Pacific Discourses About Cultural Heritage and Its Protection: An Introduction

The articles collected in this special issue aim at addressing the debate about the protection and use of cultural heritage in the Pacific within the context of globalization. Contributions aim specifically at analyzing the tension that exists between, on the one hand, political, legal and economic discourses of Pacific peoples who wish to retain control and who seek protection of the use of their cultural heritage, and, on the other hand, the view of others arguing that it is in the interest of the general public to lift as many embargos as possible in order to stimulate research and to increase economic growth. All authors approach the subject of cultural and intellectual property rights as a discourse, with specific attention for the concepts of property and ownership, particularly in relation to cultural heritage and * University of Nijmegen. Email: [email protected] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Contributions to this special issue have been developed in the course of a series of workshops held at the annual meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. In 2005 an informal session was held in Lihu’e at Kaua’i, Hawaii; in 2006 a working session was held in San Diego, California; and in 2007 a symposium was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. For a variety of reasons, not every article presented at any of these sessions made it into this special issue, but we remain grateful to the following people for their interest and contributions to the various sessions: Nick Bainton, John Barker, Jane Barnwell, Anne Chambers, Keith Chambers, Haidy Geismar, Sam Kaima, Jacob Simet, and Nicholas Thieberger. I am especially indebted to Malia Talakai for co-organizing the sessions and for her stimulating work on the protection of cultural property in Tonga. I also thank Alex Golub for drawing my attention to the early work by Robert Lowie, and Michael Goldsmith for his comments on an earlier version of this introduction. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the contribution to my work on cultural and intellectual property by Mark Busse, Manuka Henare, ‘Okusitino Māhina, and Owen Morgan, with whom we hope to initiate a large, comparative research program on the issues set out in this special issue. International Journal of Cultural Property (2009) 16:221–232. Printed in the USA. Copyright © 2009 International Cultural Property Society doi:10.1017/S0940739109990191