Christoph Brumann, David Berliner, eds, <em>World heritage on the ground: Ethnographic perspectives</em>, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Publishers, 2016, pp. 327
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2914
Recensione di Christoph Brumann, David Berliner, eds, World heritage on the ground. Ethnographic perspectives, New York-Oxford, Berghahn Publishers, 2016, pp. 327. 
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Christoph Brumann, David Berliner, eds, <em>World heritage on the ground: Ethnographic perspectives</em>, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Publishers, 2016, pp. 327
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Christoph Brumann, David Berliner, eds, <em>World heritage on the ground: Ethnographic perspectives</em>, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Publishers, 2016, pp. 327
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                                          2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 329-332




                                                                          RECENSIONI
Cristoph BRUMANN, David BERLINER (eds) ⎸World Heritage on the Ground.
Ethnographic Perspectives, New York and Oxford, Berghahn Publishers,
2016, pp. 327.


   The book edited by Christoph Brumann and David Berliner is offering
what it promises, meaning a perfect articulation of two equally legitimate
approaches: a top-down one, investigating UNESCO’s World Heritage as a
global institution, and a grass-roots one, searching for local applications and
implications of patrimonial decisions taken up-there. As he confesses,
Brumann has «never done such a World Heritage site study» but has a huge
experience in «participant observation of accessible meetings of the World
Heritage system» (Brumann 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014). On the other side, David
Berliner has an intensive fieldwork experience with Luang Prabang in Laos
(Berliner, 2010, 2011, 2012). At the crossroad of these views and interests
arises the general question of the book: «What does World Heritage actually
do on the ground of the World Heritage properties, far away from the
meeting halls where the committee takes its decisions? » The general
answer, as Berliner has it, is that «by attempting to preserve spaces, practices
and objects, UNESCO experts and national heritage professionals effectively
transform them».
   If patrimony/heritage is an old concern, its global dimension – greatly
fuelled by UNESCO policies – is rather a more recent one. It is rooted, in a
way, in a warmhearted and broader UNESCO project inspired by its first
president, Julian Huxley: the writing of a History of Mankind, leaving Euro-
centrism behind and offering an image of peace and understanding to the
traumatized post-war humanity (Duedahl, 2011; see also Cameron and
Rössler, 2013). Ascribing global time and meaning to local people was
already in the air. The project as such failed, but the road of heritage proved
to be much more successful for achieving the same goal. Convention after

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Vintilă Mihăilescu
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 329-332.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2914
330                         CRISTOPH BRUMANN, DAVID BERLINER ⎸WORLD HERITAGE ON THE GROUND


convention, UNESCO was opening up the field of patrimony, bridging natural
and cultural patrimony, material and immaterial ones, and shifting from
legacy to heritage in order to link past with future and ensure sustainable
development. Soon it became an all-embracing «allegory» (Choay, 1996),
produced its own vocabulary and values (e.g. Harrison, 2013; Samuels and
Rico, 2015), and provoked in return more and more critics, theoretical and
empirical alike. Usually dispersed in different publications, such
contributions to patrimony issues in general and UNESCO World Heritage in
particular started to be more and more packed together by common topics,
cultural spaces or shared approaches in reference collective volumes (e.g. the
Berghahn Key Issues in Cultural Heritage Series edited by William Logan and
Laurajane Smith).
   In this flourishing context, Brumann and Berliner’s collection of
«ethnographies of encounters » stands out by its problematic unity beyond
the diversity of empirical evidences, every author tracking what happens
between UNESCO offices and UNESCO protected heritage he/she is observing
«on the ground», and raising, from the point of view of his/her personal field
experience, those «fundamental questions (UNESCO’s) bureaucratic
machinery has often little time for asking ».
   With one single exception, the case studies in this volume are chosen from
around the non-Euro-American world, in remote places mainly approached
through the «tourist gaze» (Urry, 2002): the Medina of Fez (Morocco), the
Mosques in Timbuktu (Mali), the old town of Lijiand and the Yin Xu
archeological site (China), Luang Prabang (Laos), Angkor (Cambodia),
Borobudur and Prambanan temples (Indonesia), Chichén Itzá (Mexic), The
Kondoa-Irangi Rock Art, the Tadrart Acasus, and the Valcamonica Rock
Drawings sites (Tanzania, Libya, and Italy), Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove
(Nigeria), and Mapungubwe Cultural Lanscape (South Africa). The
corresponding ethnographies are regrouped in three parts: Cities,
Archeological sites, and Cultural landscapes. While all are critical – and
sometimes even overwhelmed by disappointment (Jasper Chalcraft) – none
of the authors are either «patrimony believers» or «patrimony atheists» as
Brumann (2014) has it, but just committed to the results of their in depth
ethnographies.
   The eleven case studies are eleven different situations too, with their
particular contexts, stakes, social actors and/or values. Nevertheless, in
different ways and degrees, some fundamental critics and questions passes
all of them. Up-stream, there is the founding question about «who’s
patrimony? », explicitly addressed by Noel Salazar. Traditionally, «these

