abstract Demands for restitution of cultural artefacts and relics raise four main issues: 1) how claims to cultural property can be justified; 2) whether and under what conditions demands for restitution of cultural property are valid — especially when they are made long after the artefacts were taken away; 3) whether there are values, aesthetic, scholarly and educational, which can override restitution claims, even when these claims are legitimate; and 4) how these values bear on the question of whether artefacts (...) should be returned to their place of origin. I argue that a proper conception of cultural property emphasises the role that artefacts play in the practices and traditions of a collectivity. On the basis of this conception, some restitution claims can be defended as legitimate. However, many demands for restitution are not justified (including the Greek claim to the Parthenon Marbles). Moreover, a case for restitution can be more or less strong, and other considerations sometimes prevail over rights of cultural property. (shrink)

This article draws together research from various sub-disciplines of philosophy to offer an overview of recent philosophical work on the ethics of historic preservation. I discuss how philosophers writing about art, culture, and the environment have appealed to historical significance in crafting arguments about the preservation of objects, practices, and places. By demonstrating how it relates to core themes in moral and political philosophy, I argue that historic preservation is essentially concerned with ethical issues.

Although we experience many cultural artifacts by way of reproductions, there remains a particular thrill in experiencing genuine objects—‘real things’. I argue that genuineness is a property that possesses many dimensions of value, including aesthetic value. Typically, aesthetic qualities are perceptual, but genuineness is not a perceptual property. I investigate the aesthetic dimensions of genuineness by considering the role of touch in encounters with old things, using the example of an ancient bronze figurine whose reputation as genuine has waxed and (...) waned, along with its aesthetic assessment. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that cultural objects ought to be returned to their place of origin in order to remedy injustices committed in the past. In this paper, it is shown that significant challenges attach to this way of arguing. Although there is considerable intuitive appeal in the idea that if somebody wrongs another person then she ought to compensate for that injustice, the principle is difficult to apply to wrongdoings committed many decades or centuries ago. It is not clear (...) that historic injustices can meaningfully be corrected, or compensated for, and there are several arguments why, even in cases where there is a prima facie moral case for compensation, repatriation might not be a legitimate means of remedy. In order to bring analytical clarity to the issue, this paper discusses the various steps of the argument that must be addressed in order to ground a valid repatriation claim based on historic injustices. (shrink)

In this chapter we explore two important questions that we believe should be central to any discussion of the ethics and politics of cultural heritage: What are the harms associated with appropriation and commodification, specifically where the heritage of Indigenous peoples is concerned? And how can these harms best be avoided? Archaeological concerns animate this discussion; we are ultimately concerned with fostering postcolonial archaeological practices. But we situate these questions in a broader context, addressing them as they arise in connection (...) with the appropriation of Indigenous cultural heritage, both past and present. (shrink)

In this book an international and multidisciplinary team addresses significant ethical questions about the rights to access, manage and interpret the material remains of the past.

In this provocative analysis of historical narrative, Michel-Rolph Trouillot demonstrates how power operates, often invisibly, at all stages in the making of history to silence certain voices. From the West's failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave revolt in history, to the continued debate over denials of the Holocaust, and the meaning of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Trouillot shows us that history is not simply the recording of facts and events, but a process of actively enforced (...) silences, some unconscious, others quite deliberate. (shrink)

In Arizona, a white family buys a Navajo-style blanket to be used on the guest-room bed. Across the country in New York, opera patrons weep to the death scene of Madam Butterfly.These seemingly unrelated events intertwine in Cannibal Cultureas Deborah Root examines the ways Western art and Western commerce co-opt, pigeonhole, and commodify so-called "native experiences." From nineteenth-century paintings of Arab marauders to our current fascination with New Age shamanism, Root explores and explodes the consumption of the Other as a (...) source of violence, passion, and spirituality.Through advertising images and books and films like The Sheltering Sky, Cannibal Culturedeconstructs our passion for tourism and the concept of "going native," while providing a withering indictment of a culture in which every cultural artifact and ideology is up for grabs--a cannibal culture. This fascinating book raises important and uncomfortable questions about how we travel, what we buy, and how we determine cultural merit. Travel--be it to another country, to a museum, or to a supermarket--will never be the same again. (shrink)

abstract In a number of contexts one comes across the suggestion that cultures are collective owners of cultural property, such as particularly significant works of art. Indigenous peoples are often held to be collective owners of cultural property, but they are not the only ones. Icelandic culture is said to have a claim on the Flatejarbók and Greek culture is held to own the Parthenon Marbles. In this paper I investigate the conditions under which a culture is the rightful owner (...) of cultural property. I argue against the claims that cultures inherit cultural property. I also argue that a culture's claim to own cultural property is seldom, if ever, founded on either practices employed in the culture or collective production of cultural property. I maintain, however, that the very value of cultural property for some culture can, in some instances, provide the basis for the culture's claim on the property. (shrink)

