ABSTRACT
Analyzing objects through a cultural property framework draws our attention to the constitutive role of culture, to how "identity is asserted and difference claimed through expressive activities that deploy meaningful forms". It also elucidates the very complex processes through which objects are mobilized to make meaning, how they are used to constitute and produce new forms of knowledge. Theories regarding the intangibility of culture and anthropological analyses of the "new kinds of entitlement and processes of claim making" that emerge in relation to local formulations of ownership have become increasingly useful in attempts to track how objects -and, indeed intangible objects, such as oral histories and folklore- are invested with particular kinds of value. This chapter examines an unruly corpus of objects, data, and testimonies that are central to the assertion of claims to new, alternative forms of historical, cultural knowledge in contemporary Spain.
