Modalities of heritage–border relations in a multipolar world order

This paper examines cultural heritage and border relations as co-constitutive processes significant in a shifting multipolar world order. We propose a scalar, conceptual approach and analyse three modalities of heritage–border relations: territorial revanchism, heritage alliances, and civilisational imaginaries. Our argument combines a clear conceptual frame with case studies from West Asia: tangible heritage (the Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque in Azerbaijan and the Blue Mosque in Armenia) and intangible heritage (the poet Rumi and the new year celebrations of Nowruz). These cases demonstrate how heritage and borders are co-produced across symbolic, territorial, and civilisational registers, linking regional realignments and local effects and functioning as geopolitical strategy. We acknowledge both ontological implications (the nature and structure of heritage–border relations) and phenomenological implications (lived experience). The former is our central focus, while the latter is signposted for future work. The paper offers a heuristic framework for analysing the combined, dynamic force of heritage and borders in the production and contestation of space, identity, and power without reducing these dynamics to diplomacy.