Authenticity:Principles and Notions
This paper illustrates the evolution of the concept in the context of the World Heritage Convention, following the World Heritage Committee’s records as primary source materials. Already in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the at-that-time-valid normative framework of the convention was under pressure from sections of the international community for revision based on a shift in emphasis from physical aspects to the cultural significance of properties. The change from physical to intangible significance is reflected in the expansion of heritage concepts and the recognition of diverse conservation practices. Against such a background, authenticity was given a new approach by the Nara Document: authenticity as credibility of information sources. The Nara Document was introduced into heritage practices in various regions and was accepted in UNESCO’s “Operational Guidelines” in 2005. The Nara Document recognized that the authenticity of a site is rooted in specific sociocultural contexts. Under the World Heritage Committee’s Global Strategy, certain types of properties may obtain new values attributed by society, and conservation of certain properties involves the continuous interrelationship between people, their activities, and heritage. As a result of the sociocultural perspective that the Nara Document introduced, some new issues have been identified to which the idea of authenticity will need to be adapted.
ICOMOS, The Venice Charter, Nara Document, world heritage
Large-scale dismantling during the restoration of Shoko-ji Temple in Takaoka City, Japan. (Toshiyuki Kono)
[End Page 436]
Authenticity has been recognized as a theoretically and practically complex and important issue, on which numerous articles have been published. For example, the Bibliographic Database of the ICOMOS Documentation Centre shows almost six hundred hits as the result of a keyword search for authenticity.1 These publications from the period between 1981 and 2013 often focus only on specific topics such as reconstruction,2 historic city centers,3 cultural landscapes,4 twentieth-century architecture,5 or specific regions.6 It is not easy to get an overview of the current state of debates on authenticity. Few articles clearly guide us in an understanding of current issues on authenticity7—a very unfortunate situation in the context of world heritage, since the normative effect of authenticity affects a number of stakeholders.
The anniversary year of the two fundamental documents on authenticity—the Venice Charter of 1964 and the Nara Document of 1994—is an appropriate moment to revisit debates on authenticity8 and to illustrate the evolution of the concept in the context of world heritage. Such a discussion could confirm our current perspective and serve as a foundation for future-looking considerations. For this purpose, this paper considers the following in its analysis: (1) authenticity in the context of world heritage, drawing on debates with a functional rather than strictly theoretical or philosophical aspect; (2) the possibility that charters and some other documents adopted by ICOMOS could influence the substance of hard law through the system of institutionalized advisory bodies, and (3) [End Page 437] primary source materials mainly from official records of the World Heritage Committee in addition to some documents adopted by ICOMOS in order to minimize bias.
The Venice Charter and the Nara Document
The preamble to the Venice Charter declares that it “is essential that the principles guiding the preservation and restoration of ancient buildings should be agreed upon and be laid down on an international basis.”9 It placed further emphasis on the conservation of material aspects with historical and artistic values and with a focus on “ancient monuments.” Article 3 states that the “intention in conserving and restoring monuments is to safeguard them no less as works of art than as historical evidence.” Article 9 continues that the restoration is “to preserve and reveal the aesthetic and historic value of the monument and is based on respect for original material and authentic documents.”10
Thirty years later, the Nara Document intended to build on and extend the spirit of the Venice Charter “in response to the expanding scope of cultural heritage concerns and interests in our contemporary world.”11 The Nara Document acknowledges in Article 7 that “all cultures and societies are rooted in the particular forms and means of tangible and intangible expression that constitute their heritage, and these should be respected.” The Nara Document stated in Article 11 that “it is thus not possible to base judgements of values and authenticity within fixed criteria.” Thus, the Nara Document articulated a concept of the diversity of cultures and heritage.
The differences between these two documents provide an indication of the changes that occurred over the thirty years separating these two events. In the 1960s, the international community could still believe in universally common principles, while in the 1990s, as sustainability became a common concern of the international community, cultural and natural diversities emerged. The Nara Document was drafted against such a background. It had been gradually recognized prior to the Nara Conference that understandings and interpretation of cultural heritage may differ in each culture. There were challenges against the common principles in the framework of the World Heritage Convention prior to the Nara Document. The following section aims to examine these frictions.
Why Was the Nara Document Needed? The Global Study and Its Failure: Struggles During the Pre-Nara-Conference Period (1979-1993)
Instruments with normative effects usually face challenges in response to social needs. No instrument emerges without social needs. This section aims to illustrate the above-mentioned frictions during the period from the early stage of the World Heritage Convention (the Convention) before the adoption of the Nara Document; more precisely, it outlines the struggles of the World Heritage Committee (the Committee) and experts to identify a balance between a conceptual framework that maintained the one-list system under the Convention and the demands from diverse cultures. This analysis is necessary to understand that the Venice Charter did not stand intact since its conception and that the Nara Document did not emerge suddenly.
