ALSA 2025 meeting

The past decade has hosted concurrent movements in the fields of art, archaeology, anthropology, and international law for the return of cultural heritage. Such movements have achieved significant moments for Southeast Asia, with notable repatriation of artifacts to states such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar from Western museums. The presentation reflects on the preceding efforts through the perspective of epistemic justice. The presentation argues that epistemic justice calls for return of cultural heritage in ways that satisfy the expectations of the cultures of origin, and those expectations do not necessarily align with states. The presentation focuses on Southeast Asia, highlighting how the return of Indigenous cultural heritage to Southeast Asian states has been insufficient to meet the expectations of their respective Indigenous peoples.

Since the mid-20th century, many former postcolonial states have engaged in multiple constitution-making exercises, with the turnover in written constitutions often due to coups or internal conflict. Conversely, people have resisted authoritarian rule through alternative constitution-making. The reality that most countries have had numerous official and unofficial constitutional texts begs the question: How do past constitutions matter in the present? This book explores the social life of constitutional legacies, or how past constitutions matter. Using the case of Myanmar, Professor Crouch demonstrates that constitutions are a palimpsest of past texts, ideas, and practices, an accumulation of contested legacies. Through constitutional ethnography, The Palimpsest Constitution traces Myanmar's modern constitutional history from the late colonial era through its postcolonial, socialist, and military regimes. The Palimpsest Constitution captures the idea that contemporary debates about constitutional reform are informed by the contested legacies of the past.