THIS article is about thinking heritage and democracy together, in general, and making a case for human rights and heritage in particular. It calls for a renewed cultural politics seeking to both democratize heritage and render democracies more heritage sensitive.

Yet, before we get to that, why bother with dealing with democracy and human rights in the field of heritage? Are democratic principles and institutions really a necessary ingredient for heritage conservation? In times of massive transformation, one could argue that there are more urgent threats to the natural and cultural heritage of our world. Isn’t the heritage field already under enough assault from ruthless developers, poor finance and general government neglect? What’s the point of adding yet a layer of political complexity for overburdened heritage managers already struggling with safeguarding the remains of heritage in the first place? Does this not risk diluting activities even more?

Conversely, the other side – stakeholders promoting grassroots democracy and the like – might ask, is heritage really a necessary means for democracy? For social movements and political parties, questions of heritage may seem marginal in the context of accessing the realms of power and influence, fighting for social justice and maintaining healthy and vibrant democracies. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index recently reported that less than 5% of the world’s population live in a full democracy. Without challenging the criteria and indicators behind such data, the remaining 95%, accordingly, live with a democratic deficit of some kind. Heritage from that angle may be aspired for, but not considered as at the core of the democratic project more concerned with elections, social equity and basic political participation. Yet, look again more carefully.

Whereas politicians may hold back on public finance for heritage conservation, many readily evoke heritage in political campaigns and ceremonial actions in the name of the nation. From holding political meetings and landmark speeches in heritage sites towards the recycling of heritage imagery and narratives in portraying the country, a certain form of instrumental heritage politics appears both evident and common across the globe.

 

Indeed, the risk of populism is ever lurking. Heritage sites and spaces – from natural beauty to cultural monuments – are used as political symbols of nationhood and pride to mobilize the masses or conversely, targeted for destruction as symbols of domination. In either case, heritage complexity is replaced by narrative simplicity, political polarization and, very often, social, religious and ethnic exclusion. While the destruction of heritage in places like Palmyra has been widely condemned in recent years, we need to recognize that the hijacking or instrumentalization of heritage values for a wide range of other political and economic purposes is now pervasive, even predominant in certain contexts. It is no longer the historical trace or intrinsic natural values as such which matters, but how such traces and features in the landscape are being recycled in contemporary politics and business operations.

The spectacle of heritage shows catering to the ever-growing domestic and international tourism consumption is another case in point. While often framed as a win-win in terms of coupling heritage conservation with carefully massaged heritage ‘products’, it raises fundamental questions about the nature of contemporary heritage values and their more or less subtle transformation. It also raises core questions about how such additional value production and transformation is potentially captured or controlled by a minority or conversely, mobilized to be shared more equitably. I say this not to challenge the idea of tourism as such, but rather that we need to recognize head-on that heritage has shifted from being a marginal concern of a few towards being employed in central political narratives of identity, economic activity and other forms of value. Still, it is striking how heritage policy repeatedly remains silent about this – constantly growing – elephant in the room.

 

For people working in the heritage field, this may still lead to declining budgets, privatized heritage operations, politics of visibilizing heritage and a general pressure on heritage management to act entrepreneurially. For people living in these areas, the transformations may be equally important. In the name of rendering sites clean, beautified and ‘true’ to the imagery being produced, local rural and urban populations often find themselves sidelined. While expected to carry the burden of the living heritage of the area, locals are confronted with the politics of displacement, political imperatives and investment hungry business actors rendering everyday life complicated. Of course, the reader may argue that there is more to it than a bleak story of heritage capture and marginality. Heritage projects may offer new job and income opportunities, allow for the revitalization of heritage practices, and restore and protect what would otherwise be lost. So what’s the problem?

The problem, exactly, is the narrow politics of how heritage decisions are made, resulting in uncertain outcomes about how heritage values are defined, whose voice counts and what local concerns are considered legitimate. The common pattern of uneven decision-making and inequitable social outcomes has long been observed in the heritage field. Yet, it is striking just how little policy attention these core dimensions of heritage practice receive.

