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    Confronting Colonial Objects

    Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture

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    Author(s)
    Stahn, Carsten
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    In 1978, UNESCO Secretary General Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow compared cultural colonial objects to ‘witnesses to history’. Their treatment is one of the most debated questions of our time. Calls for a novel international cultural order go back to decolonization. However, for decades, the issue has been treated as a matter of comity or been reduced to a Shakespearean dilemma: to return or not to return. This book seeks to go beyond these classic dichotomies. It argues that contemporary practices are at a tipping point. It shows that cultural takings were material to the colonial project throughout different periods (early takings, birth of modern nation state, nineteenth-century scramble for objects) and went far beyond looting. It relies on micro histories and object biographies to trace recurring justifications and contestations of takings and returns, and the complicity of anthropology, racial science, and professional networks in colonial collecting. It demonstrates the dual role of law and cultural heritage regulation in enabling colonial injustices, and mobilizing resistance thereto. It challenges the argument that takings were acceptable according to the standards of the time. Drawing on the interplay between justice, ethics, and human rights, it develops a theory of entanglement to rethink contemporary approaches. It shows that future engagement requires a reinvention of knowledge systems and relations towards objects, including new forms of consent, provenance research, partnership and a rethinking of the role of museums themselves. It proposes principles of relational cultural justice to confront ongoing historic, legal, and economic entanglements and enable normative transformation.
    URI
    https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/79402
    Keywords
    colonial violence, cultural heritage law, restitution, return, museum ethics, object biographies, access to culture, indigenous rights
    DOI
    10.1093/oso/9780192868121.001.0001
    ISBN
    9780192868121
    Publisher
    Oxford University Press
    Publisher website
    https://global.oup.com/
    Publication date and place
    Oxford, 2023
    Grantor
    • Universiteit Leiden
    • Queen's University Belfast
    Series
    Cultural Heritage Law and Policy,
    Pages
    592
    Rights
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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