S. Gauer-Lietz (eds), Heritage Education: Capacity Building in Heritage Management. Frankfurt am Main/Cottbus, Germany, IKO – Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation/Brandenburg Technical University, pp. 64–69. Logan, W. S. 2007b. Closing Pandora’s box: human rights conundrums in cultural heritage protection. In: Silverman and Fairchild (eds), op. cit., pp. 33–52. Logan, W. S. 2008. Cultural heritage and human rights. In: B. J. Graham and P. Howard (eds), Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot, UK, Ashgate Publishing, pp. 439–454. Logan, W. S. 2010. Development of World Heritage studies in university education. In: D. Offenhäußer, W. Ch. Zimmerli and M.-T. Albert (eds), World Heritage and Cultural Diversity. Frankfurt am Main/Cottbus, IKO – Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation/Brandenburg University of Technology, pp. 38–43. Logan, W. S. 2012a. Cultural diversity, cultural heritage and human rights: towards heritage management as human rights-based cultural practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 231–244. Logan, W. S. 2012b. Patrimonito leads the way: UNESCO, cultural heritage, children and youth. In: K. Darian-Smith and C. Pascoe (eds), Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage. London, Routledge, pp. 21–39. Logan, W. S. 2012c. States, governance and the politics of culture: World Heritage in Asia. In: P. Daly and T. Winter (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia. London, Routledge, pp. 113–128. Logan, W. S. 2012d. Heritage: The Emergence of a New Paradigm? Paper presented to the International Summer Academy ‘Constructing Heritage’, Brandenburg Technical University, Cottbus, 9–22 July. Logan, W. S. In press. From Kakadu to Cape York: Australia, World Heritage, governance and politics. Journal of Social Archaeology. Mathisen, B. 2012. East Africa World Heritage Network and stakeholder priorities. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 332–338. Oviedo, G. and Puschkarsky, T. 2012. World Heritage and rights-based approaches to nature conservation. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 285–296. Silberman, N. 2012. Heritage interpretation and human rights: documenting diversity, expressing identity, or establishing universal principles? International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 245–256. Silverman, H. and Fairchild D. R. (eds). 2007a. Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. New York, Springer. Silverman, H. and Fairchild D. R. (eds). 2007b. Cultural heritage and human rights. In: Silverman and Fairchild (eds), op. cit., pp. 3–22. Smith, L. 2006. Use of Heritage. London, Routledge. UN. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York, United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/ documents/udhr/ (accessed 21 December 2011). UN. 2007. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New York, United Nations. http://www. un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf (accessed 14 October 2012). UNESCO. 1972. Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention). Paris, UNESCO. UNESCO. 2001. Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Paris, UNESCO. UNESCO. 2003. Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paris, UNESCO.

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UNESCO. n.d.a. World Heritage Convention. Frequently asked questions. http://whc.unesco.org/en/ faq (accessed 14 October 2012). UNESCO. n.d.b. UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs programme. http://www.unesco.org/en/unitwin/ (accessed 14 October 2012). UNESCO. n.d.c. List of UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN networks in the field of cultural heritage by country. http://www.unesco.org/en/university-twinning-and-networking/access-by-domain/ culture/cultural-heritage/ (accessed 1 October 2011). UNESCO Bangkok. 2011. Asian Academy of Heritage Management. http://www.unescobkk.org/ culture/world-heritage-and-immovable-heritage/asian-academy-for-heritage-management/ (accessed 14 October 2012). UNESCO Executive Board. 2010. Report on the Independent External Evaluation of UNESCO. Document 185 EX/18, Paris, 30 August. UNESCO FUUH. n.d. Forum UNESCO: University and Heritage. http://universidadypatrimonio.net/ eng/home.html (accessed 14 October 2012). UNESCO World Heritage Committee. 2011a. State of conservation of World Heritage properties inscribed on the World Heritage List. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2011/whc11-35com-7Bepdf (accessed 18 October 2012). UNESCO World Heritage Committee. 2011b. Presentation and adoption of the World Heritage strategy for capacity building. whc.unesco.org/archive/2011/whc11-35com-9Be.pdf (accessed 18 October 2012). UNESCO World Heritage Committee. 2012. List of World Heritage in Danger. http://whc.unesco.org/ en/danger (accessed 19 October 2012). UNHRC. 2011. Report of the Independent Expert in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed. Human Rights Council Seventeenth Session Agenda Item 3 (A/HRC/17/38). Geneva, United Nations Human Rights Council. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G11/122/04/PDF/ G1112204.pdf?OpenElement (accessed 7 November 2011). UNPFII. 2011a. Report on the tenth session (16–27 May 2011). E/2011/43-E/C.19/2011/14, Supplement No. 23. New York, United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/session_10_report_EN.pdf (accessed 14 May 2012). UNPFII. 2011b. Joint Statement on Continuous violations of the principle of free, prior and informed consent in the context of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention. New York, United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. http://www.aippnet.org/home/ statement/489-joint-statement-on-continuous-violations-of-the-principle-of-free-prior-andinformed-consent-in-the-context-of-unescos-world-heritage-convention (accessed 19 October 2012). Ween, G B. 2012. World Heritage and indigenous rights. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 257–270.

Cultural Landscape Theory and Practice Moving from Observation to Experience Julian Smith

Introduction Cultural landscapes can be understood as a relatively new typology in the heritage field, but it is perhaps more revealing to consider how the concept of cultural landscapes is forcing us to reconsider our overall approach to cultural heritage. Cultural landscape theory and practice is creating the basis for what we in Canada consider to be a new paradigm for identifying, understanding and treating cultural heritage. The most important shift is towards an ecological view of cultural resources. This view leads to an integration of natural and cultural resource management with each other and with contemporary cultural practice. Whereas previous paradigms in heritage studies might have allowed us to treat the protection of nature, or the protection of culture, as specialized and legitimate enterprises, the new paradigm requires us to accept that we are nature, and we are culture. The role of the objective observer is replaced by the role of the engaged participant. Only when experience, rather than observation, is given priority are we able to fully understand and act on the ecological systems we are part of. The challenge is no less daunting for natural resource conservators than for cultural resource conservators. Although environmentalists accept the primacy of ecological integrity, they have rarely accepted the idea of the human species as part of the ecological equation. The emphasis has been on the protection of natural ecosystems by humans, as outside observers, rather than the evolution of natural ecosystems understood and experienced culturally. On the cultural side, the challenge is applying an ecological model to resources that have often been deliberately separated out from their evolutionary context, into a more static realm of a designated and protected site. Ironically, the very act of designating a cultural landscape as a recognized object of value may begin to undermine its integrity. The cultural landscape concept, and particularly its connection to cultural practice, has been formulated in Canada partly in response to the insights of First Nations communities. These communities have been only peripherally involved in the field of cultural heritage, as defined within the major academic and institutional frameworks. And yet many of them have wrestled deeply and imaginatively with issues related to cultural heritage conservation, as members of a culture continually under threat of extinction. From an Aboriginal perspective, the intimate relationship between nature and culture is a given. The cultural landscape concept is an immediate and useful

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tool. However, to return to our original theme, the aboriginal cultural landscape is not revealed through observation but through experience, and it must be continually practised into existence to be sustained. What is now becoming evident is that this paradigm is fundamental not just within the aboriginal community, but to a whole new generation convinced that cultural heritage must be put within a broad ecological perspective in order to be understood and made sustainable (see Prosper, 2007; Andrews and Buggey, 2008). The ecological imperative of the cultural landscape model requires a rethinking of education and training in the heritage field. In Canada, Willowbank is a new institution that is exploring the possibilities of a redesigned approach. It is a National Historic Site, a School of Restoration Arts, and a Centre for Cultural Landscape, and all of its programmes and activities are set within a cultural landscape model. Of particular significance is its emphasis on practice as a route to theory, rather than theory as a prerequisite for practice.¹

Defining the term “cultural landscape” It is worth stepping back to examine the evolution of the term “cultural landscape”, which is used with increasing frequency in the heritage field but also with increasingly diverse meanings.

Art and representation In its original form, the word “landscape” implied a form of cultural representation. It was introduced in the seventeenth century, as a term for a new genre of paintings – paintings of natural scenery, rather than of people or events. In 1608, Joshua Sylvester writes of “the cunning Painter  …  limning a Landscape, various, rich, and rare.” In 1683 John Dryden writes, “Let this part of the landschape be cast into shadows that the heightening of the other may appear more beautiful.” In time, the word expands to denote not only the paintings, but the scenes being depicted in the paintings. In 1742, we find Edward Young writing that “Sumptuous Cities gild our Landscape with their glittering Spires.” The idea of representation is inherent in the word, right from the beginning – the interplay between the object and the subject, the issue of ways of seeing. Going back to 1600, we have A. Gibson writing “As in a curious Lantschape, oft we see Nature so follow’d, we think it is She.” A century later, in 1704, Joseph Addison writes

1 For more information on Willowbank and its programmes, see http://www.willowbank.ca.

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“To compare the Natural Face of the Country with the Landskips that the Poets have given us of it.” In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the distinction between object and subject – between the scenery itself and the painting of the scenery – is further blurred in the development of the English landscape garden. The Oxford English Dictionary defines landscape gardening as “the art of laying out grounds so as to produce the effect of natural scenery.” Nature is transformed into a painting of itself – thus the use of the word Picturesque to denote this style. In the twentieth century, the word becomes associated primarily with scenery itself, and less and less with representation. There is still reference in art historical terms to the landscapes of Turner, or Constable, but these are more often termed landscape paintings and the word landscape refers to the physical thing itself.

Geography and mapping The physical reality of landscape was further emphasized by geographers. They began to see it as an object for scientific study and to stress relationships and correlations between physical conditions and human activities. A pioneer in this work was the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache who spoke of pays and genre de vie in analysing landscape differences (1918). A near-contemporary, the American geographer Carl Sauer, used the term cultural landscapes in The Morphology of Landscape in 1926. The following quote summarizes his central thesis: “A cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium. The cultural landscape is the result.” Another early geographical work was Ewald Banse’s exploration of landschaft in his 1924 book Die seele der geographie. His work raises the troubling connection between cultural landscape and tribalism in its darkest forms. In 1951, the American J. B. Jackson started the magazine Landscape and remained its editor for many years. His editorials in that magazine are considered by many to have been the seminal works in establishing a contemporary view of landscape in North America. His purpose in the first issue was stated thus: “Wherever we go, whatever the nature of our work, we adorn the face of the earth with a living design which changes and is eventually replaced by that of a future generation. How can one tire of looking at this variety, or of marvelling at the forces within man and nature that brought it about? A rich and beautiful book is always open before us. We have but to learn to read it.” This view of landscape as not just a single scene but as the patterns of a whole region became the focus of historical and cultural geographers throughout the second half of the twentieth century. They were interested in recording and analysing the inhabited landscapes of different countries, different cultural groups, and different

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time periods. Typical is W. G. Hoskins pioneering work on the English countryside, The Making of the English Landscape (1955). This geographical view of landscape often had a rural focus. J. B. Jackson in his original manifesto (Landscape, 1951) had noted: “The city is an essential part of this shifting and growing design, but only a part of it. Beyond the last street light, out where the familiar asphalt ends, a whole country waits to be discovered: villages, farmsteads, and highways, half-hidden valleys of irrigated gardens, and wide landscapes reaching to the horizon.” In French, the word paysage continues to have a rural connotation, more in keeping with the English word countryside, to which it is related. The study of landscape by geographers has also been recognized as having a strong vernacular focus. The Vernacular Architecture Forum, started by geographers and folklorists in 1980, moved away from the architectural historians’ focus on individual structures to the study of buildings as landscape markers. Geographer D. W. Meinig (1979) points to the central role of the vernacular in the landscape studies stimulated by J. B. Jackson’s work. The mapping of landscapes has been a central focus of geographical study of the land.