North American archaeologists have long defined their ethical responsibilities in terms of a commitment to scientific goals and an opposition to looting, vandalism, the commercial trade in antiquities, and other activities that threaten archaeological resources. In recent years, the clarity of these commitments has been eroded from two directions: professional archaeologists find commercial entanglements increasingly unavoidable, and a number of nonarchaeological interest groups object that they are not served by scientific exploitation of the record. I offer an analysis of issues (...) having to do with the identity of archaeology that underlie this debate and outline one strategy of response now emerging. (shrink)

Analyzes the historic correlation of injustice and moral judgments. Universalizability in analyzing moral judgments; Role of payment of money in the embodiment of communal remembrance; Symbolic reparation.

Drawing parallels between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, I point to some common features of essentialist pictures of culture. I argue that cultural essentialism is detrimental to feminist agendas and suggest strategies for its avoidance. Contending that some forms of cultural relativism buy into essentialist notions of culture, I argue that postcolonial feminists need to be cautious about essentialist contrasts between "Western" and "Third World" cultures.

My aim of this paper is to clarify, and in a certain very limited way to defend, historical theories of property rights (and their associated theories of social or distributive justice). It is important, I think, to better understand historical rights for several reasons: first, because of the extent to which historical theories capture commonsense, unphilosophical views about property and justice; then, because historical theories have fallen out of philosophical fashion, and are consequently not much scrutinized anymore; and finally, because (...) of (what I see as) the continuing need to better understand the historical components of our society's responsibilities to the descendants of victims of systematic injustice in our own past. The case I will have in mind throughout is that of the property claims of Native American tribes, claims based on their historical standing as the original owners of certain lands and resources. And while I will concentrate here only on the question of rectifying past violations of property rights, this will constitute at least a start to answering more general questions about just rectification, which includes the more serious and less compensable wrongs of violence against persons. (shrink)

John O’Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light usefully distinguish two ways of thinking about environmental values, namely, end-state and historical views. To value nature in an end-state way is to value it because it instantiates certain properties, such as complexity or diversity. In contrast, a historical view says that nature’s value is (partly) determined by its particular history. Three contemporary defenses of a historical view are explored in order to clarify: (1) the normatively relevant history; (2) how historical considerations are (...) supposed to instruct environmental decision making; and (3) the relative importance of historical and end-state considerations. There are multiple reasons for including historical considerations in an account of environmental values. For example, knowledge of a natural object’s history can add depth and texture to our appreciation of that object. Further, if we were blind to the relevant history, we could not adequately understand and defend environmental policy goals such as preserving the potentials of natural systems or maintaining ecological health, for these goals appear to have irreducibly historical aspects. While historical considerations are important, such considerations are insufficient to guide our normative thinking about nature and how it should be dealt with practically. But they succeed in broadening and deepening our understanding of the nature and sources of environmental value. (shrink)

abstract Contemporary archaeologists commonly acknowledge moral responsibilities to the descendants of the subjects whose remains they disturb. There has been comparatively little reflection within the professional community on whether they have duties to the dead themselves. I argue that doing wrong to the dead is not reducible to harming their successors; that there are ways in which archaeologists can wrong the dead qua the living persons they once were; and that nevertheless this may not have such radical implications for the (...) practice of archaeology as might first be imagined. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of recent attempts, by George Sher and others to justify compensation to be paid to descendants of deceased victims of past wrongs. This recent attempt is important as it endeavours to avoid some well-known critiques of previous attempts, such as the non-identity problem. Furthermore, this new attempt is grounded in individual rights, without invoking a more controversial collectivist assumption. The first step in this critique is to differentiate between compensation and restitution. Once this important distinction (...) is clear, an examination of several factors follows: the importance of the passage of time vis-à-vis claims for compensation and/or restitution, the responsibility of the would be payers, the responsibility of the descendants of the victims, the welfare level of the descendants of the victims, information-related issues, and several additional factors. The conclusion is that once we take into account the distinction between compensation and restitution, and the additional factors mentioned, the case for compensation and/or restitution under the ‘continuing injustice argument’, is highly limited. (shrink)