In 1979, at the third session of the Committee, Michel Parent of ICOMOS presented [End Page 438] a report of The Comparative Study of Nominations and Criteria for World Cultural Heritage. This study was carried out because of a request from the Bureau of the Committee, which had been “faced with a number of problems over the application of the criteria.”12 In this study, cultural properties that had already been inscribed on, or nominated to, the World Heritage List were analyzed and classified using many “subtypes” under the three definitions (monument, group of buildings, and site) provided in the Convention. The report proposed “to work out a clear typology or classification of the nominations pending, revising as necessary the proposals made in this Report, and specifying those properties which belong to more than one category.”13
Four years later, in 1983, Michel Parent pointed out in his speech during the seventh session of the Bureau of the Committee (the Bureau) that guaranteeing the consistency of “greater strictness in interpretation of the criteria”14 was an increasing cause of concern. Echoing his sentiment, it was resolved during the seventh session of World Heritage Committee, held in the same year, that ICOMOS will “prepare a preliminary typological study, based on all cultural properties already included in the World Heritage List and on a review of the tentative lists already submitted” and convene expert groups to “formulate suggestions towards the interpretation of these criteria,”15 in particular with regard to three specific areas: historic cities; properties representing events, ideas, or beliefs; and the notion of authenticity.16
Note the fact that clarifying the notion of authenticity was already on the agenda at this stage. However, except for a study on historic cities, no report was submitted. These tentative lists had been affirmed as a basic source “which could serve as a point of departure for a global study.”17 However, not many tentative lists had been submitted by the state parties, so the secretariat repeatedly emphasized how urgent it was to submit tentative lists.18
Under such circumstances, a working group set up at the eleventh session of the World Heritage Committee in 1987 was tasked to review all the sites on the World Heritage List and tentative lists and to “review ways and means of ensuring a rigorous application of the criteria.”19 In 1988, the working group recommended preparing “a global reference list of properties of outstanding universal value” to “define a World Heritage List that is universally representative.” For this purpose, the working group proposed to carry out the global study, which would enable “the Committee as well as state parties to evaluate the List as well as the Tentative Lists and to take note of possible lacunae and redundancies with a view to future inscriptions.”20 The recommendations of the working group were approved by the Committee at its twelfth session in 1988 and would allow for the global study as well as “complementary studies of rural landscapes, traditional villages and contemporary architecture.”21
Having gone through a series of struggles as indicated in the reports of the sessions of the Bureau and the Committee from 1988 to 1991, a framework was proposed at the sixteenth session of the Committee in 1992: “A study system founded on the basis of a matrix structuring cultural properties into three categories: time, culture and human achievement.”22 It was further examined in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1993. After all the efforts, what [End Page 439] became clear was the different views on the most appropriate approach: “the consultation carried out by the Secretariat however showed that the community of experts had not reached a consensus on methodology of this approach.”23 The global study thus failed.
At the thirteenth session of the Committee in 1989, “the representative of ICOMOS emphasized in particular the need to highlight the changes that had occurred in the world and in approaches to culture in the last twenty years.”24 A 1993 document reported about the failure of the global study: “Some specialists fear that this procedure might give too much importance to the traditional categories of traditional art history which have developed around the study of the great monuments and great civilisations.”25 A 1998 progress report of the global strategy described how “the early 1990s criticisms of the Global Study began to emerge. Most notably, it was described as being a functional typology based on historical and aesthetic classifications that bore little reality to the diversity of the world’s cultural heritage or to living cultures.”26
It should be stressed that during this process, views that emphasized the significance of properties over material aspects obtained more support:
From this time [1991] onwards, it became generally accepted that the World Heritage List is more than a catalogue of monuments . . . The vision and choice of properties to inscribe, far from being purely aesthetic, are more clearly historical, and even anthropological, in that they attach greater importance to the significance of the properties than to their physical aspect.27
As these evaluations in the early 1990s show, in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the normative framework valid at the time of the Convention was already under pressure from sections of the international community to be revised based on a shift in emphasis from the physical aspects to the cultural significance of properties. This trend was a baseline to interpret authenticity differently.
Expansion of the Heritage Concept as a Background
The change from the physical aspect of the properties to cultural significance is reflected in the fact that two thematic studies conducted in 1993 were not about historic monuments, but about industrial heritage and twentieth-century architecture. Concurrent with these thematic studies, which intended to define new types of cultural heritage, several meetings of experts were convened, based on requests of the Committee, in order to discuss specific types of heritage. This section discusses four examples of such an expansion of the heritage concept, which imply that such expansion of the heritage concept requires new ideas on authenticity.
Cultural Landscapes
The cultural landscape, earlier classified as “rural landscape” and which had failed to capture outstanding universal value in either cultural or natural criteria, had been the subject [End Page 440] of global debate for a decade. It was appealing as an effective tool for the balanced World Heritage List. The expert group met in October 1992 in La Petite Pierre, France and recommended to “study the criteria necessary for the inclusion of cultural landscapes on the World Heritage List.”28 At the sixteenth session of the Committee in 1992, the Committee decided to amend the Operational Guidelines in order to accommodate cultural landscapes.29 Through this amendment, some key words, such as “cultural tradition” and “land-use” were added to the existing criteria, and new interpretive paragraphs on cultural landscape were developed. In response to this decision, the nomination of Tongariro National Park was resubmitted by New Zealand authorities in light of the revised cultural criteria for inscriptions (cultural landscapes).30 Tongariro National Park was originally submitted as a mixed site but inscribed under natural criteria in 1990, since a comparative study of the heritage of the Asia-Pacific cultures had not been carried out, leaving ICOMOS unable to evaluate the site’s cultural value.31 In 1993, this site was finally extended as a mixed site adding cultural criterion (vi) as per the Bureau’s recommendation recognizing “the unique significance of the site for the Maori people.”32
Heritage Canals
The nature and extent of canals as well as their components of significance were examined during the expert meeting on heritage canals hosted by Canada in September 1994. Finding that “the significance of canals can be examined under technological, economic, social, and landscape factors,”33 the experts proposed to modify the Operational Guidelines by adding the words “technology” and “technological” to the criteria.
