Museums and the Securitization of Cultural Heritage

The overall aim of this PhD thesis is to address how the use of cultural heritage in modern armed conflicts and the subsequent securitization of cultural heritage has created new roles and challenges for the global museum sector.

Over the last two decades cultural heritage has become a growing issue in human security, and the protection of it a transnational cross-sectoral topic. Current literature has explored the securitization of cultural heritage and how cultural heritage now is recognised as part of military strategy and hybrid warfare by state and non-state actors in order to spread propaganda, to manipulate, escalate conflicts, gain international attention, and erase unity or national identity. This has established a politically platform with agreement on the need for protection of cultural heritage during conflict, yet institutionalized strategies for who is going to implement this protection lag behind. This PhD thesis contributes with knowledge about the identification of the linkage between cultural heritage and security threats and the recognition of it as a new research field. The thesis argues that a re-politicization of cultural heritage is expressed in how cultural heritage is becoming an inherent concept of human security. A clear expression of this development is in the increasing shift from protecting cultural heritage for its own sake to viewing its protection as connected to broader agendas of peace and security. This is a novel development and have a major impact on the museum sector - when cultural heritage is securitized, it expands the museum sector's place and role in society causing museum actors to act outside their traditional institutional field of work. Through an extensive collection of semi-structured interviews with museum actors as well as other professionals affiliated with the museum sector, the thesis generates important knowledge on the museum actors´ experiences and perspectives on the process of securitization of cultural heritage and subsequently the new roles and challenges for the global museum sector. The thesis shows how the museum sector’s new role in human security is not institutionalized and how it largely depends on individual interest and political agendas. Especially state-funded or partly state-funded museums need to tick-off the right boxes in terms of interests in order to gain attention and attract donors be they governments or private foundations. Thus, the sector is dependent on public and political awareness dictated by the geopolitical setting around the destruction of cultural heritage. In consequence, the sector cannot always select the most sustainable solutions or get involved in all places of need around the world. Furthermore, the PhD thesis demonstrates how the museum actors’ involvement in heritage protection is influenced by a mixture of agencies, and how this weakens the manageability for the actors involved. Thus, the actors’ involvement is influenced by a lack of material resources, lack of policies, quest for publicity, political trends, diplomacy, personal relationships, personal engagement and concern, career opportunities, and the sense of a lack of action by officials. This entails the risk of disparity in the allocation of heritage protection responses and funding. The thesis emphasizes how the lack of systematic approaches to heritage protection causes heritage protection initiatives to be characterised by short-term planning and a low level of actual interventions. The thesis underlines how the general understanding and performance of the museum sector’s role within the nexus of cultural heritage and human security in armed conflict is still underway, with the major Euro-American museums as frontrunners being aware of this new role while the museum sector as a whole lacks an international institutionalised system. Lastly, the thesis contributes essential knowledge concerning the potentials and barriers for researchers, museum professionals and policymakers to collaborate on incorporating cultural heritage protection in a broader international humanitarian operational strategy. The thesis advocate for structural changes to promote more independent and reliable funding for the protection of heritage in conflict. Overall, this thesis reveals the multifaceted complexities the museum sector faces when organizing and carrying out the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict.