boasblog papers. Thinking About the Archive & Provenance Research

In the debate about the colonial past of ethnographic museums in Western Europe, provenance research has emerged as a central method for researching colonial legacies and addressing museums’ need for decolonisation. Researchers have started to investigate colonial era collections systematically to create a sound basis for dealing with these collections in the future. As a consequence, they are increasingly seen as archives in themselves. What has been lacking, however, is a debate about the theoretical implications of this approach – what are the implications of such an archival perspective and what kinds of knowledge can provenance research create? To find answers to this question, the authors of this volume engage with a range of materials – from the famous Benin Royal Collections to a seemingly insignificant Egyptian doll. They approach these materials sometimes on a theoretical, sometimes on a very practical level to offer their different visions of what a theoretically grounded provenance research may look like

The Gender of Ethnographic Collecting

What is the gender of ethnographic collecting? This question, if asked at all, is often given little attention in the study of ethnographic collecting. In the museums that house most ethnographic collections amassed during the colonial period, the question remains equally unasked. Objects are thought to reveal something about the gender relations of their original owners, but the gendered circumstances of their acquisition and of imperial expansion at large are almost never addressed. This issue of Boasblogs Papers brings together seven unique contributions that challenge this supposed gender neutrality and provide a range of perspectives on the gendered dimensions of ethnographic collecting. The issue centres the role of gender for histories of imperial ethnographic collecting, collections, and the related knowledge-making projects. It is about interrogating the ways histories of collecting are, conventionally, accounts told from masculine perspectives, producing gendered understandings not only of these histories and collections but of the practices and societies from which these collections are made

The Gender of Ethnographic Collecting

What is the gender of ethnographic collecting? This question, if asked at all, is often given little attention in the study of ethnographic collecting. In the museums that house most ethnographic collections amassed during the colonial period, the question remains equally unasked. Objects are thought to reveal something about the gender relations of their original owners, but the gendered circumstances of their acquisition and of imperial expansion at large are almost never addressed. This issue of Boasblogs Papers brings together seven unique contributions that challenge this supposed gender neutrality and provide a range of perspectives on the gendered dimensions of ethnographic collecting. The issue centres the role of gender for histories of imperial ethnographic collecting, collections, and the related knowledge-making projects. It is about interrogating the ways histories of collecting are, conventionally, accounts told from masculine perspectives, producing gendered understandings not only of these histories and collections but of the practices and societies from which these collections are made