Anthropology News • November 2010
CO M M ENTARY
World Heritage Tourism
UNESCO’s Vehicle for Peace?
Michael A Di Giovine
U Chicago
Heritage tourism is considered a
means of economic development,
employment and poverty allevia-
tion, but also of neo-colonialism,
inauthenticity and museumifica-
tion. For UNESCO, it seems to be
employed for a far more ambitious
goal: to produce “peace in the minds of
men.” This conten-
tion rests not in
tired reiterations of
multiculturalism
discourses but
rather in analyses
of the phenomeno-
logical attributes of
tourism, heritage
and globalization.
Phenomenologically, tourism is a
voluntary, temporary and perspec-
tival interaction with place. Nelson
Graburn drew on Victor Turner’s
understanding of pilgrimage and
ritual to contend that it is undertaken
to experience a formative change
from the everyday. Tourism’s circular,
return-oriented movement provides
a particular ritual structure; it can be
considered not only a rite of passage
but a rite of intensification, a cyclical
rite renewing the social order after
periods of anomie, and may even create
a sense of communitas—a sensation of
Archaeotourism
continued from page 7
expand as a niche leisure tourism
market, pertinent issues will require
more discussion, such as the commod-
ification of the past and the privatiza-
tion of heritage management. These
issues are relevant to anthropolo-
gists and archaeologists engaged in a
critique of archaeotourism as hege-
monic development, as well as those
interested in the economic opportu-
nities that archaeotourism potentially
provides communities. Second, future
studies should both inform archaeol-
ogists of their role within local and
regional economies and also outline
ways to generate more collaborative
archaeological practices that incor-
porate this awareness. Participatory
research approaches in archaeology
do have important contributions to
8
human unity that transcends socio-
political boundaries. Tourism is also
perspectival; John Urry points out that
the meaning of a touristic encounter
is created through the tourist gaze, a
socially organized process of seeing a
place that decontextualizes a site from
its social-spatial milieu and imposes a
narrative claim upon it, like a museum
does to the objects it displays.
Heritage sites’ efficacy in moving
people rests on the perspectival
nature of their encounter. Rather than
being passive or inanimate symbols,
these structures are perceived as
active mediators, binding a soci-
ety’s members in a discrete imagined
community. Heritage sites are thus
often integral to a community’s place-
making strategy, a social and material
process mediated by memory, which
creates emotional attachments among
those who see themselves as part of its
environment. A collectively compre-
hendible narrative claim is created,
linking the individual interactant with
society through the selective employ-
ment of the monument’s own life
story—a claim often built around arbi-
trary yet clearly demarcated bound-
aries that gain precision when defined
in binary opposition to each other;
this often ignites protracted conflicts
among disparate groups vying for
physical and ideological possession of
the place.
make to disciplinary research ethics,
but its practitioners need to become
better informed of the main themes of
development studies
literature before
adopting a disap-
proving position
against attempts to
link archaeotourism
with economic
sustainability. One
possibility is to find
a place for develop-
ment studies in grad-
uate-level training
in archaeology and
in archaeological
research design.
No matter what One development initiative at the Tsodilo Hills was the
side archaeologists creation of a curio shop for community members to sell
find themselves their crafts to tourists to supplement their incomes.
on these debates, In this photo, development workers aid community
members in balancing their financial accounting books.
familiarity with the Photo courtesy Rachel F Giraudo
possibilities and
Angkor Archaeological Park
One example is the Angkor
Archaeological Park, a 400-square-
kilometer World Heritage site
containing the archaeological remains
of roughly 600 years of the Khmer
empire. Articulating claims that his
capital was the cosmological center
of the world, the Vaishnavite king
Suryavarman II created Angkor Wat
as a metonym for Mount Meru. The
rival Shivite kingdom of Champa
staged a devastating attack on Angkor
shortly thereafter but was pushed
out 15 years later by the Mahayana-
Buddhist Jayavarman VII. Arguably
the most powerful Khmer ruler,
Jayavarman sacked Champa’s capital
and undertook an ambitious religious
and urban revitalization program
by commissioning Buddhist monas-
teries, hospitals, rest-houses and an
impressive network of laterite road-
ways stretching from present-day
Thailand to Vietnam. But such an
exposition of power caused an icon-
oclastic backlash, and in the 15th
century the armies of Ayutthaya
captured Angkor for the exposition of
their own political and material claims
as the preeminent force in Southeast
Asia. Performing their annexation of
Khmer power, the Thais carried to
their capital the linga that Jayavarman
had pillaged from Champa, erected
replicas of Angkor Wat and
pitfalls of sustainable development
will help them make smart and crit-
ical contributions to the crux that
IN FOCUS
constructed a new narrative claiming
Angkor was created by the first
Ayutthayan king—which still causes
controversy today. Likewise, after
the French naturalist Henri Mouhot
discovered the temples in 1860, the
French also employed the monuments
to produce Orientalist narratives
positing Western Europeans as heirs
to—and protectors of—the luminous
torch of civilization. Like Jayavarman,
they carried off monumental symbols
to be displayed in their own nascent
nationalistic temples—museums and
World’s Fairgrounds—to mediate
between individuals in France and the
colonial experience in Indochine.
The Heritage-scape
UNESCO’s World Heritage program
reappropriates these sites for their
own global placemaking endeavor,
creating a worldwide imagined
community that I call the heritage-
scape. Positing in its constitution
that people’s identities are problem-
atically based on traditional territorial
conceptions that are constructed and
diffused through these emotionally
charged monuments, UNESCO’s goal
of creating lasting peace includes a
fundamental reworking of the geopo-
litical system not through conquest,
but by reordering individuals’ sense of
place. By simultaneously celebrating
the differences that create conflict,
is the ever-growing phenomenon of
archaeotourism.
