Reconstructing Heritage in the Aftermath of Civil War: Re-Visioning the Nation and the Implications of International Involvement

Abstract Culture is an indispensable asset in post-conflict recovery processes; however, it can also be used as a means of continuing violence on a symbolic and ideological level, particularly in the case of civil wars. In a reconstruction paradigm this violence often takes the form of struggles over history, memory, heritage, and identity. Despite the context-specific differences of conflicts, their aftermaths do retain some common elements—such as an emphasis on re-envisioning history and re-defining national identity. This article examines three issues: the intentionality guiding choices about what to rebuild, the symbolic landscape that emerges as a result, and the ethical issues that arise from third party intervention in the reconstruction of cultural heritage. The rhetoric that surrounds reconstruction projects differs widely from the reality on the ground and I will argue that it is important to understand this in order to assess the impact that reconstruction can have on attempts at reconciliation, identity and state-building. This article also examines some of the ethical issues involved in the post-conflict reconstruction of cultural heritage including the role of international values associated to 'heritage of mankind' and their possible conflict with local valuations of cultural heritage. This area of study is becoming increasingly urgent. International organizations have escalated their involvement in post-conflict reconstruction work and in these interventions they impress their particular code of values on fragile societies often without a full appreciation of the possible long-term consequences of their actions. Keywords: cultural heritagepost-conflictcivil-warreconstructionSpain, Bosnia and Herzegovina Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Dzenan Sahovic at the University of Umeå for reading and commenting on an early draft of this article as well as her colleagues on the EU funded project Cultural Heritage and the Reconstruction of Identities after Conflict (CRIC, http://www.cric.arch.cam.ac.uk). Some of the ideas presented in this article were first introduced in Viejo-Rose (Citation2007) and further examined in Viejo-Rose (Citation2011). Notes 1. Mary-Catherine Garden (Citation2006) first used this term to refer to how heritage sites more and less successfully convey a sense of place. The use of the term in this article builds on a broader understanding of the term (Viejo Rose Citation2011) to include a sense of the multiplicity and malleability of symbolic meaning, interrelations and interpretations of heritage sites which are in a state of constant flux and imbue a landscape with a myriad of meanings. 2. There are dissenting definitions of what constitutes a civil war. Collier and Hoeffler (Citation2001), Paris (Citation2004) and Armitage (Citation2008) consider Bosnia as a civil or internal war, though admittedly the wars that comprised the dissolution of Yugoslavia took different forms throughout their various stages, including secessionist and foreign aggression. What is important for the purpose of this study is the process by which a structure fragments and in so doing tears rifts through society, neighbourhoods and families. 3. Sir Frederic Kenyon, former Director of the British Museum, together with James Mann, Director of the Wallace Collection, visited Republican-held areas, and Michael W. Stewart of the Victoria and Albert Museum visited Nationalist-held territory in 1937. 4. 'Re-visioning' here means how the idea of the nation is at once re-imagined and revised and how the resulting image is in turn visually represented both nationally and internationally. 5. Statebuilding here refers to the construction and stabilization of public institutions and structures such as those dedicated to governance and a judiciary while 'nation-building' refers to the formation of the body polity that the state structures should serve. 6. This is brilliantly captured in Luis García Berlanga's Citation1953 film Bienvenido Mister Marshall. 7. The official name of the law, approved in October 2007, is 'Ley por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la Guerra Civil y la Dictadura'. 8. See Bet-El in Müller (Citation2002) for references to Milosevic's use of the past. See Tanner (Citation1997) for an appraisal of Tudjman's use of the past. Also Colovic's 'War Folklorism: Zagreb Lasses and Captain D' in Borden et al. (Citation1992) and Hall (Citation1994). 9. This bridge was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2007 as the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad; the old bridge area of the old city of Mostar was inscribed in 2005. 10. This links back to Paris's analysis of the ideologically liberal standards of the international community, but it is also important because of the number of religiously oriented interventions in heritage reconstruction with different countries or NGOs funding the religious group with which they have affiliations. 11. More recent normative instruments developed by UNESCO, such as the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), acknowledge the importance of communities, groups and individuals in the valuation of heritage, the idea of 'universal value' continues to underlie the notion of world heritage which gets called on to justify interventions (i.e. Dubrovnik). 12. Vaclav Havel, ex-President of Czechoslovakia in 2004; Alois Mock, ex-Chancellor of Austria in 2005; Nelson Mandela, ex-President of South Africa in 2006; Mohammed Elbaradei, General Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2007.