Spatial Disposition of UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage and Soft Power: A Survey on the Possibility of Reification of Power Discrepancies

Abstract

With the development of the International System of Power Governance embodied in the myriad of international organizations such as United Nations on the onset of the Second World War, the strategic recourse to settling conflict of interests through war and military might has decreased considerably, as long as the five permanent members have sustained the system. Russia’s ongoing military presence in Ukraine and China–US collision course into Taiwan is the biggest challenge to the Pax Internationalis, but there is no reason to ignore that during the prolonged time of systemic peace among nations, power struggles never ceased but changed its nature, as Soft Power, or cultural might. Concurrent with the development of the above-mentioned legal-political system, there was the development of an international organization whose main objectives are the exchange and promotion of highly praised cultural and scientific achievements, and the protection of cultural heritage of peoples, the UNESCO. Despite the universalist ideal behind this institution, there is the general respect to the sovereignty of States, which works as a barrier to defining some cultural good as heritage contrary to the will of the ruling government. It is, nonetheless, a possibility to self-determination of what is locally considered to be of cultural value, in opposition to universalist hierarchy of values. This legal, international and bureaucratic structure is also an economic burden that may hinders poor states to apply to the list. For all the above said, in its essence, UNESCO’s World Heritage List is a public statement of success and cultural relevance of a country. Its analysis could unveil the state of Soft Power distribution among states, as the inclusion on the list is also a way of participating on the official and international list of tokens of cultural relevance. In this fashion and considering the possible confounding variables described above, this survey intends to use statistical tools to understand the state of affairs and power dynamics incorporated on the World Heritage List, without recurring to preconceived theories of distribution of power relations, as Marxism, Anticolonialism, Postmodernism, or others. Soft Power is a reference frame that has an ontology of power (Soft Power itself), but it does not ascertain a priori who are the owners of the power and their dynamics, so we use it in this research. Data itself shall guide the conclusions of the study, which may support a posteriori any theoretical perspective.