UNESCO’s World Heritage List: power, national interest, and expertise
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221105597 |
| Author | Deborah Barros Leal Farias |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221105597
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(4) 589 –612
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221105597
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UNESCO’s World Heritage
List: power, national interest,
and expertise
Deborah Barros Leal Farias
UNSW-Sydney
Abstract
With almost universal membership, the World Heritage Convention is at the heart of the
global governance of heritage. Nested within UNESCO, the Convention sets the parameters
for determining which natural and/or cultural sites can receive the prestigious ‘World Heritage
Property’ designation and be added to the World Heritage List. What started in the early 1970s
as an expert-based classification procedure focused on heritage preservation has become an
ostensive political process, and a hotbed of competing nations interested in the domestic and
international power deriving from inscriptions in the World Heritage List. This paper takes this
empirical case as a springboard to reflect upon two key interrelated issues: the politicization of
expertise and classification by International Organizations, and heritage as a national identity
project and projection of ‘soft power’. In doing so, it highlights how changes in the global system
since the late 19th century – for example, colonialism, Cold War, ‘emerging’ powers – affected
the global politics of heritage. The paper adds to the incredibly trans-disciplinary field of world
heritage research by anchoring itself in International Relations literature, mostly through a
Constructivist-based approach.
Keywords
classification, expertise, heritage, international organizations, power, UNESCO
Introduction
In 2022, the World Heritage Convention (WHC) celebrates its 50th anniversary. Since its
creation, under the aegis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), the Convention has established itself as the key international
legal document concerning the protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage,
Corresponding author:
Deborah Barros Leal Farias, UNSW-Sydney, UNSW – Kensington Campus, Morven Brown Bldg. R. 135,
Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Email: deborahblf@unsw.edu.au
1105597IRE0010.1177/00471178221105597International RelationsBarros Leal Farias
research-article2022
Article
590 International Relations 37(4)
with nearly universal ratification. One of the most visible and well-known elements of
the Convention is the World Heritage List (WHL): a list of properties forming part of the
cultural heritage and natural heritage considered as having ‘outstanding universal value’
(Convention’s Article 11).
Since its implementation, the World Heritage Convention and its List have been
investigated and analyzed from a variety of angles and disciplines. This has been particu-
larly evident in the transdisciplinary interest in studying international heritage regimes,
pursued by researchers in Anthropology, Law, Sociology, Economics, Political Science,
etc. Studying international heritage regimes means ‘studying palpable, official aspects
and subtle norms and socialization processes within communities of professionals,
experts, bureaucrats, and politicians working in different tiers of national ministries,
transnational agencies, and international organizations’.1 The present paper is situated
in the realm of international heritage regime studies, but does not focus on the regime
per se. Instead, it draws from research in this area to analyze the WHL from the pers-
pective of International Relations (IR) literature, adopting a Constructivist approach.
Notwithstanding the many variations in this approach, they all center around the social
construction of reality and the intersubjectivity of knowledge.2 More specifically, the
analysis draws from authors who focus on (state) power through a Constructivist lens:
the creation and (re)production of power – as it relates to heritage – in a variety of forms
and expressions in the international system.3 The starting point is the understanding that
the analysis of power in international relations ‘must include a consideration of how
social structures and processes generate differential social capacities for actors to define
and pursue their interests and ideals’, wherein power can be defined as ‘the production,
in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine
their circumstances and fate’.4 In this context, the paper seeks to answer two main ques-
tions. First, how is power sought and exerted within the WHL institutional decision-
making context? That is, who has the power to decide what is (or is not) a heritage site
of outstanding universal value? Second, how can heritage be used for domestic and inter-
national ‘power projects’, such as creating and strengthening national identities?
The study of the WHC and the WHL using IR literature and IR-based concepts is not
original, with Lynn Meskell’s work standing out as a reference.5 However, most of these
works are published in the field of Anthropology and/or in journals dedicated to heritage
studies – not International Relations. Thus, the present article seeks to contribute to this
relatively understudied approach. It does so by taking the empirical case of the WHL as
a springboard to reflect upon two key interrelated issues. First, the politicization of
knowledge and expertise in the context of International Organizations, which are power-
ful actors in the classification, standardization, and categorization of global phenomena.
Second, on states’ national interests and the use of heritage as a part of national identity
projects and global projections of power. In doing so, the paper investigates (global)
heritage as a product of major changes in the global system since the late nineteenth
century, such as colonialism, nationalism, Cold War, and power shifts taking place in the
global system, including in international organizations.
Among its key contributions, the paper shows that the (global) governance of heritage
is inextricably intertwined with issues of power and national interest, manifested in a
variety of ways. For example: how heritage is defined and what is its purpose(s); how a
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