UNESCO World Heritage Program, Eurocentric process

The concept of 'World Heritage' and its associated ideas have, according to Askew, been destructively used worldwide as an instrument which 'mobilises resources, reproduces dominant arguments and rationales, establishes program agendas and policies, and dispenses status surrounding the conservation and preservation of the thing called "heritage"' (Askew 2010:19). The 1960s and 1970s provoked worldwide awareness and cooperative rescues to save endangered cultural material and the natural world from depredation (see Turtinen 2000;

Askew 2010). In order to be consistent with the United Nations’ mission to promote a 'culture of peace', the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) adopted the World Heritage Convention (WHC) 1972, which is probably the most influential document in the heritage conservation sphere (Di Giovine 2009). As David Lowenthal (1998) observed, the promulgation of the WHC facilitates global discussions about the modern implications of heritage, and UNESCO state parties obsessively engage with the mechanisms of world heritage inscription. Since then, the usage of 'world heritage' has become an integral part of the multi-faceted phenomenon of globalisation, and has received as much criticism as praise (Askew 2010).

Since the World Heritage Convention was promulgated in 1972, over 191 states have signed the World Heritage Convention (WHC), making it one of the most powerful instrument of heritage protection, not least because it proclaims itself politically neutral and objective, which gives it a level of international scientific credibility (UNESCO 2016). There are currently 1052 sites in 165 countries listed on the World Heritage List (UNESCO 2016). State Parties to the WHC have also placed 1650 sites on the ‘Tentative List’ (UNESCO 2015). The mission of the World Heritage Convention is to 'seek to identify, protect, conserve, present and transmit to future generations cultural and natural heritage of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ (UNESCO 2010). In this sense, the WHC created a discursive ‘cosmopolitan law’ to protect the past for future generations, an aspiration for a shared sense of belonging and global solidarity (Choay 2001: 140; Meskell et al. 2015: 424). Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) is the central and fundamental concept within the world heritage nomination process. To be considered for listing as a World Heritage site, properties must be of ‘outstanding universal value’ (see Jokilehto and Cameron 2008; Labadi 2007, 2013; Meskell et al. 2015). A nominated property must also meet the conditions of integrity and/or

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authenticity and have sound protection and management systems (Operational Guidelines 2011).

The World Heritage Centre was established in 1992 in order to coordinate within UNESCO all matters related to World Heritage practice. The World Heritage Centre organises the annual sessions of the World Heritage Committee and provides advice to State Parties in the preparation of site nominations (UNESCO 2015). The Committee consists of twenty-one members as representatives of the State Parties, which, along with the Advisory Bodies responsible for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, determine whether a property is inscribed on the World Heritage List (UNESCO 2015). The Advisory Bodies are three international non-governmental organisations which include the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property (the Rome Centre), the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Union for Preservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The three Advisory Bodies are comprised of international experts such as archaeologists, historians, architects, planners and landscape architects, etc., each with their own disciplinary, expertise, national and personal priorities and attachments (Turtinen 2000; Lafrenz Samuels 2009). Based on the World Heritage Convention and the Operational Guidelines, ICOMOS and IUCN are responsible for consulting over cultural and nature heritage nomination issues respectively, while ICCROM takes charge of advice about restoration techniques and training (UNESCO 2015; Turtinen 2000). Those organisations have facilitated the globalisation of the discursive influence of the UNESCO world heritage program (Logan 2001; Askew 2010). As Logan (2001:52) comments:

these organizations continue to play a powerful role on the global scene, laying down international standards for professional practice - 'world's best practice' - in the cultural heritage field as well as influencing thinking in those fields in less direct ways. In these respects UNESCO and its associated bodies may be said to be attempting to impose a common stamp on cultures across the world and their policies creating a logic of global cultural uniformity.

