Cultural objects and reparative justice : a legal and historical analysis
- Title
- Cultural objects and reparative justice : a legal and historical analysis
- Creator
- Patty Gerstenblith
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice provides a comprehensive legal and historical analysis surrounding a highly debated current question: Where should cultural objects that were removed without consent be located? This book follows an innovative, interdisciplinary approach based in law, history, art history, anthropology, and archaeology and proposes a paradigm for reparations.
Tracing the historical foundations of the current legal framework, the work closely examines three factors that heavily informed the cultural heritage debate since the late eighteenth century: the rise of the encyclopaedic museum, the development of archaeology as a science, and the appropriation of objects in the context of armed conflict and colonialism. Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice outlines how current cultural heritage laws and ethical guidelines with respect to cultural heritage derive from a background of imperialism and colonialism. The book advocates for a new structure based on reparation, restitution, repatriation, compensation, and market regulation to cease perpetuating past harms and to disincentivize new ones.