Museum codes of ethics stress the importance of preservation, knowledge and access, but they remain silent on the justificatory framework of the duty of care museums have to the objects in their collections and on museums' obligations towards their public. In this essay I propose a triangular framework for understanding the duty of care museums have, according to which it is shaped by the need to negotiate an object's transit from past to future in such a way as to secure (...) that object's future significance. The account provided of transit to the future is underwritten by a model of trust as entrusting. Hence, museums' duty to care for the objects in their collections is found to be grounded on the demands of the trust relationship, complemented by the respect that is necessary for effective negotiation of the transit from past to future. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 345-359, October 2011.

"Nature" and "wilderness" are central normative categories of environmentalism. Appeal to those categories has been subject to two lines of criticism: from constructivists who deny there is something called "nature" to be defended; from the environmental justice movement who point to the role of appeals to "nature" and "wilderness" in the appropriation of land of socially marginal populations. While these arguments often come together they are independent. This paper develops the second line of argument by placing recent appeals to "wilderness" (...) in the context of historical uses of the concept to justify the appropriation of land. However, it argues that the constructivist line is less defensible. The paper finishes by placing the debates around wilderness in the context of more general tensions between philosophical perspectives on the environment and the particular cultural perspectives of disciplines like anthropology, in particular the prima facie conflict between the aspirations of many philosophers for thin and cosmopolitan moral language that transcends local culture, and the aspirations of disciplines like anthropology to uncover a thick moral vocabulary that is local to particular cultures. (shrink)

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism — and certain minority group rights in particular — make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity (...) and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate. Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government’s giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives’ own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened. In reply, some respondents reject Okin’s position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin’s focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays — expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions — are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today. The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir. (shrink)

Recently in environmental ethics some theorists have advocated narrative accounts of value, according to which the value of environmental goods is given by the role that they play in our narratives. I first sketch the basic theoretical features of a narrative accounts of value and then go on to raise some problems for such views. I claim that they require an evaluative standard in order to distinguish the valuable from the merely valued and that the project of constructing such a (...) standard faces significant problems. I conclude by questioning whether narrative accounts of value really offer advantages over other pluralistic and context-sensitive accounts of value. (shrink)

In discussion surrounding the destruction of cultural heritage in armed conflict, one often hears two important claims in support of intervention to safeguard heritage. The first is that the protection of people and the protection of heritage are two sides of the same coin. The second is that the cultural heritage of any people is part of the common heritage of all humankind. In this article, I examine both of these claims, and consider the extent to which they align with (...) the current practices that they are intended to justify. (shrink)

Museums are home to millions of artworks and cultural artifacts, some of which have made their way to these institutions through unjust means. Some argue that these objects should be repatriated (i.e. returned to their country or culture of origin). However, these arguments face a series of philosophical challenges. In particular, repatriation, even if justified, is often portrayed as contrary to the aims and values of museums. However, in this paper, I argue that some of the very considerations museums appeal (...) to in order to oppose repatriation claims can be turned on their heads and marshaled in favor of the practice. In addition to defending against objections to repatriation, this argument yields the surprising conclusion that the redistribution of cultural goods should be much more radical than is typically supposed. (shrink)

Philosophers have used the terms 'impersonal' and 'personal value' to refer to, among others things, whether something's value is universal or particular to an individual. In this paper, I propose an account of impersonal value that, I argue, better captures the intuitive distinction than potential alternatives, while providing conceptual resources for moving beyond the traditional stark dichotomy. I illustrate the practical importance of my theoretical account with reference to debate over the evaluative scope of cultural heritage.

Is there something morally wrong with cultural appropriation in the arts? I argue that the little philosophical work on this topic has been overly dismissive of moral objections to cultural appropriation. Nevertheless, I argue that philosophers working on epistemic injustice have developed powerful conceptual tools that can aid in our understanding of objections that have been levied by other scholars and artists. I then consider the relationship between these objections and the harms of cultural essentialism. I argue that focusing on (...) the systematic nature of appropriative harms may allow us to sidestep the problem of essentialism, but not without cost. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Monument as Museum, Museum as Monument Arts of Appropriation Appropriation, Property and Oppression Appropriation, Memory and Identity References.

