Caring for Cultural Heritage

This book comprehensively analyses the UK law and non-law instruments that care for cultural heritage. Viewing the law as a community of care, working with other communities, brings new insights to our understanding of cultural heritage protection, making this book of interest to legal and heritage academics and practitioners.

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This book explores how cultural heritage and its care are translated in UK law and non-law instruments. It analyses how communities of care look after cultural heritage because they care about it. These communities include the international and national community, national and local governments, courts, professional bodies, institutions such as museums as well as community groups. 'Care' refers to the varied ways in which communities engage with cultural heritage to maintain it, sustain relationships about it and with it, use it and provide access to it, with a view to passing it on to future generations. The book also assesses how far these nested practices of care assist communities of care in providing respectful, empathetic and dialogical care to navigate harm to cultural heritage. It will be of interest to scholars of cultural heritage studies across disciplines, including law, sociology and anthropology, as well as policymakers and practitioners in cultural heritage management.