Kayoiura, located at the most easterly point of Omijima Island, Nagato City, Japan, is a small fishing village where community-based coastal whaling took place from late 1600 to early 1900. Today, more than 100 years since the end of whaling, the community maintains a number of cultural properties, both tangible and intangible, dedicated to the spirits of whales, including prayers for the whales given daily by two elderly Buddhist nuns. This article suggests that these cultural properties convey the former whaling community's ethics and spirituality with a strong sense of reciprocity that acknowledges the undeniable human dependency on other lives. It is argued that such spirituality has an important implication for our understanding of sustainability. Whaling is no doubt one of the most contentious issues in today's environmental debates, where divisive arguments collide over a wide range of issues. Although any study on whaling would play a role in the debate, this article's intention is elsewhere: to acknowledge the importance of ethics and spirituality as intangible cultural heritage and their role in sustainability debate.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to acknowledge the generous support provided by Mr. Fujii, director of the Nagato Whale Museum in organizing the fieldwork in Nagato. His passion, willingness, and commitment to the local community provided immense support for this study. I am grateful for the people at Kayoi who accommodated me and shared their knowledge, experiences, and many stories. I am particularly indebted to obii-sama, the Hosen-an nuns, for allowing me to hear the stories of their lives as well as record the sound around Hosen-an, including their prayers. I wish for the safety and prosperity of the people who live with and care for the natural environment and the spirits of all beings.

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]〉.

The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was agreed upon with an overwhelming majority and after the swiftest ratification process in the history of the UNESCO entered into force on 18 March 2007. Now, five years later and with some 130 Members committed to implementing the convention, not only observers with a particular interest in the topic but also the broader public may be eager to know what has happened and in how far has the implementation progress advanced. This is the question that animates this article. It seeks to answer it by giving a brief background to the UNESCO Convention, clarifying its legal status and impact, as well as by looking at the current implementation activities in domestic and international contexts. The article sets this analysis in the frame of international regime complexity insights.

Social scientists are increasingly approaching the World Heritage Committee itself as an entry-point to understanding global heritage processes and phenomena. This article explores the subject of human rights in the operations of the World Heritage Committee—the decision-making body established by the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention. It seeks to address the epistemological and methodological implications of approaching the World Heritage Committee as a point of departure for understanding global heritage and rights dynamics. It builds on an “event ethnography” undertaken by the authors to understand how rights discourse appeared in multiple contexts during the Thirty-Ninth World Heritage Committee session held in Bonn, Germany, in June 2015.

In this article, we discuss the methodological and ontological implications of studying rights discourses in the context of World Heritage events and processes. We have a particular interest in the interplay of formal and informal dynamics, revealing the entangled and multi-sited processes that shape and are shaped by the annual event. While much of the debate and analysis in heritage studies is understandably concerned with formal decision-making processes and position-taking, this work demonstrates the significance of a range of informal dynamics in appreciating future possibilities.

The hope has long been that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) would finally bring ancestors and their cultural items home to their communities to be reconnected and rest. However, 30 years later, museums and academics still fear losing control of research and access in their intellectual pursuits. Far from true, museums have benefited in working with tribes in telling stories around their cultural history, present and future. This article shares experiences over the authors’ careers and counters the alarmist calls to arms against compliance with NAGPRA.

Heritage preservation is distinctly political, often presenting a privileged elitist interpretation of historic sites, while denigrating or even destroying later significant built environments. Structures that are the emanation of subsequent cultures, but similarly tied to the place, are often undervalued, underinterpreted, and even purposely obliterated from the landscape. This article considers the politics of heritage related to privileging one type of historic structure to the complete detriment of the other. The example of Gurna, in Egypt, serves as a powerful case study for the loss of a living historic built environment solely for the simplified or “flattened” interpretation of a place. In highlighting the preferential protection and presentation of the World Heritage Site of the Theban Necropolis and ultimate demise of the historic hamlets of Gurna, the article builds on previous work in the field on interpretation, the impact of tourism, and the conflicting identities of historic sites.

This article problematizes the process of heritage declaration using ethnographic research on the working class carnival produced each year in the historic city center of Puebla, México. The author explores the ways in which the intersection of cultural and political practice in this case has not only called into question the authenticity of certain aspects of this local tradition, but have instead converted them into points of contention among carnival producers.

This article considers the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention in light of climate change, offering a state of the field review of climate responses for World Heritage sites (WHS). Opening with a brief review of UNESCO World Heritage activities around climate change, we then detail the primary impacts and risks that climate change pose for WHS and the reporting and monitoring systems in place to document and track these impacts. Looking forward, we examine the most promising pathways for World Heritage to advance in the domains of climate mitigation, adaptation, climate communication, and climate action.