Planning and heritage conservation In the last quarter of the twentieth century, landscapes became a concern of both planners and heritage conservation professionals. This was part of a shift in focus from individual buildings and sites to the more complex interrelationships evident across larger areas. The initial interest in landscape conservation reflected the rural connotations of the word landscape. Robert Melnick’s influential 1984 study entitled Cultural Landscapes: Rural Historic Districts in the National Park System was the first significant heritage publication in North America to address landscapes as a conservation category. The same year, France proposed three rural landscapes for designation by UNESCO as World Heritage sites. A few years later, the English Countryside Commission proposed the Lake District as another potential World Heritage site. A 1992 international conference on rural heritage, hosted by the Vernacular Architecture Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and ICOMOS Germany, led to a publication entitled Historische Kulturlandschaften (ICOMOS, 1993).² Planners were

2 The full title of the 1992 conference at Brauweiler Abbey was “Preservation of the Rural Heritage. Cultural Landscape and Sites in Europe”. A co-sponsor was the Council of Europe, which in 1991 had created a working group of specialists on ‘Heritage Landscapes and Sites’.

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beginning to move beyond heritage planning in an urban setting to heritage planning in rural areas. The interest in landscapes also grew out of an existing commitment to the identification and protection of historic gardens and sites, through groups such as the ICOMOS Historic Gardens Committee. Landscapes were both an extension and transformation of the ideas of the historic garden as identified in the Florence Charter on Historic Gardens of 1982. The Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation was created by North American conservation professionals in the 1980s. For heritage professionals at the international level, the interest in landscape conservation came from both natural heritage and cultural heritage perspectives. IUCN, on the natural resource side, began to identify protected landscapes or seascapes of cultural, aesthetic and ecological value. ICOMOS, on the cultural resource side, began to identify heritage landscapes and sites of historical, archaeological, artistic, scientific, social and technical interest. Both groups recognized that their interests were beginning to overlap.³ The French and English requests for designating landscapes as World Heritage sites exposed weaknesses in the separation of natural and cultural heritage in the designation process. Because of the legal and financial implications of UNESCO designation, terminology became an important issue. The ICOMOS Landscapes Working Group, at its critical meeting in 1992 in France, adopted the term cultural landscape or paysage culturel to describe those “combined works of nature and of man” that are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time. The World Heritage Committee developed three sub-categories of cultural landscape (Word Heritage Centre, 2009): – designed cultural landscapes, often gardens or parks that are the work of a single designer or period, and that have clear aesthetic intent; – evolved cultural landscapes, which are the result of a gradual adaptation of a community to an environment, often through many generations, and that may be continuing (if still active) or relict (if no longer inhabited or active); – associative cultural landscapes, which have powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations and which may have little material culture evidence. These categories began to shape the consideration of landscape nominations to UNESCO from Member States around the world, and to inform approaches to landscape conservation. Other heritage jurisdictions began to reflect the cultural landscape terminology of UNESCO in their own definition of terms. The US Parks Service now uses cultural landscapes as the overall term to represent historic sites, historic designed landscapes,

3 Nora Mitchell, for example, was closely involved with both groups from about 1988 onwards. IUCN’s 2005 publication on the protected landscape approach: discusses this overlapping evolution within ICOMOS and IUCN.

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historic vernacular landscapes, and ethnographic landscapes. These last three terms roughly correspond to the designed, evolved, and associative landscapes of the World Heritage Committee. Historic landscape, however, is still the predominant usage in the United States for landscapes of heritage value. The overall cultural landscape programme is within the Historic Landscape Initiative of the US Parks Service. The Historic American Landscapes Survey was developed to parallel the much older Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record. In England, the term cultural landscape is used by English Heritage and ICOMOS UK, but the term countryside still carries strong connotations for those involved in rural landscape preservation. Similarly, in Quebec, the term paysage carries strong connotations even without the adjective culturel; for some, the term paysage by itself denotes value. As stated in the preamble of La Charte du paysage québécois, produced by the Conseil du Paysage Québécois (2000), “Le territoire … devient paysage lorsque des individus et des collectivités lui accordent une valeur paysagère”. Aboriginal communities in different countries have increasingly used the concept of cultural landscapes to denote the overlap of natural and cultural heritage that is intrinsic to their worldview. Some countries such as Canada have used the term aboriginal cultural landscapes to denote these landscapes (see Buggey, 1999). The term has also been included in the associative cultural landscape category of UNESCO and the ethnographic landscape category of the US Parks Service. However, the term cultural landscape is increasingly used by itself to denote these landscapes, as is the case in both Canada and Australia.⁴ Overall, the use of the term cultural landscape within the heritage conservation community has broadened the scope of inventories, research activities, designations and management tools. There is yet to be a full convergence of IUCN and ICOMOS perspectives, however. The culture / nature divide is still in evidence, and where convergence does occur it is primarily in rural or wilderness areas or in large urban parklands. And the objective delineation of significant landscapes is still generally understood as a prerequisite to designation.

Postmodernism and the return of representation In the early years of the twenty-first century, the notion of landscape as both an objective and a subjective reality has once again become a central concern of both theoreticians and practitioners.

4 Canadian Lisa Prosper, for example, speaks of cultural landscapes from an Aboriginal perspective, not about Aboriginal cultural landscapes. Similarly, Deborah Bird Rose speaks of Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness.

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This re-evaluation of landscape has cut across many disciplines, including history, geography and conservation, and has included contributions from anthropology, philosophy, sociology and political science. Part of this re-evaluation of landscape has been an interest in multiple layers of meaning. The intangible values of landscape were recognized in UNESCO’s associative landscape category, but this recent move has considered all landscapes to have associative value that are key to their understanding. Among the important earlier works in this development were Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960); Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia (1974); D.  W. Meinig’s The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (1979); Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (original French version, 1984; first English translation, 1991); and Denis Cosgrove’s Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1984) and The Iconography of Landscape (1988). There are also debts to the writing of Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, and other intellectuals examining the relationship of subject and object, sign and signification, mental and physical geographies. The impact of this theoretical work has been to put landscape back into the role of being both a reality in itself and a representation of reality. Multiple readings of landscape lead to fluidity in the definition of the term landscape itself. As suggested by Yves Luginbühl in 1994: “Le paysage ne recouvre pas une seule signification ni une seule manière de le saisir. De multiples manières de le voir et de le décrire ont été utilisées, depuis celles des peintres, des écrivains, des photographes, des praticiens de l’aménagement à celles des scientifiques, il reste difficile de s’entendre sur une définition unique.”

Multiple readings not only resist definition; they can lead to ideas of contested terrains and notions of territoriality, as discussed for example in relation to aboriginal land claims in Jean Manore’s Wilderness and Territoriality (1998). The intangible and associative quality of landscape leads to emphasis on symbolism, commemoration and memory. The encyclopaedic three-volume work Les Lieux de mémoire edited by Pierre Nora, released over the period 1984–1992, deals specifically with sites of memory, in the very broadest terms. In fact, in his introductory essay, Nora says that lieux de mémoire exist because there are no longer any milieux de mémoire, settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience. Some theorists would claim that it is the milieux de mémoire that are the true cultural landscapes of France, and that are still open to multiple readings as continuing rather than relict landscapes. Lieux de mémoire are the “commemorative landscapes” that become the increasingly static, relict landscapes discussed by authors such as James Young in The Texture of Memory (1993) or John R. Gillis in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (1994). As landscapes become places of commemoration, their heritage value itself transforms their intrinsic character and role. This transformation is addressed by geographers such as J.  E. Tunbridge and G.  J. Ashworth in Dissonant Heritage (1996) and

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David Lowenthal in The Past is a Foreign Country (1985) and Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996). At a practical level, conservation of landscapes in this postmodern context requires an increasingly ecological approach. This is an ecology that not only embraces cultural as well as natural systems, but also puts the physical landscape within a larger cultural, social, economic and political landscape. Drawing from quixotic early sources such as Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (1973), this approach is given focus by the Brundtland Commission’s definition of “sustainable development” in its 1987 report. This definition does not directly address cultural heritage, but inextricably links natural and cultural realities. It creates a framework for examining the nature of development, whether urban or rural, and allows an examination of dichotomies such as ecological integrity and commemorative integrity. Strategic and project-based environmental assessments address both the cultural and natural health of landscapes subject to new initiatives. Cultural landscapes, as vehicles for cultural identity and social well-being, require more broad-based involvement in conservation decisions than individual sites. The Australians have taken a lead role in making social value an integral part of cultural landscape understanding and intervention, transforming the more traditional emphasis on historical and architectural value. As early as the 1992 discussions at UNESCO, the Australians had suggested that a focus on cultural landscapes would transform the heritage conservation field from a top-down to a bottom-up approach, because of the essentially vernacular reality of landscapes and the fact that their values could only be understood by their inhabitants. The European Landscape Convention of 2000 points out that “official landscape activities can no longer be allowed to be an exclusive field of study or action monopolised by specialist scientific and technical bodies. Landscape is the concern of all and lends itself to democratic treatment, particularly at the local and regional level.” Postmodern understandings of landscape have allowed the terms landscape and cultural landscape to be applied equally well to urban as well as rural landscapes, and to landscapes at many different scales. Dolores Hayden (see in particular Hayden, 1997) has been a pioneer in the application of cultural landscape theory to urban contexts, and she traces her influences directly to theorists such as Lefebvre and Lynch who understood the political and cognitive dimensions of landscape. An examination of mapping and cartography in relation to landscapes becomes an important aspect of reassessing questions of reality and representation in a postmodern context. A number of recent books such as Brian Jarvis’ Postmodern Cartographies (1998) have examined traditions of both literal and figurative mapping within the geographical tradition. Questions of authenticity and integrity are also re-examined in a postmodern context. The traditional emphasis on a physical or material basis for judging authenticity was challenged by the international conservation community at the same time

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that cultural landscape theory was being developed. The UNESCO adoption in 1992 of the cultural landscape category included a more dynamic understanding of authenticity and integrity, related to qualities sustained by the same living traditions that had shaped the landscapes to begin with. Within a few years, the ICOMOS Nara Conference on Authenticity (1994) had fundamentally altered the test of authenticity to reflect what the conference organizers called a move from a Eurocentric approach to a postmodern position characterized by recognition of cultural diversity and relativism. In particular, there was an appreciation of the intangible qualities that could contribute as much to the meaning of place as the material and substance of its physical elements.

Current trends Landscape is still a term with multiple meanings and connotations. The term cultural landscape has become widely used in the last few years, across many disciplines, partly because the adjective cultural invites multiple interpretations, including ideas of cultural production, cultural reading and cultural representation. The multiple interpretations, however, can be as much of a hindrance as a boon. To begin with, the terms cultural landscape and historic landscape are often used interchangeably. Yet their implications are quite different. Historic landscapes are physical landscapes – gardens, parks, rural landforms, water features – that have acquired historic value and recognition. They are tangible and observable places, places that can be preserved as ruins, or restored as part of a commemorative programme, or developed as part of a tourism and economic development initiative. Historic landscapes are objects, somewhat akin to historic buildings or historic engineering structures or historic urban districts. They are a useful typology within the cultural heritage field. Cultural landscapes, on the other hand, are not inherently physical in the observable sense – they exist in the cultural imagination. They are physical to the extent that they are experienced and that this experience becomes culturally shared. They are intangible as well as tangible, kept alive by a continual process of re-imagination and cultural practice. A cultural landscape that is healthy is not necessarily static, but rather in a state of equilibrium – a place with a healthy ecology. And a healthy ecology is not so much about the visual appearance of a place but rather about its internal sense of balance. Cultural heritage institutions still hesitate to move to this more holistic concept of landscape. Although it is generally understood that these places reflect ideas of land use and traditional practice, the focus still tends to be on the physical evidence of these practices rather than on an understanding of the practices themselves. From an ecological perspective, a historic landscape may be understood and managed this

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way, but a cultural landscape must be defined, understood and conserved through the lenses of use and practice, in and of themselves. Whether several cultural landscapes can coexist in the same place, or whether a place is a single cultural landscape with multiple readings, is open to debate. The former, however, is the more consistent with the emerging contemporary definition. The role of ritual in the cognitive mapping and social dynamics of cultural landscapes is only beginning to be addressed. J. B. Jackson mentions the interplay of ritual and place in his last book A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time (1994). The topic has also been looked at in relation to aboriginal landscapes, but not in a systematic way. It appears that it will become increasingly significant as a way of understanding experience of place. The broader question of the relationship between the tangible and intangible dimensions of cultural heritage is also a developing area of study. The most important contribution to date is Britta Rudolff’s “Intangible” and “Tangible” Heritage: A Topology of Culture in Contexts of Faith (2010). She proposes the term “topology” to capture the more subtle aspects of cultural landscapes as reflections of cultural practice, and is able to develop a methodology that embraces the role of ritual and narrative, and the possibility of multiple readings. Cultural landscape theory and practice as a framework for integrating heritage concerns into larger planning and development exercises has yet to be explored in detail. There is beginning to be a body of casework, but the theoretical framework is still being developed. And yet this relationship will be the true test of the validity of the emerging cultural landscape paradigm. The recent UNESCO International Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes (HULs) is the first significant evidence of cultural landscape theory being applied in a broad, integrative way that crosses many of the old boundaries. It builds in part on explorations of integrated territorial and urban conservation at ICCROM and elsewhere. However, it is a still a work in progress, without a substantive set of management practices or tools (see Bandarin and van Oers, 2012). And finally, cultural landscape theory and practice as a framework for cultural heritage studies – including the design of education and training programmes – is in its infancy. It is this question to which we now turn.

