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By Subject: Museum Studies

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• eBook available August 2013

  About the Hearth

  Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North

  Anderson, D. G., Wishart, R. P., & Vaté, V. (eds)

  Due to changing climates and demographics, questions of policy in the circumpolar north have focused attention on the very structures that people call home. Dwellings lie at the heart of many forms of negotiation. Based on years of in-depth research, this book presents and analyzes how the people of the circumpolar regions conceive, build, memorialize, and live in their dwellings. This book seeks to set a new standard for interdisciplinary work within the humanities and social sciences and includes anthropological work on vernacular architecture, environmental anthropology, household archaeology and demographics.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Archaeology Museum Studies Heritage Studies

• December 2001

  Academic Anthropology and the Museum

  Back to the Future

  Bouquet, M. (ed)

  The museum boom, with its accompanying objectification and politicization of culture, finds its counterpart in the growing interest by social scientists in material culture, much of which is to be found in museums. Not surprisingly, anthropologists in particular are turning their attention again to museums, after decades of neglect, during which fieldwork became the hallmark of modern anthropology - so much so that the "social" and the "material" parted company so radically as to produce a kind of knowledge gap between historical collections and the intellectuals who might have benefitted from working on these material representations of culture. Moreover it was forgotten that museums do not only present the "pastness" of things. A great deal of what goes on in contemporary museums is literally about planning the shape of the future: making culture materialize involves mixing things from the past, taking into account current visions, and knowing that the scenes constructed will shape the perspectives of future generations. However, the (re-)invention of museum anthropology presents a series of challenges for academic teaching and research, as well as for the work of cultural production in contemporary museums - issues that are explored in this volume.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available November 2018

  Artifak

  Cultural Revival, Tourism, and the Recrafting of History in Vanuatu

  DeBlock, H.

  In Vanuatu, commoditization and revitalization of culture and the arts do not necessarily work against each other; both revolve around value formation and the authentication of things. This book investigates the meaning and value of (art) objects as commodities in differing states of transit and transition: in the local place, on the market, in the museum. It provides an ethnographic account of commoditization in a context of revitalization of culture and the arts in Vanuatu, and the issues this generates, such as authentication of actions and things, indigenized copyright, and kastom disputes over ownership and the nature of kastom itself.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies Museum Studies

• eBook available March 2021

  The Best We Share

  Nation, Culture and World-Making in the UNESCO World Heritage Arena

  Brumann, C.

  The UNESCO World Heritage Convention is one of the most widely ratified international treaties, and a place on the World Heritage List is a widely coveted mark of distinction. Building on ethnographic fieldwork at Committee sessions, interviews and documentary study, the book links the change in operations of the World Heritage Committee with structural nation-centeredness, vulnerable procedures for evaluation, monitoring and decision-making, and loose heritage conceptions that have been inconsistently applied. As the most ambitious study of the World Heritage arena so far, this volume dissects the inner workings of a prominent global body, demonstrating the power of ethnography in the highly formalised and diplomatic context of a multilateral organisation.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)

• February 2014

  Borders of Belonging

  Experiencing History, War and Nation at a Danish Heritage Site

  Daugbjerg, M.

  In an era cross-cut with various agendas and expressions of national belonging and global awareness, “the nation” as a collective reference point and experienced entity stands at the center of complex identity struggles. This book explores how such struggles unfold in practice at a highly symbolic battlefield site in the Danish/German borderland. Comprised of an ethnography of two profoundly different institutions – a conventional museum and an experience-based heritage center – it analyses the ways in which staff and visitors interfere with, relate to, and literally “make sense” of the war heritage and its national connotations. Borders of Belonging offers a comparative, in-depth analysis of the practices and negotiations through which history is made and manifested at two houses devoted to the interpretation of one event: the decisive battle of the 1864 war in which Otto von Bismarck, on his way to uniting the new German Empire, led the Prussian army to victory over the Danish. Working through his empirical material to engage with and challenge established theoretical positions in the study of museums, modernity, and tourism, Mads Daugbjerg demonstrates that national belonging is still a key cultural concern, even as it asserts itself in novel, muted, and increasingly experiential ways.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Travel and Tourism Museum Studies Memory Studies

• December 2006

  Challenge and Transformation

  Museums in Cape Town and Sydney

  Goodnow, K.

