Trafficking Cultural Objects: Introduction

Abstract

The papers in this special issue offer different theoretical and empirical considerations in relation to the transnational traffic in cultural objects. They are the result of a call for papers sent out by Trafficking Culture, an ERC-funded initiative that gathers and analyses evidence on the scale and nature of the global trade in looted cultural objects. More details on the topic are available on our website at traffickingculture.org. We would like to express our thanks to the journal for inviting us to organise this special issue, and to the editorial team who have worked with us in the process, especially Ernesto Savona and Giulia Berlusconi. In this introduction to the volume, we will set out some of the parameters and background to the current criminal justice debate on looting and traffic of cultural objects, while drawing out some common themes in the papers which follow. Cultural objects are objects whose monetary value derives from their cultural worth. The most obvious example is a painting. The price of a painting cannot today be reduced to the cost of its materials and the time taken to paint it. The price reflects instead the artistic merit and thus scarcity of the painting, assessed by subjective consensus in terms of conception, originality, content, style, execution and so forth — the painting is said to have cultural value. It has not always been so. In fifteenth century Italy, for example, contracts were drawn up between patrons and painters itemising cost in terms of the quantity and quality of ingredients and the skill and labour of the artist (Baxandall 1972: 1–28). Present day ideas of artistic merit are rooted in nineteenth century Romantic reifications of creative originality or genius (Shiner 2001: 197–212). But not all cultural objects are art objects. Most are not. Many cultural objects have a religious or otherwise ritual significance. Donna Yates, for example discusses the theft of devotional objects from churches in Bolivia. Neil Brodie, Sam Hardy and Christiana Panella focus on ‘antiquities’, cultural objects of historical interest excavated from archaeological sites. Some cultural objects can mean different things to different people. Many of the antiquities Eur J Crim Policy Res (2014) 20:421–426 DOI 10.1007/s10610-014-9256-4