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Distinguishing Cultural Property and Cultural Heritage: Technologies of Sovereignty and Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2022

Valdimar Tryggvi Hafstein*
Affiliation:
Professor of folklore at the University of Iceland.

Extract

With empirical touchstones from Europe, North America, and Africa, the paper argued that heritage and property represent different approaches to subject formation, produce distinct bodies of expertise, and belong to different rationalities of government in a global patrimonial field: that cultural property is a technology of sovereignty, part of the order of the modern liberal state, but cultural heritage is a technology of reformation that cultivates responsible subjects and entangles them in networks of expertise and management. Recounting Scottish claims to the Lewis Chessmen and Greek claims to the Parthenon Sculptures, the paper explored different nuances in assertions of sovereign power and affirmations of cultural integrity in the face of foreign invasion and foreign rule, globalized markets, and foreign science under the sign of cultural property. The paper contrasted these to the safeguarding of the Jemaa el Fna marketplace in Marrakech and other cases that attempt to organize cooperation and orchestrate social practices under the sign of cultural heritage.

Type
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cultural Heritage and the Arts
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.

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Footnotes

This panel was convened at 11:15 a.m., Thursday, March 25, 2021, by its moderator Alison Dundes Renteln of the University of Southern California, who introduced the panelists: Valdimar Hafstein of the University of Iceland; Kristin Hausler of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law; Jonathan Liljeblad of the Australian National University College of Law; and James Nafziger of Willamette University.