Who owns our songs? Authority of heritage and resources for restitution

Abstract

This article analyses property relations in cultural expression in the ambivalent process of heritage production, and considers the implementation of intangible heritage by communities and individuals in the framework of cultural policy making. Ownership reflects an entanglement of interests, grounded in the established social and political domains. There appear moments that sustain or contest agency in property ownership, while modern cultural politics may dictate conflicts between individual or communal property rights in the context of claiming significance to heritage. My discussion of the predicaments of collective or individual ownership, contested restitution or celebration observable in the policies of intangible cultural heritage is based on the experience of the Seto community in Estonia. © Museum Tusculanum Press 2010.