This work provides an in-depth exploration of the basic concepts and mechanisms of the World Heritage Convention. As the Convention celebrates its 40th anniversary and reflects on its future, this book offers new insights into the reasons for its global success, into its prospects, and into its contradictions.

Francesco Bandarin, Former Director, UNESCO World Heritage Center, and UNESCO Assistant Director General for Culture

The World Heritage Convention of 1972 established a list of sites acknowledged by UNESCO to be of universal human value—World Heritage Sites. With the detailed knowledge of an insider to the heritage establishment and the critical perspective of an independent researcher, Sophia Labadi takes us through the key issues of how such sites can be compatible with cultural diversity, with notions of an authentic past, with sustainable development and tourism, and with social cohesion in the modern nation state. She finds fault with the implementation of the convention and its core value, while offering an astute resolution rooted in a more sensitive and pluralist cultural politics of tangible and intangible heritage for us all. This is essential reading for all concerned with contemporary heritage and the vital importance of the past to the present.

Michael Shanks, Stanford University