Contribution short abstract:

This contribution is based on a workshop with scholars & indigenous representatives in Namibia. Going beyond restitution we dealt with collections of items with overlapping senses of belonging, issues of access and with digital divides that are better dealt with in terms of sharing than commoning.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution is based in large parts on a workshop held at the Helvi Mpingana Kondombolo Cultural Village in Namibia, in 2024. Participants were a dozen scholars from a range of German and Namibian universities and museums while the other half of the gathering were members from communities in Namibia, mostly indigenous San, with an interest in material culture and ethnographic collections. The theme of the meeting ("How things connect people") was expressly going beyond the celebrated cases of stolen heritage which are at the centre of restitution efforts. Instead, we were turning towards collections of everyday items, often held outside museums and often by fieldworkers as a "byproduct" of their research. What would the future uses and purposes of such items be?

The results underline that there can hardly be "common property" if commons presuppose the existence of "a community". When we deal with a variety of transfers through which items were incorporated into such collections, then we have to do justice to a multitude of agents connected through things in a host of ways that are not appropriately covered by "common property". Rather, there are overlapping senses of belonging, issues of access and questions of digital and generational divides that are better dealt with in terms of an anthropology of sharing than through a concept of commoning. The contribution reports on the results from the specific case but also seeks to draw more general conclusions for best practice models.