  Focusing on how change takes place in museums, Challenge and Transformation: Museums in Cape Town and Sydney is built around a series of case studies outlining the way museums have come to terms with issues of diversity and change - within ethnographic museums, historic sites and art galleries. The case studies are complemented by an introduction by Jack Lohman and an epilogue by the current CEO at Iziko Museums, Jatti Bredekamp.

  Subject: Museum Studies

• February 2010

  Changes in Museum Practice

  New Media, Refugees and Participation

  Skartveit & Goodnow, K. (eds)

  How can museums move beyond simply raising awareness and establish a dialogue both within and across communities and cultural boundaries? By examining the ways in which museums can involve refugees and asylum seekers this volume explores this key question. Leading artists, curators, and academics come together to outline different levels of participation by audiences and communities and explore a range of topics from video games to role-play and theatre; and from photography to participatory video and digital storytelling. Case studies are used throughout to highlight the various ways that different participatory approaches can be used successfully.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Refugee and Migration Studies

• May 2013

  Colonial Collecting and Display

  Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

  Wintle, C.

  In the late-nineteenth century, British travelers to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands compiled wide-ranging collections of material culture for scientific instruction and personal satisfaction. Colonial Collecting and Display follows the compelling history of a particular set of such objects, tracing their physical and conceptual transformation from objects of indigenous use to accessioned objects in a museum collection in the south of England. This first study dedicated to the historical collecting and display of the Islands' material cultures develops a new analysis of colonial discourse, using a material culture-led approach to reconceptualize imperial relationships between Andamanese, Nicobarese, and British communities, both in the Bay of Bengal and on British soil. It critiques established conceptions of the act of collecting, arguing for recognition of how indigenous makers and consumers impacted upon "British" collection practices, and querying the notion of a homogenous British approach to material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

  Subjects: Museum Studies History (General) Anthropology (General)

• eBook available February 2022

  Contested Holdings

  Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return

  Bodenstein, F., Otoiu, D., & Troelenberg, E.-M. (eds)

  Going beyond strictly legal and property-oriented aspects of the restitution debate, restitution is considered as part of a larger set of processes of return that affect museums and collections, as well as notions of heritage and object status. Covering a range of case studies and a global geography, the authors aim to historicize and bring depth to contemporary debates in relation to both the return of material culture and human remains. Defined as contested holdings, differing museum collections ranging from fine arts to physical anthropology provide connections between the treatment and conceptualization of collections that generally occupy separate realms in the museum world.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available April 2012

  Crafting 'The Indian'

  Knowledge, Desire, and Play in Indianist Reenactment

  Kalshoven, P. T.

  In Europe, Indian hobbyism, or Indianism, has developed out of a strong fascination with Native American life in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Indian hobbyists” dress in homemade replicas of clothing, craft museum-quality replicas of artifacts, meet in fields dotted with tepees and reenact aspects of North American Indian lifeworlds, using ethnographies, travel diaries, and museum collections as resources. Grounded in fieldwork set among networks of Indian hobbyists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Czech Republic, this ethnography analyzes this contemporary practice of serious leisure with respect to the general human desire for play, metaphor, and allusion. It provides insights into the increasing popularity of reenactment practices as they relate to a deeper understanding of human perception, imagination, and creativity.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Museum Studies

• eBook available November 2018

  Curating Live Arts

  Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice

  Davida, D., Pronovost, M., Hudom, V., & Gabriels, J. (eds)

  Situated at the crossroads of performance practice, museology, and cultural studies, live arts curation has grown in recent years to become a vibrant interdisciplinary project and a genuine global phenomenon. Curating Live Arts brings together bold and innovative essays from an international group of theorist-practitioners to pose vital questions, propose future visions, and survey the landscape of this rapidly evolving discipline. Reflecting the field’s characteristic eclecticism, the writings assembled here offer practical and insightful investigations into the curation of theatre, dance, sound art, music, and other performance forms—not only in museums, but in community, site-specific, and time-based contexts, placing it at the forefront of contemporary dialogue and discourse.

  Subjects: Performance Studies Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)

• September 2021

  Digital Archives and Collections

  Creating Online Access to Cultural Heritage

  Müller, K.