Rachel F Giraudo is a PhD candidate
in anthropology at University of
California–Berkeley. Her research
focuses on cultural heritage, tourism
and development in southern Africa.
Her dissertation, based on fieldwork
at the Tsodilo World Heritage Site,
investigates heritage tourism as a
means of sustainable development for
Botswana’s ethnic minorities.
Benjamin W Porter is assistant
professor of Near Eastern archaeology
at University of California–Berkeley.
He is also co-director of the Dhiban
Excavation and Development Project,
an international project based in Jordan
that is designing an archaeological site
for domestic and international visitors
in collaboration with local community
and government agencies.
IN FOCUS
and positing some unanimously
recognizable universal culture,
UNESCO proposes a peaceful world
system based on the structural unity
of difference—a “culture of cultures”
as Sahlins famously wrote. If a heri-
tage object temporally connects
individuals with the socio-spatial
milieu from which they came,
UNESCO’s World Heritage
objects are intended to transcend
the temporal and spatial situat-
edness of one culture’s heritage
claims, ensuring that everyone
equally possesses each World
Heritage site; rather than basing
identities on collective antago-
nism toward difference, tourists
consuming the World Heritage
narrative can celebrate and
internalize diversity.
UNESCO’s process changes a
site’s narrative; it is decontextu-
alized, evaluated for its universal
value, idealized and redefined
by fitting it into a predeter-
mined set of typologies that can
be understood, in part, through
touristic interactions. The site’s
official description is also a
product of politicking as stake-
holders struggle to determine the site’s
specific discourse, often producing
unintended consequences.
For example, the World Heritage
Committee designated Angkor
in 1992 on the basis of four criteria
that oscillate between valorizing the
Khmer empire as profoundly influ-
ential producers of cultural master-
pieces, and another espousing more
Orientalist claims of a civilization that
moved from East to West, leaving
only “remains of … cult structures in
brick and stone.” Its French-colonial
title, Angkor Archaeological Park,
also reveals this discursive oscilla-
tion between the historical focus of
archaeology and
the leisure-oriented activities of a
natural playground.
These narratives are not simply
conceptual but materially manifest
themselves in the manner in which
the site is subsequently conserved
and packaged for touristic consump-
tion. At Angkor, edifices are alterna-
tively “restored” or “preserved.” While
these two terms are used somewhat
November 2010 • Anthropology News
interchangeably in historic preserva-
tion, instantiated within the Angkor
Archaeological Park, they produce the
same two conflicting narratives that
the visitor to Angkor must problem-
atically negotiate. Sites such as Angkor
Wat and the Bayon can be considered
restored—that is, they were cleared of
the jungle’s stranglehold and partially
reconstructed as they are imagined to
have appeared for its intended use by
the host society—espousing a narra-
tive that valorizes Khmer culture.
Consequently, guides pause before
cleaned bas reliefs depicting deities
and daily life-processes to discuss
Khmer history, aesthetics and folklore.
However, sites such as Ta Prohm and
Preah Khan have been preserved—
reinforced, but left in the ruined state
the French found them, “vestiges”
of culture suffocated by nature—
prompting guides to encourage visi-
tors to amble at leisure through the
disarray of crumbled ceilings, cause-
ways and walls.
Unity in Diversity: The
Peacemaking Nature of the
Heritage-scape
Just as Angkor Wat’s meaning is
complexified through tourist interac-
tions with other monuments in the
Angkor Archaeological Park, so too
is its meaning as a World Heritage
site deepened through its juxtaposi-
tion with other dissimilar sites in the
World Heritage List. The heritage-
scape can be considered a map of the
list, its primary geographic features
not national boundaries or political
capitals, but places equal in their asso-
Continue discussing tourism at the 2010 Annual Meeting.
Sessions include:
• Contemplating New Movements in Tourism
• Boundaries in Motion: Narrative, Performance and Tourism
• Heritage and Tourism in Motion
• Mobilities of Development
• Heritage Markets
For details, and to search for more sessions, workshops and papers, go to
www.aaanet.org/meetings.
ciations and value. Like the objects in
a museum, each site gains complexity
through its juxtaposition with the
greater collection of disparate sites
across the heritage-scape. Thus, the
heritage-scape is not simply a network
of specially delineated destinations
with their own local social relations,
but a unique place with its own social
context that is constantly evolving and
expanding.
It is this meta-narrative of “unity
in diversity,” illustrated by the list
and experienced by visitors traveling
the heritage-scape, that can poten-
tially foster “peace in the minds of
men.” These differences ultimately
define us as individuals; these differ-
ences are ultimately what we all share.
These differences make us part of
a human society. Searching for this
difference, for this diversity outside of
the everyday, tourists too become one
with the heritage-scape’s sociality and
form a uniquely universalized iden-
tity. It is this identity—constructed
and continually revised in a dialec-
tical fashion as they amass ever-the-
more interactive experiences within
the heritage-scape—that can create
world peace.
Michael A Di Giovine is a PhD
candidate at the University of
Chicago and author of The Heritage-
scape: UNESCO, World Heritage,
and Tourism (2009). He is currently
researching cultural revitalization in
Southern Italy associated with religious
tourism and the cult of 20th-century
Catholic stigmatic and saint Padre Pio
of Pietrelcina.