Although the World Heritage program has proven itself both popular and influential around the world, the Convention’s approach to OUV, and its relevant notion of authenticity, has not been uncontested. With the concept of OUV and its associated sense of authenticity and

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integrity being widely used in the process of world heritage nomination and management, its limitations have been increasingly exposed (Labadi 2007, 2013). Heritage, as defined by UNESCO in the Operational Guidelines (2011), is our inheritance from our ancestors which possesses Outstanding Universal Value, and which we convey to future generations. UNESCO points out that World Heritage Sites represent collective properties of humanity, not just the countries where they exist. Such sites are selected for nomination to the World Heritage List based on their ‘outstanding universal value’ for listing as cultural and natural heritage properties. The Operational Guidelines (2011) define OUV as:

‘Outstanding Universal Value means cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent protection of this heritage is of the highest importance to the international community as a whole’. (II.A 49 Operational Guidelines 2011)

There are ten criteria for the inscription of properties on the World Heritage list (WHL), six for cultural heritage and four for natural properties. For cultural sites, a site must meet at least one of the following criteria:

(i) represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;

(ii) exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;

(iii) bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;

(iv) be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history; (v) be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;

(vi) be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.

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(The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria)’. (II.D 77 Operational Guidelines 2011).

One of the key concepts of 'outstanding universal value' requires selection and evaluation on the basis that some heritage values are more important than others. The international experts who possess specific expertise recognised by UNESCO and its associated organisations have power to decide the hierarchy of heritage values, and actively shape understandings of particular sites through the world heritage listing process (Turtinen 2000; Logan 2001). Over the past decade, many scholars, such as Logan (2001), Musitelli (2002), Taylor (2004, 2010), Smith (2006), Labadi (2007, 2013) and Waterton (2010) have criticised the setting of these ten universal criteria designed criteria for OUV. Labadi (2007) argues that the current criteria of OUV and the statements of authenticity are object-related. The establishment of the World Heritage Convention was originally intended to protect and safeguard the World Heritage properties as well as represent the cultural or natural patrimony of countries around the world. OUV is regarded by the World Heritage Convention as the touchstone for all world heritage properties. Long and Labadi (2010:8) point out that the properties have to meet at least one of the ten criteria, which reflect UNESCO, ICOMOS and IUCN’s assumption of authority ‘reinforced by the discourse of apolitical universalism’. Denis Byrne (1991) criticises the concept of universal significance and argues that despite the diversity of heritage in each country, non-Western countries utilise similar forms of assessment and management ideologies that derive from a European viewpoint. This is based on his research, which demonstrates that an ideologically Western understanding of heritage has been imposed both in Thailand and on Indigenous Australia, which marginalises Indigenous and non-Western approaches to heritage (see also Pocock 1997; Cleere 2001; Sullivan 2004; among others). This European influence has seen the World Heritage List dominated by monumentally grand and aesthetically valued sites and places (Arizpe 2000: 36; Cleere 2001; Yoshida 2004: 109). Labadi (2007) supports Byrne's arguments, and illustrates how World Heritage themes and frameworks, as well as the criteria for assessing the OUV of the World Heritage Sites and their authenticity, are Eurocentric. She further identified the imbalance of the World Heritage List, noting that more than half of World Heritage sites are from the European region. This, she argues, is as a result of UNESCO’s Eurocentric perspective, based on her quantitative research of 106 world culture heritage sites' dossiers (see also Cleere 2001; Meskell 2002; Long and Labadi 2010; for similar arguments). Recent research conducted by Frey, Pamini and Steiner (2013) and Reyes (2014) on the number of World Heritage sites per

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country also confirms, despite UNESCO’s recent attempts to be more geographically inclusive, Western Europe’s disproportionate representation in the List remains.

