Whose Gold is This? Challenging Exclusion in Restitution, Towards a Social Analysis of Provenance

The restitution of material objects has become central for engaging with past injustices in post-conflict situations. Thereby, restitution is increasingly attributed a transformative potential to enable dialogues between different victim and perpetrator groups in the aftermath of mass violence. In both, National Socialist and colonial contexts, most objects that are returned are considered ‘valuable’ or ‘meaningful’ in dominant financial, artistic or cultural terms. Historically, these ‘valuable’ objects have left more archival traces leading to memorialization and restitution requests. Conversely, objects of alternative value, belonging to marginalized groups or appreciated in different value regimes (for instance economic objects, everyday objects, mineralogical samples) have left less extensive archival records, are less vividly remembered and are often overlooked for restitution. This focus on objects of a dominant value poses a fundamental challenge to restitution: how do the objects that are returned shape our social understandings of victim groups? How can marginalized groups become part of the dialogues that restitution envisions? We devote attention to these questions from a ‘social provenance research’ perspective to contemplate challenges of exclusion and different value systems for restitution processes and researchers. We explore a more socially differentiated understanding of restitution as a justice mechanism that not only shapes present perceptions of historical injustices but is itself also influenced by processes of selection and exclusion.