FOR 772:  The Constitution of Cultural Property: Actors, Discourses, Contexts, Rules

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2008 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 25905063

Cultural property is a concept with far-reaching consequences. The interest in bringing cultural property to market (or to block it from reaching the marketplace) and thereby realise an economic, ideological, collective or individual profit has proven difficult in light of the highly divergent circumstances that actors face in a post-colonial, late-modern world. Our Research Unit is engaged in examining the constituting of cultural property at the intersection of conflicting priorities in cultural, economic, legal and social discourses. By focusing on the actors, discourses, contexts and rules that have led to different ways of constituting cultural property, the Research Unit intends to highlight the problematic nature inherent to the concept of cultural property itself, with an eye to both understanding and explaining it as a phenomenon.
This also calls for a combining of expertise from various disciplines; the Research Unit includes specialists from cultural anthropology and ethnology as well as from law and economics. Together, they conduct micro-studies in Indonesia, Cambodia as well as in Europe, in order to address the constitution of cultural property at different from local to regional and national as well as within international organisations.
Ethnographic studies will contribute to and interact with the formulation of theories of institution-building based on jurisprudential and economic models - with the micro-level augmenting the macro-level and vice versa. Interdisciplinary cooperation and the holistic intermeshing of theory and practice with respect to cultural property will lead, across disciplines, to the mutual enhancement of basic knowledge, of central epistemic concerns and of methodology. The exchange of knowledge such interdisciplinary work promotes seeks to remedy the deficits that exist in the various disciplines with respect not only to concept formation but also to empirical work thus far undertaken. Work on cultural property is meant to reach differing publics, and in cooperating with national and international scholars, the Research Unit will build a network, unique in German-speaking Europe, that has the subject competence to address numerous aspects of questions that arise about cultural property and copyright. This network will serve as a basis both for communicating with other researchers in this area and serve as an information conduit to decision makers.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Das Kulturvölkerrecht vor neuen Herausforderungen (Applicant Stoll, Peter-Tobias )
• Ethik von/in Verhandlungs- und Regulierungspraxen um Cultural Property (Applicant Bendix, Regina )
• Geographische Indikationen: Kulinarisches Erbe als Cultural Property (Applicants Johler, Reinhard ;  Spiller, Achim )
• (In-)Wertsetzung von Heritage im zwischenstaatlichen Vergleich: Auswahl und Regulierungsmodalitäten im Vergleich (Applicant Bendix, Regina )
• Klänge und Töne als cultural property? (Applicant Hengartner, Thomas )
• Kulturelles Erbe zwischen Souveränität indigener Gruppen, Staat und internationalen Organisationen am Beispiel Indonesiens (Applicant Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta )
• Prozesse der Konstituierung eines "Weltkulturerbes" und dessen Bedeutung am Beispiel Angkors (Kambodscha) (Applicant Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta )
• Recht und Ökonomik von cultural property: Eine institutionenökonomische Analyse der Regelbildung (Applicants Bizer, Kilian ;  Spindler, Gerald )
• Umstrittene Sammlungen: Divergierende Ansprüche auf Eigentum in Debatten und Verhandlungen 40 Jahre nach der Verabschiedung der UNESCO-Konvention über rechtswidrigen Kulturgütertransfer (Applicants Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta ;  Stoll, Peter-Tobias )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Bendix, Regina )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Regina Bendix
• Deputy: Professor Dr. Kilian Bizer