Leeds East Asia Papers: New Series No.1

Authors: Victor T. King and Michael J. G. Parnwell

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This provisional and critical analysis of three UNESCO designated sites in Thailand is part of a wider cross-national, multidisciplinary comparative programme of research on selected World Heritage Sites across the Southeast Asian region (specifically in Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). The research examines the tensions that exist between the often competing interests, understandings and agendas of the various stakeholders involved in these globally important sites: local communities, national governments and their provincial and local agencies, international conservation organisations (including UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] and ICOMOS [International Council of Monuments and Sites]), tourists (both domestic and international) and civil society institutions. The project also has a policy and practical dimension in that it seeks to determine whether or not these competing tensions and pressures are being or can be resolved, and what policy options work best in certain given circumstances. International organisations like UNESCO impose a set of conservation and protection requirements on the sites which are designated on the World Heritage List. These requirements derive from the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage and may not always sit easily with national government interest in for example increasing their revenue from tourism and therefore promoting these sites in the international market-place, and in deploying them as centres for the construction and promotion of national identity and in placing them in a national historical context.