  Museums and archives all over the world digitize their collections and provide online access to heritage material. But what factors determine the content, structure and use of these online inventories? This book turns to India and Europe to answer this question. It explains how museums and archives envision, decide and conduct digitization and online dissemination. It also sheds light on born-digital, community-based archives, which have established themselves as new actors in the field. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the chapters in the book trace digital archives from technical advancements and postcolonial initiatives to programming alternatives, editing content, and active use of digital archives.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Media Studies Anthropology (General)

• eBook available March 2013

  Distributed Objects

  Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell

  Chua, L. & Elliott, M. (eds)

  One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell’s work, which remains salient, and controversial, in the social sciences and humanities. Extending his theory into new territory – from music to literary technology and ontology to technological change – the contributors do not simply take stock, but also provoke, critically reassessing this important work while using it to challenge conceptual and disciplinary boundaries.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Museum Studies Literary Studies

• eBook available January 2022

  Emerging Technologies and Museums

  Mediating Difficult Heritage

  Stylianou-Lambert, T., Bounia, A., & Heraclidou, A. (eds)

  How can emerging technologies display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage? Emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By examining varied theoretical approaches and case studies, authors demonstrate how “awkward”, contested, and rarely discussed subjects and stories are treated – or can be potentially treated - in a museum setting with the use of the latest technology.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Heritage Studies Media Studies

• June 2015

  The Enemy on Display

  The Second World War in Eastern European Museums

  Bogumił, Z., Wawrzyniak, J., Buchen, T., Ganzer, C. & Senina, M.

  Eastern European museums represent traumatic events of World War II, such as the Siege of Leningrad, the Warsaw Uprisings, and the Bombardment of Dresden, in ways that depict the enemy in particular ways. This image results from the interweaving of historical representations, cultural stereotypes and beliefs, political discourses, and the dynamics of exhibition narratives. This book presents a useful methodology for examining museum images and provides a critical analysis of the role historical museums play in the contemporary world. As the catastrophes of World War II still exert an enormous influence on the national identities of Russians, Poles, and Germans, museum exhibits can thus play an important role in this process.

  Subject: Museum Studies Memory Studies

• September 2015

  European Products

  Making and Unmaking Heritage in Cyprus

  Welz, G.

  On the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, rural villages, traditional artefacts, even atmospheres and experiences are considered heritage. Heritage making not only protects, but also produces, things, people, and places. Since the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, heritage making and Europeanization are increasingly intertwined in Greek-Cypriot society. Against the backdrop of a long-term ethnographic engagement, the author argues that heritage emerges as an increasingly standardized economic resource, a “European product.” Implemented in historic preservation, rural tourism, culinary traditions, nature protection, and urban restoration projects, heritage policy has become infused with transnational market regulations and neoliberal property regimes.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Museum Studies Heritage Studies

• eBook available April 2021

  Exchanging Objects

  Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution

  Nichols, C. A.

  As an historical account of the exchange of “duplicate specimens” between anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and museums, collectors, and schools around the world in the late nineteenth century, this book reveals connections between both well-known museums and little-known local institutions, created through the exchange of museum objects. It explores how anthropologists categorized some objects in their collections as “duplicate specimens,” making them potential candidates for exchange. This historical form of what museum professionals would now call deaccessioning considers the intellectual and technical requirement of classifying objects in museums, and suggests that a deeper understanding of past museum practice can inform mission-driven contemporary museum work.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available April 2014

  Exhibiting Europe in Museums

  Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations

  Kaiser, W., Krankenhagen, S. & Poehls, K.

  Museums of history and contemporary culture face many challenges in the modern age. One is how to react to processes of Europeanization and globalization, which require more cross-border cooperation and different ways of telling stories for visitors. This book investigates how museums exhibit Europe. Based on research in nearly 100 museums across the Continent and interviews with cultural policy makers and museum curators, it studies the growing transnational activities of state institutions, societal organizations, and people in the museum field such as attempts to Europeanize collection policy and collections as well as different strategies for making narratives more transnational like telling stories of European integration as shared history and discussing both inward and outward migration as a common experience and challenge. The book thus provides fascinating insights into a fast-changing museum landscape in Europe with wider implications for cultural policy and museums in other world regions.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Memory Studies

• eBook available February 2021

  Experiencing Materiality

  Museum Perspectives

  Gamberi, V.

