54 ethnologia europaea 39:2 Currently, Italy claims more than 100 Etruscan ob- jects from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. According to the authorities in Rome, this cache of objects has been acquired illegally. The director of the museum in Copenhagen admits that a few ob- jects acquired in the beginning of the 1970s were in- sufficiently documented according to contemporary acquisition practice. However, his counter claim is that past acquisitions should not be judged by to- day’s standards. How should European ethnolo- gists and anthropologists theorize such claims and counter claims to material objects? What is at stake theoretically for the disciplines in thinking through predicaments such as the current dispute between Italy and Denmark? Generally, the terms “repatriation”, “restitution” and “return” (R-terms) are deployed to mean the de- acquisition of human remains and material objects held in museum collections back to their original resting place or back to the descendants of their orig- inal custodians. The R-terms have made their way into several bodies of “soft law”: UN declarations, codes of ethics, policy documents and position statements by various scholarly associations, white and green papers published by various ministries of culture around the world, collection management papers issued by museums, etc. Does this emerging body of codified norms at the institutional, national and international levels imply new rules for the traf- fic and circulation of material objects on a global scale? I will argue that answering this question hing- es on an adequate conceptualization of the institu- tion of cultural property 1 as a technology of recogni- tion and material distribution governed by national doctrines on the “proper” place of things. Thus, the purpose of this article is to unpack the terms, asking: what is the most promising theoretical purchase on the R-terms? Thus, what follows is a prospectus for THEORIZING REPATRIATION Martin Skrydstrup This contribution is a stab at unpacking the discursive register restitution, return and repatriation. Initially, I map the genealogies of these terms, suggesting that an adequate conceptualization rests on the elementary forms of reciprocity and recognition. I contend that the discursive register can both be understood within neo-Maussian exchange theory as a set of transactional orders resting on sliding scales of obligation and within postcolonial theory hinging on the concept of recogni- tion. I further argue that repatriation claims cannot be conceived independently from the regimes of recognition they address, which both enable and silence claims. I conclude by suggesting that the intersection of reciprocity and recognition might illuminate the institution of cultural property as a phenomenon of postcolonial potlatching. Keywords : repatriation, objects, property, recognition, postcolonial potlatching © Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: info@mtp.dk Ethnologia Europaea. Journal of European Ethnology: Volume 39:2 E-journal :: © Museum Tusculanum Press 2010 :: ISBN 978 87 635 3361 4 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.hum.ku.dk/details.asp?eln=300279