‘Made in India’: Heritage Diplomacy and the Infrastructure of Buddhist Memory

1. Legacies and New Identities: Contemporary India and South Africa Compared Sujata Patel and Tina Uys Part I. Migration, Indenture and Identities: Being Indian in South Africa 2. Indenture and Indianness in South Africa: 1860-1913 Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed 3. Tracing the Journey of South African Indian Women from 1860 Mariam Seedat-Khan 4. In a Faraway Sugarcane Field: Imagining Indentured Labour in Colonial India V. Geetha 5. 'Made in India. Proudly South African': Commemorating 150 years of Indian Presence in South Africa Rehana Vally 6. Commemoration, Celebration, Commiseration? 150th Anniversary of Indentured Labourers in South Africa Brij Maharaj 7. The Legacy of Indentured Indians in South Africa: The Politics of Saving the Early Morning Market in Durban Lubna Nadvi 8. Indenture and Diasporic Integration: Historical Anthropology of India-South Africa Interface Ravindra K. Jain Part 2. The Contemporary Contradictions of Nation States: Democracy, Education and Environment 9. A Better Life For All: The Post-1994 South African Journey in the Second Decade of the New Millennium Janis Grobbelaar 10. South Africa: Conceptualising a Politics of Human-Oriented Development Adam Habib 11. Indian Democracy in Search of a Democratic State: Socio-Political Challenges and State Responses in Contemporary India Ujjwal Singh 12. Reproduction, Contradiction, Contestation and the Struggle for a Just Education in India Padma Velaskar 13. Reflexive Education to Re-envision Modernity Anita Rampal 14. The Place and Role of Higher Education in an Evolving South African Democracy Derek van der Merwe 15. Urban Dreams and Realities Kalpana Sharma 16. Contesting Conservation: Nature, Politics and History in Contemporary India Mahesh Rangarajan Part 3. Relating to Each Other as Regional Nation-States 17. Globalising World and the Changing Dimensions of Indo-South African Ties Rajen Harshe 18. IBSA in the Foreign Policy of a Rising India Priya Chacko 19. Scientific, Environmental and Agricultural Collaboration within the IBSA Dialogue Forum, 2003-2010 David Fig. About the Editors, Notes on Contributors. Index

This article aims to fill the gaps in the discourse on heritage diplomacy, especially concerning the EU’s efforts on heritage. Heritage diplomacy is a new term, the discussions about a more precise theorization of which are still ongoing. Thus, of particular interest was the question of the functions and defining features of the heritage diplomacy of the European Union in terms of its internal (“domestic”) and external (“foreign”) dimensions. Considering this research question, the article focuses on defining the main functions and features of the European Union’s heritage diplomacy activities through their heritage-specific projects and initiatives, especially given the intensification of the EU’s heritage activities in recent years. To do this, firstly, the concept of heritage diplomacy was analyzed and the role and place of heritage and heritage diplomacy in the EU policy was indicated. This article defines heritage diplomacy as the process of instrumentalising the tangible and intangible past (heritage) and the narratives around them to promote (geo-)culture and/or intercultural relations. Then, a careful analysis of the EU’s initiatives and projects on heritage (European Heritage Label, European Capitals of Culture, European heritage awards, UNESCO-EU joint projects, etc.) was done, through which many functions of EU’s heritage diplomacy were pointed out and categorized within the internal (“domestic”) and external (“foreign”) dimensions. Among the functions were defined the following: integration, creation and strengthening of European identity through making a European narrative, ‘Europeanisation’, cooperation, raising awareness of other issues (such as about the practices of sustainability), conservation, culture preservation, involvement of non-European cultures in the cultural dialogue (heritage as a platform), peacekeeping, etc. Although the two ought to be distinct, a blurring between the two dimensions was pointed out, resulting in the notion of the heritage diplomacy of the European Union as being mostly done on the level of the European Continent.

‘MAKE IN INDIA’ necessitates the boost in Indian manufacturing industries to be involved in new product development (NPD) for achieving industrial sustainability. Product development process (PDP) is one of the most vital factors of NPD for developing new products as per customer demand. The successful adoption of PDP requires the top management support (TMS), external collaboration (EC) and market analysis (MA) to develop the suitable environment for successful NPD by producing the high-quality products with technological developments in reduced cost. This study develops a framework comprising of the aforesaid factors and measures by structural equation modelling (SEM) approach with the primary data collected from 263 experts of Indian manufacturing companies. The analysis infers that PDP is escalated by TMS, EC and MA to develop new products trading off among product cost, quality and technological developments for NPD success. The positive influence of TMS on EC has also been explored.

