Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

World Heritage Sites: Places of Conflict, or of Peace?

By Michael A. Di Giovine

UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, particularly those in hotspots of geopolitical conflict, have been in the news this past month. The Wall Street Journal published a photo essay on some of the most recently designated sites. And while the Palestinian Authority reportedly has nominated Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity—believed to be Jesus’ birthplace—to the prestigious World Heritage List, Cambodians and Thais have engaged in bloody shootouts that have left nearly 10 dead over the remote Khmer temple of Preah Vihear. What are these sites and why do they captivate the imaginations, and ideologies, of so many people?

Ratified in 1972, the World Heritage Convention designates local places of historical, cultural, or artistic interest as “universal heritage.” In The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism, I argue that this is not empty political maneuvering, but rather a way to foster “peace in the minds of men”, as the Preamble to UNESCO’s Constitution urges, by creating a vast heritage-scape that is bound together by these places of universal significance. Mixing such different sites together, the heritage-scape makes it clear that what unifies all of us is our diversity.

Why do countries agree to “give up” their locality to the universality of the heritage-scape, and adopt the costly regulations UNESCO imposes? Contrary to public belief, a designation does not win the country funding—which is disbursed on a case-by-case basis for training. Rather, these countries respond to the prestige factor associated with site designation.

Just being on the List not only adds value to a nation-state (“we have one of the most important places in the world!”), but allows some of the smallest countries to be counted with the big ones, equating lesser-known monuments like Preah Vihear with popular places such as Venice and Angkor Wat. Without discounting any of the good intensions on the part of the Palestinian Authority, this certainly is a motivating factor: getting on the list means sitting at the same table as other countries; it is one step closer to being recognized as a legitimate state. The fact that Palestine has chosen a (non-Muslim) site important to many Westerners to represent itself on the global stage is therefore no accident; rather, it is a way of claiming to share in Western heritage, and to be its ally rather than its enemy.

While Palestine is betting on a site that is not fully considered “Palestinian” by its people, most World Heritage sites are deeply rooted in the culture and ideology of a nation-state. Many, like Preah Vihear, are claimed by multiple countries. A 9th-century monastery straddling a long-contested portion of the Thai-Cambodian border (its main structure is in Cambodia, but it’s only accessible through Thailand), Preah Vihear was designated for Cambodia in 2008 after a deal was brokered between the now-deposed Thai government of Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodia’s Hun Sen. The Thai opposition party immediately stoked intense local feelings for Preah Vihear, setting in motion a series of uprisings and coups that toppled Shinawatra’s government and continues to this day.

UNESCO could have handled the situation differently by not attributing an “owner” country to Preah Vihear (like Jerusalem), or, better, by requiring both countries to share the temple (there are already several so-called “transnational sites”). The latter would have the added value of diplomatically illustrating UNESCO’s peacemaking claims of “unity in diversity.” Provided it joins the World Heritage Convention, the Palestinian Authority’s request can provide UNESCO with a second chance to truly foster peace diplomatically; let’s hope the Church of the Nativity fares better than Preah Vihear—it has unfortunately seen enough combat already.

Michael A. Di Giovine is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago, a former tour operator, and the author of The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism. He is currently researching heritage, pilgrimage and cultural revitalization associated with the cult of Catholic saint and stigmatic, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

Witnessing Genocide, Commemorating the Holocaust

By Jürgen Matthäus

Many of those who report or write about genocides stress one aspect of their experiences: the strong feedback they get from survivors who find some level of comfort in the opportunity to share, often for the first time, their painful stories. State documents and historical analyses might reflect the causes and conditions that led to organized mass murder; yet its full meaning can only be grasped by listening to those who have experienced firsthand what it means to become a victim of genocide. These voices often attain an important, at times iconographic role in the attempt of commemorating or otherwise coming to grips with a murderous past.

