Some thoughts on how criterion vi is used in the World Heritage List.
UNESCO's
selection criteria for the list include criterion vi, "To be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance".
It's sensible. Heritage (in a general, non-List sense) often revolves around the idea that "something happened here". We memorialise battlefields; we adorn buildings with plaques that say X Lived Here or X Slept Here; an ordinary staircase in Washington or London can suddenly become heritage as "the Exorcist Steps" or "Nancy's Steps", and not even because of events that happened in real life but events from a story! (We'll see how long future generations preserve The Escalator In Croydon From The Music Video To "Opalite" By Taylor Swift.) But previous WHC practice, and the directive that "The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria", seem to indicate that the World Heritage List is not intended to deal with heritage in that way (or, not primarily in that way) - a principle that as we'll see has not always been adhered to.
Probably the most contentious consequence of crit vi is as it relates to
"sites of memory": though they've had a presence on the List since its early days (most notably, Auschwitz and the Genbaku Dome), the WHC has displayed more interest in inscribing them in recent years. It's difficult to argue that sites associated with (for example) the Cambodian or Rwandan genocides don't deserve memorialisation, or that those aren't stories that deserve to be told; but in the context of a List that's mostly about celebrating the best of humanity they can rub up oddly and ill-fittingly. Inscriptions to the List always have a political dimension but this can be more acute for "sites of memory", and that increases the risk of site inscriptions that arise from diplomatic shenanigans rather than expert heritage recommendations (a risk that is already too high at the best of times!).
Many of these sites of memory are inscribed only on crit vi, but they're not the only sites that applies to: there's
a connection for them. I've wondered aloud before
why Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a "crit vi only" site and am grateful for Solivagant (via email) and Els's illuminating responses on this subject. Looking again at the list it's not the only suspect item from the early days:
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La Fortaleza and San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico. The (retrospective) OUV statement says the fortifications "represent a fine display of European military architecture adapted to harbour sites on the American continent", and even the crit vi-specific reasoning says they "outstandingly illustrate the adaptation to the Caribbean context of European developments in military architecture from the 16th to 20th centuries" - I'd say the experts are clearly aware that this is actually a ii or iv site and it's simply too late to change it now!
Indeed, looking at the earliest "crit vi only" sites, I note that two of the others (from 1978 and 1979) are related to the slave trade in Africa; I'm tempted to suggest that when San Juan and HSI Buffalo Jump were inscribed (in 1983 and 1981), they may have been viewed as similarly symbolic of the colonisation of the Americas and/or as sites of symbolic importance for other minoritised cultures (Hispanic Americans in the US, First Nations peoples in Canada) and thus filed under vi in a rather condescending fashion.
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L'Anse aux Meadows. As with HSI, an archaeological site with tangible remains doesn't feel like a vi - it seems more like a iii or iv. Also as with HSI, perhaps at the time of inscription there wasn't enough known about its physical heritage to say specifically, or perhaps it was also treated as a symbol of colonization rather than a site of tangible importance.
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Mostar. "an outstanding example of a multicultural urban settlement" - OK, authenticity might have been lost through reconstruction, but if the OUV statement still uses those words, how is this not a crit v? Says UNESCO, "The reconstructed Old Bridge and Old City of Mostar is a symbol of reconciliation, international co-operation and of the coexistence of diverse cultural, ethnic and religious communities". Fair enough I suppose, but what's the bit about "international co-operation"? "The Old Bridge was recently rebuilt and many of the edifices in the Old Town have been restored or rebuilt with the contribution of an international scientific committee
established by UNESCO..." ah yes. So the event or living tradition of outstanding universal significance that UNESCO have judged that Mostar is associated with - and accorded far more importance than any Ottoman or other heritage of the town - is, well, UNESCO. Backslapping of the highest order.
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Besides the "crit vi only" sites, there are
plenty that include crit vi alongside others.I think crit vi works best when it's most obviously a supplement: a feather in the cap of an already worthy site, a historical detail that deserves to be mentioned in the statement of OUV but which isn't being leaned on too heavily. Versailles is an exquisite and massively influential palace... but it also was home to key scenes in French history. Durham Castle and Cathedral is clearly worthy of inscription for its architecture and innovation... but it also contains the relics of Saints Bede and Cuthbert. This "...but it also" pattern is most obvious for "Historic Centres" - Prague, Salzburg, and Rome are architectural ensembles that even the untrained eye could appreciate, but what serious heritage list could mention them without mentioning Kafka, Mozart, Caesar?
Its use in this context seems, perhaps inevitably, rather inconsistent. Why does Prague officially vibrate with history when Paris doesn't? Why is Versailles notable for the historical figures who wandered its halls, but the Palace of Westminster isn't? Why is Thomas Jefferson so imbued with universal significance that he gets a crit vi callout for Monticello, but Shah Jahan is
just some chump? Lots of aspects of the World Heritage process are certainly arbitrary, but crit vi inclusion or omission is one of the most arbitrary - I suspect it's largely a function of how much brazen self-importance the nominating country thinks they can get away with in their dossier.
There are some other combination sites which look like "crit vi only" sites pretending otherwise, in a half-hearted adherence to letter of the "conjunction with other criteria" principle, but not the spirit. This is most obvious with the Luther Memorials, an iv-vi site for which the iv justification reads notably phoned-in. An odder case is Bikini Atoll, the nuclear test site in the Marshall Islands, inscribed on crit iv ("to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history") as well as crit vi - it's difficult for me to see where the line is drawn between a site "illustrating a significant stage in human history" and being "tangibly associated with events [...] of outstanding universal significance".
(Actually, reading the Bikini Atoll statement makes me wonder if Auschwitz fulfils other criteria, not just vi - it has symbolic importance as a memorial, but I would argue it is equally or perhaps more important that it is a physical and architectural testament to the fact of the Holocaust, which could be crit iv; it might even hit crit iii, "bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a [...] civilization", even if that civilization was a repugnant and immoral one.)
For other sites, the addition of a crit vi justification can feel like repetition of the 'real' criteria in an attempt to juice a nomination. This is particularly absurd, IMO, in the case of the Le Corbusier sites, which we learn have OUV under crit ii because of their "relation to the birth and development of the Modern Movement", and under crit vi because... they are "directly and materially associated with ideas of the Modern Movement". Perhaps if the Taj Mahal can't get a crit vi callout for its association with snoozeworthy nobody Shah Jahan, it could try for one on the basis that it's materially associated with the Taj Mahal!
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For all that, I don't think I propose that crit vi is worthless. Dealing with a notion so subjective, so culturally dynamic as "outstanding universal value" is never going to be a watertight, logical process; having a defined checklist of criteria to refer to helps in some ways but might well make things worse in others. Maybe, then, it was tempting to define crit vi as a kind of catch-all, an "I know it when I see it" approach to heritage. Its inconsistent application we can doubtless lay at the feet of individual states and their varying levels of chutzpah; the problems that arise from allowing crit vi only sites are maybe ones inevitable in the concept of heritage that UNESCO only managed to defer but could never avoid. And, of course, even if some of the wrinkles I've discussed above are genuine issues, is it of more benefit to humanity to spend time straightening them out, or to research and inscribe new sites?