Digital technologies have often been perceived as imperilling traditional cultural expressions (TCE). This angst has interlinked technical and sociocultural dimensions. On the technical side, it is related to the affordances of digital media that allow instantaneous access to information without real location constraints, data transport at the speed of light and effortless reproduction of the original without any loss of quality. In a sociocultural context, digital technologies have been regarded as the epitome of globalization forces—not only driving and deepening the process of globalization itself but also spreading its effects. The present article examines the validity of these claims and sketches a number of ways in which digital technologies may act as benevolent factors. It illustrates in particular that some digital technologies can be instrumentalized to protect TCE forms, reflecting more appropriately the specificities of TCE as a complex process of creation of identity and culture. The article also seeks to reveal that digital technologies—and more specifically the Internet and the World Wide Web—have had a profound impact on the ways cultural content is created, disseminated, accessed and consumed. It is argued that this environment may have generated various opportunities for better accommodating TCE, especially in their dynamic sense of human creativity.

The author recounts the process of acquiring a work of art, focusing on one object but encapsulating the thoughts and experience of many years. In so doing, she reflects on the value added to the appreciation of artistic works and her joy in sharing this with others through public display of her collection.

Since the first lawsuit against the Knoedler Gallery was filed for selling forgeries, the art world has been abuzz with stories of high-end fakes. However, forgeries are not a new phenomenon. The law of supply and demand dictates that there will be no end to the rising value of artworks done by the hands of “masters.” And with soaring market prices, art forgery will proliferate as forgers find incentive in skyrocketing sales. At the heart of forgery disputes is the determination of authenticity. Who makes these determinations? How does the market and legal world handle a battle of experts? Moreover, what remedies are available to disappointed buyers? The best method of protection is to complete due diligence; however, the process is often complex and expensive. Even after completing due diligence, it is possible for buyers to be left with sophisticated fakes. What legal remedies are available to buyers?

This article examines the events leading up to, surrounding, and following UNESCO’s controversial removal of Germany’s Dresden Elbe Valley from the World Heritage List in 2009. At the heart of the controversy lay the construction of a new four-lane bridge, the Waldschlößchen Bridge, that would cut through scenic meadows, destroying long-protected vistas and changing the city’s cultural landscape. Although supported by German court decisions and local public opinion polls, the bridge has been denounced by many as an eyesore and an affront to the ideals of World Heritage. Yet despite the bridge, Dresden supposedly maintains World Heritage worthiness, even if it no longer enjoys that title. The author attempts to make sense of these contradictions in order to discover lessons applicable to the World Heritage program as a whole.

Debates around cultural properties tend to focus on law and ethics, on appropriation and ownership, with media representations often producing stereotypes that reinforce and polarize the terms of the debate. The common, typically polemical, notion is that rapacious museums are merely a final resting point for captive static objects, with repatriation viewed as simply restorative compensation. A robust challenge to this view was developed in the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums signed in 2002 by the directors of 19 leading museums in Europe and North America. The concept of the universal museum asserts that objects are cared for and held in trust for the world, overriding shifting political and ethnic boundaries and enabling the visitor to see “different parts of the world as indissolubly linked.” Although many would be in sympathy with the rhetorical position asserted, critics have argued that the declaration is a thinly veiled attempt to bolster immunity to repatriation claims. On both sides of the debate, the hegemonic position of many museums remains unsettling.

In the absence of specific policies that address the digitization of Pacific cultural collections, it is important to document the practices of Australian museum professionals and cultural experts who deal with close to one-fifth of Pacific cultural objects held in museums. Interviews with 17 museum professionals and cultural experts in Australia help advance reflective practice relating to digitizing Pacific collections. Drawing on principles enshrined in international, regional, and Australian policies and protocols relating to the management of indigenous collections, they favor responsible digitization based on consultation with source and diasporic communities. In order to consult across a region with multiple languages and cultures when time and resources are limited, they begin with areas they know best and when possible, work with curators of Pacific backgrounds. Some practicalities of publishing and protecting digitized images online revolve around validating information about the artifact and going beyond copyright to respect traditional knowledge.

New Zealand claims for the return of preserved tattooed Maori heads held by foreign institutions have revisited complex legal, ethical, and cultural questions surrounding human remains in museum and other institutional collections worldwide. Recent legislation in France that facilitates the return of Maori heads in French museums represents a further stage in this ongoing story.

Cultural heritage is a crucial component that plays a fundamental role in defining an individual’s identity and advancing the protection of his or her human rights. Reinforcing cultural distinctions and human differences are significant and therefore recognized in Islam. This article enhances the understanding of an Islamic approach to cultural heritage and human rights through the lens offered by three examples: the right to education, freedom of religion, and the right to development. The discussion of the protection of cultural heritage in Islam is essential because Islam is one of the legal sources in many Muslim states, and, therefore, the examination of its intersection with international law could enhance the protection of cultural heritage and promote human rights in the Islamic world. The article develops principles of cultural heritage protection that are in conformity with international law. These principles are the promising common ground for the possibility of universal cultural heritage policy. Despite the fact that there is no clear reference to the notion of cultural heritage in Islamic teaching, this article shows that principles of the protection of cultural heritage are established.