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Heritage, be it artworks, historical and/or ritual materials, environmental landscapes, urban sites, ancestral remains, or immaterial cultural expressions, has been increasingly framed as “(cultural) assets” and its protection is likewise refracted through notions of property. Yet the destruction and dispossession of heritage continues under the conditions of war and structural violence, proving that the dispossession of art and heritage is not merely a problematic of colonialism or empire, or of the past, but is an ongoing process that is constitutive of the governance of heritage in its national and transnational formations. At the same time, international political and legal regimes designed to protect heritage continue to be rooted in problematic understandings of “culture” that shape the governance of various material and immaterial ritual, religious, artistic, and environmental expressions. We aim to deepen the discussion on the proprietary logic that pervades global heritage regimes through the following questions:

• What are the different forms that property takes in the realm of heritage? How can we distinguish the various modalities by which individuals, groups, and institutions define objects of possession and how do
these groups assert ownership over them?
• How have the laws that regulate property rights and govern the protection of heritage facilitated some forms of ownership while precluding others?
• What conceptions of property are at play in framing art and cultural heritage as public goods and as world heritage, which belong to everyone while also belonging to no one?
• How are ownership claims on objects, narratives and lives framed and negotiated in the field of art and culture? How do such claims bear on knowledge making, i.e. how do they shape epistemological practices?
• What is incorporated into or excluded from national and global property regimes of heritage and why?
• How do notions of property shape the work of governmental and/or non-governmental institutions in the field of heritage?
• How do property regimes shape struggles for restitution and with it over the past (and present)?

We propose to extend these and related questions to our fields of research and examine the governance of heritage in the contexts of the MENA region and beyond. Together we aim to explore how the knowledge production on heritage - and hence on the past - has come to be predicated on property relations and ownership, and the impasses this situation has created. Contemplating the property status of heritage as an interplay between possession and dispossession, we also invite contributions that envision different futures.

Beyond Restitution: Heritage, (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Knowledge (BEYONDREST) is an ERC-funded, five-year research project at the Forum Transregionale Studien (Project No. 101045661). More information on the project can he found here.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the speaker(s) and author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union, nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.