Rights and Ethics in Heritage

Heritage is a human thing: made by people and mobilized for their own purposes, it has a range of effects on communities. This course focuses on the human dimension of heritage with special attention to questions of rights and ethics. Where can we locate the intersections of heritage and rights? How do communities and governing structures negotiate control over and participation in heritage, and with what impacts on people? Which ethical challenges arise and how have archaeologists, heritage managers, museums, legislators, community leaders, and others approached these issues?The first half of this seminar course focuses on the theoretical and contextual basis for these discussions. We will address topics such as cultural ownership and participation as well as the global and governing contexts within which heritage is mobilized. Building on this, the second half examines cases in which different rights, needs, and goals come into conflict: museum practice, public memory, upheaval stemming from violence or disaster, and the ethics of the material world itself. Throughout, we will highlight heritage in relation to communities, rights, and responsibilities, all while thinking through ethical modes of heritage research and practice.