These two volumes examine the role of cultural heritage in sustainable and peaceful development. The core question in common is how heritage can serve the society. Both volumes share a bottom-up approach to the issue. The edited volume Heritage and peacebuilding examines heritage in the context of peacebuilding and reconciliation. In Empowering communities through archaeology and heritage, Peter Gould discusses archaeology and the economic development of communities, and tries to provide a sustainable model for community-based projects.
The destruction of cultural heritage during conflict has long been discussed, at both the international and academic levels. The recent and ongoing violence and conflict episodes in the Middle East and North Africa, and the intentional targeting of monuments, archaeological sites and museums, have captured media and public attention. The meta narrative surrounding these events is that heritage is a victim of conflict, and also that heritage destruction can fuel hatred and act as a trigger for ethno-religious violence. Therefore, the protection of cultural property is seen as a security issue, requiring close collaboration between the military, government and heritage sectors. This discourse has been unable to analyse the potential role of cultural heritage as an agent of peacebuilding and community development.
The editors of the volume Heritage and peacebuilding believe that, in the peacebuilding process, heritage should be seen as part of the solution, rather than “problematized” (p. 1). Although the book does not discuss some of the most complex and ongoing conflict situations, such as Syria or Iraq, it presents case studies from many different regions, and examines a variety of approaches to heritage and reconciliation. The book is structured in three sections: ‘New and emerging ideas around heritage and peace’; ‘Heritage and peacebuilding in practice’; and ‘Heritage, peacebuilding, and sites’. It contains 14 papers and six conversations. The contributors are not only academics and heritage professionals, but also human rights activists, and those who have been involved in peacebuilding activities have shared their views and experiences. This multidisciplinary approach to the relationship between heritage and peacebuilding adds to the value of this work.
The first section starts with ‘The heritage of peace: the importance of peace museums for the development of a culture of peace’ by Peter van den Dungen, who discusses the global lack of peace education as an essential factor to be overcome in forging a culture of peace and reconciliation. While war heritage is admired, manifested in war museums and war monuments worldwide, peace culture, heroes and events have never received sufficient attention, and have generally not found their way into museums and educational programmes. By teaching and appreciating peace history, exhibiting the heritage of peace and showcasing evidence of past initiatives, museums and other cultural institutions can play a crucial role in peace education. The need for this paradigm shift in heritage institutions, and for making available the untold history of peace, is also highlighted by Diana Walters in her chapter.
In a conversation piece, Seth Frankel, who has over 20 years of experience in exhibition planning and design, says that to act as an agent of social change, peace should be presented as a more contemporary theme by museums, in a way that relates to the lives of their visitors; this means, however, that museums will have to consider various audiences, with their different needs and sensibilities, and eventually even audiences with conflict trauma. David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool (NML), also places emphasis on building a large and diverse audience for those museums that deal with human rights. Through sharing his experience at the International Slavery Museum, a branch of NML, he explains how human rights themes in museums can cause distress to perpetrators and those who would like to distance themselves from the unpleasantness of the past, as well as to those who have been victims or have suffered in indirect ways. In this age of new technologies, the heritage sector and museums can use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in innovative ways for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. In his paper, Jasper Visser analyses several case studies, including projects that use satellite imagery and crowdsourcing either for conflict prevention, resolution or peacebuilding. ICTs offer tools for mapping, monitoring, reporting and visualising that can be used by communities, and can facilitate community activity around heritage resources and institutions. As the author argues, “ICT contributes to peacebuilding by connecting people and information” (p. 60).
The second section starts with the example of the Community Peace Museum’s Heritage Foundation in Kenya, in which the possibility of establishing peace museums in conflict zones, investing in educating the younger generation and reviving the visual symbols of peace through material culture are discussed. According to Sultan Somjee, one of the main challenges is how to change the emphasis of heritage institutions from memorialising violence to celebrating peace. The Kenyan Peace Museums facilitate the access of communities to deep-rooted peace traditions by exhibiting symbols of peace that have been used in conflict transformation, such as ‘peace trees’, alongside various peace objects.
The Balkan Museum Network and the Women’s International Leadership Development in the Western Balkans—two initiatives led by Cultural Heritage without Borders—show how museums can establish and offer a safe space for dialogue and interaction in post-conflict countries, instead of creating a barrier between people. A critical question does, however, still remain—how can cultural institutions and museums contribute to conflict prevention where the heritage itself is contested? In her exciting contribution, B. Lynch argues that while museums should actively participate in peacebuilding, they should not avoid openly facing controversial topics, such as racism, discrimination and migration, and should allow people to find a space in which to manifest their anger against injustice. Two case studies, examined by F. Hammami and D. Laven in the Palestinian-Israeli context, form an alternative narrative in which cultural heritage can “challenge the dominant discourse of violence” (p. 146). Historic public places in Nablus offer open and democratic space to different communities and visitors to discuss political problems openly. The restoration of a historic inn in Nazareth, on the other side of the West Bank border, is another example of heritage used to provide opportunities for coexistence.
