In recent years, global institutions like the UN and UNESCO have increasinglytreated obligations to preserve cultural heritage as obligations to uphold human rights. Owing to the relative novelty of this approach, little work has been done to see whatexactly such rights would be and how this treatment of cultural heritage could bejustified.

Not only is it unclear what the foundations of a human right to cultural heritageare or what precisely such a right ought to entail, but it is equally uncertain what is meantby cultural heritage in the first place. Considering this, the aims of the Book are thefollowing: (i) provide a philosophically robust definition of cultural heritage and its socialvalue that could serve as a foundation of the human rights approach to cultural heritage;(ii) building on this understanding of cultural heritage, provide a systematic conceptualanalysis of obligations to preserve cultural heritage understood in the language of humanrights.

The Book defends a constructionist-inspired account of cultural heritage,according to which cultural heritage is not primarily about historical objects andpractices, but rather about how we employ such objects and practices to make sense ofour internal and external worlds, both as individuals and as communities. Equipped withthis understanding of cultural heritage the Book provides a justification of a human rightto cultural heritage by appealing to the centrality of cultural heritage to our individualnormative agency.

This is followed by a discussion of the limits of a human right tocultural heritage, where such limits are determined by its harmful uses. Lastly, the Bookprovides a discussion of legal duties that a human right to cultural heritage will generateand briefly considers whose responsibility such duties are.

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