Cultural Routes
In 1994, at the eighteenth session of the Committee, the Report on the Expert Meeting on Routes as a Part of our Cultural Heritage was submitted. This report found that the concept of heritage routes “is based on the dynamics of movement and the idea of exchanges, with continuity in space and time; refers to a whole, where the route has a worth over and above the sum of the elements making it up and through which it gains its cultural significance; is multi-dimensional, with different aspects developing and adding to its prime purpose which may be religious, commercial, administrative or otherwise.” “A heritage route may be considered as a specific, dynamic type of cultural landscape.”34
The report recommended that the “authenticity test is to be applied on the grounds of its significance and other elements making up the heritage route. It will take into account the duration of the route, and perhaps how often it is used nowadays, as well as the legitimate wishes for development of peoples affected.”35 The report proposed to add to the Operational Guidelines the following new paragraph: “A heritage route is composed of tangible elements of which the cultural significance comes from exchanges and a multidimensional dialogue across countries or region, and that illustrate the interaction of movement, along the route, in space and time.”36 [End Page 441]
Emphasis of Intangible Aspects
Especially in the 1980s, primarily as a result of the negative impact of industrialization and mass-consumption on traditional villages and historical towns, various instruments, such as charters and declarations, were adopted by ICOMOS and its national committees. In this process, intangible aspects, such as ways of living, tradition, memory, and spiritual factor or function, were recognized as important constituent factors of heritage to be conserved. This concept provides another factor requiring a new approach of authenticity.
For instance, the Mexican National Committee of ICOMOS organized a symposium in Trinidad, Tlaxcala, in 1982 “to examine the situation prevailing in America from the view point of the dangers which threaten the architectural and environmental inheritance of the small settlements.”37 The Tlaxcala Declaration adopted by the delegates to the symposium reasserted that “small settlements are repositories of ways of living which bear witness to our cultures, retain the scale appropriate to them and at the same time personify the community relations which give inhabitants an identity.”38 “Contempt for our own values, especially in the small settlements” caused by “the introduction of patterns of consumption and behavior foreign to our traditions”39 was viewed as a key factor in encouraging the destruction of cultural heritage.
As the second example, the Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas adopted in 1987 by ICOMOS General Assembly in Washington, D.C., “concerns historic urban areas, large and small, including cities, towns and historic centres and quarters, together with their natural and man-made environments,” which “embody the values of traditional urban cultures.” “Today many such areas are threatened, physically degraded, damaged or have been destroyed, by the impact of the urban development that follows industrialisation in societies everywhere.”40 The charter aimed to “promote the harmony of both private and community life in these areas and to encourage the preservation of those cultural properties, however modest in scale, that constitute the memory of mankind.”41 It was defined that what should be preserved are qualities such as “the historic character of the town or urban area and all those material and spiritual elements that express this character.” Special attention was paid to “the various functions that the town or urban area has acquired over time,” together with four other characteristics such as urban patterns and the relationship between the elements.42
These four examples presenting the expansion of heritage concepts illustrate the demands from the international community for changes at the normative level. Hence criteria to inscribe properties whose cultural significance was at stake were elaborated. The outcome of these meetings was reflected in amendments of the Operational Guidelines, and such properties have been nominated and inscribed as World Heritage. This trend in the 1980s and the 1990s continues to push debates on authenticity in new directions.
Recognition of Diverse Conservation Methods as Another Background
Certain types of properties, or those linked to particular cultural backgrounds, may require specific heritage practices. If the significance of a property is emphasized over its physical [End Page 442] aspect, preservation should be designed accordingly to allow for the transmission of the significance, memory, or function of the property. As heritage concepts and values have been expansively interpreted in the framework of the Convention, such specific practices have been recognized and reflected in important documents. This paper considers three examples.
Adaptation
One of the earliest challenges to preservation philosophy with emphasis on material aspects of heritage is the Burra Charter adopted in 1981 by Australia ICOMOS.43 The Burra Charter highlighted social value as one of the cultural significances of a place: the aim of preservation is to retain the cultural significance of a place (Article 2), which means aesthetic, historic, scientific, or social value for past, present, or future generations (Article 1). According to the 1988 Guidelines to the Burra Charter, “social value embraces the qualities for which a place has become a focus of spiritual, political, national or other cultural sentiment to a majority or minority group.”44
The Burra Charter recognized that “adaptation is acceptable where the conservation of the place cannot otherwise be achieved, and where the adaptation does not substantially detract from its cultural significance.”45 Adaptation means “modifying a place to suit new functions without destroying its cultural significance.”46 David Saunders, the chairman of Australia ICOMOS at that time, confessed that the clearest divergence “was raised by the effort to incorporate allowance for adaptation, while yet expressing a strictness which restrains everybody concerned from introducing unnecessary and undesirable changes to a place.”47
Replacement and Renewal
The Florence Charter,48 adopted by ICOMOS in 1982, concerns historic gardens “whose constituents are primarily vegetal and therefore living.”49 Needless to say, the “preservation of the garden in an unchanged condition requires both prompt replacements when required and a long-term programme of periodic renewal.”50
Dismantling and Reassembling
Dismantling, taking detailed records, replacing decayed parts, taking necessary measures against pest damage, and reassembling have been applied to comprehensive restoration of old wooden buildings in Japan, for example. This practice may have been often unfairly seen by the West as paying little or no respect to historic materials.51 According to Herb Stovel,
the originators of the Nara meeting had more prosaic benefits in mind, however. They wished simply to extend the range of attributes through which authenticity might be recognized in order to accommodate within it mainstream Japanese conservation practices—namely the periodic dismantling, repair, and reassembly of wooden temples—so that Japan would feel more comfortable about submitting World Heritage nominations for international review.”52 [End Page 443]
Yukio Nishimura explains more precisely that “authenticity of use and function may mean that material can be replaced when its use and function remain unchanged, or in [an] even more drastic way, material may be subject to be regularly substituted in order to retain the authentic function. This is exactly what [the] Japanese claimed when they host[ed the] Nara Conference on authenticity in 1994.”53
This method has been identified as the optimal solution to preserving wooden buildings in a humid environment and has been incorporated into the heritage policy of the state. Representatives from ICOMOS evaluated this practice in the nomination of the Buddhist Monument in the Horyu-ji temple area and wrote a statement asserting that “Japanese conservation practice conforms to established principles of authenticity in design, materials, techniques, and environment.” “Conservation work of the highest order has been carried out for nearly a century there.”54 At the seventeenth session of the Committee, the temple was inscribed.55
Interpretation and Application of Authenticity: The Path from Venice to Nara
The struggles and ultimate failure of the global study, as well as the expansion of the heritage concept and conservation methods that the previous section illustrated, represent changes in heritage preservation practices. For the purpose of this paper, these changes are located at the normative level and analyzed through a normative lens.
