Heritage Justice

Charlotte Joy

doi:10.1017/9781108900669

Heritage Justice explores how far past wrongs can be remedied through compensatory mechanisms involving material culture. The Element goes beyond a critique of global heritage brokers such as UNESCO, the ICC and museums as redundant, Eurocentric and elitist to explore why these institutions have become the focus for debates about global heritage justice. Three broad modes of compensatory mechanisms are identified: recognition, economic reparation and return. Arguing against Jenkins (2016) that museums should not be the site for difficult conversations about the past, Heritage Justice proposes that it is exactly the space around objects and sites created by museums and global institutions that allows for conversations about future dignity. The challenge for cultural practitioners is to broaden out ideas of material identity beyond source communities, private property and economic value to encompass dynamic global shifts in mobility and connectivity.

‘A finely written and powerfully argued case against the colonialist mentality of curators who answer demands for return of cultural property with vacuous cries of ‘finder's keepers'. A book which challenges museums to be morally enlightened and to accept their duty, as custodians of stolen property, to engage in a principled debate about the just terms for restitution.'

Geoffrey Robertson - Doughty Street Chambers

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Heritage Justice

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