Education and training in a cultural landscape context To understand the implications of cultural landscape theory and practice as a paradigm in heritage studies, it is important to reflect on the nature of education more generally. The same modernist period that saw a tendency to focus on theory rather than practice, and on observation rather than experience, also enhanced the place of the university and the expansion of a variety of university programmes in the cultural heritage field.

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Universities excel at the exploration of theory, but they are less certain about practice. And they tend to want to objectify knowledge – to put it into publishable, textual form – rather than to engage with knowledge through experience. As Yeats said at the end of his life: “It seems to me that I have found what I wanted. When I try to pull it all into a phrase I say ‘Man can embody truth but he cannot know it’.” This is a profound concept, and one that challenges many assumptions about our current attitudes to education. It is a concept that relates relatively easily, however, to the cultural landscape model. It is reflected in what aboriginal communities often call “traditional knowledge” – a term which non-aboriginals often take to mean a kind of “old-fashioned knowledge”, referring to some kind of innocent pre-industrial knowledge, but which in reality has more to do with a traditional way of knowing. T. S. Eliot, an admirer of Yeats, made a somewhat similar observation: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” To put an educational programme into a cultural landscape framework requires rethinking both its ends and the means for achieving those ends.

Academic and apprenticeship models of learning The twentieth century saw an increasing privileging of theory over practice. In the heritage conservation field, this is notable in the separation of education and training. Education is generally assumed to refer to university-based programmes for art historians, architects, planners and others involved in the design and development of historic places. In North America, graduate programmes in heritage conservation (or historic preservation, to use the American term), first appeared in the early 1970s and quickly expanded in number throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. These were often MA or MSc programmes, multidisciplinary in nature. Their identity as academic enterprises is clearly reflected in the index of such courses provided by the US National Council on Preservation Education (NCPE). Training, on the other hand, has tended to refer to the development of trade skills, in masonry, carpentry, joinery and so on. The emphasis in training programmes in Canada has been on the development of physical skills that are used on the job site to implement the approved design and development decisions. Education has generally used an academic model – classroom teaching, seminar sessions, independent research, the preparation of research papers and theses – to focus on intellectual stimulation and development. The information is generally transmitted through written, graphic and oral sources. Training has often used an apprenticeship model, where the student is assigned to one or more mentors and works from the simplest tasks to the more complex in a slow and graduated fashion. Intellectual stimulation is a corollary, not an intention. The difference between the two can be thought of as the question of whether practice follows from theory, or theory from practice. The former model – “education” –

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privileges “theory”, with the idea that once the student has mastered the theory, they will leave the educational institution to go out into the world and practice (as an architect, or engineer or planner or whatever); whereas the apprenticeship model privileges “practice” – with the idea that once the student has mastered the practice, they will begin a career which in its mature period may lead to theorizing. Theorizing in this case would be the development of new ideas or practices based on the mastery of the existing. In North America, this split between theory and practice is very evident in the gulf between design and build. A complex legal framework was set up over the course of the twentieth century so that only theoretically trained professionals are allowed to obtain building permits and oversee design and development activity. Once the permit is reviewed and approved – a process often involving very high levels of detail – the implementation is entrusted to those in the building trades, whose work is overseen by the professionals. The word “professional” itself has tended to be reserved for those with a university education. A new generation is challenging the separation between academic and apprenticeship models, most clearly seen in Canada in the difference between degree-granting programmes (at the bachelor, masters and doctoral levels) and certificate- or diplomagranting programmes (across a wide variety of applied skills). While the more accomplished high-school students are still traditionally funneled towards the degree-granting programmes, more and more young people are choosing the diploma or certificate alternative because they are interested in a more hands-on learning model. This shift is not unrelated to re-evaluating the significance of experience vis-à-vis observation. In the cultural heritage field, the growing interest in cultural landscapes is reflective of this tendency.

An alternative paradigm for heritage studies As pointed out, the cultural heritage field in North America has tended to accept the distinction between theory and practice, and to develop programmes that fit either the degree-granting university model, or the diploma-granting apprenticeship model. At the same time, there has always been a built-in resistance to this model, with the use of internships and field projects to incorporate practice into the educational programmes, and the addition of conservation theory into practical skills programmes. Beyond that, there have been material conservation courses that create a fairly seamless integration of theory and practice, combining intellectual inquiry with hands-on work. What is fascinating about material conservators is that the design and development industry, particularly when influenced by the strict rules of government oversight, has no idea whether to include material conservators on the design side or the build side of their consulting and contracting practices.

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Programmes such as Restore⁵ in New York City take the materials conservation approach and broaden it to reach a wider group of professionals in the conservation field. There are many short courses for mid-career professionals in the cultural heritage field, given by the Association for Preservation Technology International (APTI), Parks Canada, the US National Park Service, and others, that feature this same intersection of theory and practice. The popularity of these courses, however, partly reflects the difficulty of including this approach within the more deep-seated institutional divide between education and training. The management of significant cultural landscapes adds a broader dimension to the problems inherent in this divide. The dynamic and often vernacular quality of these places and practices, whether urban or rural, makes their sustainability more dependent on internal community resources. Many have been created and sustained by master builders and their apprentices, people who operate at the boundary between theory and practice, and who both repair the old and build the new. Sustainability in these cases depends more on internal experience than on outside observation. The question then becomes how conservation theory can be embedded within the dynamic of cultural landscape practice. Part of the answer lies in pursuing the experience of cultural landscape within the educational setting. Willowbank is a relatively new institution in Canada that is exploring this challenge.⁶ It is an independent school, outside the existing university and college structure, and grants a three-year Diploma in Heritage Conservation. It combines academic and apprenticeship models of teaching, with an equal emphasis on working with the mind and working with the hand. The programme itself operates within a National Historic Site setting that is an active laboratory for the students. The teachers are active practitioners and theorists in the field, as is true for example with Restore in New York, and they act more as mentors than as professors. There are several simultaneous ideas at work in the Willowbank context. First, for students to understand culturally significant places, they must experience them in a direct and meaningful way. And experience means physical understanding as well as intellectual understanding. Andrea Palladio was a stonemason before he was an architect and writer. Second, the hierarchies established as part of twentieth-century modernism – hierarchies that have significantly privileged theory over practice – must be dismantled to establish the level playing field essential to good conservation practice. And this means creating environments where the student wearing the hard hat and the steel-toed boots in the workshop, one day, is the same person who, the following day, is engaged in intellectual discussion with a visiting Canada Research Chair in history.

5 See www.restoretraining.org. 6 See www.willowbank.ca.

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Third, the role of the master builder is critical to the survival of cultural landscapes. These people, embedded in their communities, have created much of what currently exists. They have helped to create the current sense of identity and sense of place, and are in a good position to add contemporary layers, reflecting new cultural realities. The abstract theoreticians in the architecture, urban design and planning fields have proven to be singularly inept in understanding or dealing with complexity and diversity in urban, rural or wilderness landscapes. And fourth, there is an essential need for appreciating the intersection of the traditional and the contemporary, and for understanding cultural resources as dynamic rather than static. It is important that heritage conservation students study contemporary design, and participate in the contemporary technologies that go with it. Unfortunately, students in the established schools of architecture are almost never asked to apply their skills to culturally rich settings. Even if they are, these sites are treated as complex physical constructs but not as carriers of subtle and intangible cultural values. Most students with professional design degrees have never learned to read the cultural landscape, and therefore can only interject scribbles in a foreign tongue. The new paradigm in heritage studies is not simply an intellectual shift, it is a shift in a view of knowledge, and skill, and attitude. Conservation theory can be communicated in a workshop, through actions rather than words, in ways that our existing education systems seem to miss. Conservation practice can be communicated in a seminar, through intellectual engagement, in ways that our existing training programmes seem to miss. Confidence often develops through the areas of overlap. The interaction between theory and practice is difficult to predict and manage, but it holds enormous potential for insight.

Participating in the new paradigm We live in a time when a younger generation is asking tough questions about the systems put in place during the modernist period, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century. In terms of the built environment, this generation is questioning the legal framework for design and development, the definition of professionalism, the privileging of abstract learning. The role of “experts” in the operation of social, cultural and economic systems is being re-examined. Within the cultural heritage field, the interest in cultural landscape theory and practice can be seen as part of this shift towards a more ecological worldview. There is a change in the motives and interest of those who choose to become involved with historic places. Earlier motives can be seen as falling into a number of categories, including archaeological, commemorative and aesthetic interests. What unites all of these is an interest in the cultural heritage site in relative isolation. The object of study can be separated intellectually from its present context, even if this was not the case histori-

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cally. Part of the modernist worldview was a sense that history was over, that the goal of the cultural heritage field was to rescue, preserve and interpret vestiges of history to carry forward to new generations living in an ahistorical era. The ecological worldview does not allow for this distinction. It embeds culturally significant sites into their social, cultural and economic context, and treats them as part of a larger set of collective goals for development. Many in the cultural heritage field are resistant to this more contextual approach, because it threatens the relative coherence and consistency of their theory and practice. It is the challenge of moving from a relatively well-defined counterculture into the messiness of mainstream design and development. The research methodologies change with this shift. In the earlier orientation, the primary vehicles for research are records of the place as a tangible entity – the map, the drawing, the photograph, the descriptive passage in a historical document. The goal of the research is to establish, as closely as possible, this physical evolution. The conservation activity then builds on these research findings, opting in some cases for restoration to an early visual reality, or for careful conservation of the existing fabric, or for compatible adaptation within strict design guidelines. In the ecological worldview, the research is intended not only to reveal the history of the place as a tangible object, but to put it within its social, cultural, political and economic context. This means understanding its role within the cultural imagination. Attention must be paid to the poets and novelists and artists who give shape to this imagination. It means delving into the world of fiction as well as non-fiction, of oral as well as textual traditions, of ritual as well as artefact. The mapping of ritual, for example, is a necessary part of the ecological understanding of cultural landscapes, just as the mapping of movement and behaviour is essential to any ecological study. When the mapping of ritual is done by those who experience it, and is drawn from their imaginations and their memory, it begins to create the diagrammatic reality of how a place is experienced. Different cultural communities can have different ritual patterns within the same physical space – the mapping is what draws out this distinction. To return to the original typology of the ICOMOS cultural landscape working group – designed, evolved, associative – it is worth noting that “associative” cultural landscapes were originally assumed to apply primarily to aboriginal landscapes without significant physical remains.⁷ This is appropriate enough. But it is slowly being recognized that this category applies equally well to non-aboriginal sites, including ones with significant built form, when an ecological bias is adopted and the tangible and

7 Tongariro National Park (New Zealand) and Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park (Australia), both indigenous sites, have been the two most prominently cited examples of this category. The 1995 Asia-Pacific Workshop on Associate Cultural Landscapes identified two types – indigenous and inspirational (associated with artists).