 

It is no coincidence that the 2017 Delhi Declaration on Heritage and Democracy calls for ethical principles in heritage, inclusive democratic community processes and ensuring the continuity of living heritage. ‘Of all the people, by all the people, for all the people’, the Declaration readily proclaims. Decisions have for far too long been taken by the few without an ethical basis, undermining rather than nurturing living heritage.

Why then the silence in national frameworks? Has twenty years of preaching heritage for the people only met deaf ears? Whereas both natural and cultural heritage discourse speaks to the minds and hearts of the people, even catering to their stomachs through promises of local benefits and development, practice reveals far more murky waters polluted by both economic and political interests. If in the past heritage was the domain of the few (princes, priests and politicians), it is today ‘a fundamental right and responsibility of all’, the Delhi Declaration underlines.

Yet, is it really so? Moving towards more demos in the heritage field is by no means automatic. Consider the recently adopted UNESCO World Heritage Policy (2015) to address sustainable development concerns. Critical features of the policy include calls for mainstreaming a human rights based approach, gender equality and promoting social inclusion. The reason why this is listed is exactly because it remains a deep-running challenge for the States Parties to the 1972 convention to address its social deficit. The need to democratize heritage remains a real political challenge, and it is arguably time to move from words to action.

 

Yet, what about the call to render democracies more heritage based? What might this actually mean? Is this yet another well crafted policy ambition by heritage professionals to pitch their concerns to politicians in a call for more attention and resources. If outstanding heritage has a history of prompting action by singular politicians, protectors and princes, what on earth do pristine and unique places do for the poor (other than drain resources which might elsewise be invested in social support schemes)? Consider for a moment the number of heritage defenders facing violence, stigma and threats in their efforts to defend natural and cultural heritage. Whether called environmental, human rights or heritage defenders, such individuals, and the groups they represent, signify how questions of environment, culture and identity may matter in both an individual and collective sense. While such strivings for social and environmental justice should not be conflated with heritage as an elite project, it nevertheless points to heritage as a people concern.

Yet, even as we move towards ever inclusive global participatory policy frameworks, the actual democratic spaces left for grassroots driven environment and cultural heritage appear ever shrinking. Not only are some local heritage defenders being harassed and subjected to physical violence, some are even being branded as terrorists. The recent examples of UN Special Rapporteur Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Joan Carling and other indigenous peoples’ rights defenders being blacklisted by the Philippines government are paralled by similar stigma and criminalization elsewhere.¹ This is, of course, not only deplorable and a violation of basic human rights in itself, it also illustrates the deepening gap between the polarization of heritage practice and the omnipresent call for public participation. More needs to be done to bridge this gap in real rather than rhetorical terms.

 

Indeed, the sheer presence of democratic systems is in itself (obviously) no panacea for achieving equitable heritage conservation. Some democratically elected politicians may readily engage in dismantling a heritage system built up over decades and thereby challenge the very foundations of conservation concepts. What then is the role and potential of heritage in the bigger picture of global change, inequalities and drive for democracy? There are solid reasons to question public action to downgrade heritage as a second rank collective priority. As the witch hunt against heritage defenders intensifies, it also displays the crude power games being played out to restrict and contain heritage thinking and practice. Political and economic elites may seek to maintain control, whether through colonial legacies, newly framed alliances or age-old divides structuring the nation state and society. Heritage, from this sense, may be instrumentalized as a means to conserve and sustain.

Yet, the same elites may also engage in a plural governance reform project to restructure the state to level the playing field and give space to multiple heritages in a far more inclusive manner, which goes well beyond recognition and financing of heritage schemes. This opens up for a renewed cultural politics, where democratic structure and practice is not blind to cultural diversity and social inequality.

 

So what might this new politics of democratizing heritage and rendering democracies heritage based look like? Both heritage and democracy are more than staple ingredients of political rhetoric. They raise concrete questions about how heritage practice addresses its deep running democratic deficit, and how democratic practice reflects – or neglects – the diversity of heritage values and practices.

