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Grounding world society: Spatiality, cultural heritage, and our world as shared geographies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2017

Matthew S. Weinert
Matthew S. Weinert*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, University of Delaware
*
* Correspondence to: Matthew S. Weinert, University of Delaware, Dept. of Political Science & International Relations, 347 Smith Hall, 18 Amstel Ave, Newark, Delaware, 19716, US. Author’s email: mweinert@udel.edu
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Abstract

The concept of world society has elicited sharp criticism for being too diffuse and amorphous owing to its synonymy with all transborder social relations, equability with humankind, or conflation with solidarist international society. To overcome these shortcomings, this article reconfigures world society by attaching otherwise unmoored social activity to an understanding of the world as comprised of shared social spaces. This spatialised reading foregrounds constellations of relations that have emerged in conjunction with discrete geographies – natural, economic, cyberspatial, cultural, anthropic – within which humans interact, and demonstrates that the world has become an actionable, political concept generative of activities peculiar to the space itself. A review of English School literature extracts four theses – purposive, plural, spatial, and stewardship – that invite conceptual reconstruction of world society. The article then addresses the discursive construction of cultural heritage as a worldly space populated with distinctive institutions and cognitive and normative commitments, and is followed by reflections on the added value of such an approach and directions for future research.

Keywords

World SocietyCultural HeritageEnglish School
Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 409 - 429
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

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References

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33 Ibid., p. 60. My field research in Nepal in the wake of the April and May 2015 earthquakes that destroyed or heavily damaged two-thirds of Nepal’s cultural heritage sites, confirmed the corollary to Coward’s point: to destroy the space is to destroy the relationships associated with those spaces. Many of the sites obliterated in Nepal were associated with religious observance and spiritual practices. Destruction detaches traditions from the physical structures; without the material, intangible set of practices likewise disappear. Author interview with Mr Christian Manhart, Director of UNESCO-Nepal, 30 March 2016.

34 Buzan, ‘IPE’, p. 132.

35 Coward, Urbicide, p. 1.

36 Ibid., p. 4.

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42 Buzan, FWIS?, p. 120.

43 Ibid., p. 270.

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54 My narrative should not be construed as suggesting that culture and cultural heritage are neutral or apolitical. Cultural sites, objects, and practices have been and very much are deeply political and contested. The point is beyond the scope of this immediate study, however.

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63 Ibid., p. 38, paras 79, 80.

64 UNESCO Press, ‘Timbuktu Trial: A Major Step Towards Peace and Reconciliation in Mali’ (27 September 2016), available at: {http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/timbuktu_trial_a_major_step_towards_peace_and_reconciliati/#.V_OTKeArKhc} accessed 4 October 2016. See also Coward, Urbicide.

65 ICC, Judgment, pp. 26–7, para. 46.

66 These include, with state parties as of 10 August 2016, the 1954 Hague Convention (127 state parties); the 1970 convention on the illicit transfer of cultural property (131 state parties); the 1972 World and Natural Heritage Convention (192 state parties); the 2001 declaration on cultural diversity; the 2001 underwater cultural heritage convention (55 state parties); the 2003 convention on intangible cultural heritage (169 state parties); and the 2005 convention on the diversity of cultural expressions (143 state-parties). All UNESCO cultural conventions, declarations, and recommendations may be found at {http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13649&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=-471.html}.

67 The UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage list is stipulated in Article 11 of the 1972 Convention; Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity lists are envisioned by Article 16 of the 2003 Convention; and the Memory of the World Register was created in 1992 to assist communities in preserving, protecting, and increasing accessibility through digitisation of the world’s documentary heritage, available at: {http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/homepage/} accessed 6 November 2016.

68 I owe the curatorial description of UNESCO’s maintenance of the World Heritage List to Hannah Laub, ‘Collecting World Heritage Places: An Investigation of the World Heritage List as Artifact’ (Master’s thesis, Brandenburg University of Technology, 19 September 2016), author copy.

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78 Ibid., p. 167.

79 Ibid., p. 196.

80 Ibid., p. 52.

81 Ibid., p. 136.

82 In this regard, Arendt’s concept of natality, which grounds her conception of politics, must include the creative process if natality signifies, physiologically, an actual birth or appearance of new human beings into the world, and, performatively, the insertion into this world of oneself through speech and action, which encompasses the very political and ontological significances of cultural objects and practices and knowledges. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 9.

83 For an overview of retributive justice and cultural heritage, see Frulli, ‘Criminalisation’; and Vrdoljak, ‘Genocide’.

84 UNESCO, Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (July 2013), pp. 20–1, para. 77, available at: {http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide13-en.pdf} accessed 30 October 2016. There are ten selection criteria – at least one of which must be met – for inscribing sites onto the world heritage list. See {http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/} accessed 30 October 2016. Inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity must accord with nine criteria. See {http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/doc/src/00035-EN.pdf} accessed 30 October 2016.

85 {http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/899} accessed 30 October 2016.

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99 Gillman, The Idea, p. 3.

100 UNESCO, Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (July 2013), available at: {http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide13-en.pdf} accessed 6 November 2016.

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104 Titon, ‘Music’, p. 704.

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