The Venice Charter: Authenticity as Originality
In the Venice Charter, the word of authenticity is used only once in its preamble:
Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present days as living witnesses of their age-old traditions. People are becoming more and more conscious of the unity of human values and regard ancient monuments as a common heritage. The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity.56
Authenticity was introduced in the Operational Guidelines in 1977. Article 7 of the Operational Guidelines states that “the property should meet the test of authenticity in design, materials, workmanship and setting”; thus authenticity obtained normative meaning with four indicators. In this way, the interpretation of authenticity gained not only theoretical but also practical significance.
It might be interesting in this regard to note that integrity was originally proposed instead of authenticity.57 Prior to the Committee meeting, experts convened in Morges, Switzerland, in 1976 and Paris in 1977. In Paris, Ernest Allen Connally from ICOMOS introduced the approach used by the National Park Service (United States) to evaluate the integrity of a property (concerned with location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association). According to the National Park Service’s Administrative Manual of 1953, “an essential consideration is that each one should have integrity—that is, there [End Page 444] should be no doubt as to whether it is the original site or structure, and in the case of a structure, that it represents original materials and workmanship.” However, Raymond Lemaire from ICOMOS suggested a preference for the word “authenticity” on the basis that use of the integrity concept might limit analysis to concern for original form or design.58
After the choice was made, there was a debate on authenticity at the first World Heritage Committee meeting in 1977. A core question was whether authenticity does not limit considerations to original form and function, but includes all subsequent modifications and additions, over the course of time.59 Reaching a consensus among the participants was not an easy task. For example, one participant insisted on the concept of “progressive authenticity,” because “the principle of the authenticity of a building precludes the replacement of an old element by a new.”60 The final report of the first Committee states that “the feasibility of adopting criteria gave rise to some discussion . . . to the changing and subjective nature of evaluations of qualities, to the impact of Western thought and to the difference between perception from within a given culture and perception from outside.” In this sense, the representative of ICOMOS recognized “the difficulty of drafting criteria to be applied to cultural property throughout the world and of translating concepts into words that were meaningful on a universal scale.”61
The following language can be found in the first Operational Guidelines of 1977: “The property should meet the test of authenticity in design, materials, workmanship and setting; authenticity does not limit consideration to original form and structure but includes all subsequent modifications and additions over the course of time, which in themselves possess artistic or historical values” and should be understood against such a background.62
The Historic Center of Warsaw as the First Challenge
The first version of the Operational Guidelines already faced a challenge in the year following its adoption with the nomination of the Historic Center of Warsaw. Entirely reconstructed after the destruction of World War II, Warsaw’s nomination encountered a question from ICOMOS “as to whether it meets the general rule of authenticity.”63 At its second session in 1978, the Committee decided to defer the nomination.
At the third session of the Committee in 1979, when the report of the Comparative Study of Nominations and Criteria for World Cultural Heritage was presented, Michel Parent raised the question of whether Warsaw “could nevertheless be placed on the list because of exceptional historical circumstances surrounding its resurrection,”64 despite the Committee’s decision that “the World Heritage list should not include a town or part of a town which has been entirely destroyed and reconstructed, whatever the quality of the reconstruction.”65 In this report, Parent examined the authenticity of a few cases, including a wooden temple in Kyoto, “whose timbers have been replaced regularly without any alteration of the architecture or of the look of the material over ten centuries.” He affirmed that the wooden temple in Kyoto remained “undeniably authentic.” Citing such examples, he stressed that “authenticity is relative and depends on the nature of the property [End Page 445] involved.” “The nature of a material, its finishing, its structural use, and its expressive use, the very nature of the civilization which built the building are all different factors according to which the idea of authenticity can be understood differently.”66
However, when ICOMOS recommended inscribing this entirely destroyed and reconstructed town in 1980, it stated that “the criterion of authenticity may not be applied in its strict sense.” The recommendation concluded that “its authenticity is associated with this unique realization of the years 1945 to 1966.”67 This unique realization means that such reconstruction influenced the doctrines of urbanization and the preservation of old city quarters in Europe.
From the ordinary meaning of the word, this explanation of authenticity is not fully convincing. Therefore it seems natural that at the seventh session in 1983, the Committee decided that ICOMOS would convene expert groups to “formulate suggestions towards the interpretation of these criteria.”68 One issue to be tackled was to clarify the notion of authenticity.
