Trajectories of Development: International Heritage Management of Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa

Archaeology and material heritage are increasingly being used for development projects aimed at producing economic growth and reducing poverty. I am interested in how these projects construct particular ‘developmental’ visions of heritage, orienting and circumscribing relationships both with the past and contemporary social contexts. Here I address these processes as developmental technologies that produce poverty as a ‘local’ affair, in need of intervention, set in contrast to the traveling and translational abilities of international expertise in heritage management and development. I trace the expansion of this expertise across the Middle East and North Africa region, in a variety of contexts where material heritage is mobilized to reduce poverty. Importantly, the question of the economic value of heritage is necessarily placed center-stage in such projects. I argue that as archaeologists we need to engage with the economic value of material heritage, in order to start examining how exactly material heritage works in the world: to what ends and results, in what contexts, who gains to profit, and who suffers.     

中东铁路 世纪的穿越

19世纪末20世纪初.俄国人通过和清政府签订不平等条约,在中国东北修建了一条呈T字形的大铁路.这条铁路经历了清末、民国、伪满、解放战争和新中国成立初期的沧桑岁月、是近代中国屈辱、抗争的见证.同时也是这条铁路催生了一批以哈尔滨.满洲里和绥芬河站为代表的近代城市和重要的铁路通商口岸,并留存下了大批具有俄罗斯风格、折衷主义风格和新艺术运动风格的历史建筑,吸引着无数爱好者为它倾倒.     

The Superpowers in the Middle East

RAMI GINAT. The Soviet Union and Egypt, 1945–1955. London: Frank Cass, dist. Portland, OR: ISBS, 1993. Pp. xii, 268. $45.00 (US);

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVL The United States and Israel: The Limits of the Special Relationship. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Pp. xi, 312. $35.00 (US).