Lecture “Cultural Heritage vs. Cultural Property: Contrasting Regimes and Rationalities”, por Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (University of Iceland)

Abstract

The lecture examines the relationship between cultural property and cultural heritage with reference to various case studies from Greece, Morocco, Scotland, USA and Canada, Denmark, Iceland and Greenland. Moving from a legal to an historical definition, it argues that the two concepts represent fundamentally different approaches to subject formation, that they produce distinct bodies of expertise and belong to different rationalities of government in the patrimonial field. Protecting cultural property is a technology of sovereignty and forms part of the order of the modern liberal state. Conversely, safeguarding cultural heritage is a technology of reformation, cultivating responsible subjects and entangling them in networks of expertise and management.