If both strands of action raise separate concerns and entry points, they are also linked in several ways. Consider the topic of human rights based approaches, recently adopted by the World Heritage Convention as part of its sustainability framework. On the one hand, the very spirit of human rights concerns questions of voice, participation and accountability. Improving the score in those three areas is no minor challenge for heritage institutions. It is clear that ensuring systemic improvements will likely depend on the very quality and nature of wider governance systems in the first place. Democratizing heritage, in other words, is likely to mirror the quality of a country’s democratic institutions and mechanisms.

Recent research on the intersection between human rights and heritage practice in the Asia-Pacific region,² for example, demonstrates how national legal frameworks are far more influential than global UNESCO frameworks in shaping site management. Indeed, the current decline of democratic institutions and rise of populism may well result in heritage being once again instrumentalized as a polarizing, rather than reconciliatory, force.

This being said, the heritage field may equally in many ways spearhead action and approaches, which tie democratic action and heritage together in new ways. In other words, there is no excuse for sitting back and awaiting national governance frameworks to improve before action is taken.

 

The field of rights based approaches illustrates the opportunities ahead. At the global level, the ‘Our Common Dignity’ initiative uniting the advisory body to the World Heritage Convention has advanced a series of recommendations to reform the global World Heritage system in favour of more human rights sensitive approaches.³ At the national level, several groups of heritage professionals, thinkers and community organizations are recommending action to reform outdated heritage legislation and replace it with more grassroots oriented frameworks.

In India, ICOMOS India has initiated work to reflect on rights based approaches. Critical areas identified include the need to reflect on how heritage is identified, the specific narratives involved, policy frameworks and the need to reflect customary rights of heritage custodians. The Indian experience is not alone. Across all the countries in the Asia-Pacific study listed above,⁴ a series of both policy and site-based management assessments in other countries such as Australia, Nepal, Philippines and Vietnam testify to growing opportunities for rights based action in rather different political, economic and social contexts.

The exercise of interlinking heritage and democracy should not merely be reduced to indicating a possibility, nor only preparing a manifesto. The two are already mutually imbricated. This common space is not just about what states do to protect heritage (and whether they go about it ‘democratically’), but what makes up states and ties them to citizens across past, present and future in the first place. This is not to say that heritage and democracy will eventually co-evolve, let alone converge. Indeed, we know of undemocratic heritage protection persisting despite calls for change, just as we experience age-old democracies turning heritage blind. The social consequences and profound risks are numerous, and increasingly well documented. Yet even those cases should not lead to despondency.

 

On the contrary, as I meet site managers and communities seeking to reconcile heritage values, political pressures and everyday livelihoods, ideals of voice and representation repeatedly resonate as a common aspiration. Their concerns cannot wait, but urgently need further dialogue to bring life back to heritage. And, in some respects, heritage back to life. For communities and heritage site managers, heritage destruction, commodification and displacement are not theoretical concepts for debate but rather real threats to the very social, natural and cultural fabric making up their everyday environments. We owe it to them to step out of ivory towers and into the nuts and bolts of rendering heritage more democratic, and democracies heritage bound.

If heritage thinkers have long been fond of reinventing heritage discourse, doctrines and narratives, the true battlefields now lie in the area of securing equitable practice on the ground. Such cultural politics are confined to the wording and recommendations for action. It hinges upon what difference we can make from our respective positions in terms of how heritage is thought of, enacted and sustained in partnership with its custodians.

 

Footnotes:

1. For more information see: https://www.iwgia.org/en/news/3239-update-indigenous-leaders-are-threatened-by-duterte-in-the-philippines

2. P.B. Larsen (ed.), World Heritage and Human Rights: Lessons from the Asia Pacific and the Global Arena. Earthscan/Routledge, London, 2018.

3. A. Sinding-Larsen and P.B. Larsen (eds.), Our Common Dignity Initiative – Rights-Based Approaches in World Heritage – Taking Stock and Looking Forward (Advisory Body Activities between 2011 and 2016), An Advisory Body Report. Oslo, ICOMOS Norway, 2017.

4. P.B. Larsen (ed.), op. cit., fn. 2.