  Representing a cutting-edge study of the junction between theoretical anthropology, material culture studies, religious studies and museum anthropology, this study examines the interaction between the human and the nonhuman in a museum setting usually defined as ‘non-Western’, ‘non-scientific’ and ‘religious.’ Combining an on-site analysis of exhibitive spaces with archival research and interviews with museum curators, the chapters highlight contradictions of museum practices, and suggests that museum practitioners use museum spaces and artefacts as a way of formulating new theoretical stances in material culture studies, thus viewing museums as producers of theories together with affective engagements.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)

• eBook available February 2019

  Extinct Monsters to Deep Time

  Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian's Fossil Halls

  Marsh, D. E.

  Via the Smithsonian Institution, an exploration of the growing friction between the research and outreach functions of museums in the 21st century.

  Describing participant observation and historical research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as it prepared for its largest-ever exhibit renovation, Deep Time, the author provides a grounded perspective on the inner-workings of the world’s largest natural history museum and the social processes of communicating science to the public.

  From the introduction:

  In exhibit projects, the tension plays out between curatorial staff—academic, research, or scientific staff  charged with content—and exhibitions, public engagement, or educational staff—which I broadly group together as “audience advocates” charged with translating content for a broader public. I have heard Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the NMNH, say many times that if you look at dinosaur halls at different museums across the country, you can see whether the curators or the exhibits staff  has “won.” At the American Museum of Natural History in New York, it was the curators. The hall is stark white and organized by phylogeny—or the evolutionary relationships of species—with simple, albeit long, text panels. At the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Johnson will tell you, it was the “exhibits people.” The hall is story driven and chronologically organized, full of big graphic prints, bold fonts, immersive and interactive spaces, and touchscreens. At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where Johnson had previously been vice president and chief curator, “we actually fought to a draw.” That, he says, is the best outcome; a win on either side skews the final product too extremely in one direction or the other. This creative tension, when based on mutual respect, is often what makes good exhibitions.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General)

• eBook available March 2012

  Extreme Collecting

  Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums

  Were, G. & King, J. C. H. (eds)

  By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting ‘difficult’ objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. The aim is to apply a critical approach to the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially nineteenth-century ideas of collecting; and to move towards identifying priorities for collection policies in museums, which are inclusive of acquiring ‘difficult’ objects. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology

• eBook available December 2007

  Fetishes and Monuments

  Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20^th Century

  Sansi, R.

  One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candomblé were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays, they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of art, objects of museum display and public monuments. Focusing on the particular histories of objects, images, spaces and persons who embodied it, this book portrays the historical journey from weapons of sorcery looted by the police, to hidden living stones, to public works of art attacked by religious fanatics that see them as images of the Devil, former sorcerers who have become artists, writers, and philosophers. Addressing this history as a journey of objectification and appropriation, the author offers a fresh, unconventional, and illuminating look at questions of syncretism, hybridity and cultural resistance in Brazil and in the Black Atlantic in general.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Museum Studies Anthropology (General)

• eBook available May 2014

  From Antiquities to Heritage

  Transformations of Cultural Memory

  Eriksen, A.

  Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities. Nineteenth-century nation states built museums to preserve their historical monuments. In the present world, heritage is a global concern as well as an issue of identity politics. What does it mean when runic stones or medieval churches are transformed from antiquities to monuments to heritage sites? This book argues that the transformations concern more than words alone: They reflect fundamental changes in the way we experience the past, and the way historical objects are assigned meaning and value in the present. This book presents a series of cases from Norwegian culture to explore how historical objects and sites have changed in meaning over time. It contributes to the contemporary debates over collective memory and cultural heritage as well to our knowledge about early modern antiquarianism.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Memory Studies Heritage Studies

• eBook available December 2018

  From Storeroom to Stage

  Romanian Attire and the Politics of Folklore

  Urdea, A.

  Departing from an ethnographic collection in London, From Storeroom to Stage traces the journey of its artefacts back to the Romanian villages where they were made 70 years ago, and to other places where similar objects are still in use. The book explores the role that material culture plays in the production of value and meaning by examining how folk objects are mobilized in national ideologies, transmissions of personal and family memory, museological discourses, and artistic acts.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Museum Studies Heritage Studies

• eBook available June 2007

  The Future of Indigenous Museums

  Perspectives from the Southwest Pacific

  Stanley, N. (ed)

  Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General)

• eBook available April 2016

  Having and Belonging

  Homes and Museums in Israel

  Jaffe-Schagen, J.

