ABSTRACT
This contribution traces the powerful actors and agendas constructing global heritage today through the frame of UNESCO's 1972 World Heritage Convention. With a rapidly changing world, the idea of World Heritage has expanded beyond conservation and is now being called upon to shore up cultural identities, drive development, foster cooperation, and promote human rights. At the same time, we have witnessed escalating global conflict in which heritage sites were more ideologically and politically entwined, paralleled by further internal dissent among individual nations about the direction of the Convention.