2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 329-332
CRISTOPH BRUMANN, DAVID BERLINER ⎸WORLD HERITAGE ON THE GROUND                        331


outstanding sites ‘belonged’ to the world» (Barthel-Bouchier and Hui, 2007,
apud Salazar, p. 147); but how can a local/national patrimony be
deterritorialized? Taking place «on the ground», World Heritage literally
makes place. Complementary, it makes time, inscribing local (hy)stories in a
global History, thus imposing an universalistic view – which Jasper Chalcraft
does not hesitate to call «a kind of colonial imposition» (Chalcraft 2016: 219)
– over local visions of both past and present. Then come a multi-layer
system of global-national-local interactions of actors and competing stakes.
Coming to the ground, UNESCO policies are filtered by national ones,
sometimes conflicting between them. Sometimes, interaction may go also
the other way around: unable to ensure the protection of their own
outstanding heritage, states may call on UNESCO protection. Further on,
World Heritage values are not necessarily fitting with local meanings and
interests. Most of the locals do enjoy the material benefits that come with
patrimonialization, but in most of the case this is true just for a part of them:
staging World Heritage brings touristification, which further on implies
gentrification and in most of the cases de-localization of the traditional
residents. Cultural Landscape convention may conserve a history and value-
laden local space by turning it to a global framed heritage-scape, but it may
also “save” it from the locals’ own concurrent and sui generis particular
heritage-scapes. As Manon Istasse highlights in an insightful manner when
presenting the case of the medina in Fez, such heritage-scapes are also a
question of «affect and senses». Or, «World Heritage policies and heritage
policies in general (…) miss both the sensory and the affective aspects of
heritage. (…) This stance – she concludes – often leads (heritage experts) to
deny any heritage competences to inhabitants» (Istasse 2016: 37): a
heritage-scape is what it has to be for everybody, not what residents do feel
about it.
   On another side, UNESCO’s World Heritage policies and values are
challenged by business interests, «patrimony entrepreneurs» having
frequently the last word in the local implementation of the heritage project.
The question then arises: sustainable development for who?
   Last but not least, as dramatically exposed by Charlotte Joy in the cases of
Tinbuktu and Djenné, what if your heritage is my offense, if international
protection of your sacred heritage is my «on the ground» blasphemy?
   After reading the whole volume, the least one can say is that World
Patrimony is not always a blessing for its local “owners”. The
“democratization of heritage” promoted by UNESCO is welcomed, of course,
by millions of foreign tourists and is feeding their “exo-nostalgia”, but is also

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332                         CRISTOPH BRUMANN, DAVID BERLINER ⎸WORLD HERITAGE ON THE GROUND


overwhelming locals’ «endo-nostalgia», as Berliner has it. Whatever its good
intentions, UNESCO cannot be considered thus as totally innocent of what’s
going on «on the ground».
   But does this mean that UNESCO is guilty? The editors make it clear at the
end of their introduction:
      The chapters (in this book) should curtail over-enthusiastic belief in the idea
      that an appreciation for heritage can simply be transported intact over large
      spatial and cultural distances: what we present are mixed and often complex
      messages. They neither unanimously speak for demonizing the World Heritage
      venture, nor do they encourage its glorification» (Brumann, Berliner 2016: 28).




                                                                  Vintilă MIHĂILESCU
           National School of Political Studies and Administration, Bucharest
                                                         mihailescuvintila@gmail.com




2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 329-332