The European Commission has recently identified cultural heritage as one of the focus areas for EU cultural diplomacy. The article explores EU cultural diplomacy that deals with cultural heritage and discusses the concept of heritage diplomacy based on a discourse analysis of interviews with EU officials and heritage practitioners working at sites awarded the European Heritage Label. How do EU officials and heritage practitioners understand the role of cultural heritage for cultural diplomacy and what kinds of discourses do they use in talking about it? My analysis indicates that heritage diplomacy means different things for EU officials and heritage practitioners. Their discourses on the uses of cultural heritage for diplomacy construct divergent understandings of cultural heritage and heritage diplomacy, and the power relations between these understandings.

This paper explores the concept of heritage diplomacy. To date much of the analysis regarding the politics of heritage has focused on contestation, dissonance and conflict. Heritage diplomacy seeks to address this imbalance by critically examining themes such as cooperation, cultural aid and hard power, and the ascendency of intergovernmental and non-governmental actors as mediators of the dance between nationalism and internationalism. The paper situates heritage diplomacy within broader histories of international governance and diplomacy itself. These are offered to interpret the interplay between the shifting forces and structures, which, together, have shaped the production, governance and international mobilisation of heritage in the modern era. A distinction between heritage as diplomacy and in diplomacy is outlined in order to reframe some of the ways in which heritage has acted as a constituent of cultural nationalisms, international relations and globalisation. In mapping out directions for further enquiry, I argue the complexities of the international ordering of heritage governance have yet to be teased out. A framework of heritage diplomacy is thus offered in the hope that it can do some important analytical work in the field of critical heritage theory, opening up some important but under theorised aspects of heritage analysis.

Subject. The factors of increasing the geopolitical and geo-economic significance of Asian Russia (AzRF) under the influence of current military-political and socio-economic processes, as well as the target directions of transport and transit ensuring the sustainable development of the AzRF on the basis of decarbonization of transportation processes are determined. The purpose of the work. To identify the strengths and weaknesses of promising infrastructure projects for transport and transit support of sustainable development of the Russian Arctic. Methodology. The research uses methods of world system analysis [1-3], evolutionary and institutional theory [1, 10-12], theory of production and technological balance and technical and economic structures [9], expert and analytical assessments, content analysis of periodical materials. The results of the work. The hypothesis is proved that the transport and transit provision of the sustainable development of the Russian Arctic is possible through the development and implementation of large infrastructure and integration projects associated with the Initiative of the PRC "Belt and Road", the program of India for the development of the transport corridor "North — South" and the program "Made in India", the formation of a Large Eurasian partnerships with friendly states. The conclusion is substantiated that the formation of the Arctic Ocean — Indian Ocean transport corridor (SLO — IO) can and should become an infrastructure and integration basis for the creation of the Indo-Siberian-Arctic trade Route of the XXI century. The main directions of high-tech development of land transport in the Russian Arctic have been identified, primarily in terms of maximum containerization of the transportation process and the construction of extended open magnetic levitation systems (MLTS). Special attention is paid to the identification and systematization of favorable effects for the Russian Arctic and friendly states of diverting part of the flow of Siberian rivers to the countries of Central and Western Asia. Conclusions. A reasonable conclusion is made that important partners of Russia and other post-Soviet countries in the process of reindustrialization of the economy on the basis of the latest technological structure, the formation of trade routes of the XXI century and their innovation–industrial belts in the direction of "North- South", transport and transit ensuring sustainable development of the Russian Arctic, increasing the volume of exports of transport services are the countries of the Islamic the world.

