Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology

‘Collaborative Projects as Means to Transcend Western Epistemologies’

2024-01-12T13:59:54+00:00

In the last three decades, museums and museological practices that are fundamentally based on Western knowledge systems have been strongly questioned by a collective that includes Indigenous Peoples, political activists, representatives of civil society and scholars. In the historiographic reconstructions promoted by the academy, one of the touchstones is the so-called ‘new’ museology of the mid- 1980s (Vergo 1989).

Rewarding Citizen Participation in Exhibitions: A Questionnaire Surveying Museum Practices

2024-01-12T15:50:36+00:00

The paper presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative study undertaken by a team of museum professionals and researchers based at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem) in Marseilles, France, in 2020. The survey aimed to investigate the contemporary curation practices of European museums by asking in what ways collaboration enters into their scientific projects, curation and remuneration practices. The analysis draws on the survey responses of 118 French and international participants in their capacities as independent curators, representatives and professionals from European museums and patrimonial associations. In addition, two semi-structured interviews gave further insights into specific examples of collaborative or co-creative exhibitions, designed with vulnerable communities, that break with the norm of habitual power structures and dominant heritage production. The results indicate that, while the notion of ‘participation’ entails ambiguous categorizations ranging from academic to institutional to community actors, remuneration remains a desideratum, thus highlighting issues of acknowledgment, durability and, ultimately, the social legitimacy and justice of museal practices.

‘Indigenous Encyclopedias’: Displacements and the Repositioning of Logics, Voices and Narratives in the Relationship between Museums and Indigenous Groups (Brazil)

2024-01-15T10:03:02+00:00

This article seeks to bring value to the claims of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil through ‘encyclopedias’, libraries or dictionaries, forms of expression that indicate respect for elders and ancestors. It is developed within the political context of a struggle for constitutional rights, where land rights are at the center of complex historical issues marked by violence and violations. It recognizes the role of museums as active agents, especially with respect to collaborative actions in which indigenous groups and their representative agencies directly participate in museum actions with their ancestors’ objects. A collaborative experience is described in relation to the exhibition Resistência Já! Strengthening and Unity of Indigenous Cultures - Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa and Terena, MAE-USP. Throughout the discussion, reflections on museal collaboration are raised and indigenous authors embedded with the aim of expanding the point of view of museums and their working methods with comprehensive and active indigenous participation. The position of indigenous actors on cultural knowledge transmission and the elders’ role results in an increased political appreciation of the ‘encyclopedias’.

A Donkey for the White Visitor: Practices of Collecting (with) Forced Migrants

2024-01-15T13:13:22+00:00

At a time when public and political opinion towards forced migration is negatively inclined, many museums in Europe are applying a collaborative approach to address the stories of forced migrants (Boersma 2023; Sergi 2021). Through participatory projects, museum practitioners are attempting to put forward an alternative to the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (Smith 2006), yet their practices rarely accommodate a shift towards a more inclusive discourse. Aiming to shed light on the experienced limitations of collaborative curation, this paper scrutinizes what lies in the wake of a participatory project. Assuming a focus on collection practices as a result of participatory work, this paper looks at one project in particular: ‘daHEIM: Glances into Fugitive Lives’, which was organized at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin. Through interviews with former participants and museum practitioners, combined with one of the author’s lived experience of the project and its aftermaths, this paper unpacks the persistence of hierarchies within collaborative practices and the ways in which these feed into the discourse that is developed as a result. The paper starts from the process of collecting the potential outcomes of a participatory project within an inherently white institution, and it draws parallels between practices of care for people, as well as for their objects and artworks.

‘We Don’t Want Another White Guy to Tell our Story!’

2024-01-15T13:26:27+00:00

Collaboration with creator communities has become a new paradigm for ethnological museums. In this article, we discuss the possibilities and limits of cooperation with stakeholders from creator communities based on our experience of the last five years, during which we created an exhibition together with the Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. In 1894, the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde commissioned Francis La Flesche, who is today considered the first Indigenous ethnologist, to assemble a collection of his own culture, the Umoⁿhoⁿ. ‘We don’t want another white guy to tell our story!’, Wynema Morris, Professor at the NICC, made clear when we told her about our plans to do an exhibition together with the college. The historical collection became the starting point for a collaborative project that was developed from 2017 to 2022. The experiences of racism, violence and loss of land still influence the living conditions of the Umoⁿhoⁿ community today. In this context, the Berlin collection is of particular importance, because it bears witness to the resistance against colonization. It offers the Umoⁿhoⁿ the opportunity to reconnect with their ancestors and present their own history to a German public. The project also made clear how deeply inscribed colonial contexts are in the collections of ethnological museums.

