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A future in ruins : UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace

Title: A future in ruins : UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace / Lynn Meskell.
Author: Meskell, Lynn
Publication: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

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Request for On-site Use Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Use in library	JFE 18-9918	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xxiii, 372 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

" Best known for its World Heritage program committed to "the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 as an intergovernmental agency aimed at fostering peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding. Its mission was inspired by leading European intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, and Aldous and Julian Huxley. Often critiqued for its inherent Eurocentrism, UNESCO and its World Heritage program today remain embedded within modernist principles of "progress" and "development" and subscribe to the liberal principles of diplomacy and mutual tolerance. However, its mission to prevent conflict, destruction, and intolerance, while noble and much needed, increasingly falls short, as recent battles over the World Heritage sites of Preah Vihear, Chersonesos, Jerusalem, Palmyra, Aleppo, and Sana'a, among others, have underlined. A Future in Ruins is the story of UNESCO's efforts to save the world's heritage and, in doing so, forge an international community dedicated to peaceful co-existence and conservation. It traces how archaeology and internationalism were united in Western initiatives after the political upheavals of the First and Second World Wars. This formed the backdrop for the emergent hopes of a better world that were to captivate the "minds of men." UNESCO's leaders were also confronted with challenges and conflicts about their own mission. Would the organization aspire to intellectual pursuits that contributed to the dream of peace or instead be relegated to an advisory and technical agency? An eye-opening and long overdue account of a celebrated yet poorly understood agency, A Future in Ruins calls on us all to understand how and why the past comes to matter in the present, who shapes it, and who wins or loses as a consequence. "--
"A Future in Ruins is an eye-opening look at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Focusing on early luminaries like H.G. Wells, Aldous, and Julian Huxley, with their dystopian fears for the future, through to the devastation of ancient sites like Cuzco, Abu Simbel, the Bamiyan Valley, and Palmyra, the book traces how, from 1945 to the present, cultural heritage has been a vital part of the elusive hope for a better world"--

Alternative Title

UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace

Subject

Genre/Form

Biography.
History.
Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Utopia -- Internationalism -- Technocracy -- Conservation -- Inscription -- Conflict -- Danger -- Dystopia.

Call Number

JFE 18-9918

ISBN

9780190648343
0190648341

LCCN

2018012155
40028319601
40028300390

OCLC

1008983955

Author

Meskell, Lynn, author.

Title

A future in ruins : UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace / Lynn Meskell.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Form:

Online version: Meskell, Lynn, author. Future in ruins New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018 9780190648350 (DLC) 2018030583

Other Standard Identifier

40028319601

40028300390

Research Call Number

JFE 18-9918

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