 The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage and Tourism O R D E R N O W (e-mail the distributer, APD Singapore PTE Ltd)
Overview (from the Publisher) Tourism today is recognized as the largest and fastest-growing industry in the world, capable of producing positive social and economic transformations, especially in developing countries. Yet for UNESCO, it works in conjunction with World Heritage sites for a far more ambitious goal: to produce "peace in the minds of men" by creating a new, global identity.
Anthropologist and former tour operator Michael Di Giovine draws on ethnographic fieldwork, close policy analysis and professional experiences in Southeast Asia and Europe to provide a detailed examination of UNESCO's unusual effort to harness globalization and cultural diversity for the purpose of creating peace. He convincingly argues that UNESCO's designations are not impotent political performances that lead to the commercialization of local monuments, but instead are the building blocks of a new social system he calls the “heritage-scape” – an imaginative re-ordering of the world that knows no geopolitical boundaries but exists in the individual "minds of men."
Written for social scientists, heritage and tourism professionals, and the educated traveler, The Heritage-scape is an insightful, detailed, and expansive look at UNESCO's World Heritage Program in Vietnam, Cambodia, and across the world.
The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism
Endorsements
Nelson Graburn, University of California, Berkeley & London Metropolitan University: “This is the most thorough and sophisticated examination of the UNESCO heritage system to date. The author, a former tour operator and current anthropologist, examines the cultural construction of this system from a number of points of view. Using the anthropological works of Appadurai, Bruner, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Leite, Mazzarella and others, as well as the works of historians of art, museums and gardens, geographers of place-making, sociologists of authenticity, practice and memory, cultural theorists of cyberspace and educational theory, he carefully examines the origins, growth, applications, and multivocalic reactions to the World Heritage making process. Although he examines events and monuments of Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia, and in Italy, especially Tuscany, in ethnographic detail, his knowledge of the heritage-making process is encyclopedic and critical. This is a book to be enjoyed for its timeliness, its revealing anecdotes, and its attention to contemporary social theory.”
Mike Robinson, Director, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University: “Debates continue to rage about the economic, political, and socio-cultural significance attached to, and conferred by, the UNESCO designation of "World Heritage." What Michael Di Giovine achieves in this important book, through detailed research and critical theoretical reflection, is grounding these debates in a comprehensive and compelling examination of the motivations, processes, networks, and people which not only shape the meanings of the past but which also project into the future. He carefully reveals that the World Heritage program of UNESCO, and the tourism associated with this, extend well beyond notions of privileged material preservation and can be seen to encourage a universal discourse which connects and unites people, places, and pasts and which can catalyze possibilities for meaningful exchange, experience, and peace. This is clearly an essential book for all interested in the relationships and meanings which lie behind, and are generated by, the notion of World Heritage.” James Fernandez, Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, University of Chicago: “The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage and Tourism is a valuable compendium and very useful for those like ourselves who have worked near or in relation to World Heritage Sites. ... The book is worth bringing to people's attention.” Reviews Mechtild Rossler, Chief of Section (Europe and North America), UNESCO World Heritage Centre, reviewing for The International Journal of Heritage Studies:
“The book opens challenging new opportunities to look at heritage and tourism markets. … Michael A. Di Giovine’s refreshing insights into the heritage of humankind could enhance a new form of dialogue between conservation specialists, tour operators and anthropologists and give impetus to debates about different cultures and conservation schools. Such a debate could also be a contribution to intercultural dialogue.” [See full review]
Veronica Davidov, Maastricht University, reviewing for the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change:
"Original and innovative ... [and containing] rich ethnographic detail ... The Heritage-scape is an important contribution to the discussion on the production of narratives and material culture of “modernity” – defined through a normative experience of the past and a strategic structuring of that experience." Kylie Message, Australia National University, reviewing for Curator: The Museum Journal
“Contesting the limited image of cultural diversity that is associated with the resurgent nationalism and homogenizing globalization symptomatic of the contemporary (post 9/11) era, Di Giovine makes a contribution to academic and professional understandings about the role of administrative culture as it relates to the global level of world heritage and tourism.” [See full review] Table of Contents
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