G. da Guia: "Mapping Discourses and Capital Flows in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Inter-American Development Bank Experience in Cultural Heritage Management" (Spatial History Project Working Group)

Date
Thu March 23rd 2017, 2:00 - 4:00pm
Event Sponsor
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA)
Location
Bldg. 160, Rm. 433A

Since World War II, global financial institutions such as The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) shaped development policies in Latin America and the Caribbean. From the 1970s onwards, United Nations agencies like UNESCO, UNDP and their financial support as IDB have become an incredibly influential organizing force for cultural heritage as an ‘industry’ across this region. What happens when heritage development projects become economic values in an age of globalization? Using examples from IDB funding portfolio, this presentation intends to problematize and trace the complexities involving issues of cultural heritage management and how it was conducted by discursive practices and flows of capital in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last 50 years. Showing that flows and discourse transformations of IDB and UNESCO have promoted a shift in cultural heritage management based not on the nation-state but on global relations and economic development of cultural heritage, this study brings important insights on how development projects, using identities and memories, may have introduced the idea of the commodification of the past.

George da Guia is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Brasilia (Brazil) and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Stanford.

Contact Phone Number