Cultural diversity, cultural heritage and human rights : towards heritage management as human rights-based cultural practice

The present article investigates the linkages between conserving cultural heritage, maintaining cultural diversity and enforcing human rights. While there seems to be a growing awareness of these linkages in international heritage and human rights circles, they remain poorly understood by many heritage practitioners who see their conservation work merely as a technical matter. The article argues that it is essential for practitioners engaged in heritage conservation projects to understand the broader economic, political and social context of their work. However, heritage scholars and teachers, too, need to recognise that there can be many motives behind official heritage interventions, that such action is sometimes taken primarily to achieve political goals, and that it can undermine rather than strengthen community identity, cultural diversity and human rights. Such a reorientation is an extension of the paradigm shift in which heritage is understood as cultural practice. In this more critical heritage studies discipline human rights are brought to the foreground as the most significant part of the international heritage of humanity.

Narrating heritage's living stories : a comparative study of China's Suojia ecomuseum and Australia's Melbourne living museum of the West

The Ecomusée, as emerged in France in the 1970s, is a form of open-air museum that aims to maintain collections in their original environments with local communities serving as curators and managing their own heritage. This approach and philosophy implies and is dependent upon democratic principles in the conservation and interpretation processes. Since the 1990s, China has adopted the ecomusée concept for the conservation of selected ethnic villages to relieve tensions between poverty and heritage conservation. However, does this concept really work in China? To answer this question, the Suojia Ecomuseum, the first such initiative - has been selected as a case study and assessed using the mixed methodologies of on-site observation, documentation and semistructured interviews. This process has identified several issues and problems associated with this ecomuseum. It demonstrates that Suojia Ecomuseum has not achieved international benchmarks, neither philosophical nor practical expectations have been met. This conclusion challenges the internationally acknowledged notion that all ecomuseums develop and are operated using a bottom-up approach, that they were all community-based and democratic. These discrepancies lead to other questions about the differences between ecomuseums in China and elsewhere. In order to map and compare the differences between ecomuseums in China and in Western democracies, a detailed survey was undertaken using Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West, Australia. Applying the same methodologies as in China, a comparable examination was undertaken as to its background, objectives, management structures, programs and activities, and project outcomes as well as problems. The differences between Suojia Ecomuseum and Melbourne’s Living Museum are then explained and shown. They demonstrate quite diverse organisations with different objectives and management structures relating to different cultural and natural resources. However, the unexpected finding was that the futures of both ecomuseums relied on the financial support and passion of younger generations and hence were vulnerable.

Intellectual property rights in indigenous cultural heritage : basic concepts and continuing controversies

The developments at international level in the debate on what intellectual property (IP) lawyers refer to as traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) have to be seen in the context of the decolonisation movements after the Second World War. Post-war developments saw the formation of the United Nations (UN) and the emphasis on human rights in the UN Charter. With this emphasis came development programmes for indigenous peoples and the recognition of indigenous rights in the ILO Convention No. 107 of the 1957 Concerning the Protection and Intergration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in the Independant Countries. The decolonisation movements also initiated or renewed a parallel debate about the repatriation of items of cultural heritage. There was a remarkable shift in this discussion from 'cultural heritage of mankind' to cultural particularism and an emphasis on 'cultural property' ....

The Dresden firebombing : memory and the politics of commemorating destruction

The firebombing of Dresden marks the terrible apex of the European bombing war. In just over two days in February 1945, over 1,300 heavy bombers from the RAF and the USAAF dropped nearly 4,000 tonnes of explosives on Dresden's civilian centre.Since the end of World War II, both the death toll and the motivation for the attack have become fierce historical battlegrounds, as German feelings of victimhood complete with those of guilt and loss. The Dresden bombing was used by East Germany as a propaganda tool, and has been re-appropriated by the neo-Nazi far right. Meanwhile the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche- the city's sumptuous eighteenth-century church destroyed in the raid-became central to German identity, while in London, a statue of the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, has attracted protests. In this book, Tony Joel focuses on the historical battle to re-appropriate Dresden, and on how World War II continues to shape British and German identity today.

Ignorance of the law as a defence to rape : the destruction of a maxim

In DPP v Morgan, the House of Lords correctly concluded that an accused who entertained a genuine belief that a woman was consenting to carnal knowledge of her person could not be convicted of the common law crime of rape as such a belief and the requisite mens rea to convict were mutually exclusive of one another. Though England and Wales have resiled from this position by virtue of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, s. 1 (b), which allows for conviction upon proof that the accused did not reasonably believe that the complainant was consenting, the Morgan principle has retained its vitality at common law as well as under the various statutory crimes of rape that exist throughout Australia, most notably the provisions of s. 38 of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). Despite a long line of Victorian Court of Appeal decisions which have reaffirmed the Morgan principle, the court has construed s. 37AA(b)(ii) of the Act as leaving open the possibility of an acquittal despite the fact that the accused acted with an awareness that one or more factors that are statutorily deemed as negating consent under s. 36(a)-(g) of the Act were operating at the time of his or her sexual penetration; specifically, the court held that the foregoing factors do not necessarily preclude a jury from finding that the accused acted in the genuine belief that the complainant was consenting. This article endeavours to explain how the accused could be aware of such circumstances at the time of penetration, yet still entertain such a belief. The article ultimately concludes that such an anomaly can only be explained through a combination of the poor drafting of s. 37AA(b)(ii) and the court's apparent refusal to follow the longstanding precept that ignorance of the law is never a defence to a crime, ostensibly prompted by its adherence to the cardinal precept that legislation is not to be construed as superfluous.