Sovereign heritage crime : security, autocracy, and the material past / Simon Maghakyan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maghakyan, Simon, author.

Series:

Cambridge elements.

Cambridge elements. Elements in critical heritage studies. 2632-7074

Cambridge elements. Elements in critical heritage studies, 2632-7074

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural property.

Dictatorship.

Government liability.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (55 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

'Sovereign Heritage Crime' explores why autocracies intentionally exacerbate anxieties associated with an aggrieved ethnoterritorial minority's tangible heritage. Since discriminatory domestic campaigns of state-sponsored erasure are political choices, this theoretical study proposes to understand them as sovereign heritage crimes. This framework predicts that heritage securitisation - constructing disquieting material memories into ontological threats - enables legitimacy-deficient yet affluent autocracies to pursue 'performance legitimacy' by delivering a real or imagined 'permanent security'. Since this state crime is both enabled and exposed by traditional and emerging technologies, the study also explores their dual use for human rights and wrongs.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on March 4, 2026).

ISBN:

1-009-61188-7

1-009-61183-6

1-009-61187-9