Paper short abstract:

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Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the conflicting views of the importance of heritage preservation in Djenné, a World Heritage site in Mali, West Africa. Throughout fieldwork in Djenné and within UNESCO, I have attempted to do an 'ethnography of heritage', bringing to light the often neglected views and concerns of the people living in the town. Djenné is a town built entirely in mud brick architecture and is an excellent case study of the success and failure of competing interventions on peoples' cultural lives. For variety of social, climatic and economic reasons, the yearly maintenance of the houses in Djenné is becoming beyond the reach of many householders who are turning to non-traditional architectural methods to keep their houses in good condition. These non-traditional methods are strongly condemned by the government and UNESCO whose aim is to keep the town materially the same.

Within the town, the Cultural Mission, the Tourist Office, the Imam and more traditional authority structures such as the 'Chef du Villages' and the 'quartiers' elders all have a say in its preservation. Recent international interventions such a housing restoration scheme and more controversially, a scheme to improve the Mosque which provoked a riot, bring to light the underlying tensions of heritage preservation in a poverty stricken town. Against this background, tourism plays a vital role in the economic life of Djenné and is an often unspoken agent of change. For many residents in Djenné, a direct link must be made between the interventions asked of them by UNESCO and other outside agencies and economic gain. This paper will use the case study of Djenné to explore the ways in which cultural ownership is negotiated at a local, national and international level and the consequences of these discourses on peoples' everyday lives.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed