De Cesari offers a refreshing and thought-provoking perspective on the “back-and-forth movements between emancipatory and neoliberal projects” in relation to heritage discourses and the current remaking of the state. She proposes to look at heritage, governmentality, and the state from a prism of three key elements: (1) accelerated transnational circulation of cultural policy ideas, (2) culture as development and participation, and (3) the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the rearticulation of the state. The author convincingly argues that the discourse of heritage as development—or heritage as development and participation—uses a common vocabulary in extremely different situations such as Palestinian and Italian heritage management. De Cesari concentrates on the colonial/noncolonial axis as the key difference between the two cases. She demonstrates how, beyond their differences, both cases are very similar regarding the ways that cultural and heritage policies are being remodeled and shape the transformation of the governance models.

Heritage beyond the Nation-State? Nongovernmental Organizations, Changing Cultural Policies, and the Discourse of Heritage as Development. Chiara De Cesari.

Peer reviewed