Tackling Eurocentric Perspectives on Cultural World Heritage: Suggestions for Including Postcolonial Approaches in World Heritage Education

Abstract

The chapter analyses and discusses the perspectives of young people on cultural World Heritage and its imbalanced global distribution. The qualitative study is based upon focus groups and hermeneutic photography conducted with 43 secondary school students aged 14–17 years from Lower Saxony, Germany. The findings of the focus groups, which are presented in this chapter, reveal deeply rooted Eurocentric thinking patterns, that structure the understanding of cultural World Heritage in general and are used to justify the dominance of European cultural World Heritage sites. Due to these results, the authors call for including post- and decolonial approaches in World Heritage Education to foster the adoption of critical and reflexive thinking.