LSE: Public lectures and events The politics of world heritage: visions, custodians, and futures of humanity
Mar 4, 2026
Albina Hoffman, a diplomatic studies lecturer, and Elif Kalaycioglu, a scholar of global heritage politics, discuss how World Heritage constructs visions of humanity, the politics of inscription and authority, shifts from monumental to vernacular values, contested atrocity sites, state reassertion, and tensions around custody, expertise, and identity in heritage politics.
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World Heritage Actively Constructs Humanity
- World Heritage inscriptions perform the active work of constructing a shared cultural history called 'humanity' rather than simply recognizing a preexisting one.
- Elif Kalaycioglu shows the convention's identification and interpretation process (inscription, expert evaluation, state nominations) is what materializes 'humanity' via symbolic resources like monumentality and world-historical narratives.
Monumentality Made Europe Central On The List
- Early World Heritage criteria privileged monumentality, grandeur, and Eurocentric art-historical standards, producing a list centered on Europe and Greco-Roman world-historical arcs.
- Those symbolic resources (monumentality, urban planning, aesthetic genius) made Europe the social and narrative center of the regime's constructed humanity.
Paradigm Shift Elevated Vernacular Knowledge
- A 1990s paradigm shift expanded the symbolic universe to include vernacular, living traditions, and nature-culture landscapes, bringing anthropologists and Indigenous concerns into OUV definitions.
- That shift elevated local experts and allowed previously rejected sites (e.g., Zanzibar) to be reframed as outstanding fusion of cultures under new criteria.
