A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace

by Lynn Meskell

Overview

Best known for its World Heritage program committed to "the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 as an intergovernmental agency aimed at fostering peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding. Its mission was inspired by leading European intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, and Aldous and Julian Huxley. Often critiqued for its inherent Eurocentrism, UNESCO and its World Heritage program today remain embedded within modernist principles of "progress" and "development" and subscribe to the liberal principles of diplomacy and mutual tolerance. However, its mission to prevent conflict, destruction, and intolerance, while noble and much needed, increasingly falls short, as recent battles over the World Heritage sites of Preah Vihear, Chersonesos, Jerusalem, Palmyra, Aleppo, and Sana'a, among others, have underlined.

A Future in Ruins is the story of UNESCO's efforts to save the world's heritage and, in doing so, forge an international community dedicated to peaceful co-existence and conservation. It traces how archaeology and internationalism were united in Western initiatives after the political upheavals of the First and Second World Wars. This formed the backdrop for the emergent hopes of a better world that were to captivate the "minds of men." UNESCO's leaders were also confronted with challenges and conflicts about their own mission. Would the organization aspire to intellectual pursuits that contributed to the dream of peace or instead be relegated to an advisory and technical agency? An eye-opening and long overdue account of a celebrated yet poorly understood agency, A Future in Ruins calls on us all to understand how and why the past comes to matter in the present, who shapes it, and who wins or loses as a consequence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197503188
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/20/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lynn Meskell is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, and Honorary Professor in the School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Her previous books include Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt, The Nature of Culture: The New South Africa, and, as editor, Global Heritage: A Reader.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Chapter 1: Utopia
Chapter 2: Internationalism
Chapter 3: Technocracy
Chapter 4: Conservation
Chapter 5: Inscription
Chapter 6: Conflict
Chapter 7: Danger
Chapter 8: Dystopia

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"A timely and important work that combines anthropology, politics, and archaeology to consider the history and legacy of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).... The author's honest, thought-provoking treatment brings into question the abilities and benefits of UNESCO while highlighting some of the complex political and historical actions that have brought about the precarious role it now plays.... Highly recommended."— CHOICE

"A trustworthy guide through the thicket of committees, conventions, and campaigns that have defined World Heritage at the international level... Meskell builds an exemplary work of international history of World Heritage by weaving together case studies from around the world" — Sarah Griswold, Oklahoma State University, Journal of Contemporary History

"Reading A Future in Ruins is a valuable experience that needs to be shared widely across archaeology, cultural heritage studies, and related disciplines. It is a process of revisiting the consequences of allowing the bureaucratic machine of 'world heritage production' to roll on unchallenged, a journey which is best undertaken without predetermined notions coming from a detailed review of its contents." — Emily Hanscam , European Journal of Archaeology

"A Future in Ruins transcends the boundaries of history, archaeology, politics and anthropology... an enlightening and enjoyable book to read." — Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review

"This is a highly original and timely reassessment of UNESCO's checkered global mission since the late 1940s. While Meskell's book is ostensibly about UNESCO, world heritage, and the changing practices of archaeology, it is also a powerful rereading of international history and the broader politics of preservation in today's world. For those interested in the history of internationalism, contemporary global politics, and heritage studies, this is a must read." —Paul Betts, University of Oxford

"A Future in Ruins represents the first in-depth analysis of UNESCO from its heady beginnings in a postwar world to the very different political and cultural attitudes to heritage in the present. Meskell brings her considerable analytical skills to bear on the personalities and structures of the organization and the material remains on which they focused. This is a book for anyone concerned with the past and present of global heritage." —Chris Gosden, University of Oxford

"This timely book's insight and subtlety will set the diplomatic world by its ears. Meskell shows how UNESCO's pious pose of cultural universalism masks nationalistic-and Eurocentric—pursuits. Her argument steadily moves us toward the unexpected revelation that UNESCO's interventions, understood by the world's disenfranchised as redolent of Western arrogance, increase the threat to the cultural treasures they are supposed to protect." —Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

"Meskell has written a timely and important work that combines anthropology, politics, and archaeology to consider the history and legacy of UNESCO...The author's honest, thought-provoking treatment brings into question the abilities and benefits of UNESCO while highlighting some of the complex political and historical actions that have brought about the precarious role it now plays."- Choice

"Making an argument for urgently needed reform, Meskell presents numerous case studies and an analysis of UNESCO'S legal framework, which is vulnerable to manipulation by corrupt actors."- The New Yorker, Briefly Noted Section

"In A Future in Ruins, archaeologist Lynn Meskell offers an institutional ethnography of UNESCO. The organization's broad remit ranges from publishing to promoting women in science, but Meskell focuses exclusively on its role in protecting world heritage and archaeology, particularly through the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Inevitably, this role has been highly political. UNESCO's mission was to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally, Meskell observes. Yet increasingly, she argues, its efforts are caught up in the proliferation and prolongation of local conflicts and tensions...Meskell offers a trenchant critique of how UNESCO's aim of preventing war sits oddly with projects commemorating sites associated with violence [while noting] notes that international recognition enshrines only one version of history."- Nature

From the Publisher

2018-04-16
Dissension and controversy have plagued the identification and care of World Heritage sites.Meskell (Anthropology/Stanford Univ.; The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa, 2011, etc.) examines the origin, mission, and impact of UNESCO's World Heritage program, offering a well-researched argument that UNESCO has become "a mere shadow of its former ambition for peace and mutual understanding between peoples." The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was founded in London in 1945, responding to the war's "programmatic devastation of culture and heritage." Its lofty mission was to foster peace, provide humanitarian assistance, and promote intercultural respect. This utopian goal included saving archaeological and cultural sites throughout the world, deeming them treasures for all of humanity. Meskell notes, to her regret, that archaeological research soon became subsumed "and heritage more likely to be considered architecture." Rather than support excavations, which had the potential to reveal knowledge of the ancient past, UNESCO's World Heritage program shifted to preservation and restoration of monuments that attracted tourism. Once described as "the laboratory of ideas," UNESCO evolved into an "agency for branding" when it created a list of World Heritage sites that provoked competition among countries vying for the prestige of having a site inscribed. Because European nations were prominent in vetting the World Heritage List, non-Western countries felt slighted. Meskell portrays UNESCO as a bureaucracy mired in paper: "handbooks, manuals, guidelines, and other documents in multiple languages"; thousands of pages of documentation must be provided to support an application for inscription. Acceptance to the list sometimes causes unforeseen problems, as with Cambodia's Preah Vihear Temple, for example, when inscription "inflamed a long-standing history of violence" between Cambodia and Thailand and involved the U.S., as well, when companies, such as Chevron, coveted access to natural gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand. The creation of World Heritage sites, Meskell asserts, has "implications for power, authority, and legitimation" that may expose a "collision of worldviews" and even incite "dystopian scenarios" where terrorists or dissidents intentionally target listed sites.A revealing investigation of the complexities of UNESCO's mission.

Kirkus Reviews