Conclusion

This chapter concludes the book with a summation of the argument. The World Heritage regime represents a Faustian pact between protection and prestige, a pact that continues to unfold and in which the figure of the technical specialist—the expert—has a central presence. The preceding chapters uncovered the more fundamental yet ambivalent role of these experts, including their role in the very thing underpinning the geopolitical activation of World Heritage—prestige. Within an overall commitment to conservation, experts are central agents in the Faustian pact as they burnish, broker and themselves benefit from World Heritage prestige. But as World Heritage becomes, in turn, the subject of states’ status-seeking, it finally questions whether this Faustian pact too is being transformed, with implications for World Heritage protection, and whether its denouement may be approaching. But which Faust? Most versions of the story end in salutary tragedy, suggesting grave implications for World Heritage protection, prestige—or both. Yet in the most well-known version of all, Faust is ultimately redeemed.