[Discussion] cultural property/human rights

[sule tarakcioglu]

*Am Anthropological Association, session on cultural property/human rights

*Call for papers to prospective session on cultural property and human 
rights at the American Anthropological Association meetings in San 
Francisco (November, 2004)

"Culture at large! The regulation, circulation, and valorization of 
culture in international law and policy"

That the culture concept is no longer the exclusive domain of 
anthropology is well established; it is the bete noire of many an 
academic field, and a matter attended to with some urgency in areas of 
international and national policy, backed by the coercive apparatus of 
the state and global capitalism's relentless commodification of 
everything. But what happens to culture once it is out of 
anthropologist's hand? This panel examines this question from the 
vantage point of two interrelated regulatory regimes: that of property 
rights (intellectual and cultural) and human rights (including the 
rights of minorities and indigenous peoples). We are looking for papers 
on how culture is used by these sets of law, and how they impact each 
other seen through the prism of a culture as subject of law. Papers may 
address a range of topics including the conceptualization of minority 
rights, the protection of cultural heritage (intangible or tangible), 
the regulation of cultural industries and art, the commodification of 
indigenous cultural property, and human rights to cultural expression. 
We welcome short papers from all sub-fields of anthropology (and beyond) 
that deal with these questions in a provocative manner, prompting 
questions on how the 'culture concept' has been transformed by being 
made subject--in international law and policy--to ownership, possession 
and regulation, on the one hand, and valorized as an intrinsic value 
needing protection (from what?), promotion, and celebration, on the other.

Please e-mail me at the address provided for more information. Please 
note that the American Anthropological Association's deadline for 
session proposals AND individual papers in a session is *April 1*.

Niklas Hultin
Department of Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Email: inhultin@sas.upenn.edu <mailto:inhultin@sas.upenn.edu>
Visit the website at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~inhultin/aaa.html 
<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Einhultin/aaa.html>