World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia

by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin & Keiko Miura & Collective

The processus of prospection, selection and nomination of Cambodian archeological sites to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites List.

Authors: Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Keiko Miura & Collective
Publisher: Göttingen University Press
Published: 2011
Book Edition: Open Edition Books
Pages: 232
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-86395-032-3
Format: e-book

Angkor, the temple and palace complex of the ancient Khmer capital in Cambodia, is one of the world’s most famous monuments. Hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the globe visit Angkor Park, one of the finest UNESCO World Heritage Sites, every year.

Since its UNESCO listing in 1992, the Angkor region has experienced an overwhelming mushrooming of hotels and restaurants; the infrastructure has been hardly able to cope with the rapid growth of mass tourism and its needs. This applies to the access and use of monument sites as well.

The authors of this book critically describe and analyse the heritage nomination processes in Cambodia, especially in the case of Angkor and the temple of Preah Vihear on the Cambodian/Thai border. They examine the implications the UNESCO listings have had with regard to the management of Angkor Park and its inhabitants on the one hand, and to the Cambodian/Thai relationships on the other. Furthermore, they address issues of development through tourism that UNESCO has recognised as a welcome side-effect of heritage listings. They raise the question whether development through tourism deepens already existing inequalities rather than contributing to the promotion of the poor.

Tags: UNESCO, cultural legacy, Apsara Authority, Modern Cambodia, Preah Vihear, tourism

About the Authors

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin (b. 1944, Basel) is Professor Emerita of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany, and a former curator at the Ethnographic Museum in Basel, Switzerland, who has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, in particular on the indigeneity movement, Cambodia (on the local consequences of the UNESCO listings of Angkor and Preah Vihear as World Heritage), and the island of Bali, Indonesia.

A consultant for UNESCO in Bali, Sumatra and Cambodia, Prof. Hauser-Schäublin has taught cultural property rights and cultural heritage management as guest lecturer at Columbia University and Dartmouth College (USA), and at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). Her work on the status of Khmer looted artefacts led her to launch and conduct the research project “Contested collections: Diverging claims of property in debates and negotiations 40 years after the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on illicit trafficking of cultural property”, part of an an interdisciplinary research unit on cultural property at Göttingen University.

As a leading researcher in ethnographic studies at Göttingen University, Prof. Hauser-Schäublin came to study the travels of British Navy officer, explorer and cartographer James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) since most of the artefacts collected during his travels are part of the Cook/Forster Collection living at this German university established in 1734, the name of it coming from Johann Reinhold Forster (1729 – 1798) and his son Georg Forster (1754 – 1794), two German naturalists who who accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the South Pacific.

1) Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Jörg Hauser in front of the Papua *haus tambaran* at the Museum für Völkerkunde, Basel [Photo: Jörg Hauser, 1981, reproduced in Nancy Lutkehaus, “The Curious Case of Non-Western Objects…”, op. cit.]. 2) Cover of Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s latest book on Bal [Brill Publishers].

Select Publications

Leben in Linie, Muster und Farbe: Einführung in die Betrachtung aussereuropäischer Kunst am Beispiel der Abelam, Papua-Neuginea, Basel: Birkhäuser, 1989.
Kulthäuser in Nordneuguinea. Teil l: Architektur, Funktion und Symbolik des Kulthauses bei den Abelam. Teil II: Vergleichende Studien der Kulthäuser im Sepik-Gebiet und an der Nordküste, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde Dresden 43; Monographien 7), 1989.
“In the Swamps and on the Hills. Settlement Patterns and House Structure in the Sepik, Papua New Guinea,” in Nancy Lutkehaus, Christian Kaufmann, William E. Mitchell, Douglas Newton, Lita Osmundsen & Meinhard Schuster (eds), Sepik Heritage. Tradition and Change in Papua New Guinea, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1990: 470 – 480.
[with Marie-Louise Nabholz-Kartaschoff & Urs Ramseyer], Balinese Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1991.
“The Thrill of the Line, the String and the Frond, or Why the Abelam Are a Non-Cloth Culture’ ” Oceania 67(2), 1996 :81 – 106.
“Exchanged Value – The Winding Paths of the Objects,“in B. Hauser-Schäublin & Gundolf Krüger (eds): James Cook: Gifts and Treasures from the South Seas. The Cook/Forster Collection, Göttingen, München and New York: Prestel, 1999: 11 – 29.
[with Gundolf Krüger] Cook-Forster Collection: Pacific Cultural Heritage, contribution to the 2006 exhibition “Cook’s Pacific Encounters”, National Museum of Australia, 2006 [retrieved and saved as PDF by Angkor Database, 2026].
The Cook-Forster Collection of the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Canberra:
National Museum of Australia Press, 2006.
[with Keiko Miura & al.] World Heritage Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia, Göttingen University Press, Göttingen studies in cultural property, 2011, 232 p. ISBN 978−3−86395−032−3; vol II, 2013, 236 p. ISBN 978−3−86395−032−3.
[ed.] Adat and Indigeneity in Indonesia: Culture and Entitlements between Heteronomy and Self-Ascription, Göttingen University Press, Göttingen studies in cultural property 7, 2011. ISBN 978−3−86395−132−0.
[ed. with Lyndel V. Prott] Cultural Property and Contested Ownership: The trafficking of artefacts and the quest for restitution, London, Routledge, 2016, 260 p. eBook ISBN9781315642048.
“Provenance Research between Politicized Truth Claims and Systemic Diversionary Tactics”, in Historical Culture by Restitution? A Debate on Art, Museums, and Justice, Thomas Sandkühler, Angelika Epple, & Jürgen Zimmererin eds., Böhlau Verlag, 2023: 67 – 90.
Under the Spell of the Batur Volcano: The Colonization of Highland Bali by Lowland Courts, London, Brill (Series: Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‑, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. 317], 2025. eBook ISBN 978−90−04−73844−7.

Read more about Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s work: Nancy Lutkehaus, “The Curious Case of Non-Western Objects – From “Artificial Curiosities” to Objects of Identity. A Discussion about Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Captain James Cook, and Museums”, in Elfriede Hermann, Karin Klenke & Michael Dickhardt eds., Form, Macht, Differenz. Motive und Felder ethnologischen Forschens, Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2009: 87 – 98.

Keiko Miura

Keiko Miura had worked in the Culture Unit of UNESCO Office in Cambodia from 1992 to 1998, with approximately 6‑month interval working with UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust project (JSA) for archaeological and anthropological work.

After resigning UNESCO, she became engaged in a Ph. D research on the relationship between Angkor heritage and local communities at the Dept. of Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. On completing her Ph. D in 2004 she has been teaching at several Japanese universities while conducting a follow-up research in Angkor and a Balinese agriculture and rituals.