Academic Anthropology and the Museum Back to the Future [Paperback]

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.

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations

Introduction:Academic anthropology and the Museum. Back to the Future
Mary Bouquet

PART I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH THE POST-COLONIAL MUSEUM

Chapter 1.The photological apparatus and the desiring machine: Unexpected congruences between the Koninklijk Museum, Tervuren and the Umista Centre, Alert Bay
Barbara Saunders

Chapter 2.Picturing the museum: photography and the work of mediation in the Third Portuguese Empire
Nuno Porto

Chapter 3.On the pre-museum history of Baldwin Spencer's collection ol£