UNESCO and its dream of a united international mission to safeguard sites considered to be of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ has, quite possibly, done more harm than good over the past seventy years. Lynn Meskell's A Future in Ruins is a stunning exposé of the overwhelming bureaucracy, the political machinations of the member states, and the conflicting values of the World Heritage system, leading to the conclusion that it may be time to start dreaming anew.
UNESCO was born from optimism, that it was possible to manage the politics of the past in a way that fostered peace, a management ethos that resulted in the World Heritage system as it exists today. A Future in Ruins makes it clear that we should be highly critical of this universalising monumentality; but, at the same time, we should not lose sight of this original optimism. Our world today is embroiled in a number of crises--environmental, political, humanitarian--that have grown dramatically over the last few years. Now, more than ever, we are aware of the political power of cultural heritage in creating what philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah calls ‘the lies that bind’ (Appiah, Reference Appiah2018), the categories of identity that continue to divide us along national and cultural lines. Meskell makes it apparent that UNESCO and the World Heritage system, as it currently operates, serves to increase the power of the nation-states as entities governing the past, persecuting minorities as they do so. Our future will be in ruins unless we can find a way forward for cultural heritage that breaks it out of this system of national identity politics and ‘may entail not inscribing sites on a list at all’ (p. 227). Meskell does not offer solutions beyond a few remarks on the concluding pages, but she so deftly highlights the problems inherent in the system that the reader is enticed towards the sort of dreaming which must have inspired UNESCO's foundation in the first place.
A Future in Ruins is also an exploration of the problem of why archaeological fieldwork and research is not part of the UNESCO mission—it was as originally conceived in the mid-twentieth century, but this ended with the birth of ‘the List’ in the 1970s. Archaeology as a discipline has undergone a number of changes since the mid-twentieth century; and, toward the end of the final chapter, Meskell implies that perhaps, if the early relationship between archaeology and UNESCO had survived, the organisation today could likewise be more multivocal, collaborative, reflexive, ethical, and concerned with Indigenous and rights-based approaches (p. 225). Instead, UNESCO appears to be one of the most powerful embodiments of Enlightenment-era thought—continually propping up Western values, promoting dualities such as civilization versus barbarism, and perpetuating colonialism power structures. The World Heritage system is, as Meskell details, an ‘internationally sanctioned instrument for manufacturing the past’ (p. 149). It is well-known that archaeology and nationalism are unholy bedfellows, but the fact that UNESCO continues to embody the evolutionary and scientific-humanist values of Interwar archaeology ought to give us all pause.
The book is organised thematically and roughly chronologically, with eight chapters beginning with ‘Utopia’ and the founding of UNESCO in 1945, moving through ‘Internationalism’, ‘Technocracy’, ‘Conservation’, ‘Inscription’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Danger’, and ‘Dystopia’. Meskell weaves case-study narratives around these concepts, liberally employed to illustrate the shifting goals, processes, triumphs, and failures of first UNESCO and then the World Heritage List system, which began in the late 1970s. Ranging from the international rescue of the Nubian Monuments in the 1960s to the recent listing of contested sites like Ani (Turkey) and the Meiji sites (Japan), Meskell makes it clear that the early ‘rescues’ orchestrated by UNESCO and the current practice of listing sites are far more about politics than conservation, with countries acquiring the lucrative brand of ‘World Heritage’ and then abandoning the promises they made regarding conservation. She speaks from experience regarding the process of inscription of Çatalhöyük, completed in 2012, after which the Turkish government prohibited further partnerships between archaeologists and the local community, despite specifically including such public outreach in the inscription dossier. Sites may also be intentionally nominated for listing for a host of economic and political reasons, nominations which in cases have gone so far as to ignite border conflicts; ‘Through processes that have led to greater interdependence and connectivity, sites are transformed into transactional commodities with exchange values that transcend their materialities, wresting them from those contexts to serve other international interests’ (p. 122). The outrage (or lack thereof) regarding the destruction of sites is just as political (and Western-centric), with one striking example being the difference between the amount of attention paid to Palmyra and the dearth of the same for the concurrent destruction of hundreds of Islamic sites in Iraq and Syria. These chapters make the flawed approach of UNESCO very apparent: the organisation imposes a Western concept of what heritage is, it values the tangible heritage of the site over the people living around those sites today, and it assumes that ‘universal value’ equates to ‘monumental’. Most alarmingly, in some cases World Heritage inscription also provides ‘an internationally sanctioned instrument for manufacturing the past, dispensing with historical justice and reconciliation, and potentially reviving old hostilities anew’ (p.149).
Reading A Future in Ruins is a valuable experience that needs to be shared widely across archaeology, cultural heritage studies, and related disciplines. It is a process of revisiting the consequences of allowing the bureaucratic machine of ‘world heritage production’ to roll on unchallenged, a journey which is best undertaken without predetermined notions coming from a detailed review of its contents. The text is dense, and at times the narrative gets mired in details of now-defunct organisations; but the need to consider the consequences of the World Heritage system shines through even the most detailed sections.
By looking through the incisive lens Meskell provides on the history of UNESCO and the World Heritage List process, we are encouraged to reflect on how our own research and interests could contribute to ‘deliver on the impossible promise’ (p. 227) of UNESCO. Is it possible to enforce the protection of our common past, and perhaps, more importantly, of the communities to whom these sites are living landscapes rather than monumentalised pasts? Read the story of UNESCO and begin to dream.
