Contingencies and mediations of Universal Value Exceptional

intersections between the local, the international and the universal from two natural parks in the world Heritage

Abstract

The process of patrimonialization of natural parks by UNESCO can be defined rather by heterogeneity and by articulations and displacements between nature and culture, than by “values” or by pure and homogeneous categories, fixed and in opposition, which would impose a universal value as evidence. The attribution of the Exceptional Universal Value therefore depends to a large extent on local contingencies and international mediations. The research conducted in two inhabited natural parks, one in Argentina and the other in La Réunion, both recognized by UNESCO for their biodiversity, revealed a diversity of territorial scales of action, the confrontation of norms and uses, and the circulation of representations linking the place international. Thus, it is through a heterogeneous fabric of operators of legitimation, speeches and knowledge, and even the unpredictable intervention of an animal species that this game of human strategies around heritage is revealed.