Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about an extended argument for how to think about cultural property today. It contains a collection of commissioned essays demonstrates how cultural property is more than valuable artefacts embedded within varied forms of control and allocations of rights. The essays demonstrate that the rights and relations of cultural property are multiple and need to be understood as engaging a range of actors with varied power and agency. Locke's natural rights thesis for the foundation and justification of property emerged within complex political debates about the nature of existence and the authority of the Crown. If there are questions about the relationship between cultural rights, human rights, and cultural property, so too are there further questions about the intersections of cultural property and intellectual property.