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the intangible overlap. This should not be surprising. Aboriginal communities have tended to have an ecological bias as part of their overall worldview, and the cultural landscape concept is for many of these communities a simple one to incorporate. Non-aboriginal communities are beginning to recognize the wisdom of some of these attitudes, and with it the possibility of applying similar research methodologies and understandings. For a younger generation brought up on a concern for sustainability, and a tendency to view both natural and cultural resources as part of a larger ecological system, these paradigms for research, and for intervention, seem logical.

Conclusion A recent New Yorker cartoon shows two men, both homeless and begging for a handout, with one saying to the other “Good news – I hear the paradigm is shifting”. He has an ironic smile on his face – nothing has changed in the immediate realities of his life. Perhaps it is too easy to talk of such shifts when, in the end, so many of assumptions tend to remain unchanged and inflexible. However, it is important that both practitioners and theorists in the cultural heritage field engage in ongoing critical reflection. It is a field that more often than not is dealing with culturally charged places, places with both intellectual and emotional overtones. As a cultural heritage category, cultural landscapes seem to encourage critical reflection. They are often complex and difficult to manage, with an inherently dynamic quality and multiple layers of meaning. More and more detailed recording and documentation, in the form of increasingly sophisticated GIS mapping and other devices, do not get us closer and closer to their truth. It is the experience of place, the accumulation of personal and collective rituals of inhabitation, that map these places in the cultural imagination. That mapping is the true reality. In this context, good conservation practice draws on the reality of spatial practice, and uses this understanding as a basis for creating and sustaining equilibrium. In many cases, this is an equilibrium that recognizes competing cultural values and practices. In traditional conservation practice, diversity is often a negative. It works against a static and utopian approach. But from an ecological perspective, diversity is a positive. It allows multiple experiences of the same place, and can be used to create synergies. Education and training within a cultural landscape model can be similarly complex but satisfying. The tea ceremony in Japan is mastered through a seven-year apprenticeship model that in and of itself contains all the richness of a cultural landscape framework. Something similar can be said about the wooden boat-building tradition in places such as Martha’s Vineyard or Lunenburg. The process of learning to deal with complex urban or rural settlements does not have to be so different. The question is how to engage with the subject matter.

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References Addison, Joseph. 1704. Remarks on Several Parts of Italy. Andrews, T. D. and Buggey, S. 2008. Authenticity in Aboriginal cultural landscapes. The Concept of Authenticity in Historic Preservation – APT Bulletin, Vol. 39, Nos 2–3. http://www.apti.org/ publications/Past-Bulletin-Articles/Bulletin-PR-39-2-3.pdf. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. 2012. The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons. Brundtland Commission. 1987. Our Common Future. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Buggey, S. 1999. Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes. Ottawa, Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Parks Canada. Conseil du Paysage Québécois. 2000. Charte du paysage québécois. Québec. www.paysage.qc.ca/ Dryden, John. 1683. Dedication of Plutarch’s Lives. Eliot, T. S. 1934.The Rock. European Landscape Convention. 2000. Florence, Council of Europe. http://conventions.coe.int/ Treaty/en/Treaties/html/176.htm. Hayden, D. 1997. The Power of Place, Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Hoskins, W. G. 1955 (new edn 2005). The Making of the English Landscape. London, Hodder & Stoughton. ICOMOS. 1993. Historische Kulturlandschaften (Historic Landscapes). Journals of the German National Committee XI. Paris, Published by the International Council on Monuments and Sites. IUCN. 2005. The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community. Eds N. Mitchell, J. Brown and M. Beresford. Gland, Switzerland, International Union for Conservation of Nature. Jackson, J. B. 1994. (new edn 1996). A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press. Jarvis, B. 1998. Postmodern Cartographies: The Geographical Imagination in Contemporary American Culture. New York, St. Martin’s. Luginbühl, Y. (ed.) 1994. Méthode pour des atlas de paysages, identification et qualification. Paris, Ministère de l’Aménagement du Territoire, de l’Equipement et des Transports. Meinig, D. W. (ed. with J. B. Jackson). 1979. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes. New York, Oxford University Press. Melnick, R. Z. (with Sponn, D. and Saxe, E. J.). 1984. Cultural Landscapes: Rural Historic Districts in the National Park System. National Park Service, Washington, D.C. Mitchell, N., Rössler, M. and Tricaud P.-M. (eds). 2009. World Heritage Cultural Landscapes: A Handbook for Conservation and Management. Paris, UNESCO World Heritage Centre. http:// whc.unesco.org/documents/publi_wh_papers_26_en.pdf. Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, Vol. 8. Prosper, L. 2007. Wherein lies the heritage value? Rethinking the heritage value of cultural landscapes from an Aboriginal perspective. The George Wright Forum, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 117–124. http://www.georgewright.org/242prosper.pdf. Restore, www.restoretraining.org. Rudolff, B. 2010 “Intangible” and “Tangible” Heritage: A Topology of Culture in Contexts of Faith. Bonn, Germany, Scientia Bonnensis. Sylvester, Joshua, 1608. Du Bartas his divine weekes and works. UNESCO. 1972. Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf.

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UNESCO. 1994. The Nara Document on Authenticity. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/nara94.htm. UNESCO. 2008. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. http://whc.UNESCO.org/archive/opguide08-en.pdf. Vidal de la Blache, P. 1918. Principles of Human Geography. New York, H. Holt & Company. Willowbank, http://www.willowbank.ca. Yeats, W. B. 1939. Letter to Lady Elizabeth Pelham. Young, Edward. 1742. Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality.

Concepts and Developments over the Course of Time

The Shift towards Conservation Early History of the 1972 World Heritage Convention and Global Heritage Conservation Christina Cameron, Mechtild Rössler Introduction The 1972 World Heritage Convention is one of the few global instruments to promote heritage conservation. This visionary legal document paved the way for powerful cooperation among countries for the safeguarding of natural and cultural heritage properties of Outstanding Universal Value. This chapter is based on a broader research project that is currently under way on the early history of the World Heritage Convention, intended for publication on the 40th anniversary of the Convention. The specific focus here is the emergence of heritage conservation in the framework of the World Heritage Convention. The approach to conservation has changed over time, inextricably interwoven with the evolving concept of heritage covered by the Convention. The most significant developments in conservation that can be attributed to the implementation of the 1972 Convention are the emergence of state of conservation reporting to the World Heritage Committee in the 1980s and explorations of formal monitoring systems culminating in the creation of the Periodic Reporting system in 1998. This chapter is structured in line with these developments and concludes with a few general observations on more recent developments.

Emergence of conservation processes While the main purpose of the World Heritage Convention is the establishment of an effective system to protect and transmit cultural and natural heritage of Outstanding Universal Value, early activities of the World Heritage Committee were devoted to developing procedures to identify worthy sites in order to inscribe them on the World Heritage List. Debates focused on operational questions, including the definition of criteria for the selection of sites, rules and procedures, funding and assistance, as well as the listing process itself. This focus on inscription is evident in the first Operational Guidelines of 1977, which were structured under the following chapters: – Introduction; – Establishment of the World Heritage List;

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– Granting of international assistance; – Invitations to the sessions of the Committee; – Recommendations to States Parties. These first guidelines demonstrate that conservation was not considered sufficiently important to require a separate chapter, the priority clearly being set on listing and international assistance in the early stages. There was no provision for systematic monitoring of sites in the text of the World Heritage Convention. However, only a few years after the listing of the first twelve properties in 1978, discussions on the monitoring and state of conservation of sites emerged at World Heritage Committee sessions. This concern should not have come as a surprise, given that the opening statement in the Preamble of the 1972 Convention expressly points to a global context of increasing threats and destruction of heritage: “Noting that the cultural heritage and the natural heritage are increasingly threatened with destruction not only by the traditional causes of decay, but also by changing social and economic conditions which aggravate the situation with even more formidable phenomena of damage or destruction, Considering that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world” (UNESCO, 1972).

While the specific context of the conservation movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to this text, prepared on the eve of the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, it also drew inspiration from the historic preservation movement (Murtagh, 2006), the environmental movement (McCormick, 1991) and earlier United Nations efforts in heritage conservation. In the aftermath of the Second World War, mobilization of international cooperation was channelled through the United Nations and its specialized agency UNESCO, created to work for cooperation in the fields of education, science and culture. UNESCO’s leadership in the protection of cultural properties took the form of a series of recommendations, declarations and international conventions, including the 1954 Hague Convention, a direct reaction to the destruction of heritage in the Second World War. The World Heritage Convention of 1972 is certainly one of the most forward-looking in this regard, as it integrated the notion of “transmission to future generations” (UNESCO, 1972, Article  4), an idea probably inspired by the founding legislation for national parks in Canada (1930) and the United States (1916) which both included the idea of leaving these special places “unimpaired for future generations”. This text is in a way precursor to the Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, some fifteen years later (Brown Weiss, 1989). The emergence of the conservation paradigm in the 1980s was a key moment for the World Heritage Convention for two reasons. First, it created a platform that brought together the international community to discuss heritage conservation

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matters, thereby stimulating the further development of theories and approaches; and second, it united conservation specialists with the international community in undertaking specific safeguarding actions at World Heritage sites. In a way, the World Heritage Committee became the key international forum for both theoretical debate and collective action for natural and especially for cultural heritage conservation. Emerging conservation theories and safeguarding strategies for practical cases in turn influenced theoretical deliberations and methodological approaches. Monitoring was not mentioned in the Convention text. Yet, only four years after the inscription of the first properties on the World Heritage List, the agenda of the 1982 Bureau session of the World Heritage Committee received a proposal for a formal monitoring system from the United States modelled on its experience with its own National Parks. In a letter to the Committee, the American delegation justified its proposal on the grounds that: “… the World Heritage List has grown and diversified over the past few years to the point where it is not possible for the World Heritage Committee to monitor the condition of World Heritage properties through informal contacts and communications alone. One of the important responsibilities of the Committee is to ensure that properties inscribed on the List retain those values that initially qualified them for inscription” (UNESCO, 1982, CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/2).

The proposed system was to be based on a brief, standardized form for use by each country in a system of periodic reporting every two to three years. The Bureau rejected this proposal, considering that it was premature “given the current state of infrastructures in the majority of countries concerned” (UNESCO, 1982, CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/6, p. 9). While the monitoring proposal was therefore not forwarded by the 6th Bureau to the full Committee a few months later, nonetheless there was for the first time a new item on the agenda: “Protection and Management of Properties Inscribed on the World Heritage List and Reports on the Condition”. After discussion of this item, while the Committee recommended further study, it did support the desirability of yearly reporting and called for the establishment of conservation guidelines (UNESCO, 1982, CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/6, pp. 18–19). Another emerging trend was the discussion of best practices with regard to specific cases. The World Heritage Committee sometimes succeeded in encouraging true stewardship, thereby demonstrating the power and success of an international heritage convention. On other occasions, its advice was not implemented in the face of increasing pressures from infrastructure development, lack of governance and lack of trained personnel. Although the Committee was not yet ready to endorse a systematic monitoring system only four years after the first inscriptions, it nevertheless began to discuss conservation concerns for specific sites. For example, when considering the inscription of the Tasmanian Wilderness (Australia), the Committee expressed concern about infrastructure development that could potentially threaten the site:

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“The Committee is seriously concerned at the likely effect of dam construction in the area on those natural and cultural characteristics which make the property of Outstanding Universal Value. In particular, it considers that flooding of parts of the river valleys would destroy a number of cultural and natural features of great significance, as identified in the ICOMOS and IUCN reports. The Committee therefore recommends that the Australian authorities take all possible measures to protect the integrity of the property. The Committee suggests that the Australian authorities should ask the Committee to place the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger until the question of dam construction is resolved” (UNESCO, 1982, CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/6, p. 6).

This text is interesting for a number of reasons: – the invitation to a State Party to consider Danger Listing for a potential threat; – the threat by a major infrastructure project (which in the future paragraph 172 of later versions of the Operational Guidelines was considered as a key trigger for launching a reactive monitoring process through State Party submission of documents); – the link between the threat and the key notion of the Convention: the protection of Outstanding Universal Value. The discussions about a systematic monitoring system and the particular Australian site can be identified as the start of state of conservation considerations at the World Heritage Committee, thus translating the text of the World Heritage Convention into the operational domain.

