HERITAGE VS. MODERNITY

The Geopolitics of UNESCO World Heritage Listings

- Samadrito Mukherjee

When Culture Becomes Strategy

World Heritage tags are often greeted with jubilation—front-page headlines, local pride, a sense of belonging to something larger. Yet beneath the celebration lies a harder truth: heritage is political. It decides whose history is preserved and whose is left out, who benefits and who remains invisible. Far from neutral, UNESCO’s listings shape national prestige, invite global scrutiny, and sometimes ignite open conflict.

Vietnam's Ha Long Bay captures this tension. For tourists, it is postcard beauty; for locals, it is livelihood; for UNESCO, it became a test case. Construction and unregulated development began eroding the fragile landscape until global intervention forced Hanoi to pause. For the fishermen, hoteliers, and politicians around the bay, the debate was not simply about conservation—it was about power, growth, and accountability. That is what World Heritage status often means: a stage where memory collides with modernity.

UNESCO and the Politics of Recognition

The World Heritage system, created in the 1970s, promised to safeguard the treasures of “all humankind.” But the process has always been entangled with diplomacy. To nominate a site is not just cultural—it is strategic. Governments prepare dossiers, lobby committees, and trade influence. Recognition confers legitimacy, but it also creates obligations, sometimes uncomfortable ones.

Different countries have played the game in different ways. China has actively pursued Silk Road sites, inserting the Belt and Road narrative into UNESCO’s very architecture. This is more than archaeology; it is statecraft, projecting a civilizational continuum that reinforces Beijing’s modern ambitions.