Book contents
- Caring for Cultural Heritage
- The Law in Context Series
- Caring for Cultural Heritage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Caring for Cultural Heritage
- 3 Nested Practices of Care for Cultural Heritage
- 4 Translating How and Why Communities Care about Cultural Heritage
- 5 Creating Communities of Care
- 6 Quotidian Care
- 7 Navigating Harm to Cultural Heritage
- 8 The Rhetoric of Saving for the Nation
- 9 Challenging the Status quo
- 10 Conclusion
- Index
9 - Challenging the Status quo
Cultural Heritage, Care and Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2023
- Caring for Cultural Heritage
- The Law in Context Series
- Caring for Cultural Heritage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Caring for Cultural Heritage
- 3 Nested Practices of Care for Cultural Heritage
- 4 Translating How and Why Communities Care about Cultural Heritage
- 5 Creating Communities of Care
- 6 Quotidian Care
- 7 Navigating Harm to Cultural Heritage
- 8 The Rhetoric of Saving for the Nation
- 9 Challenging the Status quo
- 10 Conclusion
- Index
Summary
This chapter analyses how communities of care challenge the status quo of who possesses cultural heritage; it focuses on the way in which the notion of caring for extends across the generations to claims made by the descendants of past owners, communities of origin or states and the multivocality in decision-making. Frequently the question has been asked: who owns cultural heritage? But it is more helpful to consider whether there is a reason to challenge the status quo and to analyse how decisions are made about the appropriate course of action to take. Many UK national museums have prohibitive governing statutes preventing them from acceding to repatriation requests (although these have been eased in the context of Nazi Era spoliation and some human remains). In some cases, a defensive stance is taken to challenges which represents paternalistic care.Some individual museums which have faced repatriation claims in the past for human remains or other cultural heritage objects have developed their own policies and processes in response to this which represents dialogic care.
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- Caring for Cultural HeritageAn Integrated Approach to Legal and Ethical Initiatives in the United Kingdom, pp. 306 - 359Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023