Expertise and the making of World Heritage policy

This paper contributes to two emergent areas of scholarship: first, the role of expertise within the domain of cultural heritage practice; and second, international heritage institutions and their processes of governance. It does so by exploring expertise within the context of World Heritage Committee meetings. These forums of international heritage policy formulation have undergone significant changes in recent years, with larger geopolitical forces increasingly shaping process and decisions. This paper foregrounds the idea of these annual meetings as ‘locales’ in order to explore the inflows of expertise that help constitute authoritative decision-making, how expert knowledge is crafted for and by bureaucratic structure, and how the interplay between technical knowledge and politics via an ‘aesthetics of expertise’ bears upon future directions. In offering such an analysis, the paper seeks to add nuance and conceptual depth to our understanding of international conservation policy and the regulatory, governmental practices of organisations such as UNESCO.     

Collective Amnesia and the Mediation of Painful Pasts: the representation of France in the Second World War

This paper describes research that was designed to examine the assertion that historic designation of properties, under the heritage legislation in Canada's largest province, has a negative impact on the values of those properties. The actual selling price of subject properties was used to establish their value history trends, which were then compared to ambient market trends within the same communities. Almost 3,000 properties in twentyfour communities were investigated, in what is believed to be the largest study of its kind ever undertaken in North America. It was found that heritage designation could not be shown to have a negative impact. In fact there appears to be a distinct and generally robust market in designated heritage properties. They generally perform well in the market, with 74% doing average or better than average.The rate of sale among designated properties is as good or better than the ambient market trends and the values of heritage properties tend to be resistant to downturns in the general market.     

栖居绿色心脏中 图林根的世界遗产

<正>图林根州位于德国的中部,因为绿化M率相当高而被称为"德国的绿色/已、脏",从该州版图上可以清楚地看到整个州几乎就是?M块的绿色,相当养眼,而到了现场感受體,你会发现这种养眼的鲍M扑面而来。就这一点来说,图林根州确实值得德国人骄傲,毕竟有越多的绿色就意味着生态环境越美好,德国人很好地i全释了工业发展其实是可以与环境保护共同和谐并存的。瓦特堡:德国唯一进入名录的古堡德国的古堡很多,德国的世界遗产项目也很多,但是瓦特堡却是德国唯一一个进入世界文化遗产名录的古堡,而能够进入世界遗产名录自然有其独特的人文及历史魅力。     

Rethinking representation: The challenge of non-humans

This article argues that the standard model of political representation mischaracterises the structure of representation. After surveying the classical types of representation and their application to non-humans, the basic nature of representation is shown to have been unduly centred on interests, responsiveness and unidirectional protocols. It proposes a different structure by drawing inspiration from recent scholarship and developments in political philosophy, as well as the representation of non-human actors. It proposes an ontological grounding of representation in ‘irreducible multiplicity’, and a structural analysis based on the concepts of claim and relation. This abstract form of representation can take into account both human and non-human cases, and works to ground different typologies. The relational structure of representation creates interests and preferences, subjects and actors, power dynamics and seemingly immutable identities.

作者认为,标准的政治代表模式错误地勾画了代表的结构。作者首先考察了代表的经典类型并将其应用于非人类,指出关于代表的本质,以往过多强调利益、反应、单向协议等等。作者根据从近年学术研究、政治哲学以及非人类主体的代表性那里得到的灵感,提出了另一种结构。文章指出代表的本体论根据在于不可简化的多重性。作者还提出了一种基于诉求和关系概念的结构分析。这种抽象代表形式既考虑了人类也考虑非人类的情况,并为不同的类型提供了根据。代表的关系结构造就了利益和偏好、对象和主体、权力的动态以及看似不变的身份。     

Review Article: The Ways of the World

S. E. FINER. The History of Government from the Earliest Times: Volume I: Ancient Monarchies and Empires. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii, 610; Volume II: The Intermediate Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 613–1,061; Volume III: Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 1,065–1,701. $270.00 (CDN), for the three volumes. Reviewed by A. P. Thornton     

Subjectivity and representation in descartes: The origins of modernity

Although ‘Burke and Irish history’ is a theme which has long been known to modern commentators, it has not necessarily been addressed sufficiently. This essay seeks to put forward a more comprehensive account of Burke's views on Irish history than has previously been offered by scholars. According to Burke, the protection of Christianity had brought flourishing science to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. Nevertheless, the nation was plunged into a barbarous state after the invasions of the Danes and other northern tribes. Burke's sympathy with the Brehon law was possibly unique, although he was not uncritical of it. Unlike the Irish patriots, his chief concern with historical Ireland was not the origins of the Irish legislature. He was rather most interested in the religious affairs which had continued to plague the nation during history. Throughout his career, Burke considered the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to have been ‘provoked’, and continuously endeavoured to remove the penal laws imposed on the Roman Catholics after the Williamite Conquest of 1689–1691. In his view, despite the substantial increase in prosperity after 1688/9, the series of religious persecutions, as well as other oppressive policies, had still obstructed the further progress of Irish society.     

The politics of representation: the Kuwait National Museum and processes of cultural production

Museums are often sites for the fabrication of hegemonic discourse. They represent the political nature of heritage construction and the instruments used to support these narratives. This paper traces the appropriation of museums as symbols of national projects and argues that not all museums achieve this political end. The Kuwait National Museum designed by Michel Écochard will be examined as a case study for this argument. Écochard’s project demonstrates the many challenges that develop between nationalist politics, heritage production and competing centres of power.