ABSTRACT
Heritage has long been a contentious term. Scholars from various disciplines have criticised it as partial, contingent, difficult and – famously in the case of David Lowenthal’s (1998) disavowal of heritage in contrast to history – as basically fictitious. These various heritage sceptics can point to many examples of poorly managed, cynically exploited and depressing heritage spaces and practices, for example in rapid and massive gentrifications often tied to the advent of World Heritage status (e.g. Chan et al. 2016; Herzfeld 2010). Their critique is easily made, but is contemporary heritage-making always about hollowing-out the meaning of spaces and practices? And if heritage is not a thing but a process – to recall with nostalgia that Clifford could emphasise that procedures rather than essences were the key to the experience of cultural identity (1988: 275) – then can heritage be made cosmopolitan? Or rather where is cosmopolitanism in the ways heritage is being made at present? For cosmopolitans everywhere, making heritage genuinely cosmopolitan should be a crucial part of a genuine recognition of difference and dignity.
