Museums, Heritage and International Development

The relationship between museums, heritage and international development has been underexamined from a critical and comparative perspective. This edited volume inaugurates a new, important debate across these and other disciplines, identifying the distinct contribution of museums and heritage to international development agendas, engaging with the politics of museums and heritage for development, and identifying the specific challenges facing this sector within development practice. Grounded in case studies which range from Africa, to South, East and South-East Asia, to South America and the Caribbean, the volume aims at a rethinking of both international museum and development practice.

While many claims are made regarding the power of cultural heritage as a driver and enabler of sustainable development, the relationship between museums, heritage and development has received little academic scrutiny. This book stages a critical conversation between the interdisciplinary fields of museum studies, heritage studies and development studies to explore this under-researched sphere of development intervention. In an agenda-setting introduction, the editors explore the seemingly oppositional temporalities and values represented by these "past-making" and "future-making" projects, arguing that these provide a framework for mutual critique. Contributors to the volume bring insights from a wide range of academic and practitioner perspectives on a series of international case studies, which each raise challenging questions that reach beyond merely cultural concerns and fully engage with both the legacies of colonial power inequalities and the shifting geopolitical dynamics of contemporary international relations. Cultural heritage embodies different values and can be instrumentalized to serve different economic, social and political objectives within development contexts, but the past is also intrinsic to the present and is foundational to people’s aspirations for the future. Museums, Heritage and International Development explores the problematics as well as potentials, the politics as well as possibilities, in this fascinating nexus.