Introduction: Part 1

This volume begins where all serious investigations about any topic should—namely, “values.” Part 1 comprises six distinctive essays, each exploring the perceived value of cultural heritage by individuals who identify with or against it, as well as threats against such heritage. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the distinguished philosopher from New York University’s School of Law, has long explored the nature and complexity of the value of identity. In his 2006 book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, he argued that the connection through a local identity is as imaginary as the connection through humanity. “The Nigerian’s link to the