The politics of participation in the Qhapaq Ñan Project: governmentality and heritage-making in Peru

Participatory policies in the Qhapaq Ñan Project, aimed at securing UNESCO World Heritage status for Peru's precolonial road system, function as a hybrid of governance techniques that both engage local communities and constrain their agency. This study reveals how such approaches, framed as ethical commitments to improvement, are subsumed within structural hierarchies shaped by dominant technical views on preservation and development, ultimately reinforcing state control over heritage relations. Analyzing three monumental preservation programmes—Huaycán de Cieneguilla, Huánuco Pampa, and Aypate—using Foucault’s concept of governmentality and Li’s 'will to improve,' the research demonstrates that participatory practices, while opening spaces for negotiation, are strictly circumscribed by legal, technical, and normative limits. This highlights a tension between local agency and state-driven heritage-making in Peru.

Uribe-Chinen, C. (2026). The politics of participation in the Qhapaq Ñan Project: governmentality and heritage-making in Peru. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 32(10), 1560–1583. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2026.2689955