This volume is not devoted solely to armed conflict; in the third section, other types of conflict are also discussed, including the loss of industrial heritage in Sweden (Lagerqvist), and the tensions between communities, government and developers in Thailand (Pimonsathean). The critical role of safe spaces in heritage and peacebuilding projects is also discussed in two case studies from Northern Ireland and the Balkans. Although the Northern Ireland case study is about storytelling in the reconciliation process, and the Balkans example talks about a regional restoration camp, both argue that providing a safe place can be a heritage asset in facilitating trust among those who have been affected by conflict, with trust being a crucial component in the reconciliation process. In her chapter, Elena Monicelli describes a project focused on the location of a Second World War massacre in Italy. The project deconstructs the traditional narrative based on ‘good/evil’ and ‘us/them’, and helps visitors to discover the deep roots of prejudice, hatred and violence. A. Gelbman proposes using different geopolitical borders for peace tourism, using the Dorasan Station between North and South Korea, the Peace Road along the Israel-Jordan border, and the Green Belt in Europe and the For Europe Garden as case studies. In her chapter, L. Hughes analyses the ongoing battle for control over Mau Mau heritage in Kenya. The last part of this volume is a short conversation with Saleem Ali, an environmental planner, who talks about his experience in environmental conflict resolution, and the lessons to be learned about cultural heritage context.
Although, in the preface to the book, the primary objective of UNESCO—which is to contribute to peace and security in the world—is addressed, the volume does not discuss the potential ways that UNESCO’s main legal instruments and conventions, including the World Heritage and the Hague conventions, can be used to support bottom-up community initiatives aimed at peacebuilding. Despite this, the book is an encouraging collection of ideas and initiatives that explore the constructive role of heritage in making peace in the minds of humankind.
Peter Gould’s volume on ‘Empowering communities through archaeology and heritage’ attempts to provide theoretical guidance for heritage professionals and archaeologists who wish to work with communities around heritage places. It shows how organisational governance, decision-making and management systems should respond to the complexity of different cultural, geographic, economic and political contexts. For a long time, cultural heritage was not included in sustainable development debates. In recent years, there have been high-level efforts, mainly led by the United Nations and other international organisations, to introduce cultural heritage into the global sustainable development agenda. The prerequisites for building a successful model for both communities and heritage professionals have not, however, been adequately reported on or discussed in academic studies. Consequently, this book represents an important step towards summarising the success factors of those projects in which heritage resources have been used in the sustainable economic development of communities.
This volume has seven chapters and a conclusion. The author has meticulously analysed four, long-surviving, community-based projects in rural areas: Asociacíon Inkallaqta (Peru), the Maya Centre Women’s Group (Belize), The Burren Centre (Ireland) and I Parchi della Val di Cornia (Italy). All of these cases together demonstrate how conflict and disagreement among different communities and stakeholders can be managed and resolved through institutional mechanisms, founded by community members. In all of these projects, the primary success factor has been their significant and sustained economic contribution to the development of the surrounding communities. This volume showcases the author’s efforts to find and explain a pattern in these successful case studies that can allow for the establishment of a framework for other heritage professionals to use in different contexts.
Where projects have been inspired by a real need in the community, and their organisations are founded and managed by members who have deep roots in that community, seeking financial and technical assistance from outside sources has been helpful. Transparent financial management and decision-making systems are a key priority. In some of the examples discussed by Gould, the stakeholders have open access to the financial and management documents. This is to be recommended, but it is clear that in addition to financial transparency, an effective governance institution for community-based heritage projects should use local and traditional knowledge, and have a democratic and polycentric decision-making system. In different geographic, cultural, political, legal and economic contexts, different formulae can work to form governance institutions. The author has organised the complexity of the legal and procedural formality of governance organisations into two levels—financial/operational requirements and the social/political context of the community. The higher the degree of complexity of each of these categories, the greater the need for elaborate formal governance. Community-based projects can be successful if community members can form their own governance systems. Governmental support in the form of investing in, and promoting, tourism programmes, developing legal structures and economic policies, and providing training is, however, crucial for the sustainability of such systems. Gould identifies context, capacity and governance as the three main elements in his approach to designing a local organisation for managing heritage and community projects. In this context, he means that the relationships of both community and external heritage stakeholders with each other and their different needs and expectations should be considered.
The proposed approach in the book is primarily valid for small-scale locations with cultural heritage resources. How the findings might be applied to larger-scale contexts, such as historical city centres or World Heritage sites, requires further elaboration. The book, however, provides a starting point for those heritage professionals who want to examine new governance models for larger-scale sites, where communities can be left in charge of protecting and managing their own heritage resources. When context, capacity and governance are in balance, bottom-up institutions and structures can be established, and archaeology can contribute to empowering communities.