2.3 'Boundedness' of Heritage

The object related idea of heritage facilitates a set of boundaries in the UNESCO World Heritage program. The original meaning of the word 'heritage' was generally used to describe 'an inheritance that an individual received in the will of a deceased ancestor or bequeathed when dead to descendants' (Graham et al. 2000:1). Because of the global anxieties about lost and rapid post-war social and physical changes since the Second World War, international authorities like UNESCO, ICOMOS and IUCN institutionalised the conservation ethic and the 'conserve as found' ethos that had developed since the nineteenth-century (Smith 2006:27; see also Graham 2001; Long and Reeves 2009). Since the adoption of the World Heritage convention in 1972, it has been seen as a canonical text that spreads heritage consciousness and particular heritage practices within national and international settings. Ashworth and Tunbridge (1996:2-3) noticed that the formerly precise legal term of 'heritage' has started to dramatically expand its original boundaries, from its primary meaning about individual inheritances into a much broader concept, which refers to physical relics or sites surviving from the past, non-physical or intangible cultural elements from the past, resources or elements from the natural environment, as well as systematically selling products and services linked to the heritage industry. In this sense, the concept of heritage has been conceived as a 'site', 'object', or intangible form of culture defined by Western experts with identifiable boundaries, and is able to be managed by the application of relevant expertise. For instance, the dichotomy in how 'nature' and 'culture' are conceptualised has influenced the way international authorities have framed 'cultural heritage' or 'natural heritage' in heritage practice. However, in recent decades, heritage inscriptions, particularly in the Asian context, are beginning to reflect the fact that nature and culture are starting to be seen as indivisible (see Taylor 2009, 2012; Inaba 2012). Thus, international debates have, since the 1990s, enlarged their understanding of heritage with the introduction of the concept of Cultural Landscape (see Fairclough et al. 1999; Grenville 1999; Cotter et al. 2001; Fairclough and Rippon 2002; Taylor 2009, 2012; Russell 2012).

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UNESCO adopted the new cultural landscape category in 1992, which reflects UNESCO’s attempt to move from the 'Western notion of separation of culture and nature' within the world heritage program (Taylor 2009:15). The official definition of Cultural Landscape within the process of assessing 'outstanding universal value' is that the property should represent the ‘combined works of nature and of man’，which illustrates ‘evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal’ (II.A 47 Operational Guidelines 2011). As Fairclough (1999) argues, the concept of landscape as proposed by the international heritage authorities not only stresses the protection of physical 'sites' with boundaries, but also considers the relationship between linear time periods and sites.

However, the implications of this new concept has been proven to be problematic by many scholars (Taylor 2009, 2010, 2012; Lennon 2003; Lowenthal 2005; Han 2012). Firstly, as Taylor (2012) and Lennon (2012) observe, based on their research in the Asia-Pacific region, there is a dilemma facing The World Heritage Committee as it inscribes and manages cultural landscape sites. The dilemma is that, at first, Cultural Landscape properties are multilayered, which not only includes traditional cultural and natural elements, but also people who have a deep attachment to their centuries-old practices and customs. Existing boundaries defined by the WHC have been deemed insufficient, because many countries cannot find proper management criteria base on the dichotomy between nature and culture in the World Heritage Convention (Araoz 2008; Rössler 2008). Therefore, as Taylor (2009) observes, the international authorities have ignored Asian understandings of landscape, and the international heritage practices based on the Western ethos of protection dispossessed local peoples’ traditional rights and occupancy in South, Southeast and East Asia including India, China, Japan and Thailand.

Secondly, as Taylor (2009) argues, the Southeast and East Asian countries often confuse the meaning of the 'international' definition of Cultural Landscape (Taylor 2009). 'Landscape' in Western contexts has been linked to the concept of wilderness or wild nature since the Enlightenment, from which the philosophical dichotomy concerning the concepts of 'nature' and 'culture' emerged (Head 2000b). As Waterton (2005) observed, the international authorities such as UNESCO had deemed 'landscape' as innately 'natural'. In this sense, Taylor (2009:11) indicates that 'people were not seen as part of nature, and landscape was not

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seen as a cultural construct'. The conjunction of the word 'cultural' with ‘landscape’ was derived from a post-late 1980s movement that tends to extend to 'the idea of landscape as a cultural product' (Taylor 2012:2). Since the 1990s, UNESCO accepted the World Heritage categories of cultural landscape, but Lowenthal (2005) has observed that the UNESCO policy documents still marked the sense that preserving nature is a priority over culture, and the heritage nomination, conservation and management process still constrained by boundaries that were formulated or regulated by experts. Therefore, the fluidity and mutability of heritage and the multi-vocality of non-expert users associated with cultural landscapes have been constrained.