Parent’s speech at the seventh session of the Bureau of World Heritage Committee in 1983 pointed out that there were some cases in which periodic repair, occasional additions, regular reconstruction, and/or even conjectural reconstruction is needed. He introduced these cases in order to question the applicability of the principle of authenticity, which focused only on the material elements of a building.69 Parent distinguished two different changes, referring to restoration works made in Europe in the nineteenth century:
1) an improper and haphazard restoration which has quite simply disregarded the originality and therefore the authenticity of the monument; and 2) an operation that has, in effect, transcended the original monument and turned it into a work typical of the nineteenth century. Such a work would be judged for what it means in the context of that century. In such a case, furthermore, it is not impossible that the criterion of representation of a great national or transnational religious or philosophical idea might lend weight to the particular interest of the property.70
From his first example, he seems to have understood authenticity as material originality. However, his second example implies that he knew that the focus on strict material originality might cause problems. In fact, in the 1980s, a special approach to authenticity for specific types of heritage had been required in heritage practices.71
The Nara Document: A Shift from Material Originality to Credibility of Information
As the above-cited examples show, when authenticity was interpreted in a more flexible manner, focusing on specific properties or specific types of heritage, it became indispensable to revisit the concept of authenticity and review the appropriateness of its application. Hence, in 1992, at the sixteenth session of the Committee, issues concerning authenticity of cultural heritage were discussed at length in the context of the test of authenticity [End Page 446] found in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. At the suggestion of ICOMOS, the World Heritage Committee requested that the concept and application of authenticity to cultural heritage be further elaborated through international discussions among experts.72 The Government of Japan offered “to sponsor a major international conference of experts at the historic city of Nara, Japan, to further examine authenticity in relation to the World Heritage Convention.”73 After a preparatory meeting in Bergen in February 1994, the Nara Conference took place in November 1994.
The Nara Document was the outcome of the conference and defines authenticity as “the qualifying factor concerning values”74 and states that all “judgements about values attributed to cultural properties as well as the credibility of related information sources may differ from culture to culture, and even within the same culture.”75 Authenticity was separated from a definition that required “originality of material aspects” of heritage; instead, it was qualified as a tool to analyze the credibility of information sources.
The Nara Document provides a nonexhaustive list of fourteen types of information sources, namely: form and design, materials and substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location and setting, spirit and feeling, and other internal and external factors.76 To be noted is that this list includes intangible and dynamic aspects such as use and function, traditions and techniques, spirit and feeling. By using this nonexhaustive list, the Nara Document offers a more analytical approach that enables the inclusion of diverse values.
Some important articles have been published on the Nara Document.77 A recently published article states that “the preservation of monuments involves a ‘message’ that is linked to certain authentic traditions, a message that is credible—that is authentic—because it is based on the authentic traditions of different cultures and is attested to by monuments as authentic evidence.”78 It continues that, “the Nara Document on Authenticity ends with the crucial article 13. Given the diversity of the cultural heritage, the test of authenticity is presented here in a much broader and more flexible framework, quite in the sense of the full richness of their authenticity already anticipated in the Venice Charter . . .”79 If this statement suggests that authenticity in the Venice Charter was understood as “credibility” by its drafters, this does not hold. As the second section of this paper showed, referring to the documents of the drafting stage of the Operational Guidelines of 1977, the core of the debate was in identifying how much the category of material originality could be relaxed. There was no debate to replace material authenticity with credibility. There were already continuous debates and struggles about how to maintain a strict application while accommodating diverse nominations in the very early stages of the Convention, but we had to wait until the Nara Document clearly defined authenticity as credibility.80 The above-cited statement in a recent publication seems to constitute a “rereading” of the Venice Charter through the lens of the Nara Document. However, we should clearly distinguish an ex ante and ex post perspective in order to analyze normative principles and notions to avoid confusion.
Constant and continuous debates and efforts to relax material authenticity have arisen since the early stages of the Convention. The Nara Document was made possible [End Page 447] only against such a background. The Nara Document did not appear suddenly, nor was it revolutionary, but it was indispensable. It connected authenticity as a normative tool with social demands—necessary because when demands in society change, normative tools should be revisited.
Impact of the Nara Document: A Path Toward Its Acceptance in the Operational Guidelines
Although the Nara Document itself did not have any normatively binding power, it found use in heritage practices in various regions.81 Starting on a regional level, it gradually expanded its influences, and in 2005 it became a legal document as part of the Operational Guidelines. This section of the paper will trace this path of the Nara Document.
Diffusion of Its Impacts: The Nara Document in Regional Contexts
Declaration of San Antonio of 1996
Some regional meetings were held to examine the applicability of the Nara Document to their regional context. The first example of such regional meetings was the Inter-American Symposium on Authenticity in the Conservation and Management of the Cultural Heritage held at San Antonio, Texas, in 1996. The participants from the ICOMOS National Committees of the Americas examined whether the American perspective was fully represented in the Nara Document.82 In the Declaration of San Antonio adopted at this conference, authenticity was analyzed in relation to the following seven themes that represent the main features of American cultural heritage: identity, history, materials, social value, dynamic and static sites, stewardship, and economics.
