ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on ten months fieldwork in Djenne, a World Heritage Site in Mali, and two months in the Intangible Heritage Division of UNESCO in Paris, which explore the historical and present-day conditions under which 'value' is attached and detached from Djenne's cultural heritage. Djenne is a particularly popular World Heritage Site within UNESCO and features on a lot of its promotional literature because it embodies rare characteristics: representing at once Africa, monumental architecture, and uniqueness through being built entirely out of mud. UNESCO has helped to raise the profile of Mali's World Heritage Sites, and most tour companies design their itineraries around the three longest-established World Heritage Sites in the country, Djenne, Dogon Country, and Timbuktu. Aside from the 'heritage elite' described above, most people in Djenne have either never heard of UNESCO or may have heard of it but do not know who or what UNESCO is.