Fen Han (2006, 2012), based on her research in China, argues that Chinese academics and practitioners have encountered difficulties in understanding the Western interpretation of the term 'Cultural Landscape’. She identifies that the Chinese traditional sense of landscape is 'a result of the interaction between nature and humans relies on the human-nature relationship driven by views of nature.' (Han 2012：92; see also Han 2006). One of the significant philosophical Chinese ideologies within Confucianism and Daoism is that nature lives with me in symbiosis, and everything is with me as a whole 天地与我并生，万物与我为一 (Zhuangzi and Xu 1957). In other words, the holistic idea of people, nature and cultural interweaving with identities, memories and other personal spiritual senses have been considered as the traditional Chinese understanding of landscape (see Lin 2001, 2002; Han 2006, 2012). However, many Chinese scholars have extensively discussed and disseminated the discourse of ‘Cultural Landscape’ (see Zhou et al. 2006; Shan 2009b, 2010b; Han 2010, 2012; Wu 2011; Xi and Zhang 2014). Those scholars believe that the concept of Cultural Landscape fits some Chinese traditional value of harmony between culture and nature, and provides a useful tool both theoretically and practically to fill the gap between nature and culture within the Chinese context (Han 2010). Wu (2011) suggested that the Western concept of cultural landscape provides a great opportunity for the Chinese government to enlarge Chinese world heritage sites. Han (2012:103) points out that UNESCO promulgated the concept of Cultural Landscape, which has moved Chinese scholars, including her, to rethink the ‘Chinese traditional views of nature, the interactions between Chinese and nature’. She also identified that because of the cultural differences between China and the West, ‘there has been much cross-cultural misconception about the term 'cultural landscape' previously’ (Han 2012:103). However, there has been little consideration to date as to why many Chinese people have not been able to make sense of the term Cultural Landscape,

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which is widely used in the international literature. One of the tasks of my thesis is to address this issue. Nevertheless, Han (2012:103) wrote approvingly of UNESCO’s conception of Cultural Landscape:

World Heritage categories provide a platform to share landscape heritage values and widen our horizons based on cultural diversity. This also offers a great opportunity for China to contribute and to benefit.

Han (2006) points out the significant differences between how China and the West conceptualise heritage. As Lowenthal argues (2005:89), despite UNESCO putting forward the idea of Cultural Landscape in order to combine culture and nature, the dichotomy of nature and culture was already imbedded in Western thinking, in the sense that the idea of 'nature is perfect and culture a nuisance'. Smith (2006:79) believes that heritage management processes are still constrained by boundaries, and used similar management methods, to ensure that ‘culture’ and nature’ are manageable. Therefore, she argues:

any sense of place becomes inevitably constrained by the boundaries defined for it by management practices and classification, listing or scheduling systems that require well definable boundaries.

However, the Chinese traditional sense of 'Harmony of Man with Nature’, by contrast with the Western sentiment that nature is superior to culture (see Lowenthal 2005), instead ‘emphasized immanence and unity’ (Chinaculture.org 2014). Many Chinese scholars believe that the philosophical integration of the harmony of man with nature in China resulted in the most significant characteristics of Chinese culture, which distinguish it from Western dualism, which had led to an opposition between man and nature (Han 2006:186; see also Gao 1989; Wang 1990; Feng 1990; Gong 2001).

However, many Western scholars have recently begun to discuss the intimate link between heritage, identity and memory making (see Graham et al. 2000; Bagnall 2003; Cleere 2001; McLean 2006; Smith 2006, 2011, 2012; Smith and Akagawa 2009: 7). For instance, Graham et al. (2000: 32) argue that 'landscape interconnects with a series of interacting and constantly mutating aspects of identity’, which they note includes 'nationalism, gender, sexuality, "race", class, and colonialism/postcolonialism'. However, Cleere (2001), Macdonald (2003), Graham et al. (2005) Smith (2006) and Byrne (2009) criticised the on-the-ground heritage practices that still focus on how the material of heritage and the conservation of its fabric informs a sense of nationalism. Many scholars have discussed the use of material culture in establishing

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and sustaining national identities (see for instance Trigger 1989; Hobsbawm 1992; Diaz- Andreu and Champion 1996; Spillman 1997; Boswell and Evans 1999; Carrier 2005; and Hancock 2008). Harvey (2001:320) criticises contemporary heritage practices for focusing on specific technical issues around conserving and managing material culture for the purpose of bolstering national identity, which ignores other non-nationalistic uses of heritage, and its recruitment in the production of identity, power and authority. The marginalisation of non- nationalising uses of heritage and the associated sense of identities are attributed to what Laurajane Smith (2006) has labelled the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (AHD). The next section will analyse the concept and the consequence of the AHD.