Inviting all humanity to an elite club? Understanding tensions in UNESCO’s global heritage regimes through the lens of a typology of goods

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to reflect on heritage diplomacy by analysing the nature of tensions in Global Heritage Regimes (GHRs) built around the World Heritage Convention and the Intangible Heritage Convention. Combining regime theory with Ostroms’ typology of goods, we claim that the process of transforming the abstract idea of ‘Heritage of Humanity’ (HoH) into an outcome in the form of a heritage list needs to mobilise heritage as diplomacy and also is the result of heritage as diplomacy. At the same time, the transformation generates tension based on the experienced delusion of (1) the expectations built upon the inclusive idea of the ‘Heritage of Humanity’ (public good) and (2) the exclusive character of heritage lists (club goods). We claim that this ‘Inclusion-Exclusion Tension’ (IET) is an inherent element of global heritage regime design and as such needs to be managed through diplomatic efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage diplomacy
• UNESCO
• global heritage regimes
• heritage lists
• typology of goods

Acknowledgments

The authors of this paper acknowledge that the presented research results benefited from the National Science Council, Sonata 15 research grant no. 2019/35/D/HS5/04247, Between the heritage of the world and the heritage of humanity: studying international heritage regimes through the lens of Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. They also want to express their gratitude to the Workshop Ostrom scholars for their insightful comments and inspiring discussions during Hanna Schreiber’s research visit in Spring 2022. Special thanks go to Scott Shackelford, Michael McGinnis, Daniel Cole and Veeshan Rayamajhee for their detailed and helpful remarks as well as to Charlotte Hess for inspiring discussions on the topic of the paper. The paper has also significantly benefited from the critical remarks of two anonymous reviewers, editors of this volume as well as from the valuable support of Julia Krzesicka, Katarzyna Piotrowska, and Tomasz Wiśniewski.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We decided to capitalise the term ‘Heritage of Humanity’ despite the common practice to write it as ‘common heritage’, ‘heritage of humanity’, or ‘heritage of mankind’. The reason behind this decision is that we consider it as a fundamental idea for the establishment, design, functioning, and structure of Global Heritage Regimes.

2. We deliberately chose for our analysis the two UNESCO heritage lists that are widely considered crucial and garner great international interest and attention. We are fully aware, however, of the existence of other listing mechanisms in the UNESCO Heritage Conventions. The 1972 Convention established the List of World Heritage in Danger (currently including 52 properties), whereas the 2003 Convention established the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Need of Urgent Safeguarding and the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices (currently containing 71 elements from 38 countries and 29 good safeguarding practices from 26 countries). The number of elements inscribed into those lists alone proves, however, that it is appropriate to consider the WH List (currently 1154 inscriptions from 167 countries) and the ICH List (currently 529 elements from 135 countries) to be the most important ones.

3. It is worth noting, however, that GHRs are also composed of other sub-regimes, e.g. administrative or non-governmental sub-regimes. We do not aim to characterise them here, we only acknowledge their existence.

4. We deliberately exclude from our analysis long discussions and treaty law built around the concept of the ‘common heritage of mankind’ applied to outer space, poles (especially Antarctica), and high seas. See more on this concept: Shackelford (2009), Shackelford (2020).

5. We are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

6. We are thankful to an anonymous reviewer and to Katarzyna Piotrowska for pointing this out.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by  Narodowe Centrum Nauki [Sonata 15, 2019/35/D/HS5/04247].

Notes on contributors

Hanna Schreiber

Hanna Schreiber is PI of the 3-years research grant on the application of Elinor Ostrom’s methodology to the field of UNESCO international heritage regimes. She is the President of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Council of the Capital City of Warsaw (Poland) since 2020, actively engaged in the UNESCO 2003 Convention field as an expert, global facilitator, state representative or NGO representative since 2015. Active member of ILA, ESIL, IASC and ACHS.

Bartosz Pieliński

Bartosz Pieliński was Vice-Director of the Institute of Social Policy at the University of Warsaw in 2016-2019. Since 2017, he has been a Management Committee Member in ‘Empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars,’ a project financed by COST European Cooperation in Science & Technology. In 2019, he became Steering Committee Member in ‘Coordinating and Advancing Analytical Approaches for Policy Design,’ a project financed by the U.S. National Science Foundation. He co-founded the Institutional Grammar Research Initiative (IGRI).