Fifteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

During the past years, policymakers, cultural managers, and scholars have become increasingly interested in the instrumental value of cultural heritage sites and museums, identifying them as spaces for cooperation and underlining their potential for diplomacy. Recently, scholars have explored the linkages between cultural heritage, museums, and diplomacy with various emphases and conceptualizations. In this paper, we examine the conceptualization of heritage diplomacy in scholarship and the notions of cultural heritage and approaches to power included in it. Our critical close reading of 57 sampled scholarly publications reveals how the concept of heritage diplomacy is ambiguous. Its meanings vary from heritage-related actions in states’ international relations and foreign policy to providing contact zones at heritage sites and museums for facilitating intercultural dialogue within and between diverse communities. In scholarship, heritage diplomacy is commonly approached from a conservationist point of view, emphasizing the preservation of tangible cultural heritage through knowledge exchange, material aid, and funding. Besides international organizations and states, the concept is extended to include people-to-people diplomatic relationships that scholars, however, rarely scrutinize. Our study underlines that cultural heritage and power relations are entangled in the conceptualizations and explorations of heritage diplomacy. A critical approach to this entanglement encourages us to rethink cultural heritage sites and museums through a transnational perspective that highlights the historical connectivity and mobility of people, objects, and ideas, as well as the uses of power included in narratives dealing with such connectivity.