ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses institutional pathways for the rise of heritage development, including its basis in the turn to cultural approaches to development, supported by the key tenets of sustainability, capacity-building, and participation. A central structuring theme for the World Bank’s vision of its heritage expertise is that it is a specifically cultural expertise, contrasted to economic expertise. The World Bank became heavily involved in international discussions about best practices for socially sustainable development and cultural heritage. The maturation of heritage development as a domain of economic growth and knowledge production is also visible in its extension beyond the large multilateral development banks to a suite of transnational actors such as consulting firms, NGOs, and private investment. Cultural heritage therefore offered the World Bank a tangible and direct line into the new paradigm of sustainable development that arose in the early 1990s, which focused on social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
