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UNESCO World Heritage Sites Online: The “Field Site” in a Global Context Are online UNESCO world heritage sites (W.H.S.) becoming kinds of nascent world heritage destinations unto themselves? The Scottish Island and UNESCO world heritage site St. Kilda, for example, which is very difficult to get to - there aren't any ferries even in the summer - has a rich web site which might provide as much information and ‘touristic’ experience as a visitor might want - i.e. interactive flash movies, sound, a Quicktime panoramic movie, slide shows, history, a guest book – given the difficulty of getting there. As these information technologies change and develop, it will be interesting to compare and contrast how UNESCO’s conception of common heritage changes in response to these new ways of communication, by comparing online sites with on the ground sites from the perspective of the visitor/tourist/end user as well as the producers of these sites, including UNESCO and others. The German website, Schätze der Welt, (Treasures of the World) focuses on about 175 sites out of the current 721 UNESCO cultural and natural sites and includes a 10-15 minute movie for each site as well as a slide show, a map and links to others sites. What are the implications of these new forms of communication for UNESCO World Heritage in terms of an anthropological conception of “the field” in a globalizing world?
Anthropologists have historically looked at and gone to "the field" which has traditionally been geographically bounded. Examining UNESCO world heritage sites (which are now in about 124 out of about 183 countries) on the ground and online as a “field site” shapes interesting methodological questions in relation to the conception of “the field.” First, UNESCO world heritage sites as a "field" are inherently multi-sited, spanning national boundaries, and shaped by a set of UNESCO criteria of what common heritage is. Secondly, if one looks at UNESCO world heritage web sites as destinations in themselves, embedded in a form of time-space compression and accessed by clicking a mouse, using a search engine or entering a URL, the "cyberspace" of online world heritage can be potentially viewed as another "field" with another set of methodological challenges, shaped by changing information technologies. In anthropological terms, the field in these cases becomes shaped by a variety of histories and living traditions, an UNESCO agenda to preserve these sites, a specific concept of common history, and the ways in which UNESCO world heritage is represented on the Internet in the context of developing multimedia technologies for visitors, tourists and end users.
In George Marcus’ `Ethnography in/of
the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography,' the author's examination of recent methodological
trends in anthropology shows the way in which anthropological approaches
are beginning to examine complex objects and become multi-sited within
the context of a world system and late capitalism. Marcus shows how ethnography is
moving from a single-sited approach to cross-cut dichotomies of
global and local, of "lifeworld" and system. Utilizing
an extensive review of anthropological literature, he identifies
the way multi-sited ethnography is now located within new
interdisciplinary spheres including media studies and science and technology
studies. One of Marcus' underlying arguments is that "any
ethnography of a cultural formation in the world system is also an ethnography
of the system, and therefore cannot be understood only in terms of the
conventional single-site mise en scène of ethnographic research, assuming
indeed it is the cultural formation, produced in several different locales,
rather than the conditions of a particular set of subjects that is the
object of study." (Marcus, 1995, 99) For Marcus, "Multi-sited
research is designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or
juxtapositions of locations in which the ethnographer establishes some
form of literal, physical presence, with an explicit, posited logic
of association or connection among sites that in fact defines the argument
of the ethnography." (Marcus, 1995, 105) By identifying field sites
within the context of a world system, Marcus provides a methodological
orientation in which to contextualize the idea of "the field"
based on UNESCO's World Heritage conceptions of natural and cultural
‘common heritage.’ From an anthropological perspective, UNESCO W.H.S.
online, as a field site, extend an understanding of multi-sitedness
across multiply national boundaries, specifically incorporating multiply
historical and living traditions, for both natural and cultural sites.
In the aggregate, UNESCO world heritage sites also implicitly invoke
a very wide cast of actors which not only include the various local
and regional producers and consumers of online and on the ground heritage
from their respective countries and language groups, but also
institutional actors relating to UNESCO’s supranational
administrative position. The concept of common heritage, which in this
case defines a cultural formation based on criteria originating out
of UNESCO's beginnings as a response to the second
world war, explicitly attempts to identify outstanding shared characteristics
which transcend national boundaries, thus constructing a unique
anthropological global "field." These bounded, island-like sites, arguably sharing a transnational, common heritage are now produced and represented in a series of web sites, representations, and digitally mediated forms of communication on the Internet. In `Discourse and practice: "the field" as site, method and location in anthropology,' Gupta and Ferguson relocate the field in terms of social, cultural, and political locations, de-centering it from its constitutive (Stocking), ‘local,’ on the ground, anthropological origins. In the context of the Internet and cyberspace, online UNESCO world heritage sites, as a worldwide-accessible, digital field site, contribute to such an anthropological repositioning of the field by not only providing information about on-the-ground world heritage sites to a worldwide audience, but also by providing access to online representations of world heritage embodied in new information technologies, which are arguably sites themselves and which offer new ways of mediating communication. Social communication and communities involved in these new technologies and online UNESCO world heritage sites shape nascent ways of online interaction and meaning. Ethnographically, ‘cyberspace’ as a field site spurs questions about the ways in which visitors, tourists, end users, and producers interact, both globally and locally, using these new technologies in the context of a world system. Opportunities for new kinds of fieldwork, both online, and on the ground, are thus presented, which rewrite the ways in which UNESCO’s concept of common heritage is understood as well as how community members, producers, tourists, visitors and end users utilize these representations and digital means of communication.
Farmer and Freeman provide examples of ways in which de-centered, multi-sited ethnography is practiced in a transnational context. By examining the way discourses shape ethnographic interpretations and theories of anthropology, which aren’t bound locally, they contribute to a reformulation of “the field” in anthropological interpretation. In a globalizing world, the implications of
these new forms of digital communication for UNESCO World Heritage in
terms of an anthropological conception of “the field” contribute to
its reshaping and extension in manifold ways. UNESCO world heritage,
the destinations and the concept, constitute a potential anthropological
‘field’ as do the ways in which it is represented on the Internet for
the actors involved. New modes of digital communication also reformulate
linkages, contours and associations articulating new forms of both on
the ground and online “field sites.” Sites like St. Kilda and ‘Schätze der Welt’ begin to shape an online UNESCO world heritage “field” in the
context of a world system, thus contributing to an ongoing relocation
of the anthropological concept of the “field.” Works Cited Farmer, Paul. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, University of California Press, 1992. Freeman, Carla. `Is local:global as feminine:masculine?' Signs 26, 4 (2001): 1007 ff. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson: `Discourse and practice: "the field" as site, method and location in anthropology', Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, University of California Press, 1997: 1-46. Marcus, George. `Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography', Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 95-117. National Trust for Scotland. December 2001. “St. Kilda World Heritage Site.” http://www.kilda.org.uk/ Online: 8 April 2002 UNESCO “The World Heritage List: Alphabetically
by State Party.” November 1972. Update:
16 December 2001. http://www.unesco.org/whc/heritage.htm
Online: 14 February 2002. Sudwest Rundfunk.
“Schaetze der Welt.” 2001. http://www.schaetze-der-welt.de/sdw_index.html
Online: 8 April 2002 |