Closing the gap between anthropology and public policy: The route through cultural heritage development

Anthropologists are returning to the field of public policy making. Recent work has focused attention on problems and "disorders" in the nonwestern world that could benefit from intervention by development anthropologists as both proponents and designers of appropriate strategies. Foreign aid resources available to multilateral lenders have been shrinking as the magnitude of the problems multiply. At the same time, the commitment of the World Bank to macroeconomic ("top down") strategies had minimized dialog with anthropologists, whose research continues to take place at ground level and whose recommendations feature "bottom up" perspectives on change. Across the last decade, both Bank staffers and anthropologists have converged on the importance of cultural factors in development planning, the need for "inclusion" of presumptive beneficiaries in project design, and the testing of "participatory policy making" as a postmodern alternative to hegemony and hierarchy. In the economy of global capitalism, investment promotes trade, and trade properly managed promotes distributed benefits to the poor. This essay examines UNESCO's cultural heritage sites (e.g., Angkor, Borobudur, Fez-Medina) as a proper venue for partnership between the World Bank and development anthropologists intended to produce income streams for the alleviation of "absolute poverty." The "participatory policy generator" is proposed as a suitable instrument for testing at cultural heritage sites.