23 Feb WORLD HERITAGE: AUTHENTICITY, DEVELOPMENT AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL DE-LINKING
Date/Time
Date(s) - 23/02/2018
4:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Location
University of Nottingham
Categories
It has been acknowledged that Small Island Developing States (SIDS),
which include the Anglophone islands of the Caribbean, are the most
under-represented in the world in terms of UNESCO Word Heritage Sites
and concerted efforts have been made over many years to change this
situation. In fact, the wider Caribbean region forms a key part of the
World Heritage Committee’s global strategy for a representative World
Heritage List and a Caribbean Action Plan for World Heritage initially
spanning the ten-year period 2004-2014 and redrafted and extended to the
subsequent period between 2015-2019 has been developed as a means of
addressing this under-representation of the region. These Caribbean
Action Plans have resulted in more World Heritage Sites being designated
in the region and of the 1073 properties on the World Heritage List as
at 22nd November 2017, twenty-two (22) are in the Caribbean. Of this
total five (5) are in Anglophone Caribbean SIDS specifically Barbados,
Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia and Dominica. However, a look at
the tentative list as at the same date, revealed a total of twenty (20)
properties across eight (8) Anglophone Caribbean SIDS, indicting the
potential for further growth in the number of World Heritage Sites in
this region. The desire for global recognition through Word Heritage
status thus shows no sign of abating and even The Bahamas, which was the
last country in the Caribbean region that had resisted ratifying the
UNESCO World Heritage Convention, was finally brought into the fold in
2014.
In this presentation I focus on the World Heritage Sites within these
five Anglophone Caribbean SIDS and problematise the extent to which
their representations are ‘authentic’ and the role they play in the
(under)development of these countries. I question whether it is even
desirable for these Caribbean countries, which are still struggling to
come to terms with their post-colonial identities, to continue to
subscribe to the discourse and practice of World Heritage which suffers
from its own conceptual contradictions and which has been argued by
several authors to be an inherently political and Eurocentric concept.
Indeed, I go further to suggest that authenticity and development in
these Caribbean SIDS might best be served through an ‘_EPISTEMOLOGICAL
DE-LINKING’_ from the hegemonizing concept of World Heritage.
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The Travel Cultures Network continues to build on collaborations which
began in 2009 with the Travel Writing Reading Group (Jean-Xavier Ridon,
CLAS). The Travel Cultures Network (TCN) has expanded to three core
schools across the Arts and Social Sciences, and this is the third year
of our seminar series. Initially, we explored the meaning of hospitality
in the modern world, and then the role of the counter-culture as a
transformational influence on modern travel. The current series of
seminars will explore the role of authenticity in the context of
development, in partnership with the Development Studies Association.
The TCN offers a space for exchange and reflection on questions
concerning cultures and practices of travel and encourages opportunities
for interdisciplinary research collaboration between academics,
professionals from the creative and tourist industries, travel writing
and journalism, photography and the visual arts.
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