  The home and the museum are typically understood as divergent, even oppositional, social realms: whereas one evokes privacy and familial intimacy, the other is conceived of as a public institution oriented around various forms of civic identity. This meticulous, insightful book draws striking connections between both spheres, which play similar roles by housing objects and generating social narratives. Through fascinating explorations of the museums and domestic spaces of eight representative Israeli communities—Chabad, Moroccan, Iraqi, Ethiopian, Russian, Religious-Zionist, Christian Arab, and Muslim Arab—it gives a powerful account of museums’ role in state formation, proposing a new approach to collecting and categorizing particularly well-suited to societies in conflict.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Heritage Studies Refugee and Migration Studies

• eBook available November 2019

  Heritage Movements in Asia

  Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics, and Identity

  Mozaffari, A. & Jones, T. (eds)

  Heritage processes vary according to cultural, national, geographical, and historical contexts. This volume is unique in that it is dedicated to approaching the analysis of heritage through the concepts of social movements. Adapting the latest developments in the field of social movements, the chapters examine the formation, use and contestation of heritage by various official, non-official and activist players and the spaces where such ongoing negotiations and contestation take place. By bringing social movements into heritage studies, the book advocates a shift of perspective in understanding heritage, one that is no longer bound by (at times arbitrary) divisions such as those assumed between the state and people or between experts and non-experts.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Museum Studies Anthropology (General)

• December 2006

  Human Remains and Museum Practice

  Lohman, J. & Goodnow, K. (eds)

  Human Remains and Museum Practice explores fundamental issues of collecting and displaying human remains, including ethics, interpretation and repatriation as they apply in different parts of the world. This volume reflects the controversial discussions that were held at the Museum of London as part of an international symposium on the political and ethical dimensions of the collection and display of human remains in museums. It represents a second publication devoted to exploring diversity and promoting intercultural dialogue in museum practice.

  Subject: Museum Studies

• January 2001

  Hunting the Gatherers

  Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in Melanesia 1870s-1930s

  O'Hanlon, M. & Welsch, R. (eds)

  Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Theory and Methodology Colonial History Heritage Studies

• June 2011

  The Lives of Chinese Objects

  Buddhism, Imperialism and Display

  Tythacott, L.

  This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo – China’s most important pilgrimage island – to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers’ and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the ‘Mongolian race’ and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown.

  As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.

  Subjects: Museum Studies History (General) Archaeology

• eBook available November 2010

  The Long Way Home

  The Meaning and Values of Repatriation

  Turnbull, P. & Pickering, M. (eds)

  Indigenous peoples have long sought the return of ancestral human remains and associated artifacts from western museums and scientific institutions. Since the late 1970s their efforts have led museum curators and researchers to re-evaluate their practices and policies in respect to the scientific uses of human remains. New partnerships have been established between cultural and scientific institutions and indigenous communities. Human remains and culturally significant objects have been returned to the care of indigenous communities, although the fate of bones and burial artifacts in numerous collections remains unresolved and, in some instances, the subject of controversy. In this book, leading researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences reflect critically on the historical, cultural, ethical and scientific dimensions of repatriation. Through various case studies they consider the impact of repatriation: what have been the benefits, and in what ways has repatriation given rise to new problems for indigenous people, scientists and museum personnel. It features chapters by indigenous knowledge custodians, who reflect upon recent debates and interaction between indigenous people and researchers in disciplines with direct interests in the continued scientific preservation of human remains.

  In this book, leading researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences reflect critically on the historical, cultural, ethical and scientific dimensions of repatriation. Through various case studies they consider the impact of repatriation: what have been the benefits, and in what ways has repatriation given rise to new problems for indigenous people, scientists and museum personnel. It features chapters by indigenous knowledge custodians, who reflect upon recent debates and interaction between indigenous people and researchers in disciplines with direct interests in the continued scientific preservation of human remains.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies

• eBook available November 2018

  The Man Who Invented Aztec Crystal Skulls

  The Adventures of Eugène Boban

  MacLaren Walsh, J. & Topping, B.