State of conservation reporting The following year, 1983, the first monitoring report on a World Heritage site was presented, somewhat by accident, to the 7th session of the World Heritage Committee in Florence. In an interview for our research project on the origins and early implementation of the World Heritage Convention, Dr Jim Thorsell of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recounts his experience at the 7th session in 1983, the first meeting of the World Heritage Committee that he attended: “I would say that a significant thing happened at that meeting, however. I gave what I think was the very first monitoring report for any site ever on the World Heritage List. And that took place only because I was living in Tanzania and I had just come from a two-week study tour with a bunch of my African students to Ngorongoro and I was quite disturbed at what was going on there. So at the meeting there somehow came up an opportunity to introduce this whole idea of monitoring and I gave them probably a 15 or 20 minute summary of what I thought the issues were at Ngorongoro. I remember there was a one or two minute total silence after I gave this report. The Committee members couldn’t believe that one of their sites could be in so much trouble.”¹

1 Canada Research Chair on Built Heritage, University of Montréal 2010, interview with Jim Thorsell.

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In response to Thorsell’s state of conservation report on Ngorongoro, the Committee asked the Tanzanian Government “to initiate the procedure for including this property in the List of World Heritage in Danger” (UNESCO, 1984, SC/83/CONF.009/8, p. 15). The next year, in 1984, IUCN established its position as the regular technical advisor on the state of conservation of World Heritage sites. For ICOMOS, it was a different and protracted story. Monitoring occupied an increasingly important place in the agenda of the World Heritage Committee, both in terms of time allocated and its importance for the overall credibility of the Convention. This relates back to the basic principle at the heart of the Convention text: “Each State Party to this Convention recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage referred to in Articles 1 and 2 and situated on its territory, belongs primarily to that State. It will do all it can to this end, to the utmost of its own resources and, where appropriate, with any international assistance and co-operation, in particular, financial, artistic, scientific and technical, which it may be able to obtain” (UNESCO, 1972, Article 4).

Having been encouraged by the Committee to collect information through its expert networks, IUCN in 1984 reported on the state of conservation of four natural sites: Simien National Park (Ethiopia), Mount Nimba (Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire), Tai National Park (Côte d’Ivoire) and Durmitor National Park (the former Yugoslavia, now Montenegro) (UNESCO, 1984, SC/84/CONF.004/9, p.  21). The next year, IUCN institutionalized its work by reporting on the state of conservation of twelve World Heritage sites, organized by priority into three groups: sites on the Danger List, sites for possible inclusion on the Danger List, and other natural properties (UNESCO, 1985, pp. 16–19). IUCN was able to take on this role because it had access to reliable and current information on natural World Heritage sites through its collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge (United Kingdom), as well as the United Nations’ Global Environmental Monitoring System (UNESCO, 1985, p. 4). ICOMOS on the other hand was ill-equipped to advise the Committee on the state of conservation of cultural properties. For cultural properties, there was nothing in existence that could match the scientific data available to IUCN. Although the Committee in 1985 recommended that “ICOMOS and ICCROM should take the procedures adopted by IUCN for monitoring the status of natural properties as a guide, and make proposals” (UNESCO, 1985, p. 4), it was the UNESCO Secretariat that presented a proposal for monitoring cultural heritage properties. Based on the principle that responsibility for monitoring resided with States Parties, the Secretariat proposed a questionnaire to be used by members for regular reports on conservation challenges and needs. Following a lengthy debate, the World Heritage Committee set up a working group to examine issues on the questionnaire, the periodicity of reporting and budget implications (UNESCO, 1986, pp.  11–13). The following year, further discussion at the Committee confirmed the “need to ensure that States were the primary source of

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information” and that “ICOMOS should be more closely involved with the proposed system” (UNESCO, 1987, p. 12). ICOMOS thus missed an opportunity early in the implementation of the Convention to exercise leadership in monitoring World Heritage sites (Cameron, 1990, p. 528).

A new paradigm: Periodic Reporting The 1987 report from the working group led to the development of a monitoring questionnaire that was to be completed by States Parties. A first set of questionnaires was tabled at the Committee in 1990, but further distribution of questionnaires was postponed, pending analysis of existing information. The questionnaires were abandoned in 1991 (UNESCO, 1991, p. 8). The shift towards a new paradigm, periodic reporting, is documented by Herman van Hooff, a staff member of the World Heritage Centre: “In the meantime, several monitoring and reporting activities had been initiated in which different methodologies and institutional arrangements were applied. In some cases, for example, the preparation of reports was undertaken through United Nations programmes such as the UNESCO UNDP Regional Project for Cultural, Urban and Environmental Heritage for Latin America and the Caribbean (1991–1994) or through UNEP for sites in the Mediterranean. In other cases, the States Parties undertook the preparation of reports by themselves or in collaboration with one or more of the Advisory Bodies (IUCN, ICOMOS, ICCROM)” (Van Hooff, 2004, p. 33).

Subsequently the issue was taken up both by the Committee with new Strategic Orientations formulated on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and by the General Assembly of States Parties. The Committee approved Goal 4 of the Strategic Orientations to “pursue more systemic monitoring of World Heritage sites” (UNESCO, 1992, p. 3). On the basis of this decision, the Secretariat intended to pursue various options for systematic monitoring to be presented to subsequent sessions of the World Heritage Committee. But unexpectedly the debate shifted to the agenda of the General Assembly of States Parties to the Convention. In a background document prepared for the General Assembly of States Parties at its 10th session in 1995, the Secretariat noted: “The term monitoring does not appear in the World Heritage Convention. However the World Heritage Committee and its Bureau considered that there are several provisions in the Convention, which not only make it possible for the Committee to introduce an adequate monitoring and reporting system, but which create an obligation for the Committee to do so” (UNESCO, 1995, p. 2).

The General Assembly had a substantive debate on this matter in 1995 and 1997 with amendments prepared by a great number of States Parties. It eventually led to a new interpretation of Article 29 of the World Heritage Convention, which requests States Parties to submit reports on the implementation of the Convention. This decision

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marks the starting point for Periodic Reporting. The first cycle of reporting by regions started in the year 2000. Today it is a successful exercise which brings together site managers and national institutions, along with the UNESCO Secretariat and the Advisory Bodies. Periodic Reporting provides the World Heritage Committee with a full overview of regional trends in the state of conservation of properties as well as the status of the implementation of the World Heritage Convention overall. Van Hooff observed that with these measures: “the Committee confirmed a direct link between the definition of the Outstanding Universal Value of a property and its management. It also established mechanisms of reactive monitoring and periodic reporting that enables the World Heritage Committee to assess whether a property maintains its Outstanding Universal Value over time. What remains to be addressed is the issue of the day-to-day management of the site” (Van Hooff, 2004, p. 34).

Conclusions This link between heritage value and management of the properties may be one of the greatest achievements in the evolution of the Convention. The World Heritage Committee established a new standard which has had a global influence on the management of natural protected areas and cultural properties alike. Now a basic requirement for protection and conservation of sites, monitoring is an integrated part of standard management plans. A recent study by Caren Irr concludes that the “World Heritage Committee has successfully articulated standards of excellence that bridge differences between a European monumental tradition and non-Western concepts of culture” (Irr, 2011). As debates became more and more refined, the global conservation community discovered how the World Heritage Convention could be used as an instrument to advance theoretical discussions and specific coordinated actions as well as to develop capacity and build curricula in conservation of natural and cultural heritage in specialized institutions. In the process of its implementation, the Convention has succeeded in bringing together different conservation concepts and approaches to create globally acceptable international standards in heritage conservation practice.

References Brown Weiss, E. 1989. In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law, Common Patrimony and Intergenerational Equity. New York, Transnational Publishers. Cameron, C. 1990. Towards a Cultural Resource Monitoring Network, ICOMOS 9th General Assembly and International Symposium. Lausanne, Swiss National Committee, pp. 527–529. Canada, 1930, National Parks Act, Section 4.

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Irr, C. 2011. World Heritage Sites and the Culture of the Commons. Boston, Mass., Brandeis University. http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/summary.jsp?index=RS_Irr_Commons.xml (accessed 14 September 2011). McCormick, J. 1991. Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press. Murtagh, W. J. 1997, rev. ed. Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. New York, Preservation Press/John Wiley & Sons. UNESCO, 1995. New monitoring activities related to the World Heritage sites, Paris (WHC-95/ CONF.204/7). UNESCO, 1992. Report of the Rapporteur of the 16th session of the World Heritage Committee, Santa Fe (WHC-92/CONF.002/12, Annex II). UNESCO, 1991. Report of the Rapporteur of the 15th session of the World Heritage Committee, Carthage (SC-91/CONF.002/15). UNESCO, 1987. Report of the Rapporteur of the 11th session of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (SC-87/CONF.005/9). UNESCO, 1986. Report of the Rapporteur of the 10th session of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (CC-86/CONF.003/10). UNESCO, 1985. Report of the Rapporteur of the 9th session of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (SC-85/CONF.008/9). UNESCO, 1984. Report of the Rapporteur of the 8th session of the World Heritage Committee, Buenos Aires (SC/84/CONF.004/9). UNESCO, 1984. Report of the Rapporteur of the 7th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Florence in December 1983, Paris (SC/83/CONF.009/8). UNESCO, 1982. Examination of a proposal to establish a programme for monitoring the conditions of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, 6th session of the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/2). UNESCO, 1982. Report of the Rapporteur, 6th session of the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (CLT-82/CH/CONF.014/6). UNESCO, 1982. Report of the Rapporteur, 6th session of the World Heritage Committee, Paris (CLT-82/CH/CONF.015/8). UNESCO. 1972. Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Paris, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. United States of America. 1916. The National Park Service Organic Act, Section 1. Van Hooff, H. 2004. Monitoring and reporting in the context of the World Heritage Convention and its application in Latin America and the Caribbean, Monitoring World Heritage, pp. 32–38. (World Heritage Papers 10). http://whc.unesco.org/en/series/10/.

UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape¹ Michael Turner

Poems Belonging to a Reader For Those Who Live in Cities Bertolt Brecht The cities were built for you. They are eager to welcome you. The doors of the houses are wide open. The meal Ready on the table. (Brecht, 1976, p. 141)

Introduction The debate on the management of urban areas came to centre stage with the final touches to the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, discussed at the General Conference of 2011. The litmus test will be the capacity of Member States to adapt and apply the Recommendation. Whether we can manage change effectively and eliminate apparent heritage-development conflicts depends on the capabilities of the authorities to direct development, on the one hand, and their recognition of the evolving relationships of planning and conservation in the history of the city, on the other. The Recommendation notes that urban changes, especially rapid growth, both social and physical, have brought about the need for an improved language to discuss and define the urban scene, to analyse the problems and put forward solutions that are meaningful and can be measured and monitored. It presents an integrative approach to grasping the knowledge of the city. Heritage and development, seen until now as an oxymoron, its components regarded as mutually exclusive, can possibly be understood as denoting a desirable urban growth framework. With the adoption of this Recommendation by the UNESCO General Conference in November 2011, and based on new precedents and best practice, a new exegesis will evidently

1 Presentation given at the Neue Residenz, Bamberg, as part of the meeting on Quality Control and Conflict Management at World Heritage Sites (14–15 July 2011), organized by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development in conjunction with the German Commission for UNESCO and the City of Bamberg.

