CLLAS will provide funding for a research project led by Dr. Maria Fernanda Escallón, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, titled “Unequal Inclusion: Civil Society Participation in Global Heritage Governance.”
The project examines why international efforts to make cultural heritage governance more democratic and inclusive can still leave Latin American civil society organizations on the margins. Dr. Escallón’s research focuses on UNESCO’s 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, which expanded the definition of cultural heritage to include practices such as music, dance, festivals, and other living cultural traditions. Although the convention was designed to center communities and nongovernmental organizations, more than half of accredited NGOs come from Western Europe and North America, while only about 5% come from Latin America and the Caribbean.
With CLLAS support, Dr. Escallón will complete in-person fieldwork with three UNESCO-accredited NGOs in Brazil, located in São Paulo and Brasília. This work is part of a larger research project that includes analysis of more than 300 UNESCO-accredited NGOs, site visits to Latin American NGOs, archival research, participant observation, and interviews with NGO staff, UNESCO representatives, and state delegates.
Dr. Escallón is working in partnership with the 15 Latin American NGOs accredited by UNESCO. She is also currently co-authoring an article with a Colombian NGO representative and a University of Oregon undergraduate student.
The goal of the project is to understand how global heritage systems can reproduce unequal power relationships between the Global North and Global South, even when they are built around participation and inclusion. Dr. Escallón’s research asks why Latin American NGOs are less represented and less engaged in UNESCO’s heritage governance process, and how barriers such as language, travel, bureaucracy, political relationships, and unequal access to resources shape their participation.
The findings will contribute to Dr. Escallón’s next book project, as well as two articles and a policy brief for UNESCO. Her work advances CLLAS’s mission by bringing Latin American cultural policy, civil society participation, and global inequality into conversation, while highlighting the role Latin American organizations play in shaping debates about heritage, democracy, and representation.