  Eugène Boban began life in humble circumstances in Paris, traveled to the California Gold Rush, and later became a recognized authority on pre-Columbian cultures.  He also invented an entire category of archaeological artifact: the Aztec crystal skull. By his own admission, he successfully “palmed off” a number of these crystal skulls on the curators of Europe’s leading museums. How could that happen, and who was this man? Detailed are the travels, self-education, and archaeological explorations of Eugène Boban; this book also explores the circumstances that allowed him to sell fakes to museums that would remain undetected for over a century.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology

• eBook available August 2019

  The Museum of Mankind

  Man and Boy in the British Museum Ethnography Department

  Burt, B.

  The Museum of Mankind was an innovative and popular showcase for minority cultures from around the non-Western world from 1970 to 1997. This memoir is a critical appreciation of its achievements in the various roles of a national museum, of the personalities of its staff and of the issues raised in the representation of exotic cultures. Issues of changing museum theory and practice are raised in a detailed case-study that also focuses on the social life of the museum community. This is the first history of a remarkable museum and a memorable interlude in the long history of one of the world’s oldest and greatest museums. Although not presented as an academic study, it should be useful for museum and cultural studies as a well as a wider readership interested in the British Museum.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available June 2022

  Museum Times

  Changing Histories in South Africa

  Witz, L.

  Museums flourished in post-apartheid South Africa. In older museums, there were renovations on the go, and at least fifty new museums opened. Most sought to depict violence and suffering under apartheid and the growth of resistance. These unlikely journeys are tracked as museums became a primary setting for contesting histories. From the renowned Robben Island Museum to the almost unknown Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, the author demonstrates how an institution concerned with the conservation of the past is simultaneously a site for changing history.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available October 2015

  Museum Websites and Social Media

  Issues of Participation, Sustainability, Trust and Diversity

  Sánchez Laws, A. L.

  Online activities present a unique challenge for museums as they harness the potential of digital technology for sustainable development, trust building, and representations of diversity. This volume offers a holistic picture of museum online activities that can serve as a starting point for cross-disciplinary discussion. It is a resource for museum staff, students, designers, and researchers working at the intersection of cultural institutions and digital technologies. The aim is to provide insight into the issues behind designing and implementing web pages and social media to serve the broadest range of museum stakeholders.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Media Studies

• eBook available September 2022

  Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

  Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities

  Bünz, A.

  A characteristic trait of the maritime museums is that they are often located in a contemporary and/or historical environment from which the collections and narratives originate. The museum can thereby be directly linked to the site and its history. It is therefore vital to investigate the maritime museums in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections. This volume unravels the kinds of worlds and realities the Nordic maritime museums stage, which identities and national myths they depict, and how they make use of both the surrounding maritime environments and the architectural properties of the museum buildings.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology Cultural Studies (General)

• March 2008

  Museums, the Media and Refugees

  Stories of Crisis, Control and Compassion

  Goodnow, K, Lohman, J. & Marfleet, P. (eds)

  Across countries and time, asylum-seekers and refugees have been represented in a variety of ways. In some representations they appear negatively, as dangers threatening to ‘over-run’ a country or a region with ‘floods’ of incompatible strangers. In others, the same people are portrayed positively, with compassion, and pictured as desperately in need of assistance. How these competing perceptions are received has significant consequences for determining public policy, human rights, international agreements, and the realization of cultural diversity, and so it is imperative to understand how these images are perpetuated. To this end, this volume reflects on museum practice and the contexts, stories, and images of asylum seekers and refugees prevalent in our mass media.

  Based on case studies from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, the overall findings are illustrative of narratives and images common to museums and the media throughout the world. They aim to challenge political rhetoric and populist media imagery and consider what forms of dissent are likely to be sustained and what narratives ultimately break through and can lead to empathy and positive political change.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Refugee and Migration Studies

• February 2015

  Objects and Imagination

  Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning

  Fuglerud, Ø. & Wainwright, L. (eds)

  Despite the wide interest in material culture, art, and aesthetics, few studies have considered them in light of the importance of the social imagination - the complex ways in which we conceptualize our social surroundings. This collection engages the “material turn” in the arts, humanities, and social sciences through a range of original contributions on creativity in diverse global and contemporary social settings. The authors engage with everyday objects, art, rituals, and ethnographic exhibitions to analyze the relationship between material culture and the social imagination. What results is a better understanding of how the material embodies and influences our idea of the social world.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Museum Studies

• May 2011

  Panamanian Museums and Historical Memory

  Sánchez Laws, A. L.