A Room for Reaching in at the Heart of the Museum: Rethinking Dialogical Curating

2024-01-15T13:31:31+00:00

Museums often prioritize connecting with their audiences, but they may neglect the importance of providing internal spaces for staff to communicate openly. This article thinks through the first Prep Room project at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, whose invited residents were brought together in a process of dialogical curating museums staff. The goal was to transcend classic notions of curating by focusing on the processual aspects of co-creating multilayered transdisciplinary methodologies to foster an informal space for reflection and exchange. During these in-depth discussions, the participants explored the practical implications of having diverse ontologies in their collections and had an opportunity to reflect on their everyday practices.

Strategic Narcissism: A Lived Experience of ‘Decolonising’, Inclusion of and ‘Collaborations’ with Indigenous Researchers

2024-01-15T13:37:44+00:00

Based on my lived experience, the current decolonizing turn towards increasing the inclusion of and collaborations with indigenous researchers is characterized by strategic narcissism. Collaborations are shaped by wishful thinking, ignoring our lived experience and realities on the ground. While decolonizing is framed by Global North academic institutions as a moral project, it could be seen as empty, exploitative and extractive by indigenous researchers. In this short commentary, I reflect on recent ‘decolonial’ attempts to reform the practices and policies of inclusions of and collaborations with indigenous researchers based on my lived experience as an indigenous Egyptian heritage and museums researcher. I argue that the current promotion of Eurocentric perceptions of equity and ethics as universal is rooted in strategic narcissism. It serves the Global North in clearing its consciousness while forcing indigenous researchers into colonial assimilation and violence. I call for a shift towards empathy as an indigenous-centred approach to dismantling current recolonizing decolonial framing honouring the emotional tax and lived experience of indigenous researchers. Global North institutions and researchers are invited to self-reflect and question for whom are they doing this decolonizing work?

‚Um Grande Instrumento de Partilha‘

2024-01-15T13:46:21+00:00

This article is a multi-voiced report on an innovative method of teaching an introductory course on Amazonian ethnology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. This course foregrounds the voices of indigenous colleagues of the postgraduate program of social anthropology (PPGAS) of the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM). Indigenous interlocutors open up (via videoconference) a panorama of contemporary lifeworlds in Amazonia and reflect on it with their different approach of an Antropologia Indígena. This seminar amounts to a modest, albeit effective decolonizing method of teaching anthropology.

Delgado Rosa, Frederico and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.): Ethnographers Before Mali- nowski. Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870–1922. EASA Book Series, 44

2024-01-15T14:27:43+00:00

Eckert, Julia M. (ed.): The Bureaucratic Production of Difference: Ethos and Ethics in Migration Administration

2024-01-15T14:38:25+00:00

Beek, Jan, Thomas Bierschenk, Annalena Kolloch, and Bernd Meyer (eds.): Policing Race, Ethnicity and Culture. Ethnographic Perspectives Across Europe

2024-01-15T14:43:47+00:00

Dippel, Anne und Martin Warnke: Tiefen der Täuschung: Computersimulation und Wirklichkeitserzeugung

2024-01-15T14:49:27+00:00

Werthmann, Katja: City Life in Africa. Anthropological Insights

2024-01-15T14:53:12+00:00

Strange, Stuart Earle: Suspect Others: Spirit Mediums, Self-Knowledge, and Race in Multiethnic Suriname. Series: Anthropological Horizons

2024-01-15T14:56:34+00:00

Back to the Future of Humboldtian Museums

2024-01-15T13:53:31+00:00

Content/Inhalt

2024-01-12T11:19:12+00:00

Elke Mader Obituary (1954–2021)

2024-01-15T14:05:21+00:00