ABSTRACT
The market that is embedded in community is one that is subject to the mutual obligations that constitute community. The idea of the public domain and the theoretical positions that have been developed to support, elaborate and nurture it are concerned with the protection of community rights and interests in cultural production. Cultural heritage, even in its pre-radicalized state, is located somewhere in the processes of community formation and life. The fact that it is a less obvious and transparent method of reinforcing state sovereignty makes it no less resistant to claims over that heritage by communities formed outside the international law system of sovereign states. The fact that cultural artefacts are often closely implicated in some of these negative expressions of community is a further reason for caution. Locating the cultural property of communities within a greater discourse of the cultural commons can have a role in limiting those dangers.
