The past laws of nations
Memory, identity and legislation in international disputes over cultural property
Abstract
Based on a dialogue between two well-known sub-disciplines, cultural history and legal anthropology, the following article explores recent disputes involving various groups and related institutions in the global South and their historical claims to cultural property, the right to its curatorship, attempts to facilitate restitution and tensions within international organisations. To this end, I shall examine and compare four lawsuits brought against the British Museum in recent years by the states of Chile, Egypt, Nigeria and Greece, demanding the restitution of objects that they claim form part of the cultural heritage of their communities. This provides a glimpse of the enormous legal, historical, ethical and political challenges involved in examining disputes that span controversial horizons and require clear definitions within the framework of overlapping discordant systems, all of which renders these conflicts uncomfortable and challenging for the international community as a whole.
Downloads
References
Beatriz Barreiro Carril, La diversidad cultural en el Derecho Internacional: la Convención de la Unesco, 1° Edición, Madrid, Iustel, 2011
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson, Comunidades imaginadas. Reflexiones sobre el origen y la difusión del nacionalismo, 1°Edición, México, FCE, 1997
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Conocer desde el Sur. Para una cultura política emancipatoria, 1° Edición, La Paz, Plural, 2007
Carol Roehrenbeck, “Repatriation of Cultural Property. Who Owns the Past? An Introduction to Approaches and to Selected Statutory Instruments”, International Journal of Legal Information, 38, Iss. 2, Article 11, 2010. En línea en https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/ijli/vol38/iss2/11 [Consulta: 04/06/07]
Caron Timothy, “The Application of International Law, Morality, and Public Policy to the Elgin Marbles Dispute”, Baku State University Law Review, 3,1, 2017, 1-14
Cecilia Cervantes Barba, “Derechos Culturales y Desarrollo Humano: implicaciones para el diseño de políticas culturales”, Revista Iberoamericana de Derechos Culturales y Desarrollo Humano, 2003, 39-53
Christina Riggs, “Colonial Visions: Egyptian Antiquities and Contested Histories in the Cairo Museum”, Museum Worlds, Oxford, 1, 2013, 552-568
Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, 1° Edición, Londres, Pluto Press, 2020
Geoffrey Robertson, Who Owns History?: Elgin's Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure, 1° Edición, Penguin Random House, Australia, 2019
Hayden White, El pasado práctico, 1°Edición, Buenos Aires, Prometeo, 2018
Jan Stubbe Østergaard, Marco Collareta y Vinzenz Brinkmann, The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present, 1° Edición, Getty Publications, 2008
Jane Cowan, “Cultura y derechos después de Culture and Rights”, Revista De Antropología Social, 19, 2010, 67-101
Jane Cowen, Marie-Benedicte Dembour y Richard Wilson (Eds.), Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, 1° Edición, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Jea-Frédéric Schaub, Historia política de la raza, Buenos Aires, FCE, 2019
John Henry Merryman (Ed.), Imperialism, Art and Restitution, 1°Edición, California, Stanford University, 2006
June Starr y Jane Fishburne Collier (Eds.), History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal Anthropology, 1° Edición, Londres, Cornell University Press, 1989
Kurt Siehr, “Das Forum rei sitae in der neuen EuGVO (Art. 7 Nr. 4 EuGVO n.F.) und der internationale Kulturgüterschutz”, en Witzleb, N. et al. (eds.), Festschrift für Dieter Martiny zum 70. Geburtstag, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2014, 837-850
Laura Nader y Harry Todd, The Disputing Process-Law in Ten Societies, 1°Edición, New York, Columbia University Press, 1978
Lauren Bearden, “Repatriating the Bust of Nefertiti: A Critical Perspective on Cultural Ownership”, The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2, Iss. 1 , Article 2., 2012 En línea en https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/kjur/vol2/iss1/2 [Consulta: 04/06/07]
Magnus Strand, The Passing-on Problem in Damages and Restitution under E.U., 1°Edición, Suecia, Uppsala University, 2017
Margaret Bruchac, “Decolonization in Archaeological Theory”, en Claire Smith (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 1°Edición, New York, Springer, 2014, 2069-2077
María José Ochoa Jiménez, Derecho Internacional Privado y Bienes Culturales. Una aproximación en perspectiva latinoamericana, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Serie Doctrina Jurídica, 923, México, UNAM, 2021 Michel Foucault, Las palabras y las cosas. Una arqueología de las ciencias humanas, 1°Edición especial, Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI, 2014
Mario Rufer, “La exhibición del otro: tradición, memoria y colonialidad en museos de México”, Antítesis, 7, 14, 2014, 95-120
Mark Goodale, Antropology and Law: A Critical Introduction, 1°Edición, New York, New York University Press, 2017
Marta González Suárez, La diversidad cultural y el tráfico ilícito de bienes: nuevas perspectivas internacionales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Instituto Interuniversitario para la Comunicación Cultural, 2017
Régine Robin, La memoria saturada, Buenos Aires, Waldhuter Editores, 2012
Resolución de UNESCO, Noviembre de 1976, 1977 En línea en http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001140/114038s.pdf#page=146 [Consulta: 04/06/07]
Sebastián Englert, La tierra de Hotu Matu'a: historia, etnología y lengua de la Isla de Pascua, 1°Edición, Rapanui Press, 2010
Sven Lundén Staffan, Displaying Loot. The Benin objects and the British Museum, 1°Edición Gothenburg University, 2016
Walter Mignolo y Arturo Escobar (Eds.), Globalization and the Decolonial Option, 1°Edición, New York, Routledge, 2010
Copyright (c) 2022 Instituto de Historiografía "Julio Caro Baroja" de la Universidad Carlos III
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The holder of the copyright for the contents of this journal is the Instituto de Historiografía "Julio Caro Baroja" of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
