Heritage Discourses

The UNESCO World Heritage List is often perceived as a prestigious collection of showcased sites of local and national pride, but it can likewise be understood as a global standard-setting instrument, which defines the future representation of humanity's shared heritage, a global cultural history in the making.

In light of this, the List and its decision-making body, the World Heritage Committee, have been criticized for lack of credibility following allegedly inconsistent or even contradictory decisions, and a growing tendency towards politicization. Heritage professionals, scholars, and the international media voiced concerns that its members started bending their own rules, in order to please their mutual loyalties.

Based on multi-disciplinary paradigms and a triangulation of qualitative research methods, the research project analyses the decision-making processes and the organizational culture of the World Heritage Committee, which provides the stage and dynamics for the production of World Heritage. It thereby aims to understand individual and group motivations and ethics within the process of World Heritage production. Finally, the research seeks to outline, in a proactive fashion, amended or alternative models, which have the potential to avert the criticism currently raised and may contribute to sustain the credibility of World Heritage representation and preservation.