In American societies, where diverse value systems built by European colonizers, African slavery, and successive waves of European and Asian immigrants coexist as multiple layers, cultural heritage is crucial as strong “common threads that unify the Americas.”83 In such societies, the authenticity of cultural heritage should be identified through a deep understanding of the history of heritage and “true values as perceived by our ancestors in the past and by ourselves now as an evolving and diverse community.”84 Investigation of material evidence is important, since it transmits such values, but “the goal of preserving memory and its cultural manifestations” can be achieved by enriching human spirituality beyond the material aspect.85 At “dynamic cultural sites that continue to be actively used by society,” certain physical changes constitute “an intrinsic part of our heritage,” and enrich the significance of cultural heritage rather than damaging it. Therefore such changes could be accepted as a “part of on-going evolution.”86
In the Declaration of San Antonio (the Declaration), some comments are provided on several provisions of the Nara Document, based on the above-mentioned analysis. For example, “the concept of participation by the local community and stakeholders needs to be stronger.”87 The Nara Document is an “important mechanism in the search for cultural identity in the Americas,” but “perspective for the re-assignation of lost or new values for weakened cultural traditions and heritage” is lacking.88 “The close coexistence of vastly differing cultural groups” such as highly technical societies or nomadic tribes should be [End Page 448] recognized and protected in the context of heritage protection,89 because “in the understanding of authenticity it is crucial to acknowledge the dynamic nature of cultural values, and to gain such understanding static and inflexible criteria must be avoided.”90
The Declaration proposed to establish a process to “define and protect authenticity” and to recognize “a broad range of significant resources,” including a management mechanism with participation of all concerned groups.91 In addition, the Declaration recommends further “consideration to be given to the proofs of authenticity so that indicators may be identified for such a determination in a way that all significant values in the site may be set forth.”92 These indicators could include reflection of the true value, integrity, context, and identity as well as use and function.93
The Nara Document in an African Context
The second example of a regional meeting was the expert meeting on authenticity and integrity that took place in an African context, which was held in Zimbabwe in 2000 at the invitation of the World Heritage Centre. At this meeting, the Nara Document was evaluated as “important because it has opened people’s minds on the issue of authenticity, moving it away from the old Euro-centric version that was focused on authenticity of materials. However, the Nara Document is not operational. It is a declaration of important principles, but it is difficult to put into practice.”94
Particularly in African cultures, where a distinction between natural and cultural heritage does not necessarily exist, and where the distinction between spiritual and material, tangible and intangible elements may be inappropriate, local communities are crucial as holders of traditions. Hence the participation of communities should be ensured at all levels of heritage protection, and it was proposed to add a new paragraph to the Operational Guidelines to state that “community participation should, in essence, involve the right to information, and the right to be involved in decision-making and implementation processes of the World Heritage Convention.”95
As we will see below, the Operational Guidelines amended in 2005 contain three sources (management systems, language, and other forms of intangible heritage) in addition to the fourteen aspects that the Nara Document originally proposed to identify authenticity. These three sources stem from the recommendations of the meeting, reflecting the importance of communities and a traditional management system as well as the inseparable link between heritage and intangible factors including language in Africa. Furthermore, “due to the specific spiritual character of some potential African World Heritage sites,”96 it was proposed at this meeting to apply criterion (vi) alone, since “cultural heritage can exist in spiritual forms in its own right with the absence of any tangible evidence at a particular site.”97
Revision of the Operational Guidelines: Acceptance of the Nara Document on a Normative Level
According to Sophia Labadi, who examined 106 nomination dossiers of sites for inclusion on the World Heritage List, four parameters in the Operational Guidelines of 1977 (design, [End Page 449] materials, workmanship, and setting) were not functioning properly: “contradictory and unrealistic presentations of authenticity in nomination dossiers conceal the fact that the Operational Guidelines bear no relation to the reality of this concept until its 2005 revision.”98
This revision can be traced back to recommendations adopted by the Expert Meeting on Evaluation of general principles and criteria for nominations of natural World Heritage sites held in Vanoise, France, in 1996. During the meeting, it was “acknowledged that use of terminologies such as natural, cultural, mixed and cultural landscapes to distinguish World Heritage sites was undermining the Convention’s uniqueness in its recognition of the nature–culture continuum.” In this context, the experts recommended that the committee consider “developing one set of criteria, incorporating existing natural and cultural heritage criteria.” Therefore, it was also recommended to study “the possibility of applying conditions of integrity to both natural and cultural heritage.”99
At the twentieth session in the same year, the Committee adopted a proposal of “a truly joint meeting of cultural and natural heritage experts to discuss the application of the conditions of integrity versus the test of authenticity” together with two other issues: “the question of a unified or a harmonised set of criteria” and “the notion of outstanding universal value and its application in different regional and cultural contexts.”100
The World Heritage Global Strategy Natural and Cultural Heritage Expert Meeting was held in Amsterdam in 1998 to discuss the three above-mentioned issues. During this meeting, as the consolidated view of the Advisory Bodies, “the application of conditions of integrity (incorporating the concept of authenticity) to cultural as well as natural properties” was recommended.101 However, the working group that “examined the combination of the notions of authenticity and integrity” considered that “the test of authenticity should not be deleted entirely as it has importance for certain cultures and types of cultural heritage.” The working group recommended that “the conditions of integrity and authenticity be linked and related to each criterion as appropriate in the Operational Guidelines, and retain the test of authenticity for some types of cultural heritage.”102 These recommendations were presented to the twenty-second session of World Heritage Committee in the same year.
