Cultural Heritage Aid –Cultural heritage as a means to development

Abstract

This thesis handles donor countries relation to cultural heritage aid and investigates if aid agencies have any awareness of the complexity of cultural heritage and any discussion of their part in creating heritage. The donor countries investigated are Japan, Germany, Sweden and Norway. The purpose of the thesis is to describe and discuss the discourse of cultural heritage aid and scrutinize how the donors define the concept 'cultural heritage', their motives for giving aid to cultural heritage, and if the countries deal with aspects of power in their cultural heritage policies. The investigation is done with the methodology of discourse analysis through text analyses. The sources constitute of cultural heritage theory literature, foreign aid theory literature and policy papers, guidelines and other documents from donor countries concerning their cultural heritage aid. The thesis is disposed in one theoretical part and one empirical part. In the theoretical part, the cultural heritage sector’s definition of cultural heritage, usual motives within foreign aid and different views of the ownership of cultural heritage is described. This chapter also includes aspects of power connected to cultural heritage aid. The empirical part presents text analyses of the donor countries´ cultural heritage policies. The thesis concludes that the foreign aid sector is coherent in its definition of cultural heritage as something material or immaterial, something from the past used and valued in and by today’s society. All usual motives within foreign aid such as humanitarian, moral, economic, political and environmental are adjusted to fit in cultural heritage aid policies. Relating to power structures, the donor countries acknowledge different kinds of power aspects within cultural heritage aid. The conclusion that the motives vary from moral to economic reasons show that the donor countries have a great belief in the effects of cultural heritage. The cultural heritage is mainly used through its utilitarian value. The thesis questions the notion of global responsibility and highlights the issue that cultural heritage can foster both positive and negative forms of development. The thesis ends with the rhetoric question if too much is asked of cultural heritage within foreign aid.