The decision of the Governments of Indonesia and Malaysia to collaborate on shared cultural heritage is an interesting phenomenon. The dispute over cultural heritage claims between the two countries several years ago strained their relationship. The reluctance of both governments to understand each other’s different views and take unilateral action regarding their shared cultural heritage has complicated the cultural conflicts. In 2017, Indonesia and Malaysia collaborated to register pantun as shared cultural heritage in the UNESCO. Three years later, UNESCO designated pantun as the world’s intangible cultural heritage from Indonesia and Malaysia. This research aims to analyze the motivation of the cooperation between Indonesia-Malaysia in promoting shared cultural heritage at the international level, with a case study of the registering pantun as a representative list of UNESCO, carried out in 2017-2020. This study employed the concept of heritage diplomacy and soft power with a qualitative analysis method. The findings disclosed that the motivation of the Governments of Indonesia and Malaysia was to fulfill their political interest at the bilateral, regional and international levels. Using cultural heritage as diplomacy demonstrates that culture can solve the political problems between states and become their soft power.

Diaspora

This chapter presents an overview of contemporary Indian Buddhism, broadly conceived, highlighting several historical developments, transregional influences, and Indo-centric adaptations within the colonial and postcolonial context. As the “homeland” of Buddhism and central to various contemporary revitalization movements, two themes are of particular analytical importance to this chapter: the recovery and reconfiguration of Buddhist material objects and the importance of reinvention among a range of Western and Asian Buddhist actors. After situating Indian Buddhism within the context of Indian historiography and discussions around the decline of Buddhism, this chapter examines various ways Indian Buddhist sites, artifacts, and structures are reimagined and reconfigured under colonization, nation-building, and changing socioeconomic interests. Also covered are Buddhist movements within India such as the Ambedkar-inspired New Buddhism, the role of Tibetan Buddhist refugees, and how the valorization of India’s Buddhist pilgrimage geography intersects with state goals toward tourism development and heritage diplomacy in Asia.

With September 11 and the conflicts in the Middle East serving as turning points, US public diplomacy, as well as heritage diplomacy, experienced significant shifts. The destruction and illicit trafficking of cultural property during conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have intensified the need for the US to take action to protect and conserve the archaeological and cultural resources in the region by employing smart power. The transformation of 21st-century heritage diplomacy, driven by global conflicts, has elevated the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural property as a critical point for international cooperation, with implications for both national security and global stability. This study seeks to not only examine the characteristics of US heritage diplomacy, but also to assess its evolution including expanded scope and policy changes over the past two decades since the Iraqi heritage crisis. It finds that despite the expansion of heritage diplomacy as a national security concern, the formation of a strategic network aimed at enhancing federal leadership, and significant policy changes—including modifications to the Cultural Property Implementation Act and the ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention—there has been a notable absence of substantive policy advancements to support a shift in heritage diplomacy.

This work studied the efforts of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage in Cyprus to explore how effectively the TCCH applies diplomatic relation-building efforts towards cultural heritage management and how this can be used to construct a bridge to a process of sustainable development of social relations and heritage use in Cyprus. The Committee’s efforts demonstrate community heritage diplomacy and civil heritage diplomacy, employed by the two largest communities of the island as they attempt to build relations with each other and other minor communities across the border via various heritage practices, and public heritage diplomacy, which is employed by the authorities of each side via the Committee to influence the public of the other side. The Committee employs these forms of heritage diplomacy via a language of cooperation and by bridging gaps in and crossing borders for collaboration, so as to transfer knowledge, values, and experience, and to build trust with institutions and communities. The significance of the study lies in illustrating that the technical and collaborative successes of the Committee via application of the determined types of diplomacy may be successfully applied for a sustainable approach to build relations and confidence under ideologically and politically strained circumstances in Cyprus.

With increasing costs of imported equipment, there is a need for Indigenization of medical devices in India. The resources including skilled manpower to develop equipment of a good standard are available in the country. What plagues the developmental process is the lack of adequate interaction between the medical profession and the technologists and reluctance of the industry to venture into the medical device manufacturing. A much bigger and more serious road-block is the lack of formal certification and regulatory processes for these devices. Medical practitioners should be open to evaluating and accepting indigenous equipment that pass the requisite standards. Formal mechanisms should be developed to orient both physicians and engineers to the technical and commercial issues of device development.