This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities ? the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from prior facts about cultural identity. Moreover, when their (...) claims are articulated, each side?s arguments shed contrasting light on a broader question of property: are some things intrinsically common; that is, do some things have properties that undermine claims of private ownership? Following the logic inherent in arguments made on both sides, this paper defends an affirmative answer to these questions, and, in so doing, suggests that we need to broaden our perspective on publics goods generally. (shrink)

What conditions of vulnerability must an individual face in order that we might ever correctly say that she or he has been wrongfully exploited? Mikhail Valdman has recently argued that wrongful exploitation is the extraction of excessive benefits from someone who cannot reasonably refuse one’s offer. So, ‘being unable to reasonably refuse an offer’ is Valdman’s answer to this question. I will argue that this answer is too narrow, but that other competing answers, like Alan Wertheimer’s, are too broad. I (...) propose a new answer, a “vulnerability clause” to partially comprise a theory of wrongful exploitation. In so doing, I appeal to Marilyn Frye’s account of oppression and take guidance from her inclusion and exclusion criteria. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide the framework for an account of group assertion. On my view, there are two kinds of group assertion, coordinated and authority-based, with authority-based group assertion being the core notion. I argue against a deflationary view, according to which a group’s asserting is understood in terms of individual assertions, by showing that a group can assert a proposition even when no individual does. Instead, I argue on behalf of an inflationary view, according to which it is (...) the group itself that asserts, a conclusion supported by the fact that paradigmatic features of assertion apply only at the level of the group. A central virtue of my account is that it appreciates the important relationship that exists between most groups and their spokespersons, as well as the consequences that follow from this relationship. My view, thus, provides the framework for distinguishing when responsibility for an assertion lies at the collective level, and when it should be shouldered by an individual simply speaking for herself. (shrink)

Justifications of group-differentiated rights commonly overlook a crucial practical consideration: if rights are to be allocated on the basis of group membership, how should we determine which individuals belong to which group? Assuming that social identities are fixed and transparent runs the risk of creating further injustices, whilst acknowledging that social groups are porous and heterogeneous runs the risk of rendering group-differentiated rights impracticable. In this paper, I develop a schema for determining group membership which avoids both horns of this (...) dilemma. (shrink)

Multiculturalism is, by this point, a well-worn topic in social and political philosophy. Still, in what follows, I hope to usefully contribute to the philosophical discussion of multiculturalism by asking and trying to answer some foundational questions about the practical significance of cultural membership. Specifically, I want to investigate the normative concerns associated with the goal of preserving culture. In the first part of this article, I raise questions about the ethics of cultural preservation. Is it a permissible or impermissible (...) goal? If it is permissible, is it obligatory or at least praiseworthy? Does it even make sense to treat the fact that something is part of your culture as the primary reason for valuing or doing it? To what extent should the idea of preserving your culture be seen as in conflict with the valuable orientation of being open to learning from all cultures?In the second part, I consider the politics of cultural preservation, a topic that political p .. (shrink)

It is, I suggest, unclear whether any old inanimate objects deserve to be treated with respect simply because they are old. Yet this does not entail that an object’s age has no bearing at all on the question of how it may permissibly be treated. I defend the claim that those who fail to take seriously the histories of old inanimate objects typically deserve to be criticized on aretaic grounds. Such people, I argue, tend to lack the virtue of humility.

The philosophy of ecological restoration has focused primarily on three issues: the question of what to restore, whether and why restoration “fakes” nature, and how restoration shapes human-nature relationships. Using “M2W conversion sites” – former military lands recently redesignated as U.S. national wildlife refuges – as a case study, we examine how the restoration of these lands challenges existing philosophical frameworks for restoration. We argue that a contextual, case-based analysis best reveals the key ethical and philosophical questions related to restoration (...) at M2W sites, and that such an approach may be useful in developing more nuanced philosophical analyses of ecological restoration more generally. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 377-392, October 2011.

Nature and culture are usually treated as opposites. Nature, on this conception, is on the wane as a result of culture. A fresh analysis of the relation between these two terms in the light of the notion of “cultural landscapes” is needed. This account allows for nature to be understood as an important, distinctive category, even while granting the constitutive role of the culturally structured gaze. Culture and nature need not be conceived in opposition to each other, for it makes (...) sense to speak of, and pursue, a culture of nature. These considerations have important consequences for natural heritage conservation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Respecting Sacred Objects: Some Difficulties Alternative Grounds for Respect: The Historical and Aesthetic Properties of an Object.