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