Bringing the World Heritage Regime into View

The World Heritage regime, its central components and cast of roles are explained, examined and further revealed as a commingling of technical expertise and the political and diplomatic faces of multilateralism. The operation of the Convention and its main concepts are critically examined, with a particular focus on the World Heritage List as a governance tool. The crucial steps through which places gain, or lose, their World Heritage status are explained, with a particular focus on the role of experts. We enter the main venues of World Heritage governance as challenging ethnographic sites as well as intense spheres of professional activity, where much is at stake for participants and the planet. In entering the locales of the World Heritage regime, categories of ‘participant’ and ‘observer’ are shown to be problematic, and research and practice are entangled with each other. The dominant narrative of politicisation is shown to be a byproduct of this entanglement, analysed through tropes of ‘feedback loops’ and nostalgia. This encounter sets the scene for experts’ conditions of possibility within the World Heritage regime as they navigate their role in relation to both protection and prestige.