Abstract
The chapter analyses and discusses the perspectives of young people on cultural World Heritage and its imbalanced global distribution. The qualitative study is based upon focus groups and hermeneutic photography conducted with 43 secondary school students aged 14–17 years from Lower Saxony, Germany. The findings of the focus groups, which are presented in this chapter, reveal deeply rooted Eurocentric thinking patterns, that structure the understanding of cultural World Heritage in general and are used to justify the dominance of European cultural World Heritage sites. Due to these results, the authors call for including post- and decolonial approaches in World Heritage Education to foster the adoption of critical and reflexive thinking.
Highlights
Since its adoption in 1972, UNESCO’s World Heritage (WH) Programme has become the most influential framework for the protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the globe
The selected results suggest that the perceptions of the participants regarding cultural WH and its global distribution are predominantly grounded in Eurocentric ways of thinking
The argumentation of many participants resembles the conceptualization of cultural heritage in the early days of the WH Programme
Summary
Since its adoption in 1972, UNESCO’s World Heritage (WH) Programme has become the most influential framework for the protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the globe. The UNESCO is aware of these disparites and already in 1994 a study identified Eurocentric and elitist approaches towards cultural heritage as the main reasons for the imbalanced global distribution [2]. Other reasons include unequal financial capacities of national states, national interests and international relations of states nominating a site [7–9] While these issues are widely discussed within the UNESCO and the scientific community, they have not reached World Heritage Education (WHE). This chapter will first discuss the aims of WHE and its current blind spots It will present selected perspectives of secondary school students on specific aspects of cultural WH. These results reveal Eurocentric thinking patterns, underlining the necessity for decolonising heritage [14]. The authors provide suggestions to foster the adoption of critical and reflexive thinking in WHE
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