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be added expounding on the policies, challenges and opportunities proposed and offered. Modern urban changes started with the industrial revolution, and this drama was documented by A. W. N. Pugin in his work on Contrasted Towns 1440–1840, where he compares not only the visual integrity but the social and cultural meanings of the periods he examines. Necessarily, his perspective included simplistic physical changes, while now with the complexity of expanding and shrinking cities, population exchanges and migrations all contribute to the changing socio-economic fabric of the city and to their effect on its continuity. Political changes, while not necessarily altering the physical fabric of the city, affect its cultural continuity. Planning by definition is the control (political or otherwise) of growth or the management of change, so it becomes important to understand the differences between growth and change and the political structures that accompany each process. Growth, which is essential for continuity, is incremental, with light actions, while changes may be large and sudden, usually requiring heavy interventions. At what point do cities change, and what are the relevant parameters for measuring the nature of change? What is the metamorphosis between the small and the large city, or the cathedral and capital city? Galileo understood the structural differences, demonstrating with his original illustrations the relationship between size and shape with larger animals having relatively thicker bones. While an elephant is not a large ant, Stephen J. Gould quoted two girls, one asking whether a dog could be as large as an elephant to which her friend replied that if it was as big as an elephant it would look like an elephant; he commented “how truly she spoke” (Gould, 1980). On Growth and Form is the 1917 title of the seminal work of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. As a structuralist he develops a more diverse approach to the concepts of growth and form and stresses the inter-relationships of the disciplines through the beauty of mathematics. This integrative attitude is surely the spirit of the Recommendation. Allow me to share with you some images of the turbulent history of Berlin which will surely validate the graph of growth and change and to accompany them with some quotes of the great urban poet of the twentieth century Bertolt Brecht. Before the Second World War, he writes: “The Impact of the Cities 1925–1928 Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind! The house makes glad the eater: he clears it out We know that we’re only tenants, provisional ones And after us there will come: nothing worth talking about” (Brecht, 1976, p. 108).

… and on his return to Berlin he reviews the dramatic changes … “A New House Back in my country after fifteen years of exile I have moved into a fine house.

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… Every day, as I drive through the ruins, I am reminded Of the privileges to which I owe this house. I hope It will not make me patient with the holes In which so many thousands huddle” (Brecht, 1976, p. 416).

But it was the debate on the development project proposed just outside the Historic Centre of Vienna and in the wake of the developments close to Cologne Cathedral that precipitated the conference in 2005 on World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape. However, this problem was not confined to the German speaking world; the high rise developments proposed bordering Westminster and the Tower of London, and those by the historic centre of Saint Petersburg together with dramatic urban change in Kathmandu and Melaka and George Town provided further arguments and highlighted the issues of urban development threats to conservation goals. But on the other side of the coin, conservation threats to appropriate urban development were also identified by the many proponents of the economic viability of the city. The issues were obvious and the battle-lines clearly drawn for the management of the conflict in the historic city. The delisting of the Dresden Elbe Valley in 2009 afforded further discussion and provided a background to the urban conflict debate, and which had, by then, become part of the preamble of a new international instrument in the form of a UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. The way forward demanded additional urban tools for urban conservation with a more flexible language. One of these tools as part of the methodology includes the documentation of the city with the depicting of information as urban layers and cultural mapping. Settings and context, spirit and feeling are all part of the elusive genus loci of the city. Settings were being changed through demolitions and high rise buildings while the context was affected by the loss of tradition and continuity. New volumes and shapes and socio-economic disruptions were all taking their toll. The discussion on contemporary interventions was provoked by overly aggressive intrusions and iconic interventions. The urban language needed to address contemporary urban dilemmas did not rule out the importance of the evaluation of the monument per se but introduced new layers sympathetic with the values of the property. It was understood that our urban conservation language within the context established by the World Heritage definitions of “monuments, groups of buildings and sites” and many other international and national documents is currently orientated to the “object”, and the European object to boot. Moving from monuments to living cities was not to be considered as a replacement for current thinking but to signify the provision of additional tools to define an improved process for the integration of context and setting of the monument and the layering of the city through time in planning and decision-making. By adding the dimension of a living city to the monument, we relate to the interaction of different scales, the architectural and urban, each having

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its own context and setting, sometimes separate sometimes overlapping, and including their physical, cultural, natural, geo-morphological, historical and intangible characteristics. Thus was initiated the Historic Urban Landscape approach, at the outset as a constituent of the Operational Guidelines within the World Heritage Convention and then with its general application, as a UNESCO Recommendation. It had developed, initially as the Vienna Memorandum, as a response to managing the successful insertion of contemporary architecture in historic environments and subsequently as an approach for managing the Historic Urban Landscape. This integrative approach for conservation was not completely new having been developed as a first phase between the years 1994–1998, by Jukka Jokilehto with other staff members at ICCROM under the Integrated Territorial and Urban Conservation programme. With the preparation of the background material, efforts were made to collate existing texts including the various UNESCO Recommendations² and other texts from the European Community linking relevant EU conventions and framework projects.³ Furthermore, ICOMOS as a godchild of UNESCO has built on the Venice Charter of 1964 with numerous complementary charters and resolutions reflecting the evolving professional debate around the world.⁴ The relevant papers were identified and evaluated for their application in dealing with the current urban issues and threats.

2 UNESCO Recommendations, in particular the 1962 Recommendation concerning the Safeguarding of the Beauty and Character of Landscapes and Sites; the 1968 Recommendation concerning the Preservation of Cultural Property Endangered by Public or Private Works; the 1972 Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage; the 1976 Recommendation concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas. 3 Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe, Granada, 3 October 1985; European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Revised), Valetta, 16 January 1992; European Landscape Convention, Florence, 20 October 2000. EU – HerO/Heritage as Opportunity; Integrated Management of Historic Towns. 4 Relevant ICOMOS charters and resolutions: – Resolutions of the Symposium on the Introduction of Contemporary Architecture into Ancient Groups of Buildings (1972) – Resolutions on the Conservation of Smaller Historic Towns (1975) – Declaration of Dresden (1982) – The ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas (The Washington Charter – 1987) – The Nara Document on Authenticity (Nara Conference on Authenticity in relation to the World Heritage Convention, November 1994) – The Stockholm Declaration: Declaration of ICOMOS marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the ICOMOS Executive and Advisory Committees, 11 September 1998) – Xi’an Declaration on the Conservation of the Setting of Heritage Structures, Sites and Areas, (adopted by the 15th General Assembly of ICOMOS, 2005) – The Quebec Declaration on the Preservation of the Spirit of the Place.

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Parallel to this, the ICOMOS membership opened a regional and international forum to solicit opinions on this burning issue. It was felt that an additional Recommendation would be more helpful than changing or deleting existing mechanisms. The evolving drafts were tried out in contexts around the world, Jerusalem, Olinda and Rio de Janeiro, Zanzibar, Saint Petersburg and Paris and in each regional debate an experts’ summary statement was prepared. In that urban debate, which included the ICOMOS cohorts, possible definitions of the Historic Urban Landscape as a type of cultural landscape or as part of the historic urbs were circumscribed, and a consensus emerged indicating that the Historic Urban Landscape was to be considered as the basis for an approach and methodology and not just another category of heritage. In its current form, the Recommendation essentially provides a platform for the identification of the values of the city and its tangible and intangible developmental processes and takes a more integrative and interdisciplinary approach for the application of conservation with other planning tools, especially impact assessment. This approach was also highlighted in the UK Science and Heritage programme under the leadership of Professor May Cassar defining hybrid heritage as an approach to strengthen and develop the hybrid discipline of heritage science through interdisciplinary research of its different facets. In developing an effective urban management process, the language of conservation through the syntax of the World Heritage Convention is a useful key to unlock the new urban tools. In an exchange with the late Professor Herb Stovel,⁵ the syntax of these terms is presented in the following mapping sentence: “The values as defined by the criteria through a comparative analysis are expressed by the attributes and qualified by their authenticity and integrity; the conservation policy consists, inter alia, of management practices and integrative approaches with added layers of protection (buffer zones) sustainably balancing the external constraints, risks and resources.”

Let us focus on the possible urban applications of just three of the terms – values and their attributes, integrity and buffer zones. The urban values of the city that need to be taken into consideration must include the intangible heritage as this is often the historic evidence authenticated in the layering of cultures, not just in place but in time. It is more than simply the application of the World Heritage criterion (vi) but the active inclusion of artifacts and ritual, the intersection of which provides for the cyclical traditions of the landscape. While the inherent meaning of universality indicates that these are the permanent values of humanity set in stone, there are also some component values that are continually changing, while others are in conflict, and are moving targets as indicated in

5 Personal communication (2011) on the definitions of attributes and the furthering of texts of integrity and authenticity and the need to follow-up on the Nara Document.

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the definition of “values” in the ICOMOS glossary, that “… places may have a range of values for different individuals or groups and values are continually renegotiated.”⁶ The acceptance of different values will mean the acceptance of varying attributes and their integration in the urban fabric. The Code on the Ethics of Co-existence in Conserving Significant Places recognizes these different values and tries to accommodate this within the code.⁷ Not only are the values debatable but there is the component of interpretation which has yet to be appraised. While facts might be established and agreed, the existential, historic or universal interpretations are more than likely to be a casus belli. The solutions here range from comprise to co-existence, syncretism and symbiosis. Moreover, the Nara document highlights the issues of cultural diversity, not only between peoples and place but also through time.⁸ But it is a two-way process of acceptance, within the administrative and political structures providing the framework for the changing relationships between the players/stakeholders. Let us consider that the German Jewish population before WWII saw themselves as German, but were not accepted by the Aryan Nazi regime. Conversely, can now the Muslim community call monuments such as the Museum Island or Cologne Cathedral as “our heritage” with the acquiescence of the original owners? The key components for the translation of the values are the attributes. The Nara Document with some inputs from the later Zimbabwe meeting developed these, as illustrated in the Operational Guidelines: “Form and design, materials, use and function, traditions, location and setting, language, spirit and feeling, and others” (Operational Guidelines, Paragraph 82).

Interpreting these attributes at the urban scale provides the understanding and the guidelines needed for the conservation and development of the city. The nomina-

6 Ethical Commitment Statement for ICOMOS Members – (Revision, November 2002, Madrid) and see Article 1.2, Burra Charter, ICOMOS – Australia 1999. 7 The Code assumes that (i) the healthy management of cultural difference is the responsibility of society as a whole; (ii) in a pluralist society, value differences exist and contain the potential for conflict; and (iii) ethical practice is necessary for the just and effective management of places of diverse cultural significance. Article 13 indicates that whilst seeking to identify issues and associated cultural groups at the beginning of the process, accept new issues and groups if they emerge and accommodate evolving positions and values; Code on the Ethics of Co-existence in Conserving Significant Places (Adopted by Australia ICOMOS in 1998). 8 Cultural heritage diversity exists in time and space, and demands respect for other cultures and all aspects of their belief systems. In cases where cultural values appear to be in conflict, respect for cultural diversity demands acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the cultural values of all parties.

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tion of the Canal Ring Area of Amsterdam⁹ is an exemplary document applying this approach, identifying inter alia plot size and shape, hydraulic civil engineering characteristics, architectural typology and town planning concepts. Let us consider some examples of the city as project or process. The values of the city might be in the planning or building project as an “object”, exemplars of which are the city of Bath with the Royal Crescent, Lansdowne Crescent and the buildings between, or the plan of Brasilia.¹⁰ However, most cities have layered values reflecting the processes that created them, as in Bruges or Prague. One of the attributes might be in the building concept and form. At the next level, urban attributes might, in addition to plot size, include building lines, roofscape, materials, vegetation, ceremonies and events. Looking at the defenestration of Prague, one can imagine that the windows are the attributes – a true justification of façadism. The amount of layering and approach to the policies of conservation will be determined by the documentation with its authentication and its integrity in determining the extent for conservation. This brings the debate to the definition of boundaries. Buffer Zones are not mandatory either for WH sites or for properties of heritage value not on the List; what is vital is the quality of management and the need for “another layer of protection”. Buffer zone definitions include “a neutral area serving to separate hostile forces or nations” or “an area of land designated for environmental protection” being imported from other UNESCO programmes, notably Man and Biosphere. But in the urban context, buffer zones should be positively understood as necessary areas of transition and threshold zones, together forming a critical area of interactivity and interaction which might be better defined as liminal space. Liminal spaces are spaces in their own right, sometimes marginal, as a cartilage between different areas or sometimes overlapping thus providing for a syncretic reaction or symbiosis. How these spaces relate to the values and the attributes will determine the compatibility of their urban function. The resolution of the possible conflicts or socio-economic threats in liminal spaces is often dependent on efforts aimed at territorial sustainability, rather than generational sustainability.¹¹ Sustainability is matching the interests in a holistic manner, which can be done through balancing the demands of one generation with the resources available over time. Equally, the urban sustainability can be defined in territorial terms as the balance of the economic

9 http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/1349.pdf. 10 From the brief description of the World Heritage inscription: “Urban planner Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer intended that every element – from the layout of the residential and administrative districts (often compared to the shape of a bird in flight) to the symmetry of the buildings themselves – should be in harmony with the city’s overall design.” 11 “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” United Nations General Assembly (March 20, 1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future.