By its very nature, genocide precludes the full scale of destruction and despair caused among its victims from coming to light as it aims at killing most if not all of those who could bear witness, and furthermore at obliterating from the historical record their words and their writings. Yet even in a case like the Holocaust, in which the Nazi leadership set out to bring about a “final solution of the Jewish question” by murdering all Jewish men, women, and children within the German grasp, the genocidaires did not fully achieve their goal. Despite a staggering death toll and the destruction of the most vibrant centers of Jewish life in Europe, there was and is a surviving remnant of Jews who could attest to what had happened to them, their families and neighbors; and there is a significant yet disparate and dispersed set of testimonies produced at the time of persecution by Jews, many of whom did not live to see the end of the war.

Survivors of the Holocaust and sources produced during the Nazi era add a universe of facets to the history of the “final solution”; yet they often do not tell a comprehensive story that matches the accounts presented in ex post studies aiming at featuring the defining features of the era. This is not surprising: first, the life story of a genocide survivor reflects primarily his or her personal experiences and only indirectly the more abstract and broad phenomena historians write about. And second, the encounters, expectations and anxieties expressed by someone writing a diary or letter while the Holocaust was unfolding differ, often significantly, from that very person’s post-war recollections: memories of what one has lived through gets mixed with later reflections and knowledge acquired after the fact via stories told by others or books read on the subject.

Documentary evidence provided by those facing persecution at the time of their persecution is undoubtedly the best source to convey a sense of the openness of the situation, the unpredictability of future events, and the great variety of reactions prevailing during an unfolding crisis. This is the reason why sources like the diaries of Anne Frank, Victor Klemperer, or a range of other, less well-known diary and letter writers continue to fascinate students of the Holocaust. After the fact, events appear in a much clearer light and fewer questions remain as to which decisions were right and which led to disaster. At the time, however, the future witnesses to genocide could navigate the troubled waters of the impending catastrophe only on the basis of a sketchy map in which their judgment and the serendipitous course of events provided the main markers.

Jürgen Matthäus is research director at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the co-author of Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933-1946: Volume I, 1933-1938.

The Corruption of Cultural Resource Management and Environmental Impact Assessment, and What To Do About It.

By Tom King

Over the last couple of decades I’ve written four textbooks for Altamira Press (one now in its 3rd edition) dealing with aspects of cultural resource management (CRM) and its kissing cousin environmental impact assessment (EIA). CRM involves managing the impacts of the modern world on those aspects of the environment that are held to have cultural value – including things like old buildings, archaeological sites, and indigenous spiritual places, but lots of other pieces of the world around us as well. EIA addresses the same kinds of impacts on the entire environment.

We’re about to inaugurate a new national administration that is rather explicitly “green,” so the future should be rosy for CRM and EIA, but I’m afraid this is not necessarily so at all.

What’s Wrong With CRM and EIA

The problem – in my view – is this: the practices of CRM and EIA have become so corrupted that they no longer do what they’re supposed to do. They no longer give decision makers a fair picture of what the environmental impacts may be of decisions they’re getting ready to make. Instead, they often lull government agencies and the public alike into thinking that all’s well with a proposed project, while serious environmental impacts are swept under the rug. This may be a more serious problem with “green” projects like solar arrays and wind farms than with other kinds of projects, because of the tacit assumption that because these projects are “good,” they cannot possibly do anything “bad.” But a wind farm can destroy the view from a tribal spiritual site just as readily as a coal mine can, and a solar array can interrupt the spread of sunlight over desert plants. These kinds of impacts need to be considered in deciding whether and how to proceed with a project – not necessarily to stop the project, but to allow it to be designed so as to minimize the damage.

Current law and regulations – the stuff I’ve written about at such length in my textbooks – no longer does a fair job of ensuring that such impacts are taken into account. There are four big problem areas.

