UNESCO World Heritage regions are historically constructed categories that do not easily map onto global geographies, yet they still continue to have important political and ethical implications in the international arena. Since their inception, regional categories have been at the heart of debates over global representation and equity in the World Heritage Committee. We include the recent controversy over uneven regional representation in elections to the Committee and the measures adopted to remedy this for the future. Specifically, the “Europe and North America” regional group has historically been the most dominant region and, as we demonstrate, continues to be so despite measures such as the Global Strategy. In the last decade, however, the “Asia and the Pacific” regional group has exhibited a growing presence in many aspects of World Heritage. We go on to examine overall trends from annual sessions of the World Heritage Committee from its start in 1977 to 2014 in terms of site inscription on the World Heritage List, membership on the Committee and size of national delegations in order to look in greater detail at the rising profile of Asia. This leads to a discussion of the different forms and understandings of regionalism, whether for Europe or Asia, and how some Asian delegations see their increased role and visibility in World Heritage.

The concepts of sustainability, and of the more specific notion of sustainable development, have become entrenched in national and international policy making over the last half century. However, little attention has been paid to sustainability as it relates to indigenous communities. This article discusses sustainability concepts as understood in indigenous and non-indigenous societies, drawing a number of illustrations from the experiences and practices of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. We point out that the two approaches to sustainability share many common concerns, although significant differences are evident. While the paradigm of sustainability can be seen as a universal concept that can be applied irrespective of social, political, or cultural context, it is argued that a fully realized model of sustainability for application in non-indigenous societies will only be possible if it acknowledges the importance of culture and incorporates the insights that have been accumulated over generations in indigenous knowledge systems.

In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK—the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda—the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme. Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: My grateful thanks first to Vijayendra Rao and Gayatri Reddy for invaluable discussion and intellectual support; Debra Diamond, Jane Anderson, Lalitha Gopalan, Michael Sappol, Alexander Bauer, and two anonymous referees for extremely useful interdisciplinary insights; and to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Smithsonian's Center of Folklife and Cultural Heritage, particularly Richard Kurin, Carla Borden, James Early, and Peter Seitel, for the ideal fellowship and venue to get this paper written.

Maritime cultural heritage is made up of finite and nonrenewable cultural resources including coastal or submerged prehistoric and indigenous archaeological sites and landscapes, historic waterfront structures, the remnants of seagoing vessels, and the maritime traditions and lifeways of the past and present. To date, evaluative tools used to assess the social and economic “value” of this heritage are extremely limited, the lack of which often results in the loss of maritime cultural resources and unrealized socioeconomic opportunities. Market and nonmarket valuations, derived from ecological economics and ecosystem assessments, are viable techniques that may be integrated into existing U.S. environmental and historic preservation regulatory procedures to support resource significance determinations. In doing so, decision-making regarding maritime cultural heritage can include assessments of the short- and long-term trade-offs of human actions, and can examine the socioeconomic costs and benefits of heritage conservation projects.

First, the good news: Carpenter, Katyal, and Riley make a compelling case that the venerable concept of property—long defined primarily by such principles as transferability and rights of exclusion and control—should be broadened to encompass a robust ideal of stewardship. In doing so, “In Defense of Property” (henceforth, IDP) renders property more compatible with the indigenous view of things. This significant contribution to ongoing global debates about the protection of indigenous heritage will be of great interest to readers of the IJCP.

Significant documents of record recently produced and dealing with cultural property, heritage and related issues will be printed annually in the final issue (No. 4) of each numbered volume. Documents considered for publication may be national, regional, or international instruments and codes. Inquiries or suggestions regarding documentary materials may be addressed to the Chronicles Editor, Kurt Siehr, at ⟨[email protected]⟩ or the Editor, Alexander Bauer, at ⟨[email protected]⟩.

Within this article I discuss the productive potentials of looking at historic photographs of the Purari Delta with indigenous communities today. A particular type of artifact, the meanings of photographs are promiscuous. Thinking about the shape of cultural property relations that are manifest photographs, I show how engagements with indigenous communities unsettles European preconceptions about what photographs are as well as how doing so raises issues about what cultural property is, and perhaps can be. Instead of being a discreet entity, cultural property for the I'ai emerges as a network of relationships that envelopes people, environment, and ancestors. This expansive notion of cultural property can help us rethink how we treat and handle objects within museums and archives.

