Cultural Property and Contested Ownership

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Göttingen, Germany.Lyndel V. Prott is an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. She was previously Professor of Cultural Heritage Law at the University of Sydney, Australia, and the former Director of UNESCO’s Division of Cultural Heritage.

• Introduction: changing concepts of ownership, culture and property.Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Lyndel V. ProttPart I: Plunder, trafficking and returnIntroduction01) Destruction and plunder of Cambodian cultural heritage and their consequences.Keiko Miura02) Cambodia’s struggle to protect its movable cultural property and Thailand. Alper Tasdelen03) Looted, trafficked, donated, and returned: the twisted tracks of Cambodian antiquities.Brigitta Hauser-SchäublinPart II: Between profit, authenticity and ethicsIntroduction04) Struggles over historic shipwrecks in Indonesia: economic versus preservation interests.Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz05) Faked biographies. The remake of antiquities and their sale on the art market.Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Sophorn KimPart III: Negotiating conditions of returnIntroduction06) The Benin treasures: difficult legacy and contested heritage. Barbara Plankensteiner07) Pre-Columbian heritage in contestation. The implementation of the UNESCO 1970 convention on trial in Germany.Anne Splettstößer08) Return logistics – repatriation business. Managing the return of ancestral remains to New Zealand.Sarah FründtEpilogueLyndel V. Prott

This book makes an important contribution in the expansive domain of cultural property. Taking the 1970 UNESCO as a very specific and important point of departure, this interdisciplinary collection opens new possibilities for understanding the complex relations between international bureaucracy and local responses in terms of decision-making, implementation and negotiation.Jane Anderson, New York University, USA