1. The consulting firms that do EIA and CRM work have come to understand themselves to be parts of their clients’ planning teams, and their clients are almost invariably the proponents of the very projects whose impacts they’re analyzing. Their analyses, results, and interactions with others (regulators, the public, etc.) cannot help but be influenced by this relationship, and they are.
2. The federal agencies that are responsible for complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) have become proponents not only for their own projects but for those planned by supplicants for federal assistance and permits. These agencies have by and large come to regard EIA and CRM as ways of “clearing” projects for implementation by showing that their environmental impacts are negligible, regardless of the relationship of the projects’ actual effects.
3. The agencies that are supposed to oversee EIA and CRM to keep the systems honest no longer do so. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), and other ostensible overseers and standard setters have become obsessed with “streamlining” their review systems, and no longer provide serious, critical oversight. A few such agencies – notably in my experience the State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs) – can vehemently defend their own prerogatives and promote rigid adherence to technical standards, but seem impervious to larger policy matters.
4. The EIA/CRM review systems have become largely impervious to the public. They are convoluted; they are laden with esoteric concepts and jargon; they provide limited opportunities for public “input” and if someone from the “outside” does express concerns, the systems provide no guarantee whatever that they will be thoughtfully considered. Quite the contrary; the systems are neatly set up so that agencies can, for the most part, simply inform people of plans, solicit their input, and then ignore whatever they get.

We EIA and CRM practitioners have largely accepted these attributes of contemporary EIA and CRM as simply “the way things are” – to such an extent that many of us don’t even think of them as problems. We are, we think, supposed to be public relations specialists, making our clients’ projects look good whether they are or not. This has to change; there is simply no reason for the public to support a system of “impact assessment” that permits impacts to be ignored.

What’s To Be Done?

The problems I’ve just outlined spring from three underlying factors, expressed in the evolution of the EIA and CRM systems over the forty years or so since they were put in place by NEPA and NHPA.

1. Although the statutes lay out national policies favoring giving the environment and cultural resources a fair shake, neither the laws nor the regulations that have sprung from them provide clear direction about applying such policies. We are told in great detail about the procedures to employ, but little or nothing about how to make these procedures accomplish anything.


2. The statutes, and to a considerable extent the regulations, are painfully naïve. They assume integrity and vision on the part of federal agencies. However much we might wish it to be otherwise, such assumptions are never safe.


3. Public involvement has never been well provided for under NEPA, and in recent years it has become largely a laughing matter. The CRM regulations implementing Section 106 of NHPA are better on paper, but in practice, they are today little better than the NEPA regulations. Concerned members of the public can comment on things, but actually negotiating with project proponents about how to minimize impacts has become largely a thing of the past even under Section 106 – unless one is a State Historic Preservation Officer.

The good news, though, is that such problems can be fixed. In various contexts, I’ve offered the following recommendations to the new administration:

The President should issue an executive order directing all federal agencies to revise their procedures for compliance with laws like NEPA and NHPA to ensure in principle that impact assessments done and reports prepared are unbiased either for or against whatever is being reviewed. Some specific ways to make this happen include:

a. Doing impact analyses of all kinds using consultants who have no economic or other links to project proponents

b. Providing for thorough independent review of any impact assessment work carried out by or on behalf of project proponents.

c. Giving thorough analytic consideration to alternative ways of achieving a project’s purposes, notably including alternatives proposed by members of the public.

d. Providing for real, face-to-face, back-and-forth consultation with interested members of the public, aimed at reaching agreements about whether and how to proceed with a selected alternative – though always with provision for making a decision in the absence of agreement.

e. Paying attention to the full range of potential effects – direct effects, indirect effects, and very importantly, cumulative effects.

f. Addressing not only impacts that can be quantified but those that can’t – for example, many kinds of effects on cultural and spiritual values in the environment.

g. Coordinating analyses and consultations under all the various relevant laws – NEPA, NHPA, the Endangered Species Act, and so on, to allow all concerned to understand the synergistic relationships among impacts.

h. Providing training for all involved in EIA and CRM, and promoting cooperative arrangements to maintain high-quality interdisciplinary research and consultative standards.

i. Regular performance monitoring so that corrections can be made in analyses and consultations going awry.

j. Finally, using impact analysis results when decisions are actually made. Agencies should have to be able to show that their decisions are consistent with the policies adopted by Congress in enacting NEPA, NHPA, and the other environmental laws, or explain in detail why any inconsistencies exist.

The same executive order, or another, could direct the oversight agencies – the Council on Environmental Quality, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and others -- to rework their regulations to make them consistent with one another, simple enough for citizens to understand and work with, transparent to public scrutiny, and encouraging to full public involvement in review processes. To the extent these goals couldn’t be achieved through regulatory changes, the agencies could propose changes to the laws themselves (which are almost certainly needed, but this ought not be pursued until regulatory changes have been tried.

