The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa
13 January 2025
A new volume by Rachel King (UCL Institute of Archaeology), entitled The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa and published by Cambridge University Press, is now available.

The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa authored by Rachel King is available online and will be published in hard copy later this month (January 2025).
This new volume in the Elements in Critical Heritage Studies series argues for an economic history of heritage-making on the continent over the last 40 years. It is one of the outputs of Rachel's Leverhulme and AHRC-funded research exploring aspects of the cultural cost of development in South Africa.
The landscape of heritage on the African continent is the product of neoliberal economic and social interventions from the 1980s-2000s: the prevalence and influence of heritage NGOs; aid for cultural programmes contingent on government reforms; the use of national heritage policies and projects to signal ready capital; experiments in custodianship and private enterprise that balance conservation with consumerism; and so on.
The volume synthesises literature from anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography to describe a significant period of heritage policy and discourse on the African continent – its historical situation, on-the-ground realities, and continuing legacies in the era of sustainable development and climate crises.