  Panama is an ethnically diverse country with a recent history of political conflict which makes the representation of historical memory an especially complex and important task for the country’s museums. This book studies new museum projects in Panama with the aim of identifying the dominant narratives that are being formed as well as those voices that remain absent and muted. Through case analyses of specific museums and exhibitions the author identifies and examines the influences that form and shape museum strategy and development.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Memory Studies

• eBook available October 2019

  Playing with the Past

  Exploring Values in Heritage Practice

  Clark, K.

  Heritage is all around us, not just in monuments and museums, but in places that matter, in the countryside and in collections and stories. It touches all of us. How do we decide what to preserve? How do we make the case for heritage when there are so many other priorities? Playing with the Past is the first ever action-learning book about heritage. Over eighty creative activities and games encompass the basics of heritage practice, from management and decisionmaking to community engagement and leadership. Although designed to ‘train the trainers’, the activities in the book are relevant to anyone involved in caring for heritage.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Heritage Studies Archaeology

• eBook available January 2019

  Politics of Scale

  New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies

  Lähdesmäki, T., Thomas, S., & Zhu, Y. (eds)

  Critical Heritage Studies is a new and fast-growing interdisciplinary field of study seeking to explore power relations involved in the production and meaning-making of cultural heritage. Politics of Scale offers a global, multi- and interdisciplinary point of view to the scaled nature of heritage, and provides a theoretical discussion on scale as a social construct and a method in Critical Heritage Studies. The international contributors provide examples and debates from a range of diverse countries, discuss how heritage and scale interact in current processes of heritage meaning-making, and explore heritage-scale relationship as a domain of politics.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Museum Studies

• September 2008

  Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity

  Goodnow, K. & Akman, H. (eds)

  Museums face the task of representing the similarities and differences that exist between groups, such as national identities and indigenous and minority voices, material and intangible heritage, and current status and past history. In order to achieve this aim, a complex and not always easily compatible set of interests have to be taken into account, from those of the museum itself, to those of its main audiences, sources of support, and the groups that are, or wish to be, represented. The approach taken by Scandinavian museums in response to this challenge highlights a very active concern for forms of cultural diversity and how they are interrelated.

  By bringing together debates and discussions of diversity, this volume offers insight into the Nordic region and its diverse peoples, from the Sámi and the Inuit to newer immigrants. It presents a set of historical reviews on the formation of national museums and emerging and contested perceptions of national identity. Furthering the general debate on representations of diversity and museums, it also offers museum curators possible ways forward.

  Subject: Museum Studies

• December 2004

  Science, Magic and Religion

  The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic

  Bouquet, M. & Porto, N. (eds)

  For some time now, museums have been recognized as important institutions of western cultural and social life. The idea of the museum as a ritual site is fairly new and has been applied to the art museums in Europe and the United States so far. This volume expands it by exploring a range of contemporary museums in Europe and Africa. The case studies examine the different ways in which various actors involved in cultural production dramatize and ritualize such sites. It turns out that not only museum specialists, but visitors themselves are engaged in complex performances and experiences that make use of museums in often unexpected ways.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

• eBook available July 2018

  Sense and Essence

  Heritage and the Cultural Production of the Real

  Meyer, B. & van de Port, M. (eds)

  Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts—the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"—the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies Museum Studies

• July 2023

  The Spirit of Matter

  Modernity, Religion, and the Power of Objects

  Pels, P.

  A range of meaningful objects—exhibits of human remains or live people, fetishes, objects in a Catholic Museum, exotic photographs, commodities, and computers—demonstrate a subordinate modern consciousness about powerful objects and their ‘life’. The Spirit of Matter discusses these objects that move people emotionally but whose existence is often denied by modern wishful thinking of ‘mind over matter’. It traces this mindset back to Protestant Christian influences that were secularized in the course of modern and colonial history.

  Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Archaeology Museum Studies

• eBook available October 2013

  Transcultural Montage

  Suhr, C. & Willerslev, R. (eds)

  The disruptive power of montage has often been regarded as a threat to scholarly representations of the social world. This volume asserts the opposite: that the destabilization of commonsense perception is the very precondition for transcending social and cultural categories. The contributors—anthropologists, filmmakers, photographers, and curators—explore the use of montage as a heuristic tool for comparative analysis in anthropological writing, film, and exhibition making. Exploring phenomena such as human perception, memory, visuality, ritual, time, and globalization, they apply montage to restructure our basic understanding of social reality. Furthermore, as George E. Marcus suggests in the afterword, the power of montage that this volume exposes lies in its ability to open the very “combustion chamber” of social theory by juxtaposing one’s claims to knowledge with the path undertaken to arrive at those claims.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Museum Studies

• eBook available October 2021

  Transforming Author Museums

  From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs

  Spring, U., Schimanski, J., & Aarbakke, T. (eds)

  Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies

• eBook available January 2021

  Unlocking the Love-Lock

  The History and Heritage of a Contemporary Custom

  Houlbrook, C.

  Explores the worldwide popularity of the love-lock as a ritual token of love and commitment by considering its history, symbolism, and heritage.

  “[T]his is an eminently enjoyable and thorough investigation of a popular phenomenon through the lens of heritage and folk tradition.”—Sara De Nardi, Western Sydney University

  A padlock is a mundane object, designed to fulfil a specific – and secular – purpose. A contemporary custom has given padlocks new significance. This custom is ‘love-locking’, where padlocks are engraved with names and attached to bridges in declaration of romantic commitment. This custom became popular in the 2000s, and its dissemination was rapid, geographically unbound, and highly divisive, with love-locks emerging in locations as diverse as Paris and Taiwan; New York and Seoul; Melbourne and Moscow.

  From the introduction:
  I was distractedly perusing the photo frame aisle, my eyes skimming the generically sentimental stock pictures of happy families smiling at the camera, pretty landscapes, cute pets and couples walking hand-in-hand, when I came across one that jumped out at me…. I recognised the image instantly as a photograph of love-locks: the padlocks that had been appearing en masse on bridges and other public structures on a global scale since the early 2000s. And, having been researching the custom known as lovelocking for about five years at that point, it was with a peculiar sense of pride that I realised love-locks had accomplished the status of a stock image.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Archaeology Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available January 2019

  Views of Violence

  Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials

  Echternkamp, J. & Jaeger, S. (eds)

  Twenty-first-century views of historical violence have been immeasurably influenced by cultural representations of the Second World War. Within Europe, one of the key sites for such representation has been the vast array of museums and memorials that reflect contemporary ideas of war, the roles of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those who remember. This volume takes a historical perspective on museums covering the Second World War and explores how these institutions came to define political contexts and cultures of public memory in Germany, across Europe, and throughout the world.

  Subject: Museum Studies Memory Studies

• eBook available December 2017

  Visitors to the House of Memory

  Identity and Political Education at the Jewish Museum Berlin

  Bishop Kendzia, V.

  As one of the most visited museums in Germany’s capital city, the Jewish Museum Berlin is a key site for understanding not only German-Jewish history, but also German identity in an era of unprecedented ethnic and religious diversity. Visitors to the House of Memory is an intimate exploration of how young Berliners experience the Museum. How do modern students relate to the museum’s evocative architecture, its cultural-political context, and its narrative of Jewish history? By accompanying a range of high school history students before, during, and after their visits to the museum, this book offers an illuminating exploration of political education, affect, remembrance, and belonging.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Jewish Studies Educational Studies Memory Studies

• January 2018

  The Witness as Object

  Video Testimony in Memorial Museums

  Jong, S. de

  In recent years, historical witnessing has emerged as a category of "museum object." Audiovisual recordings of interviews with individuals remembering events of historical importance are now integral to the collections and research activities of museums. They have also become important components in narrative and exhibition design strategies. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes for the first time the new global phenomenon of the "musealization" of the witness to history, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of the transformation of video testimonies into exhibits.

  Subjects: Museum Studies History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Memory Studies

• eBook available April 2016

  World Heritage on the Ground

  Ethnographic Perspectives

  Brumann, C. & Berliner, D. (eds)

  The UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972 set the contemporary standard for cultural and natural conservation. Today, a place on the World Heritage List is much sought after for tourism promotion, development funding, and national prestige. Presenting case studies from across the globe, particularly from Africa and Asia, anthropologists with situated expertise in specific World Heritage sites explore the consequences of the World Heritage framework and the global spread of the UNESCO heritage regime. This book shows how local and national circumstances interact with the global institutional framework in complex and unexpected ways. Often, the communities around World Heritage sites are constrained by these heritage regimes rather than empowered by them.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies Archaeology Museum Studies