There’s plenty more that could be done, but these relatively modest steps would, I think, take us a long way toward putting a functional EIA/CRM system in place. And we should take these steps, quickly – before we find our broken system of impact assessment creating unnecessary conflicts between “green” developments and preserving the quality of our natural and cultural environment.

Tom King is the author of the Altamira Press textbooks Cultural Resource Laws and Practice, Federal Planning and Historic Places, Thinking About Cultural Resource Management, and Places That Count; he is also the co-author of Amelia Earhart’s Shoes. His latest book, elaborating on the points in this discussion, is Our Unprotected Heritage, published by Left Coast Press.

Revitalizing America’s Historic Sites

By Monta Lee Dakin, Executive Director

Mountain-Plains Museums Association

 
• Your site is significant. Yet, attendance could be better.

• Your historic site has a great collection, but few see it.

• Your historic site is special, but it seems lost among the dense urban area that grew up around it.

• Entrance fees do not sustain your historic site anymore.

• Financial backers of your site grouse that it costs too much to maintain.

• Staff and programs at your historic site don’t get the funding they deserve and need.

• Staff at your site think the programs are good, but attendance never matches the energy, time and money it takes to put them on.

• Your site has a revolving door with staff because of poor pay and long hours.

• The traditional tourism model is no longer a sustainable business model for your historic site.

Ever find yourself saying these things about YOUR historic site? Most of us who have worked at historic places have. And when we were the staff, we looked hard for solutions to these problems, trying to convince donors to give more money or suffering burnout from too many special events that in the end didn’t bring in much money. Very few of us found a golden goose (or program or donor) to shore up our failing site and most of us left, leaving the headaches of our under-funded yet beloved site to a new and usually younger group of folks. Much to everyone’s dismay, that cycle continues to present day.

While there is still no sighting of a golden goose to report, there may be some relief around the corner. Ideas, mainly. Yet, ideas that could be the springboard to bringing your site back to life and to gaining over-due respectability in your community.

These ideas came out of a forum I attended called Historic Site Stewardship in the 21st Century, held this past April at the National Trust site, Kykuit, in Tarrytown, NY. Thirty senior museum leaders from around the country engaged in dialogue over three days to discuss critical issues facing the many historic sites that are in decline all over the nation. The forum was a follow-up to one held five years earlier at which evidence was presented that proved there was a decline in historic house museums across the country. The recent convening in April built upon the first by broadening its scope from historic houses to historic sites. It considered models of innovation & success for historic sites as well as challenges to their sustainability and possible alternative uses.

Not all historic sites are in decline. Many are, however. And a growing number of them across the country have either closed or struggle to stay open in the face of dwindling interest, reduced staff and lack of funding. Some people have wondered publicly if there aren’t too many historic sites. Others have worried that increasing competition has put many historic sites in survivor mode, causing the quality of their preservation and maintenance to drop drastically. These are the ones that perhaps might benefit from the new way of thinking that came out of Kykuit. This new thinking may make people squirm, but should with time generate new models that are intended to strengthen historic sites and turn them back into places that people love.

What is this new thinking? It suggests among other things that historic sites have been applying inappropriate standards to their operations. Instead of following standards that work well for other kinds of museums such as art museums, historic sites should find their own standards. It also warns that many historic sites will have to make fundamental changes if they are to survive as museums. And finally, it supports a growing belief that historic sites do not have to be a museum to be successful. There are now successful models of alternative uses that can be used to revitalize an historic site without ever having to open the doors for tours again.

Alternative uses may be one of the more controversial notions to emerge in this new movement. However, transitioning to different uses is already happening. Donna Harris’ recently published book, New Solutions for House Museums, outlines eight “other” models besides museums for historic sites for which she presents case studies already in play: study houses, co-stewardship agreements, merger, long-term leases, short-term leases, sale with easements to a private owner, sale to a non profit stewardship, donation to a government entity and reprogram for mission-based use (or adaptive re-use). These different models convey a radical concept for what is becoming acceptable as good stewardship of historic sites: no longer do they need full time staff, daily hours of operation, “velvet-rope” tours, period or display rooms filled with specialized collections, or changing exhibits. The models instead encourage boards, staff and volunteers to consider deaccessioning under-used collections, finding a use that enriches the local community, and thinking creatively to achieve long-term sustainability for the site.

