IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

In 1986, John Merryman theorized two ways to define cultural heritage as marketable property. Merryman identified cultural heritage patrimony as being either primarily national or international. Other scholars such as Janet Blake have recognized the plurality of interests at work in cultural heritage, updating the dialogue over heritage. The present paper identifies four normatively distinct interests that should be identified in a normative framework governing heritage protection. The ideal-typical interests I identify are international, national, local/communal, and individual. The framework employed is legal pluralism. As a pluralist, I argue that focusing either on state sovereignty or internationalism is one-sided. I adapt the action-oriented area conservation work of Ahmed Sedky (itself a reworking of UN “Governance for Sustainable Human Development,” 1997) to show that global, national, and area-level interests in cultural heritage all make valid claims to be recognized. I also argue that the individual user must be considered alongside local community (Sedky’s end-user), nation-state, and international community. A valid pluralism will represent the interests of experts, learners, consumers, and is adaptable to countries as disparate as the Czech republic and Egypt. Any framework of this sort must necessarily be very general, and cannot provide fine-grained guidance or rules as to how conservation should function. Thus, there will always be a gap between theory and practice, of which theorists should remain aware. In the conclusion of my paper, I provide a discussion of how to bring politics, law, and conservation together.