Object lessons: the question of cultural property in the age of repatriation
Object lessons: the question of cultural property in the age of repatriation. Northwest Coast material culture has become increasingly identified as cultural property, a quasi-legal concept that denotes objects of a collective patrimony. This represents a radical shift from earlier notions of proper...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société des américanistes
2005-12-01
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| Series: | Journal de la Société des Américanistes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/2932 |
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| Summary: | Object lessons: the question of cultural property in the age of repatriation. Northwest Coast material culture has become increasingly identified as cultural property, a quasi-legal concept that denotes objects of a collective patrimony. This represents a radical shift from earlier notions of property, seen strongly as privately owned by individuals and family groups. Moreover, the status of these objects as art, that is, framed in a museum setting and partaking of certain transcendent qualities derived from the Western tradition, represents a dramatic redefinition of pieces that were considered analogous to human beings, as temporary entities. This process of redefinition, which is generational, political, and an invention of tradition, is probably inevitable. |
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| ISSN: | 0037-9174 1957-7842 |