For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies and recommendations for dealing with intangible cultural heritage. What has been the effect of such sweeping global policies on those actually affected by them? How connected is UNESCO with what is happening every day, on the ground, in local communities? Drawing upon six communities ranging across three continents—from India, South Korea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia and China—and focusing on festival, ritual, and dance, this volume illuminates the complexities and challenges faced by those who find themselves drawn, in different ways, into UNESCO's orbit. Some struggle to incorporate UNESCO recognition into their own local understanding of tradition; others cope with the fallout of a failed intangible cultural heritage nomination. By exploring locally, by looking outward from the inside, the essays show how a normative policy such as UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage policy can take on specific associations and inflections. A number of the key questions and themes emerge across the case studies and three accompanying commentaries: issues of terminology; power struggles between local, national and international stakeholders; the value of international recognition; and what forces shape selection processes. With examples from around the world, and a balance of local experiences with broader perspectives, this volume provides a unique comparative approach to timely questions of tradition and change in a rapidly globalizing world.

The Impact of UNESCO on States' Cultural Policies focuses on the impact of the 2005 Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions on the cultural policies of eight states and substates, examining how they have integrated it into their own cultural policy. Cultural diversity presents a challenge for all governments. As migration increases and technology makes access to worldwide cultural products easier, governments seek to maintain a vibrant culture within their states or substates so that their populations can keep a strong sense of identity. Cultural policies become key to balance cultural diversity and national identity, or to promote them in parallel. The book addresses three main themes: how governments deal with cultural diversity, especially in their cultural policies; what the impact of an international convention on individual states’ policies is; and how different states’ status (i.e. size) on the international scene affects their implementation of an international convention. Providing a systematic comparative analysis, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of public policy, cultural policy and international organizations. It will also be useful to policymakers involved in cultural policy.

The mission UNESCO, as defined just after the end of World War II, is to build 'the defenses of peace in the minds of men'. In this book, historians trace the routes of selected UNESCO mental engineering initiatives from its headquarters in Paris to the member states, to assess UNESCO's global impact.

This book aims to determine UNESCO's capability to facilitate heritage protection measures pre-conflict, emergency response measures during conflict and reconstruction efforts post-conflict. The book employs document analysis to ascertain UNESCO's legal obligations when it comes to facilitating cultural heritage protection in its Member States' territories in the condition of armed conflict, while drawing comparisons with the reality of the organisation's presence and involvement in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. This study maps shifts in UNESCO's level of communication with each country's respective government and civil authorities; allocation of financial, human and material resources; and implementation of heritage safeguarding and reconstruction initiatives. Both quantitative and qualitative data shows UNESCO to exhibit great inequity in engagement, at times, closing communications entirely with Syria, due to the political standpoints of other UNESCO Member States. This political gridlock is often shown to result in the organisation overstating its ability to safeguard or restore heritage, with promises not being followed up with action. Since 2015, UNESCO has expressed a stronger intent to be a key player in heritage protection during armed conflict, however as long as cultural heritage protection is not considered a humanitarian concern, UNESCO will not be able to circumvent much of the political and bureaucratic barriers facing intergovernmental organisations during conflict, which prevent emergency action from being implemented. In order to ensure heritage safeguarding is permitted during periods of significant unrest, regardless of political discord, it is crucial that UNESCO promote a people-centred approach to its cultural heritage protection initiatives. This book evidences that focusing on livelihoods and meaningful and practical connections between populations and their local heritage to be UNESCO's optimal methodological approach for justifying cultural heritage protection as a humanitarian necessity. The book's readership includes academics, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of political science, law and heritage studies.

Authored by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, this Commentary is the first to offer an article-by-article commentary on the two leading multilateral treaties on movable cultural heritage in one volume: The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.

The rock art sites of the Tadrart Acacus in southwestern Libya were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, largely owing to the activities started in 1955 by Fabrizio Mori, founder of the Libyan-Italian Mission in the Tadrart Acacus and Messak. Since the beginning, the Department of Antiquities of Tripoli and Sebha, Libya, and Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, have worked in the region nearly without interruption until 2011. This book presents the archive of the rock art sites, identified and recorded by the Italian Mission and by independent scholars, as described and critically assessed by the authors within the framework of the ASArt-DATA project (the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme). The contributions introducing the catalogue contextualize the environmental, archaeological, and cultural aspects of the engravings and paintings. They include chapters addressing the historical, cultural, and diplomatic issues involved in the long-term bilateral scientific cooperation.

The volume “The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme: Key Aspects and Recent Developments” responds to the growing interest in the scientific study of the Memory of the World Programme (MoW) and its core concept of documentary heritage, which has received little attention from scholarship so far. This sixth publication in the Heritage Studies Series provides a first collection of differing approaches (including reflected reports, essays, research contributions, and theoretical reflections) for the study of the MoW Programme, offering a basis for follow-up activities. The volume, edited by Ray Edmondson, Lothar Jordan and Anca Claudia Prodan, brings together 21 scholars from around the globe to present aspects deemed crucial for understanding MoW, its development, relevance and potential. The aim is to encourage academic research on MoW and to enhance the understanding of its potential and place within Heritage Studies and beyond.