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potential for development of the city in general with the areas of historic and public interests in particular. Again, it is the holistic vision and integrative approach that might resolve the possible conflict between heritage and development. Urban management requires a wider scale thinking outside the box and narrow conservation borders by defining approaches to various city components based on the identification of “areas of opportunity” offering the “potential for change” with the areas of high heritage value determining the “less-changeable parts” of the city. The Environmental Impact Statement in one form or another is an important tool which is internationally recognized, and the extension of this methodology to evaluating heritage impacts, is becoming ever more a standard component of heritage planning processes for responding to proposed developments. ICOMOS has pub-

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Introduction 

 85

lished a manual on Heritage Impact Assessment, and this is an important chapter to be added to the guidelines harnessing a format for the coordination of surveys and documentation. Impact assessment would be a platform for bringing together those tools that have proven effective in the cultural evaluation. This might include subjects as concepts of cultural mapping with referential analysis and thereby assist in the evaluation of urban integrity. “As the cities are very big Experts have drawn maps for Those who do not know the programme, showing clearly The quickest way to reach One’s goal. As nobody knew exactly what you wanted You are of course expected to suggest improvements. Here or there There may be some little thing not quite to your taste But that will be put right at once Without your having to lift a finger. In short, you will be In the best possible hands. Everything is completely ready. All you Need do is come” (Brecht, 1976, p. 141).

To summarize, this approach might provide a link between the multi-facet values (cultural, natural, intangible, social, economic and physical) thus becoming a holistic and integrative and inter-disciplinary approach for urbanism. Its sustainability is not just the balance between generations, but between places – balancing development and conservation. The symbiosis of the city parts is critical for its management, where development benefits conservation goals and vice versa. It is the application of the principles of Kant to the city form determining space and time as part of a system which humans use to structure their experiences. During the drafting process, it was proposed that the text of the Recommendation be as short as possible with two background paragraphs including the definitions, two key operative paragraphs on policies and tools, with the last two paragraphs focusing on support mechanisms such as capacity building, research and international cooperation. While the proposed action plan was not formally adopted in the text, it would be useful to view the possible applications of the Recommendation to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The need to take into account the singularity of the context of each urban region and historic area will necessitate the application of different methodologies of the Historic Urban Landscape approach: – Undertake comprehensive surveys and mapping of the city’s natural, cultural and human resources;

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 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape

–

Reach consensus using participatory planning and stakeholder consultations and to determine the attributes that carry these values; – Assess vulnerability of these attributes to socio-economic stresses, – Develop an integrated urban development and conservation strategy to integrate heritage values and their vulnerability status into a wider framework, including potential for change, non changeable parts and areas of opportunity; – Prioritize actions for conservation and development; – Establish the appropriate partnerships and local management frameworks. Finally the management of change can only be effective through integrative processes involving all the stakeholders – government, regional, national and local, IGOs, NGOs, very local organizations, professionals at different levels and the individuals that play an interactive role in power structures. The Historic Urban Landscape approach provides a framework to manage some of these issues, but they must be used intelligently for the people and by the people, in tandem with other developing theories in the fields of planning, architecture, urbanism and design. Will the Recommendation help to alleviate threats of development pressures on urban heritage? What will be the everyday practical use? Time will tell. “Great Times, Wasted I knew that cities were being built I haven’t been to any. A matter for statistics, I thought Not history. What’s the point of cities, built Without the people’s wisdom?” (Brecht, 1976, p. 440).

References Arts and Humanities Research Council – EPSRC. 2009. Science and Heritage Programme, Research Specification, March. Australia ICOMOS. 1999. The Burra Charter. Melbourne, International Council on Monuments and Sites. Brecht, B. 1976. Poems 1913–1956, Ed. By Willett, J. & Manheim, R. with the co-operation of Fried, E. London, Eyre Methuen. Dölling, R. (ed.). 1974/1982.The Conservation of Historical Monuments in the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, Internations. EU/URBACT.2011. The Road to Success – Integrated Management of Historic Towns; a guidebook. Connection cities/Building successes – HerO-Heritage as Opportunity. Feilden, B. M. and Jokilehto, J. 1993. Management Guidelines for World Cultural Heritage Sites. Rome, International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM). Gould, S. J. 1980. Ever Since Darwin, Reflections in Natural History. London, Penguin Books Ltd.

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ICCROM. 1999. Integrated Territorial and Urban Conservation Programme – Phase I (1994–1998). ICOMOS. Charters and Resolutions. Paris, International Council on Monuments and Sites. ICOMOS. 2010. Guidance on Heritage Impact Assessments. Paris, International Council on Monuments and Sites. McKinnon, Kelty (ed.). GROUNDED The Work of Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg – Julian Smith Cultural Landscapes. Pugin, A. W. N. 1836. Contrasts: or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and similar Buildings of the Present Day; showing the Present Decay of Taste: Accompanied by Appropriate Text. 2nd edn, London, 1841. Ringbeck, B. 2008. Management Plans for World Heritage Sites. German Commission for UNESCO. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth. 1917. On Growth and Form. 2nd edn, Dover, 1942. Abridged edn by J. T. Bonner, 1992, Cambridge University Press. UNESCO. 2005. Basic Texts of the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Paris, UNESCO World Heritage Centre. UNESCO. 1978. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Revised edn 2011, WHC 11/01. UNESCO. 2009. Buffer Zones. World Heritage Papers 25. UNESCO. 2010. Managing Historic Cities. World Heritage Papers 27. UNESCO. 2011. Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. United Nations General Assembly, March 20, 1987. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future.

Managing Change Integrating Impact Assessments in Heritage Conservation Ana Pereira Roders, Ron van Oers

Introduction This chapter introduces change management in the context of the conservation of heritage properties. It discusses the role of impact assessments in determining if and how development projects would impact on heritage properties, and thereby affect their significance. The concept of impact assessment is discussed, leading to the application of a framework which over recent years has been applied to help determine the impact assessment of sustainable urban development on cultural World Heritage properties, by relating their authenticity and integrity to the development-related factors affecting them. Some preliminary conclusions and recommendations for technical experts and policy-makers involved with change management in the context of cultural World Heritage properties are given, yet the authors foresee that such results are also relevant to other stakeholders involved in heritage management. Heritage management has been defined as an intergenerational and cyclical process of four main stages: – Identification of the resources to be protected, including activities such as inventories on their conservation status, consensus on their significance and definition of boundaries (core and buffer zones). – Development of policies to systematize heritage protection, from national to local levels. – Management and monitoring practices to better control any changes which may occur over time (Australia ICOMOS, 1999). – Implementation and impact assessment of changes to protect heritage from negative impacts (Pereira Roders and Hudson, 2011). One of the tools available to help determine the impact of changes and assist the related decision-making process is impact assessments. Based on the requirements to perform environmental impact assessments (EIAs) at the project or more strategic levels, heritage impact assessment (HIA) is defined as the practice of performing an impact analysis applied to cultural heritage assets, whenever the impacts of particular developments or changes on the significance of cultural heritage assets are considered potentially significant (ICOMOS, 2011). Clark (2001, p. 22) emphasizes that “impact analysis is not a particularly special, unusual or complex process; it is simply a codification of the basic analysis undertaken by any competent conservation adviser”. Nonetheless, we are far from having

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reached aptness. According to Sutherland et al. (2004), “much of current conservation practice is based upon anecdote and myth rather than upon the systematic appraisal of the evidence, including experience of others who have tackled the same problem”. In fact, various literatures discuss weaknesses in the evaluation of cultural heritage contained within current approaches to EIA (Teller and Bond, 2002; Bond et al., 2004; Dupagne et al., 2004; Jones and Slinn, 2008). Recent guidance from ICOMOS on HIA, specific to cultural World Heritage properties, is very critical on the direct use of procedures for EIAs, without some adaptation. Accordingly, “EIA frequently disaggregates all the possible cultural heritage attributes and assesses impact on them separately, through discrete receptors such as protected buildings, archaeological sites, and specified view-points with their view cones, without applying the lens of OUV [Outstanding Universal Value] to the overall ensemble of attributes” (ICOMOS, 2011, p. 1). ICOMOS promotes the need for a more global approach to cultural heritage properties, directly linked to cultural significance – attributes and values – of the heritage properties, which EIA still fails to master, specifically pointing out the threat that with current EIAs “cumulative impacts and incremental changes (adverse) may also more easily pass undetected”. Therefore, despite the effort to undertake an impact assessment, the outcome may lead to erroneous decision-making as in the end it does not determine the impact on the attributes and values requiring protection. To date, ICOMOS has recognized that “there are limited formal tools for identifying receptors and for assessing impact and few examples of excellence for heritage impact assessment (HIA) undertaken for cultural World Heritage properties” (ICOMOS, 2011, p. 1). This chapter describes and illustrates a proposed framework to assist in the integration of impact assessments in heritage conservation to manage changes affecting the significance – attributes and values – of heritage properties.¹

Framework The framework defined for impact assessments has three main stages (see Table 1) focusing on: – the authenticity and integrity of the property; – the factors – threats and causes – affecting the property; – the relation between authenticity and integrity and the factors affecting the property.

1 This framework for heritage impact assessments has been under development since 2009 in the course of graduate projects by MSc students in architecture at the Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.

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Table 1: Framework for integrating impact assessments in heritage management Themes

Stages

Detail

1. Authenticity and integrity of the property (significance)

1. Identification of attributes conveying significance and values

Individual (per attribute)

2. Location in the relevant periods

Nomination

Relationship (between attributes or values)

Present/project Other 3. Determine the evolution

No changes Changes (subtractions, additions)

2. Factors affecting the property (threats)

4. Determine the authenticity/ integrity of the property

Authenticity (original)

1. Identification of factors – threats and causes – affecting the property

Individual (per threat)

2. Location in the relevant periods

Nomination

Integrity (wholeness)

Relationship (between threats and causes)

Present/project Other 3. Determine the evolution

No changes Changes (subtractions, additions)

4. Determine the scale of the factors affecting the property

Spatial (from small/localized to widespread/whole) Temporal (from one-off/rare to ongoing) Capacity for management response (from low capacity/no resources to high capacity)

3. Relation between authenticity and integrity and factors affecting the property (risk assessment)

1. Relate authenticity and integrity and factors affecting the property

Individual (per group attribute/ factor) Relationship (between groups of attributes/factors)

2. Determine impact of factors on authenticity and integrity of the property

Authenticity (from minor/insignificant to catastrophic) Integrity (from minor/insignificant to catastrophic)

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Table 1: (Continue) Themes

Stages

Detail

3. Propose and/or discuss scenarios

Progression (same pattern) Mitigation (same pattern, extra mitigation measures) Alternative (different pattern)

