World Heritage and Conflict - Period 5

In this course students are made familiar with the (inter)national political framework that shapes our contemporary interaction with and debates on cultural heritage. The meaning of the concept of heritage has radically changed throughout the years, it has grown from 'monument' to the slightly larger concept of 'site', to 'setting', areas and cities and finally to landscape. But today, heritage can also refer to immaterial culture: practices, stories, theatre, etcetera. In this course however, we will talk about a very specific category of heritage: UNESCO World Heritage. What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application? UNESCO claims that World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located. During this course we will focus on the way in which UNESCO seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. By discussing critically recent academic, political and public debates on individual World Heritage Sites that somehow have become sites of conflict, you will reflect upon what is called the'heritage paradox' - the constant tension between processes of signification, appropriation and sharing, the management of future changes and the urge to protect the relics of the past. Three aspects of world heritage will be central in this course:
- Outstanding Universal Value(OUV) and the supranational character of
world heritage
- Experience and enjoyment of world heritage: tourism
- World heritage under threat: conflict

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.