Heritage and the politics of cooperation

Abstract

To date the field of heritage politics has primarily focused its attention on contestation, enmity, and destruction. This chapter looks at the politics of cooperation. It identifies themes and questions that arise if we examine cooperation as an inherently political process, and focuses on the ways in which knowledge production around heritage comes to be shaped through international relations, geopolitics, and international trade. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” is offered as an illustrative example. As we shall see, new heritage assemblages and cooperative structures are emerging across the Asia Pacific as a Silk Roads heritage industry forms to advance trade and diplomatic relations in the twenty-first century.