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.     

Museums as Relational Entities: The Politics and Poetics of Heritage

Over the last 40 years museums have become important sites to understand the politics and poetics of heritage management, display, and knowledge production. The books under consideration here all help demonstrate how museums as relational entities—containing dynamic relations between persons and things, as well as generating them—are emergent processes. Each work helps demonstrate why museums in their many guises remain critical terrains for the negotiation of identity, history, and culture in the push for more collaborative accounts of our world and the circulation and display of things.     

Usable Pasts Forum: UNESCO and Heritage Tourism in Africa

African Archaeological Review -     

Africa after the Cold War: New Patterns of Government and Politics

The state-system of Africa is still essentially the one created by the colonial powers and passed on intact at independence. But the political economy of these states — the substance of political life within fixed territorial boundaries — is changing very profoundly as a result of the breakdown of the style of government of recent decades and the decline of economies based on the export of primary commodities. The political economy which is emerging, still within the same territorial boundaries, is best understood by reference to Africa's history over a long period.     

Introduction: The International Politics of Resources

Abstract

China, Japan and Korea’s international relations are shaped by the fact that all three are significant importers of resources. This Introduction proposes two conceptual frameworks for understanding the politics that is taken up in the papers of this Special Issue. The first is to consider the extent to which there is an East Asian model of resource procurement. We find that there are some similarities in the approaches taken by all three countries; for example, their development assistance shares a focus on infrastructure building and a reticence to purposefully influence domestic politics. There are, however, also significant differences due in large part to the individual nature of the states as international actors. The second conceptual framework is the broad contemporary theme of the end of Western dominance of the world order. The main way this affects the international politics of resources in Northeast Asia is through the belief that the activities of those countries are threatening in some way. In some cases Northeast Asian approaches to resources are seen as a problem because they are not sufficiently liberal, whereas in others the problem is that Northeast Asian powers are seen as replacing Western powers in exploiting resource-rich developing countries.     

The Politics of the Past: Constructing a National Identity through Heritage Conservation

Modern nation‐states use images of a chosen past to construct a national identity. In Vilnius, the remains of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are used to construct an identity, and the aim of this exercise is to improve the economic performance of the city. Academics and professionals, alarmed of the loss of authentic values, and the living society, alarmed at the deteriorating container quality of the city, caused by this Politics of the Past, are coming forward to prevent this disinheritance. New agencies created to materialise the rejuvenation of historic urban space, together with unprecedented changes in values, and social disharmony have turned the Politics of the Past in Vilnius into an instructive heritage discourse, which is further diversified by the involvement of local experts who are now taking charge of heritage protection.     

Politics of Engagement: Gender Expertise and International Governance

This article studies the experiences of gender experts in international institutions of governance and examines their interactions with multiple actors in the governance system as they negotiate their authority to act as experts. Moving beyond binaries, such as those on the inside of hegemonic institutions versus those on the outside, or co-optation versus activism, the analysis uses processes of instrumentalization as a vantage point to lay out the multiple paths emerging in these politics of engagement. The article frames politics of engagement in terms of micropolitical tensions, ambivalences and contradictions that unfold in these interactions. It first argues that the boundaries that exist between inside and outside institutions are not clear cut because actors circulate between them. The study shows how gender experts instrumentalize their own life and career trajectories, navigating between advocacy and governance, to enhance their power in current institutional settings. It then focuses on instrumentalist discourses and traces their emergence in unequal negotiations. It demonstrates how gender experts can become part of the processes that they also critique. Finally, the study analyses strategies in which experts instrumentalize institutional inequalities to their advantage to produce diverse political possibilities with open-ended outcomes.     

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Public authority does not always fall within the exclusive realm of government institutions; in some contexts, institutional competition is intense and a range of ostensibly a‐political situations become actively politicized. Africa has no shortage of institutions which attempt to exercise public authority: not only are multiple layers and branches of government institutions present and active to various degrees, but so‐called traditional institutions bolstered by government recognition also vie for public authority, and new emerging institutions and organizations also enter the field. The practices of these institutions make concepts such as public authority, legitimacy, belonging, citizenship and territory highly relevant. This article proposes an analytical strategy for the understanding of public authority in such contexts. It draws on research from anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and social scientists working on Africa, in an attempt to explore a set of questions related to a variety of political practices and their institutional ramifications.     

Politics and Heritage in Egypt: One and a Half Years After the Lotus Revolution

With the break-in in the Egyptian Museum at the height of the ‘Lotus Revolution’ in January 2011 many heritage experts thought they saw their worst dreams come true: another ‘cradle of civilization’ threatened. One and a half years later the ‘½ Revolution’ did not bring the Egyptians the much desired prosperity. In the contrary, much seems to be worse than before January 2011 and unfortunately the heritage sector is no exception. Massive looting arose after the revolution and continues till today. This article tries to answer who these looters are and why the plunder of archaeological sites continues. Yet, many locals defended the sites in their vicinity. How come the local population felt connected to this heritage. For over 10 years they have been forbidden to enter the sites and the authorities even consider them a nuisance who need to be hidden for the massive tourist industry. The post-colonial narrative sheds much light on all these questions. It is noted that there is a huge lack of local involvement in Egyptian heritage as well as an almost absent scientific involvement of local scholars in Egyptology. There are signs that with the new government this will change. Firstly, western Egyptologists seem to realize they need to pay more attention to public/community archaeology and secondly, it is expected that Islamic heritage will be stressed in the coming years perhaps at the cost of Egyptology.