The article examines the “transformation” of the concept of “protection of cultural heritage” in the context of current international relations. The development in modern political science discourse of such theories as securitization of cultural heritage, “geocultural” power, and diplomacy of cultural heritage allows us to talk about a change, or rather, an expansion of the meaning of the term field “protection of cultural heritage.” Based on an analysis of scientific works devoted to the study of the role of cultural heritage in international political processes, as well as specialized UNESCO reports on the connection between the UN sustainable development goals and culture in general, and reports of some specialized structures (for example, the British Council), the following conclusions can be drawn. First, in the last decade, the potential of cultural heritage for state foreign policy and international heritage management has attracted increasing interest among researchers from different countries. At the moment, there is no single or established definition of heritage diplomacy. In earlier studies, heritage diplomacy has generally been associated with multinational cooperation in international heritage management within the framework of UNESCO. More recent concepts of heritage diplomacy have expanded to include more policy areas, such as sustainable development policy. Secondly, the concept of cultural heritage for international cultural relations should be conceptualized as a present- and future-oriented process through which realities are constructed from selected elements of the past. Thirdly, the political dimension of cultural heritage acts as an arena for the manifestation and negotiation of (dissonant) meanings, values and identities.

In recent years, culture and heritage have explicitly entered into science diplomacy debates and initiatives within the EU system and in EU’s foreign policy. For EU’s external relations heritage offers opportunities for developing partnerships based on shared, entangled histories but also challenges posed by dealing with difficult pasts of domination and colonialism. The paper, therefore, presents a new conceptual model for European science diplomacy that can enable more equitable ways of dealing with colonial heritage in relations between EU countries and partners outside Europe. It does so by combining recent literature on science diplomacy, heritage diplomacy, decolonial thinking, and on the concepts of interculturality. We argue that to engage successfully with colonial legacies and heritage, the concept of science diplomacy needs to be developed from a traditional “diffusionist” understanding towards a dialogical approach, which is epismologically open and acknowledges the inequalities in global knowledge production. In the second part of the paper, the practical implications of the theoretical framework are fleshed out in a discussion of three cases involving colonial heritage: The Tendaguru Fossil Collection, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels, and the work of Canadian indigenous artist Sonny Assu.