Heritage piety departs ever farther from reality. High-minded admonitions broaden the gulf between what happens to cultural property and what virtuous stewards feel should happen. Ever more of our patrimony gets looted, destroyed, mutilated, shorn of context, hidden from scrutiny, inadequately stored, poorly conserved, eBayed. Merryman cites three causes: the animus of UNESCO and archaeology against marketing cultural property, the sanguine view that trafficking abuse can be quashed by state fiat and moral suasion, and excessive constraint against heritage export by blanket diktats from source nations (and tribes and ethnic groups). These evils endure because heritage stewards commonly subscribe to four underlying sacrosanct fictions. (1) The heritage of all humanity deserves to be preserved in toto. (2) Cultural heritage matters above all for the information it can yield. (3) Collecting is reprehensible; it must be circumscribed if not outlawed. (4) Nations and tribes are enduring entities with sacred rights to time-honored legacies. I show why these views are mistaken yet remain embedded in heritage philosophy and protocol. In particular, although heritage is piously declared the legacy of all mankind, chauvinist sentiment continues to impede internationalism, partly because it buttresses the credentials of those in charge, who are forced into moral postures that promise unachievable stewardship. National and local self-esteem are holy writ for UNESCO and other cultural property agencies. Equating heritage with identity justifies every group's claim to the bones, the belongings, the riddles, and the refuse of every forebear back into the mists of time. All that stands in the way of everyone's reunion with all their ancestors and ancestral things is its utter impossibility. Heritage professionals once seen as selfless are now targets of suspicion, often thought backward looking, deluded, self-seeking, or hypocritical. Small wonder that militant reformers who seek to suppress illicit cultural property dealings by treaties, court decisions, government fiats, and the moral artillery of shame and guilt are viewed with an increasingly cynical eye.

Since “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) became the new focal point in the global heritage discourse, governments and scholars in many countries have begun to promote this new form of “immaterial” culture. The People’s Republic of China has been one of the most active state parties implementing the new scheme and adapting it to domestic discourses and practices. Policies formulated at the national level have become increasingly malleable to the interests of local government-scholar networks. By conducting a comparative case study of two provinces, this article aims to identify the role of local elite networks in the domestic implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, focusing on the incentives of scholars and officials to participate in ICH policy networks. It finds that the implementation of the Convention has not removed the power asymmetry between elite and popular actors but, instead, has fostered an elite-driven policy approach shaped by symbiotic, mutually legitimizing government–scholar networks.

Urbanization, particularly in terms of private housing construction, constitutes a mounting threat to cultural heritage sites in Palestine. At risk are not only archaeological sites, but traditional architecture and other locations of cultural heritage. The Ramallah province serves as a practical case study by which to examine how this process of urbanization affects the cultural heritage of the region, because of the increased rate of development the province has experienced over the past decade. This urbanization has proceeded with relatively little governmental oversight and administration by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and is typified by an absence of planning, which often places sites of cultural, historical, and archaeological significance in severe jeopardy. This article considers both the internal and external factors affecting the urbanization of Ramallah and proposes solutions to mitigate the dangers to cultural heritage posed by unchecked urban growth.

This article examines the codes of ethics of the British, Canadian, Australian, and American professional conservation organizations and evaluates their success in meeting the needs of the discipline as it grows and matures. Specific issues that are currently of concern to conservators are examined, including the application of a single document to a diverse profession, reversibility of treatment, preventive conservation, cultural sensitivity, and the antiquities trade. The fact that none of these codes are enforceable is considered as well as the issue of accreditation and what it means. While these codes are reasonably successful in setting forth the principles that should guide conservation work for straightforward cases, they are less successful in providing guidance for complex issues such as those presented by cultural sensitivity and the antiquities trade.

Intellectual property claims have long been sustained in a way that is now under severe scrutiny. Pacific Island countries continue to face unauthorized uses of their traditional knowledge and practices. In response, international agencies in collaboration with Pacific Island countries are promoting sui generis forms of protection. The Institute of Fijian Language and Culture's Cultural Mapping Programme looks beyond ongoing debates about indigenous collection and digitization of intangible heritage to promote sui generis protection measures in lieu of western intellectual property law. Supported by an Institute grant, the unfolding Sawau Project creates an archive of sites, stories, and shared memories of the Sawau people of Beqa, an island iconic in Fiji for its firewalking practice (vilavilairevo). Advocating a form of social intervention in situ, The Sawau Project has become a collaborative tool to encourage digital documentation, linkages, and institutional collaborations among Fijian communities and their allies to negotiate and promote alternative forms of protection.

