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Repatriating Human Remains: Searching for an Acceptable Ethics

  • Adam B. DickersonEmail author
  • Erika R. Ceeney
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Part of the Ethical Archaeologies: The Politics of Social Justice book series (ETHARCHAEOL, volume 4)

Abstract

Requests for the repatriation of human remains raise a number of perplexing ethical issues for cultural heritage institutions. The ethics of repatriation is complex, because, as Scarre (J Appl Philos 20:237–249, 2003) points out, it involves a four-way relationship between (1) cultural heritage professionals and institutions, (2) ‘the public’, (3) individuals or communities claiming close cultural and/or kinship ties with the dead and (4) the dead themselves. In this chapter, we examine the key ethical issues raised by this complex relationship and evaluate what they might mean for cultural heritage practice and policy.

Keywords

Cultural Heritage Indigenous People Indigenous Community Liberal Democracy Female Genital Mutilation 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.International Studies, Faculty of Arts and DesignUniversity of CanberraBruceAustralia

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