In her formative work, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Dolores Hayden (1995) argued convincingly for the inevitable connection between the natural environment of a location and the people who occupy it. The U.S. Overseas Research Centers (ORCs) are the very embodiment of Hayden's power of place—a space for people, foreigners and locals, to engage in a single location. For over a century, the ORCs have been the primary setting where American researchers in the humanities and social sciences and in-country scholars, students, and locals meet each other and foster the seeds of collaboration. In so doing, not only are these places key incubation areas for academic knowledge production, but also nodes of heritage diplomacy. The hope of the respective ORCs is that they provide neutral spaces for active, dynamic, and positive exchanges of ideas that inspire on-the-ground research and educational engagement. Ideally, ORCs put scholars "in the thick of things" and fulfill a diplomatic mission of the U.S. government: people-to-people interaction and the establishment of long-term networks, which promote mutual understanding and respect. Contributions in this issue establish that ORCs are powerful places in the eastern Mediterranean. In this issue, we have asked individuals who interact routinely with ORCs to reflect on their experiences. Contributions discuss a robust lecture series, typically standing room only, attended by Jordanians and foreigners, the conservation and documentation of a monument in Egypt, an excavation co-directed by an Armenian and a U.S. national, an educational space to explore the archaeology of the region by Cypriot and U.S. undergraduates, and multi-sited research forming the basis for a PhD dissertation. While acknowledging the colonial past of many of the ORCs, this collection illustrates the changing nature and missions of these organizations.With a current emphasis on empowering local researchers, students, and others through collaborative projects and shared interests with U.S. contemporaries, the following articles highlight the networks that can and do arise from fellowship programs at the American Center of Oriental Research in Jordan (ACOR), the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus in Armenia (ARISC), the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI), and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). These case studies depict the ORCs through a progressive lens, slowly shedding their colonial foundations with greater emphasis on these places as shared spaces of consultation, negotiation, and partnership between individuals dedicated to research into the past and present of not only specific countries, but also the region.The legacy of the ORCs begins with the traditional triad of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (1881), the American Academy in Rome (1894), and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (1900) (see Luke and Kersel 2013: 19–25). As might be expected of these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century creations, they were very much colonial enterprises, and very much linked to the burgeoning and increasingly dominant perspectives in the U.S. academy on classical scholarship, the interaction between religion and the past, and archaeology. Established as outposts in foreign lands, the centers supported U.S. academic endeavors, while also displaying a commitment to culture, furthering one of many U.S. diplomatic goals (Luke and Kersel 2013). With the changing geopolitical realities in the region, the establishment of new states and territories, World War I and its aftermath, the ORCs attempted to refine their missions and thus shed their identities as bastions of colonialism. Rather than remain (whether real or perceived) agents of the state, they sought to be more inclusive, collaborative, institutions with a primary focus of mutually beneficial and local scholarly interaction, exchange, and oversight.If the first wave of ORCs responded to the growing influence of the United States in foreign affairs in the early twentieth century, the second wave of ORCs responded to the internationalism embedded in the post-World War II climate. It was also a moment of intense U.S. cultural influence and financial capacity. The combination of monetary assistance under the U.S. Marshall Plan (European Recovery Act) and private philanthropy in places like Egypt, Greece, and Turkey offered renewed hope for an increased U.S., non-governmental, presence in the region (Luke 2018). The formation of ORCs in Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey was part of this wave, but subject to financial crises and foreign priorities (Luke and Kersel 2013). By the early 1970s, the momentum generated from the Nubian campaigns had inspired not only the 1964 Venice Charter and the formation of the International Council On Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), but also reignited the groundwork (stemming from the 1931 Athens Charter and various recommendations through the 1950s) of the 1972 World Heritage Convention (Luke, forthcoming). These international, collaborative efforts sought to re-focus the world's attention on the preservation and protection of natural and cultural landscapes. States enacted national laws aimed at protecting many aspects of cultural heritage including the preservation and safeguarding of artifacts, sites, monuments, museum collections. New regulations resulted in the decline of partage (the division of finds, see Crewe for a discussion of partage in Cyprus) agreements. International outrage over the looting of archaeological sites, theft of cultural items, and the illicit trade in antiquities, culminating in the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, further amplified the power of the ORCs in uniting locals and foreigners over shared interests in protecting the past for future local residents.A result of the shifting character of national legal regimes for protecting local cultural and natural heritage resulted in the need for North American researchers to conduct more of their studies in-country, where the finds and sites are located. This changing ethos paralleled the expansion of the ORCs' sphere of interests beyond the traditional investigations of the ancient into the contemporary through the study of international relations, political science, sociology, and anthropology. No longer focused exclusively on the past, the ORCs switched their attention to research activities that included the present and analyses of implications for the future, thus creating institutions relevant to a wider variety of local constituents. In fact, it was this more inclusive aspect that also inspired the establishment of additional ORCs in West Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, reflecting a growing emphasis on globalization. Rather than perpetuating a model of colonialism—a slice of the United States in Senegal, for example—through the continued process of engaging with, reacting to, supporting ongoing in-country policies, and including local voices in institutional decision-making, today the ORCs hope to act as conduits between national and the international communities. Many