At the twenty-third session of the Committee, a representative of ICOMOS reported that “the ICOMOS General Assembly held in Mexico in October 1999 had approved the Nara Document on Authenticity and that it therefore became part of the corpus of reference texts of ICOMOS. [A member] emphasized the importance of the Nara Document in recognizing, in differing regional contexts, the diversity of cultural heritage and human development.”103
Drafting
During the twenty-third session of the Bureau of the Committee in 1999, the working document “concerning revisions to Section I of the Operational Guidelines,” which “had been prepared in full consultation with all three advisory bodies”104 was examined, and it [End Page 450] was decided to hold an international expert meeting on the Operational Guidelines in Canterbury, U.K., in 2000.105
At the twenty-fourth session in 2000, the Committee recommended that “the Operational Guidelines be restructured according to the proposed new overall framework.”106 The Drafting Group on the Revision of the Operational Guidelines met at UNESCO headquarters in 2001 to discuss the Draft Annotated Operational Guidelines prepared by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The drafting group prepared the 2nd Draft Annotated Revisions during this meeting.107 When “the role and use of the qualifying conditions in the same table as the criteria was discussed in detail” during the meeting, “it was seen as potentially limiting as the criteria are broader than the factors contained in the qualifying conditions.” Therefore, “it was decided that the table only contain the criteria and that the qualifying conditions be placed after the table.”108 Furthermore, “the Drafting Group noted that the two concepts of the test of authenticity and the conditions of integrity are fundamentally different.”109
The drafting group agreed that progress was made on revising the text on authenticity and integrity drawing from the Nara Document on Authenticity and the Zimbabwe meeting on authenticity and integrity in an African context. It was also agreed to use in the future the word “conditions” for both integrity and “authenticity.”110
The draft at this stage and the version of the Operational Guidelines adopted in 2005 are almost identical. In 2003 the Committee decided that the revised Operational Guidelines would come into effect on March 1, 2004.111 The revised Operational Guidelines are dated February 2005. This version contains eight provisions on authenticity in a new section “Integrity and/or Authenticity” (contained within Articles 79–86). Three among these eight are transferred from the Nara Document. Moreover, the Nara Document is added in Annex 4 as “a practical basis for examining the authenticity of such properties” nominated under criteria (i) to (vi) in Article 79.112 In this way, the Nara Document reached a truly normative level.
The Nara Document was positively received in various regions, although some region-specific cultural specificity was not fully covered by the document. Nevertheless, the Nara Document was incorporated in the Operational Guidelines and formally became a reference point of authenticity tests in the nomination process. In this process, it was confirmed that authenticity and integrity are two different criteria.113
Issues After the Nara Document
The Nara Document “recognized that the authenticity of a site is rooted in specific socio-cultural contexts, [and] corresponds to specific values [that] can only be understood and judged within those specific contexts and according to these values.”114 This view was transplanted in the Operational Guidelines. But, for example, if values change or expand, how should the authenticity test be applied? Such a sociocultural approach to heritage raises new questions. [End Page 451]
The Global Strategy and Evolving Values
The global strategy was proposed during the working group meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in June 1994. The experts agreed that
the history of art and architecture, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology no longer concentrated on single monuments in isolation but rather on considering cultural groupings that were complex and multidimensional, which demonstrated in spatial terms the social structures, ways of life, beliefs, systems of knowledge, and representations of different past and present cultures in the entire world. Each individual piece of evidence should therefore be considered not in isolation but within its whole context and with an understanding of the multiple reciprocal relationships that it had with its physical and non-physical environment.
It was recommended “to take into account all the possibilities for extending and enriching [the World Heritage List] by means of new types of property whose value might become apparent as knowledge and ideas developed.”115
Under such an understanding of developing the global study, the global strategy commenced. It shifted “from a typological approach to one that reflects the complex and dynamic nature of cultural expression.”116 “In order to ensure for the future a World Heritage List that was at the same time representative, balanced, and credible, the expert group considered it to be necessary not only to increase the number of types, regions, and periods of cultural property that are under-represented in the coming years, but also to take into account the new concepts of the idea of cultural heritage that had been developed over the past twenty years.”117
For this purpose, two main themes—”human coexistence with the land” and “human being in society”—were identified by the experts group as having high potential to fill the gaps, which “should be considered in their broad anthropological context through time.”118 It was suggested that “the definition of sites within these themes should be undertaken in a holistic way, reflecting tangible as well as intangible qualities of the sites, as the latter are, becoming increasingly important.”119
Under this framework, many meetings were organized to focus on region-specific topics and possibilities of new categories of cultural heritage. A number of proposals on definitions, values, and understanding of authenticity were made. Hence new categories for World Heritage sites have been promoted, such as cultural landscapes, itineraries, industrial heritage, deserts, coastal-marine, and small-island sites.120 In order to examine the values of such new types of cultural heritage, the approach of the Nara Document—that is, evaluating authenticity by applying the expanded list of attributes—proved to be very useful.
Through such a process of examination, it was recognized that values of heritage are subjective, changeable, and fragile in resisting social change. For instance, in 1996 the Inter-American Symposium on Authenticity in the Conservation and Management of the [End Page 452] Cultural Heritage identified the complex and changing values in cultural landscape preservation.
In cultural landscapes, including urban areas, the process of identifying and protecting social value is complex because so many separate interest groups may be involved. In some cases, this situation is further complicated because the traditional indigenous groups that once protected and developed the sites are now adopting new and at times conflicting values that spring from the market economy, and from their desire for more social and economic integration in the national life.121
Under the global strategy, three complementary approaches were adopted after 2002: a typological framework, a chronological-regional framework, and a thematic framework. Applying detailed and diverse themes developed in this framework, the properties on the World Heritage List and the Tentative List were analyzed. The ICOMOS report, submitted to the Committee in 2004, confirms the need to identify underrepresented categories or themes, to encourage technical assistance to state parties, and to investigate cultural resources to correct such underrepresentation. The report stressed difficulties of classification: unlike natural heritage, “cultural heritage is fragmented and diverse and not nearly so easy to classify. One of the main reasons for this is the need to take account of qualities, which are subjective, and of the value that society may give to those qualities.”122
Various efforts had been made to ensure the representativeness of the World Heritage List. The global strategy among others is of particular importance. Under this policy, certain types of properties may obtain new values attributed by society. Hence authenticity should be understood in its sociocultural context, and more attention should be paid to the interrelationship between cultural heritage and society.