Indigenous peoples’ emphasis on protecting their cultural heritage (including land) through a human rights-based approach reveals the synergies and conflicts between the World Heritage Convention and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This article focuses on how their insistence on the right to participate effectively in decision-making and centrality of free, prior, and informed consent as defined in the UNDRIP exposes the limitations of existing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and World Heritage Convention processes effecting Indigenous peoples, cultures, and territories and how these shortcomings can be addressed. By tracking the evolution of the UNDRIP and the World Heritage Convention from their drafting and adoption to their implementation, it examines how the realization of Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination concerning cultural heritage is challenging international law to become more internally consistent in its interpretation and application and international organizations to operate in accordance with their constitutive instruments.

Scientific plagiarism is as sui generis as the author function in science. A study of the specificity of scientific plagiarism and the ways in which it diverges from appropriation in other disciplines allows us to question traditional definitions that focus on the copying of published copyrighted materials. The form of plagiarism that is most damaging to scientists does not involve publications, is largely outside the scope of copyright law, and is unlikely to be detected by textual-similarity algorithms. The same features that make this kind of plagiarism difficult to identify and control also provide a powerful window on the unique construction of authorial credit in science, the problems of peer review, and the limitations of plagiarism surveillance technologies.

This article addresses the shortcomings of UNESCO’s intangible heritage program in developing effective mechanisms for community participation in heritage management. Contrary to its original intentions, by prioritizing national perspectives and interests on heritage, UNESCO’s program inadvertently allows for strengthening the control of the state over the heritage of minorities and other marginalized groups. This article explores the complexities of state-led intangible heritage management, using the Semah ritual of Turkey’s Alevi religious groups as a case in point. I first detail how Alevi voices were silenced during Semah’s intangible heritage nomination process, despite those documents submitted by Turkey to UNESCO that claim Alevis’ active engagement and full support. Then I discuss in what ways the heritage making of Semah plays into the ongoing efforts of the Turkish government to integrate Alevis into dominant Sunni majority. I conclude by arguing that UNESCO’s intangible heritage program, though unintentionally, assists nondemocratic countries in their efforts to force marginalized groups to adopt the mainstream culture.

The preservation of cultural heritage is costly and one has to decide if and which items of cultural heritage are worth preserving. A method for determining the value of cultural heritage is therefore needed. In economics, several evaluation procedures are applied. This article briefly comments on impact studies and willingness- to-pay studies (hedonic market approach and the travel cost approach) and then focuses on contingent valuation surveys. The application of contingent valuation on the arts and related problems are discussed. Finally, the article combines the evaluation methods with democratic decisions by referenda. Switzerland presents an example of referenda held on art policy.

The twenty-first century has ushered in new debates and social movements that aim to structure how culture is produced, owned, and distributed. At one side, open-knowledge advocates seek greater freedom for finding, distributing, using, and reusing information. On the other hand, traditional-knowledge rights advocates seek to protect certain forms of knowledge from appropriation and exploitation and seek recognition for communal and culturally situated notions of heritage and intellectual property. Understanding and bridging the tension between these movements represents a vital and significant challenge. This paper explores possible areas of where these seemingly divergent goals may converge, centered on the Creative Commons concept of some rights reserved. We argue that this concept can be extended into areas where scientific disciplines intersect with traditional knowledge. This model can help build a voluntary framework for negotiating more equitable and open communication between field researchers and diverse stakeholding communities.

Over the last 20 years, museums have attracted unprecedented academic attention. For the first time in their history, museums as institutions have been the subject of theorizing as well as intense academic and public debates about their place in the contemporary world. Much of the theoretical work has taken place in the context of the New Museology, a critical goal of which has been to rethink the manifold and complex relationships between museums and the societies in which they exist. Advocates of the New Museology have prominently sought ways to make museums less elitist but more inclusive, that is more directly and democratically involved with their various constituencies such as the people who create and use the objects that museums collect or the audiences who visit museum exhibitions and participate in museum programs. Unfortunately, the New Museology has been rather long on theory and rather short on detailed explorations or accounts of the implications of its theoretical formulations for museum practice, that is for the day-to-day activities and interactions comprising the work that goes on in and around museums.

This article explores some key considerations around determining who should have the right to control access to, and benefit from, traditional knowledge and intangible cultural heritage. It highlights the complexities involved in these considerations by examining in detail the different claims to control by different segments of the population in regard to two case studies: Samoan tattooing and the Vanuatu land dive. It uses insights from this analysis to problematize the assumptions about the use of concepts such as “community” in legislation designed to protection traditional knowledge and expressions of culture, and it also reflects on what effect such legislative developments may have on the cultural industries initiative and the implementation of the Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage.