Where do we draw a line?: heritage, identity and place in global heritage

This chapter responds to key questions on borders from the perspective of heritage studies. Moving beyond the materiality of physical architecture, it explores the intangible structures of heritage meaning to examine its role in debates on sovereignty and its real and evident impact on the spatial imagination of border thinking. The chapter demonstrates how the notion of ‘border’ is integral to processes of heritage-making in multiple ways but in particular focuses on the impact of the global operations of the UNESCO heritage conventions in contributing to the politics of national boundary making. It examines the way in which heritage boundary-making mechanisms intersect with and impact on official geo-political and imagined socio- or ethno-cultural borders while also introducing new dimensions of boundary through the formulation of global concepts of heritage. In focusing on boundaries that a recognition of the non-physical, intangible nature of heritage involves, this chapter points to ways in which the processes of heritage identification at a global level can add to, consolidate and modify existing national and transnational border tensions