Heritage diplomacy

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of heritage diplomacy. To date much of the analysis regarding the politics of heritage has focused on contestation, dissonance and conflict. Heritage diplomacy seeks to address this imbalance by critically examining themes such as cooperation, cultural aid and hard power, and the ascendency of intergovernmental and non-governmental actors as mediators of the dance between nationalism and internationalism. The paper situates heritage diplomacy within broader histories of international governance and diplomacy itself. These are offered to interpret the interplay between the shifting forces and structures, which, together, have shaped the production, governance and international mobilisation of heritage in the modern era. A distinction between heritage as diplomacy and in diplomacy is outlined in order to reframe some of the ways in which heritage has acted as a constituent of cultural nationalisms, international relations and globalisation. In mapping out directions for further enquiry, I argue the complexities of the international ordering of heritage governance have yet to be teased out. A framework of heritage diplomacy is thus offered in the hope that it can do some important analytical work in the field of critical heritage theory, opening up some important but under theorised aspects of heritage analysis.

Keywords:

• heritage diplomacy
• cultural diplomacy
• governance
• international relations
• UNESCO

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge Toyah Horman for her help in organising and clarifying data in this paper. This work was supported by the Australia Research Council Discovery Scheme under Grant DP140102991 – The Crisis in International Heritage Conservation in an Age of Shifting Global Power.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Cited from Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, School of Humanistic Studies. 1960. Aims of the Courses. Calcutta: p1. See File: 008(540) A 01 RMIC, UNESCO Archives, Paris.

2. Cited from Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, School of Humanistic Studies. 1960. Aims of the Courses. Calcutta: p3–4. See File: 008(540) A 01 RMIC, UNESCO Archives, Paris.

3. US National Commission for UNESCO Statement by Dr George N Shuster, NC(54)7. UNESCO archives, Paris, File no X 07.21 (470) Relations with USSR – Official Part I up to 31/XII/63.

4. For further details of ISESCO activities and regional influence see Winter (2014).

5. BRICS is the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP140102991].