of the ORCs' staff and boards of directors are comprised of in-country and U.S. individuals bringing local and U.S. perspectives to ORC governance, missions, and programming. With an emphasis on inclusivity in principle and practice, the ORCs have distanced themselves from their colonial roots.Hayden (1995) contends that only by being in a place and encountering things and people "in place," can a sense of identity be created. Many of the created spaces of the ORCs have grown from inaccessible fortresses behind fences and gates to inclusive places for both formal and informal get-togethers. It is the notions of people and place that brings this collection of essays together. The long-term commitment to local people, communities, and spaces allows ORCs to move beyond heritage work being for communities to collaborative work with communities, jettisoning the hierarchical notion of community embedded in much heritage work highlighted by Gentry (2013). Since the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, the ORCs have been the persistent entities creating a place for foreigners and locals to research, to collaborate, to produce knowledge, and of course to gossip.In our volume, U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage (Luke and Kersel 2013) we made the case for the ORCs as integral elements in the foreign relations toolkit of the United States. Through the lens of Nye's (2004) "Soft Power" paradigm we asked how ORCs contribute to U.S. leverage in targeted regions of the world—those "of interest" to the U.S. government and her associates. In their recent report on cultural diplomacy and soft power in the United Nations Office at Geneva, Doeser and Nesbitt (2017: 14) state, "the terms cultural diplomacy and soft power are often used interchangeably and are often thought to be controversial due to their associations with colonialism, imperialism, and propaganda." Cultural diplomacy and soft power remain murky concepts that often result in confusion, controversy, misunderstandings, and definitional dilemmas. Contributions to this volume reveal that ORCs are no longer merely elements of the U.S. diplomatic arsenal, especially as they change into places committed to local engagement with a united purpose in the realms of international research, scholarship, and knowledge production (Kersel and Luke 2015). As stressed in their mission statements, a main purpose of the ORCs is mediating the flows, exchanges, and engagements between local researchers and foreigners. The ORCs carry out this role through support for research projects, public lectures, access to reference libraries, programming (see Corbett, Crewe, and Scott), fellowships (see Franklin and Babajanyan, and Thum), and residential spaces (short and long-term). The goal for these formal features is to offer pathways for reciprocal academic research. To be sure, ORCs also host informal social occasions, frequently centered on food and drinks, the "gastrodiplomacy" of Doeser and Nesbitt (2017) or what we (Luke and Kersel 2013) refer to as "the Tea Circuit."It is during these informal moments that national and foreign researchers leave their library perches (or come in from fieldwork) to share ideas about modern and ancient events. In fact, these opportunities for conversation pave the way for ORCs to act as ambassadors of goodwill. The result of a CAORC Multi-Country Fellowship, Thum's unique contribution is an excellent example of the power of place in informal networking and relationship building, particularly in nations without a formal ORC. Multiple fellowships from the ARISC have allowed Franklin and Babajanyan to explore the Medieval landscape of Vayots Dzor, Armenia. Their collaborative project has resulted in an enduring friendship and insights into a period of time and in a place often considered on the fringes of traditional inquiry. Corbett's contribution on the ACOR in Jordan and Crewe's paper on CAARI reveal the long-term commitment to sustainable local empowerment and collaboration on projects related to Jordan and Cyprus. Scott details ARCE's adjustment to a new political landscape in the aftermath of the uprising in the spring of 2011. Despite their foreign policy and colonial beginnings, this collection proves that ORCs can and do provide impartial spaces for collaborative efforts and evolving networks, which allow for a wider range of local and foreign voices to be heard.Exactly how such networks develop, of course, is often intangible, flexible, fluid, and immeasurable. This intangibility in deliverables creates a tension precisely because a nice, neat package with an outcome in sustained cultural diplomacy may not always be possible. In fact, because the results of a stay at an ORC are not always visible, the important power of place often goes both undocumented and unacknowledged. For these and other reasons, there is always insecurity embedded in the annual U.S. Congressional budgeting process. Without concrete "diplomatic deliverables," making the case for the funding of the ORCs is increasingly difficult. Yet, a potential decrease or cessation of financial support for the ORCs impedes local interaction and may reinforce perceptions that the United States does not care about culture. Under the umbrella of the Council for American Overseas Research Centers [CAORC], there are 24 ORCs which: [P]romote scholarly exchange, primarily through sponsorship of fellowship programs, foreign language study, and collaborative research projects. They facilitate access to research resources, provide a forum for contact and exchange, offer library and technical support and accommodation, and disseminate information to the scholarly and general public through conferences, seminars, exhibitions, and publications. (CAORC Mission Statement, https://www.caorc.org/)OCRs receive funding through a variety of sources, including governmental, public and private institutions, and individual support. Money dedicated to supporting the ORCs is often uncertain. In the FY 2018 budget, the U.S. president proposed to reduce the allotted amount for the U.S. State Department's Educational and Cultural programs from $634 million in FY 2017 to $285 million for FY 2018. In the budget breakdown for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), the Administration proposed to zero out CAORC and the centers. Not all the cuts proposed were enacted into law that year, but every new budget cycle going forward is a challenge to the funding for CAORC and the ORCs. Termination of funds could result in demise of the centers, which would result not only in a loss of a persistent U.S. presence abroad, but also of the enduring relationships built on shared interests, reciprocal understanding, and respect, all fostered by being in place.Since 1881, the ORCs have maintained a sense of place for fostering mutually beneficial long-term relationships between researchers with common interests. They provide a congenial atmosphere where long-lasting friendships are constructed. Co-authored by local and U.S. researchers, directors, former directors, staff, senior and junior scholars, the following articles are heritage diplomacy in action, demonstrating the power of place and the enduring potency of the ORCs.