Can we own the past? Cultural artifacts as public goods

Abstract

This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities – the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from prior facts about cultural identity. Moreover, when their claims are articulated, each side’s arguments shed contrasting light on a broader question of property: are some things intrinsically common; that is, do some things have properties that undermine claims of private ownership? Following the logic inherent in arguments made on both sides, this paper defends an affirmative answer to these questions, and, in so doing, suggests that we need to broaden our perspective on publics goods generally.

Keywords:

• common property
• public goods
• cultural artifacts

Notes

1. For good overviews, see Walzer (1983, ch. 3), Novak (1996, ch. 4) and Rose (1994, ch. 5).

2. As Schmidtz points out, Hobbes makes a compelling case that peace is, in effect, a universally desired public good given that securing it is a prerequisite of self-preservation.

3. Folbre (1994) argues that we can conceive of children as well as parenting as public goods given that ‘[a]ll citizens … enjoy significant claims upon the earning of future working-age adults through Social Security and public debt’ (p. 86).

4. To these three categories we might add of fourth, namely those that reflect longstanding legal custom, but whose existence may be more idiosyncratic than normatively justified.

5. Rose (1994, p. 111) refers to such cases as the ‘comedy of the commons’ in the sense that public provision leads to happy rather than ‘tragic’ results.

6. As he earlier states, the task is to ‘treat citizens even-handedly when deciding which goods to produce, and at what level’ (Miller 2004, p. 130).

7. The position is not unique to him. Novak (1996, p. 117), for instance, argues that: ‘[t]oday public powers and rights … seem self-evident. But the outcome of nineteenth-century policy was more in dispute. There was, after all, nothing inherently public about a highway or a riverway. “Publicness” had to be constructed and defended in a political and social milieu fraught with conflict and tension’ (emphasis added).

8. I shall use the term ‘artifacts’ broadly, referring not just to ancient items, but also to relatively recent additions to cultural patrimony. Admittedly, this understanding of the term raises the issue of when items become patrimony. I shall not, however, take this issue up (Appiah 2006, p. 124).

9. For an excellent treatment of both of these controversies, see Greenfield (1995, chs 1, 2). For a separate treatment of the Elgin Marbles, see Gibbon (2005).

10. Similar language was used by Eliane Karp-Toledo, former First Lady of Peru, in a 2008 New York Times op-ed: ‘Yale must finally return the artifacts that symbolize Peru’s great heritage’ (emphasis added; Karp-Toledo 2008).

11. Cuno himself is unsympathetic with these views.

12. Here I am diverging from Appiah’s (2006) remark that ‘belong … is a metaphor, of course,’ and that the issue is simply what has ‘potential value to all human beings’ (p. 120). That value, I am arguing, forms the basis for claims of ownership, which is precisely why artifacts are a contentious issue.

13. As Cuno (2008) puts it, ‘the best way to preserve the archaeological record and unprovenanced or “alienated” antiquities is to encourage scientific excavation of the archaeological record … ’ (p. xxxiv; also pp. xxxv–xxxvi, 23).

14. Peru’s counterargument (made by Haidy Geismar) is that ‘[i]n archeology, when you actually really talk to the local people, you can learn things that you would never find out simply from excavating. That kind of social context and social networks are all part of the study. It’s not just the objects themselves’ (Glenn 2009, p. 4).

15. Of course, claims of disingenuousness run in both directions: Lubow (2007) concludes that ‘Peruvians celebrate their own legendary ancestor when they describe the urgency of their case, but they also have very down-to-earth political and commercial uses for the collection’ (p. 13).

16. I shall skip over the argument that property claims can be based on discovery of the artifacts. This argument is really only inferred in any case, as when Yale’s opponents point out that Hiram Bingham, the Yale anthropologist responsible for the removal to Yale of Machu Picchu’s artifacts, did not discover Machu Picchu (Lubow 2007, p. 12).

17. For a thoughtful account of this relationship, see Brown (2009).

18. We can add to this observation anthropologist Luis Lumbreras’ somewhat cynical remark that ‘Machu Picchu belongs to multinational companies – the train companies, the hotel chains – like all world patrimony’ (Lubow 2007, p. 8).

19. The question as to whether they undermine it completely is beyond the scope of this paper.

20. Appiah (2006) strongly echoes this argument in emphasizing the vital role artifacts can play in promoting intercultural understanding and, ultimately, forging connections across borders.

21. For an argument that rights of humanity work against rights of individual ownership, see Coggins (2005).

22. ‘The mere fact that something you own is important to the descendants of people who gave it away does not generally give them an entitlement to it … It is a fine gesture to return things to the descendents of their makers … but it certainly isn’t a duty’ (Appiah 2006, p. 131).

23. Indeed there is a certain amount of skepticism surrounding identity claims. In reporting the new Acropolis Museum Director’s claim that the issue of the Elgin Marbles ‘unifies us,’ New York Times reporter Michel Kimmelman wryly added, ‘never mind that surveys show how few [Greeks] actually bother to visit the Acropolis past grade school’ (Kimmelman 2009, p. C5).

24. The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

25. Karp-Toledo captures this idea well: ‘The pieces from Machu Picchu are unique. It’s Inca, but it’s Inca of a very specific period. Machu Picchu probably had a relatively short time of functioning – some experts say around 60 years – during the life of Pachacutec, who is an extremely important person in our history’ (Karp-Toledo 2009).

26. Taylor’s (1995) argument regarding ‘irreducibly social goods’ is helpful here. He claims that certain goods – his examples are works of art and relations of frankness and equality – can only be appreciated because of a background understanding that is developed in a cultural setting, and that this setting must itself be considered a good (an irreducibly social one) (p. 136). Over time, as whatever utility to individuals the goods had in their own time recedes – the chalice is no longer for drinking – the utility comes to be derived solely in the context of this background culture, and its values ceases to be contingent on its popularity (p. 142).

27. The market lens even distorts the public goods that it fails to allocate. Hence lighthouses and vaccines are ‘inefficient,’ which, rather than being the truism that it is (the market, after all, has failed), counts as a strike against them.

28. I might, however, differ on what constitutes the vast majority. Clearly there are practical concerns with markets in antiquities, some of which have normative consequences. Coggins (2005), for instance, has persuasively argued that the private market for pre-Columbian art has led to the loss of invaluable archeological information – information that might have had important historical value.

29. Note, however, that this idea is not so foreign to the law. As Dominique Poulot notes, ‘Roman law, which has formed a part of western consciousness, understands patrimony to be that group of family possessions considered not for their monetary value, but rather as goods to be passed down’ (quoted in Bivar 2006, p. 268). Indeed, the jus publicum of Roman law has at its roots the idea that some res should not be held in private hands (Rose 1994, p. 106).