The book opens challenging new opportunities to look at heritage and tourism markets. During the past few years studies in cultural anthropology, sociology and geography have emerged that focus on the global heritage system. Michael A. Di Giovine's refreshing insights into the heritage of humankind could enhance a new form of dialogue between conservation specialists, tour operators and anthropologists and give impetus to debates about different cultures and conservation schools. Such a debate could also be a contribution to intercultural dialogue.

International Journal of Heritage Studies

Di Giovine makes a contribution to academic and professional understandings about the role of administrative culture as it relates to the global level of world heritage and tourism. Di Giovine draws on his experience as tour operator and ethnographer to assess the production of meaning at World Heritage sites.

Curator: The Museum Journal

Di Giovine's book is about possibly the largest broker of cultural meaning and institutional producer of 'heritage,' one which is virtually unimpeachable in its self-perpetuating discourse of legitimacy supported by ample cultural capital. Di Giovine offers a necessary critique, a deconstruction of both the tropes used by UNESCO in production of mythohistorical, disembedded heritage and a detailed look at the fractures in its universalizing agenda. Ultimately, the 'heritage-scape' is an important contribution to the discussion on the production of narratives and material culture of 'modernity'-defined through a normative experience of the past and a strategic structuring of that experience.

Journal Of Tourism and Cultural Change

Di Giovine terms the "UNESCO's newly ordered social structure" of World Heritage sites as the heritage-scape....The book is a project of global ethnography to conceptualize the notion, processes, and position of World Heritage Sites in contemporary globalized world….The book offers some unique perspectives regarding the relationship of heritage with tourism due to the author's experience as tour operator that brings in insights from within the tourism industry. The multi-sited ethnographic accounts of world heritage sites in the Southeast Asia is well weaved with discussion of how various players including the hosts, the guests and the heritage agencies interact in a complex network.

Conservation South Asia

This book is a substantial monograph concerned with the interface between heritage and tourism. ... An innovative ethnography, …Di Giovine's work is successful in bringing to the fore the contingent, negotiated, and at times marginalising nature of World Heritage and mass tourism that happens in World Heritage sites in Southeast Asia. Of significance is his observation of the work of UNESCO beyond a designatory or list-making regime, and as a global ordering and placemaking process aimed at creating a peaceful transnational utopia. ... All in all, this is an exciting contribution to the field of heritage and tourism studies.

Journal Of Heritage Tourism

The Heritage-Scape is a "global ethnography" which provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of the complex relationship between UNESCO, World Heritage, and tourism. Described in the book as an anthropologist and former tour guide, Di Giovine draws upon extensive fieldwork, his participation in the tour industry, and close readings of UNESCO documents and texts in order to form his insightful coverage of this triangular relationship…. This is an important book. Di Giovine undoubtedly succeeds in this attempt to analyze UNESCO's World Heritage program, moving effortlessly between detailed case study illustrations of World Heritage-related processes at specific sites, explanation of the workings and declarations of UNESCO, and more generalized discussion of the processes and implications of this inherently globalizing endeavor. Indeed, this is an anthropological study of globalization par excellence. It is therefore an essential book for a broad readership, including academics, researchers, and students in the fields of anthropology of globalization, tourism studies, cultural studies and heritage, as well as practitioners in the area of heritage tourism. Di Giovine is to be applauded for this timely and comprehensive examination of the contemporary World Heritage system.

Journal of Anthropological Research