While Harris presents only eight case studies, they are enough to blow the lid off of traditional historic site models because they clearly show that not only do alternative uses exist, they can be successfully used to preserve an historic site. Presenting these case studies in public forums is also akin to throwing down a gauntlet, urging the museum community to give stewards of historic sites permission to do what they must to ensure a building’s future. This unconventional concept may be a little bold for a museum community steeped in tradition. But once it is understood that boldness may be necessary to attain good stewardship, the concept may find ready converts.

Underlying these new ideas and part of their appeal are three fundamental principles: acknowledging that taking care of historic sites is not easy, giving permission to believe that historic sites don’t have to operate as museums to be successful, and re-establishing the ethic that historic sites deserve proper stewardship.

Proper stewardship forms the guts behind this re-thinking of historic sites. It is what it all comes down to, preserving significant sites for the long term. To do less than that should not be acceptable practices in any community. And with new tools coming to the fore -– such as proven models, resources and a regional and national advocacy that supports local efforts --it should start to get easier to revitalize historic sites in ways we never thought possible.

To learn more, attend the session on this topic at MPMA’s 2007 Conference in Fargo this fall.

The planning for this forum was a joint venture of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, American Association for State and Local History, American Association of Museums and American Architectural Foundation. Primary financial support was provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the National Trust.

 

This article was written by Monta Lee Dakin, Executive Director, Mountain-Plains Museums Association based on materials prepared for this meeting and the discussions that took place there. It reflects the views of the author and not necessarily those of other conference participants or of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Museums Outside-In

“Museums are in the midst of another transition … from the government/corporate sector to the realm of civil society.”

So says Gail Dexter Lord in her remarks to the second Stephen Weil Memorial Lecture on August 20, 2007 at the International Council of Museums General Conference in Vienna, Austria.

 Visit http://www.lord.ca/Media/MuseumsOutsideIn.pdf for her provocative and inspiring speech.

Here is an excerpt from the speech entitled “Museums Outside-In”:

Over the past few decades there has been a slow stealthy transition of museums from the government to the civil society realm; and like most change in museums, it is not always by choice. This momentous change started with small cutbacks in government grant aid. On average, government subsidy to individual museums has declined by 20% to 50% over the past 30 years. However, it needs to be said that overall government subsidy to the sector may even have increased. But there are more museums and museums are more professional so they want to do more - selling even better quality services at below the cost of production!

But something very exciting is also going on. Because the museum must look outside for support -- not only financial but social – it becomes a more outward focussed organization with more links to the community. Good reviews are very important--not just for your professional standing--but because it is important that your museum is embraced by your community. The Deputy Director now needs to learn about the tourism industry and the Head of Education has to learn how to welcome learners of all ages and all ethnic groups exhibitions becomes more of a dialogue and less of a monologue and so a more vital type of museum has emerged. A more outside-in museum has emerged.

I would suggest that, whether or not a museum becomes de-linked from government, there is a tipping point in the proportion of government versus income from other sources at which the museum becomes de facto a civil society institution. Whether this tipping point occurs at 50% or 75% or 85% single source funding is relative to the local culture, politics and the size of museum. Does the museum director and his or her team have a different role before and after this tipping point has been reached?

Much of the recent business literature on this subject makes a big distinction between the two roles:

These texts say that Management is about “doing the thing right”.

But Leadership is about “doing the right thing”.

I question whether this distinction is valid for museums?

Gail Dexter Lord is the author of many other speeches as well as the co-author of The Manual of Museum Management (1997) and The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums (2007), and co-editor of The Manual of Museum Planning (1991) and The Manual of Museum Exhibitions (2001), published by AltaMira Press. Visit http://www.lord.ca for more information.