Page 24 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Hiyab Gebretsadik Weldearegay Critics on Heritage Laws and Tourism Politics in Ethiopia

omy of Merryman (1986) that excludes communities. so much is not in doubt that institutional racism char-
Communities must be more centrally involved in cul- acterised by wrongly structured heritage governance
tural property governance and benefit-sharing. They mechanisms may lead up to; identity cleansing, in
shall shape that involvement by changing existing any appropriate sense of the term, (Mill & Morrison,
rules of multi-layered sovereignty over heritages to 1985; Hall & Jenkins, 1995): open doors to deliberate
local independence, which presents novel possibilities delay of conservation and neglecting the restoration
for community control over heritages; this supports of treasures; undermine or silence contestant’s treas-
the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights ures (Walleligne, 1969); deconstruct, deny, or omit
of Indigenous Peoples, which provided a platform for elements considered unfit for specific purpose. Mem-
Indigenous peoples to unsettle the autonomy of the ories of all nations may not be equally and sufficiently
nation-states in which they live and provided the in- presented to the deserved scope and scale of the reality
stitutional presence required to exert influence on na- as some may be under-presented and others over em-
tional governments to respect their collective rights as phasised (Merryman, 1986, Wallelign, 1969; Wight &
peoples and their struggles to maintain their unique Lennon, 2007; Biehl et al., 2015) which means the pro-
cultural identities, traditions, and institutions in the ductivity of meanings that construct counter-history
face of discrimination (Soderland & Lilley, 2015). where the politicised ‘portion of truth’ is produced;
From the philosophical and political categorical im- Deconstructionist systematic suppression or deletion
peratives of national treasures, it is recognised as a of heritage related evidence; Smuggling of heritage
priori, a knowledge that needs no proof, to be herit- treasures (Casana & Panahipour, 2014; Al-Ansi et al.,
age only in their textual address by this UN proclama- 2021); Biasedly selecting heritage as national prestige
tion. As heritage is the contemporary use of the past (Walleligne, 1969; Wight & Lennon, 2007); Selective-
(Wight & Lennon, 2007), there may be conflicting in- ly researching and publicising heritages (Walleligne,
terests among owners (McCamley & Gilmore, 2017) 1969); and, Selectively proposing treasures to be world
and perhaps several politically motivated layers of heritages (Wight & Lennon, 2007; Lixinski, 2011). This
owners with their claim of sovereignty (Lixinski, 2011) over/under/misrepresentation of the past could serve
and are prone to be managed for a range of purposes as a tool of social, political and economic hegemony
defined by the needs and demands of the present soci- and a place for objectifying political aspirations.
eties (Wight & Lennon, 2007) which ultimately make
it cumbersome obstacle to protect cultural heritages Literature Review on Heritage Economics and Tourism
(Lixinski, 2011). Heritages can shape how future gen- Politics
erations remember and analyse their ancestors. They Heritage has a value that transcends numbers and fig-
can act as sites of both memory (Al-Ansi et al., 2021) ures. The remote consequence of the politicisation of
and counter-memory (Davis & Starn, 1989); they may heritage governance is on the economics of heritage
reflect tyrannical histories of domination and mis- (Lixinski, 2019), which in turn unnecessarily collided
recognition and hold great spaces for politics and po- with the long-run interests of the economic remuner-
litical struggle as there is a split between the national ations in the tourism industry (Richter, 1983; Jordan
culturalist demand for autonomy and sovereignty, et al., 2007). The Tourism Business sub-sector can
and the negation of the certainty in the articulation be an instrument and victim of this politics (Richter,
of imperialist demands as a practice of domination. 1985; Matthews & Richter, 1991; Hall, 1994; Dredge &
Simone (2019) has also stated that the powers of her- Jenkins, 2003; Douglas, 2014; Hollinshead & Suleman,
itages are not measured by what they overtly say or 2017). So, the above postulates indicate that the func-
how they are exposed to tourists now but by the fab- tioning of the Tourism sector is against the ontolog-
ricated meaning that explains how the past happened. ical Dialectical Materialism because it adheres to a
Therefore, given the fact that heritage occupies a dis- pure materialist worldview about tourism instead of
cursive political space with vast sphere of influence, an integrated totality of the political domain.

20 | Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference