Legalized Identities
Cultural Heritage Law and the Shaping of Transitional Justice

Reimagines the fields of transitional justice and cultural heritage, showing how law shapes cultural identities in unanticipated yet powerful ways.

Lucas Lixinski (Author)

9781108488150, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 April 2021

250 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.45 kg

'This book is well written and is a fairly unique addition to the extant scholarship on cultural heritage and transitional justice … This text would be an invaluable addition to the collections of academic and law school libraries, particularly those offering courses in human rights, intellectual property, and traditional knowledge, as well as to any researchers or policy makers who focus on UNESCO, cultural heritage, and the cultural and social aspects of post-conflict transitioning societies.' Julie A. Lavigne, Canadian Law Library Review

Cultural heritage is a feature of transitioning societies, from museums commemorating the end of a dictatorship to adding places like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to the World Heritage List. These processes are governed by specific laws, and yet transitional justice discourses tend to ignore law's role, assuming that memory in transition emerges organically. This book debunks this assumption, showing how cultural heritage law is integral to what memory and cultural identity is possible in transition. Lixinski attempts to reengage with the original promise of transitional justice: to pragmatically advance societies towards a future where atrocities will no longer happen. The promise in the UNESCO Constitution of lasting peace through cultural understanding is possible through focusing on the intersection of cultural heritage law and transitional justice, as Lixinski shows in this ground-breaking book.

1. Introduction
2. Identity, Memory, and Transitional Justice
3. Conservation and Reinvention: Remaking Symbols
4. Erasing or Replacing Symbols
5. Creating New Symbols
6. Cultural Heritage as Pragmatism
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]