Heritage Process as a Sociocultural Aspect of Heritage
Certain types of heritage inevitably require a continuing process for conservation. For example, according to the Charter on the Built Vernacular Heritage ratified at the ICOMOS Twelfth General Assembly in Mexico in 1999, “vernacular building is the traditional and natural way by which communities house themselves. It is a continuing process including necessary changes and continuous adaptation as a response to social and environmental constraints.”123 This charter recommends “a code of ethics within the community” (presented in Article 3) as a tool of intervention when adaptation and reuse of vernacular structures are carried out.
Another example is the Vienna Memorandum on World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture: Managing the Historic Urban Landscape—the result of the International Conference on World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture held in 2005. It redefined “the historic urban landscape.” The historic urban landscape “goes beyond traditional terms of ‘historic centres,’ ‘ensembles’ or ‘surroundings’ to include the broader territorial and landscape context.”124 It acknowledged that continuous changes in functional use, [End Page 453] social structure, political context, and economic development are part of the city’s tradition. It also recognized the fundamental requirement “to guarantee an urban environmental quality of living to contribute to the economic success of a city and to its social and cultural vitality,” while taking into account “the emotional connection between human beings and their environment, their sense of place.”125 In this condition, “the authenticity and integrity of historic fabric and building stock”126 is to be respected when interventions in the inherited historic urban landscape are undertaken. For the purpose of decisionmaking for such interventions in a historic urban landscape, “a culturally and [historically] sensitive approach, stakeholder consultations and expert know-how”127 are considered appropriate for ensuring adequate and proper action.
As these examples show, conservation of such properties whose tangible and/or intangible aspects may change or whose essential part is the change itself is not a onetime action. It involves an ongoing process, which includes a continuous interrelationship between heritage and people’s activities—part of the socioeconomic activities of a whole community. The preservation of historic urban landscapes or cultural landscapes invites us to draw more attention to the context of social function, economic benefits, or environmental contributions of cultural heritage. In today’s world, authenticity should be revisited through the lens of this kind of process.
The Nara Document for the Future–NARA + 20
Labadi pointed out that, before the incorporation of the Nara Document in the Operational Guidelines in 2005, nomination dossiers did not depart from the “quasi-monolithic understanding of authenticity.”128 From a normative perspective, it is understandable that those member states that submit nomination dossiers would follow the Operational Guidelines at that time of submission. It would be too risky for member states to add new parameters to justify the authenticity of nominated properties by their own judgments. On the other hand, it seems crucial to conduct an empirical study to analyze if and how the 2005 version of the Operational Guidelines has affected nomination dossiers in terms of authenticity. In other words, after the Nara Document was incorporated into the Operational Guidelines, its normative effects should be evaluated.
Besides such empirical studies, new issues have emerged as a result of the sociocultural viewpoint that the Nara Document introduced. The following five points were identified for future discussions and addressed in the Himeji Recommendations as an outcome of an international symposium held in the framework of the fortieth anniversary of the World Heritage Convention129: (1) values and authenticity, (2) defining authenticity and integrity, (3) credibility of sources, (4) involving communities, and (5) heritage and sustainable development. These five points were further elaborated and presented as discussion points to be addressed in Nara + 20, which was finalized at the second Nara Conference in 2014. These are the five discussion points: (1) diversity of heritage processes, (2) implications of the evolution of cultural values, (3) involvement of multiple stakeholders, (4) conflicting claims and interpretations, and (5) the role of cultural heritage in sustainable development. [End Page 454]
As we have seen, with new values, new heritage categories, and new heritage practices and processes, the interrelationship between heritage and people is highly complex and difficult to deal with using general language. Case studies are therefore necessary to illustrate these themes and related questions in a more visible manner. An interactive approach between theoretical exercises and management practices is expected to be developed.
Conclusion
The Nara Document was not born suddenly. There were many factors in practice and theory that created the document. In the 1990s, the cultural dimension of development was widely recognized. In the 2000s, cultural diversity was considered an indispensable factor for sustainable development. Against such a background, it has been recognized that culture is a tool for socioeconomic development. Hence the interrelationship between heritage and society has gained practical significance. At the same time, societies started to experience rapid and sometimes drastic changes. Since the intensification of the interrelationship between heritage and society following the adoption of the Nara Document, current issues on authenticity are inevitably complex. This is the context in which we should approach authenticity today.
Toshiyuki Kono (BA, Kyoto; LL.M. Kyoto) is Distinguished Professor, Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan). He currently serves as a member of ICOMOS Executive Committee (since 2011). He chairs the Committee on Cultural Affairs of the UNESCO National Commission in Japan as well as the Committee on Intellectual Property and Private International Law in the International Law Association (London). He is vice president and titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (Paris) as well as science advisor of Ministry of Education, Cultures, Sport, Science and Technology of Japan.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to express sincere gratitude to Ms. Junko Mukai of the Department of Culture, Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs of Bhutan for her invaluable assistance.
