Experts in the World Heritage Regime: Between Protection and Prestige

Addressing the topic of expertise in international cultural conservation, this book argues that the UNESCO World Heritage regime emerged as a Faustian pact between protection and prestige, and a productive tension between these elements remains at its core, embodied by the heritage expert. Tracing experts’ practices in the World Heritage regime, this book shows how they burnish, broker and themselves benefit from World Heritage prestige. As World Heritage prestige also contributes to states’ international status claims, the stakes are raised, with both the denouement of the pact and the future for World Heritage poised between condemnation and redemption.

Luke James is a heritage studies scholar, lawyer and heritage practitioner specialising in World Heritage and international conservation governance. Luke is a Lecturer, Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University and previously worked in the Australian Government’s International Heritage Section, for UNESCO and as a heritage consultant. Publications include ’Expertise and the making of World Heritage policy’, (International Journal of Cultural Policy) and ’The symbolic value of expertise in international heritage diplomacy’, (Future Anterior).