Authenticity and integrity of the property The process is initiated by identification of the attributes conveying the significance and the ascribed values, at the time the property was listed. For some properties, Statements of Significance (or Statements of Outstanding Universal Value for World Heritage properties) exist. For other properties, retrospective Statements of Significance are under preparation. With some exceptions supported by new findings, the majority of retrospective statements elaborates on the decisions and arguments used when listing the property. The attributes are identified by means of content analysis (stage 1.1), “a systematic, replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content categories based on explicit rules of coding” (Berelson, 1952; Krippendorff, 1980; Weber, 1990; Stemler, 2001). The arguments used to justify the significance of each attribute – both tangible and intangible – and their relationships are coded according to the referenced values, classified in eight variables: social, economic, political, historic, aesthetical, scientific, age and ecological values (Pereira Roders, 2007). This typology of values was proposed to complement the four cultural values – historic, aesthetic/artistic, scientific and social values – recognized in UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention (1972, 2008); with the three pillars of sustainable development – ecological, social and economic values, the political values (Riganti and Nijkamp, 2005) and the age values (Alois Riegl, 1903, trans. Riegl and Scarrocchia, 1990) as conveyed in cultural heritage assets. The aims were to verify Mason’s (2002) assumptions on; first, the regency of traditional values, for example historic for assessing cultural significance; second, the existence of a broader nature of values conveyed in cultural heritage assets; and third, the contribution of a typology of values to mitigate manifoldness, by providing an effective and neutral guide to be used by those involved with cultural heritage assets. Table 2 illustrates the list of referenced attributes which are thought to convey the OUV of the Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications World Heritage site (Sri Lanka). Considering this heritage property is an early nomination (inscribed in 1988), where the decision text did not include more than the selection criteria, this list was created based on the content of the Advisory Body evaluation report and the arguments pre sented to justify the inscription of the property on the World Heritage List. When the

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Table 2: List of referenced attributes thought to convey the OUV of the Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications, Sri Lanka (Boxem and Fuhren, 2011) Value

Attribute

Social

Dutch church

Tangible X

Town as a living settlement

Economic

X

Interaction of cultures

X

Interaction of cultural conditions related to Sri Lankan identity

X

Harbour

X

Administrative centre of the South of Ceylon

Political

Historic

X

Warehouses and buildings related to trade in 16th – 19th century

X

Forge, carpentry, rope-making workshops

X

Buildings related to administration

X

Fortifications and bastions

X

Gate in warehouse

X

Naval guardhouse, barracks, commandants residence, arsenal, powder house

X

Ancient harbour

X

Urban ensemble that shows interaction between European architecture and South Asian traditions from 16th to 19th century

X

Interaction of historic conditions related to Sri Lankan identity Aesthetical

Scientific

Intangible

X

Regular grid pattern

X

Dutch church

X

Wide streets planned with grass and suriyas

X

Streets, lined with houses

X

Houses with own garden

X

Houses with open verandah supported by columns

X

European architecture, European models

X

Urban ensemble that shows interaction between European architecture and South Asian traditions from 16th to 19th century

X

Local manpower

X

South Asian traditions

X

Sewer system of 17th century

X

Measures conform regional metrology Coral and granite in the ramparts

X X

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Table 2: (Continue) Value

Attribute

Tangible

Ecological

Bay of Galle, sheltered by rocky peninsula

X

European models, adapted to geological conditions of Sri Lanka

X

European models, adapted to climatic conditions of Sri Lanka

X

Sewer system of 17th century, flushed by sea water

X

Streets adapted to configuration of terrain

X

Intangible

retrospective Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, which is now under development, is adopted, this list of attributes may need to be updated. One possible variation of this method, still to be explored, is the adaptation of the Nara Grid (ICOMOS, 1994; Lemmens et al, 2004; Van Balen, 2008) to include all eight variables of values, as well as the complete list of the expressions officially considered as attributes under the guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO, 2008). As such, the dual categorization – tangible and intangible – would grow into a categorization of sub-variables (Table 3). Table 3: ICOMOS tangible and intangible categorization Tangible

Intangible

– form and design – materials and substance – other internal factors

– use and function – traditions, techniques and management systems – location and setting – language, and other forms of intangible heritage – spirit and feeling – other external factors

As soon as the attributes are identified, they need to be located in the property (stage 1.2). The exercise to map the attributes during the period of nomination enables the baseline to be set as it relates to the authenticity and integrity of the property. However, it needs to rely on the documents (primary and secondary) produced during the nomination stage and/or on the testimonies of the parties involved. Considering that the discussion about cultural significance and its attributes is relatively recent (in the last decade or so), there are few chances to find attributes conveying significance and the related values already inventoried during the nomination of the vast majority of World Heritage properties. Nonetheless, these inventories are very valuable as they provide the data to locate the attributes as the baseline relating to the property’s authenticity and integrity.

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Depending on the listing period, properties may have passed through various loops of periodic reporting or political changes which have often included inventories as one of the first actions. Such periods may also be relevant to map, so that later it is possible to see the impact of the political changes. Unlike mapping the attributes in previous periods, mapping in the present relies on property surveys, complemented by the most recent primary documents and the testimonies of the parties currently involved with the property. Fieldwork, as well as archival studies, is undertaken for data collection, where the surveyors can scan the whole property and carry out interviews in search for evidence to either identify or confirm the location of the attributes. Based on a comparison between the different relevant periods, what exactly has remained unchanged can be distinguished from what has changed (stage 1.3). Also, it is possible to outline what has been subtracted (e.g. demolished, no use) and what has been added (e.g. new building, new use). Such an overview will determine the evolution of the attributes conveying significance; and supported with evidence from the statements at the following stage, will form a conclusion on the authenticity and/ or integrity of the property (stage 1.4). The conditions of authenticity are exclusive to cultural heritage properties. Within the context of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the condition of authenticity is considered to be met whenever the “cultural value (as recognized in the nomination criteria proposed) are truthfully and credibly expressed through a variety of attributes”. The statement of authenticity should “assess the degree to which authenticity is present in, or expressed by, each of these significant attributes” (UNESCO, 2008, paras 82, 85). The condition of integrity concerns all heritage properties. Integrity is “a measure of the wholeness and intactness of the natural and/or cultural heritage and its attributes”. The condition of integrity should assess “the extent to which the property: a) includes all elements necessary to express its Outstanding Universal Value; b) is of adequate size to ensure the complete representation of the features and processes which convey the property’s significance; c) suffers from adverse effects of development and/or neglect” (UNESCO, 2008, para. 88). Comparing the baseline level of the authenticity and/or integrity of the property with the following levels shows whether the evolution has been decreasing, maintaining or even enhancing the attributes conveying significance. When already implementing limits of acceptable change to certain attributes, the level of authenticity and/ or integrity of the property can be scaled. This scale can be defined either in general terms, as a percentage sample of the population-attribute graded according to the level of change allowed; or in specific terms, where particular samples of the population-attribute are graded according to the level of change allowed (see Table 4). Bear in mind that the table is merely illustrative and the scale and percentages of allowed change would have to be determined per attribute, preferably as part of participatory planning, and with the consent of the parties involved.

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Table 4: General and specific terms for scaling authenticity and/or integrity Scale

Level –2

Level –1

Level 0

Level +1

Level +2

Description

Disappearance of attribute(s)

Intolerable reduction of attribute(s)

Tolerable reduction or increase of attribute(s)

Intolerable increase of attribute(s)

Overpopulation of attribute(s)

General terms

+100%

Specific terms

C–

B–

A

B+

C+

Factors affecting the property As with authenticity and/or integrity, the second stage begins with the identification of the factors affecting the property. Factors referenced as threat or cause may be related, although there may also be specific causes related to more than just one threat, and vice versa. Therefore it is very important not only to inventory threats and causes, but also their relationships. The notion of direct threats, specific to biodiversity conservation but which can be directly read for cultural diversity, has been defined as “the proximate human activities or processes that have caused, are causing, or may cause the destruction, degradation, and/or impairment of biodiversity targets (e.g. unsustainable fishing or logging). Direct threats are synonymous with sources of stress and proximate pressures. Threats can be past (historical), ongoing, and/or likely to occur in the future. … Natural phenomena are also regarded as direct threats in some situations” (Salafsky et al., 2008). UNESCO (2008) distinguishes two levels of danger to classify the factors affecting heritage properties: ascertained and potential. When in ascertained danger, “the property is faced with specific and proven imminent danger”. When in potential danger “the property is faced with threats which could have deleterious effects on its inherent characteristics” (paras 179, 180). Moreover, six specific dangers are listed as ascertained and six main threats as potential (Table 5).

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Table 5: Ascertained and potential dangers as defined in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention Ascertained dangers / threats (UNESCO, 2008, para. 179)

Potential dangers / threats (UNESCO, 2008, para. 180)

i) serious deterioration of materials; ii) serious deterioration of structure and/ or ornamental features; iii) serious deterioration of architectural or town-planning coherence; iv) serious deterioration of urban or rural space, or the natural environment; v) significant loss of historical authenticity; vi) important loss of cultural significance.

i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi)

modification of juridical status of the property diminishing the degree of its protection; lack of conservation policy; threatening effects of regional planning projects; threatening effects of town planning; outbreak or threat of armed conflict; gradual changes due to geological, climatic or other environmental factors.

Like the attributes, the threats and causes are also identified by means of content analysis (stage 2.1). The data sources are the primary documents produced during the management process, later complemented and/or verified by secondary documents, interviews and property surveys. The difference from the previous stage is that there is no pre-established category of threats, so the list of threats and causes keeps evolving until the inventory is completed. A threat may be general. It may also happen that a specific cause is referenced together with the threat and, with some luck, the affected attribute also. Thus the identified threats will probably differ in the level of detail for related factors. As soon as the list of factors referenced as threats and causes is completed, it is time to locate them in the property (stage 2.2). As with the attributes, it is most relevant to locate these factors in the largest possible number of time periods. The exercise to map them in the period of nomination allows the baseline of factors affecting the property to be set. A factor considered as a threat or cause may only start being referenced years after the property’s inscription. However, it may be relevant to trace the factors back until the nomination period to gain a better understanding of why and how such a factor has become a threat or is causing the property’s significance to be damaged. Periods prior to the nomination period may also be relevant in understanding the history of such factors considered as threats, as well as to eventually sustain hypothetical causes, if no causes are referenced. The exercise to map previous periods again relies mainly on the documents (primary and secondary) produced before and during the nomination stage and/or on the testimonies of the parties involved. So the guarantee of an acceptable level of validity and reliability also rules at this stage. Depending on the listing period, heritage properties may have passed through various loops of periodic reporting about their state of conservation, as well as various political changes to improve and/or replace their conservation and planning policies. Such periods may also be relevant to map, so that later it is possible to see

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if the impact of these political changes have helped or worsened the factors affecting the properties. Unlike mapping the attributes in previous periods, mapping in the present relies mainly on property surveys, complemented by the most recent primary documents and the testimonies of the parties currently involved with the property. Fieldwork is undertaken for data collection, where the surveyors can scan the whole property and carry out interviews in search for evidence to either identify or confirm the location of the factors affecting the heritage property. New threats and causes may also be identified. Figure  1 illustrates the building density of the Stone Town of Zanzibar (United Republic of Tanzania), surveyed over three distinctive periods of time. The previous periods were surveyed by two different organizations: the first by the United Nations

Fig. 1: Building density of the Stone Town of Zanzibar, United Republic of Tanzania (Vroomen et al., 2011)

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Human Settlements Programme in 1982 (UN–HABITAT, 1984); and the second by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in 1992 (AKTC, 1996). In 2011, the same methods were applied and a stage of new data collection was undertaken. Based on the comparison between the different relevant periods, the evolution of the factors affecting the property can be distinguished (stage 2.3). As with the attributes, it is also possible to outline what has been subtracted (e.g. demolished, no use) and what has been added (e.g. new building, new use). Such an overview will determine the evolution of the threats and causes referenced as factors affecting the attributes conveying significance; and supported with evidence from the statements at the following stage, will form a conclusion on the scale of the factors affecting the property (stage 2.4). Three main criteria are used to scale the factors found to be affecting the property: spatial, temporal and capacity for management response. These scales have been referenced to the matrix created to list the factors affecting World Heritage Outstanding Universal Value, based on the IUCN Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) Proposed Classification of Direct Threats (IUCN, 2011). They are rated on a scale of 1–4. Table 6 details the three main criteria in relation to their scale. Again, in participatory planning the conversion of these scales could be adapted into more quantitative values. The values given are for illustration only. Table 6: The three main criteria for scaling the factors affecting a World Heritage property (IUCN, 2011) Scale

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Spatial

whole/widespread (100%)

large/widespread (>50%)

large/localized (>50%)

small/localized (