LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:7 July 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2021
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

A Study on the Changing Roles and Responsibilities of Ethnographic Museums with Respect to Indigenous Peoples

Onshangla Zimik, M.Phil.

Abstract

Museums during colonial era reflected the mindset of the period. Indigenous peoples were represented as unchanging and frozen in time as they were displayed in a diorama form alongside extinct dinosaurs in natural history museums. They were classified and presented as “exotic”, “savage”, primitive”, “barbaric” and on the verge of extinction based on Western scientific categories which helped in legitimizing colonial rule. However, museums around the world have had to reevaluate their museological practices and roles in the light of postcolonial theory and criticism. Since the 1980’s, a new museological form emerged which sought to involve the source communities in the interpretation of their culture. Moreover, the adoption of 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO has contributed to the importance of intangible cultural heritage in museums which was ignored earlier. In this respect, the paper attempts to present the changing roles and responsibilities of museums as they reinvent themselves to stay relevant in the societies in which they exist.

Keywords: Ethnographic Museums, Representation, New Museology, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Indigenous people

History of Ethnographic Museums

Ethnographic museums are those institutions that are involved in the representation of ‘other’ culture. Before the era of internet and mass tourism, museum was a medium through which the general public could witness the ‘material evidence’ of other societies studied by anthropologists. Therefore, in ethnographic museums of the colonial era, “objects stood metonymically for the distant ‘other’ and distant places experienced and analyzed by anthropologists” (Harris, Hanlon 8).

Anthropology as an academic discipline emerged in the late nineteenth century and was closely linked to ethnographic and ethnological collections in museums. This new discipline sought to study human ways of life mainly of non-European nations. Most objects in ethnographic museums belong to societies who were believed to be “‘exotic’, ‘primitive’, ‘simple’, ‘savage’, or ‘vanishing races’” and at one point in history have encountered western explorers, missionaries, colonizers and anthropologists (Lidchi 161). The kind of representations and classification systems to be found in ethnographic museums are made according to anthropological theory of a particular historical time. As such, Lidchi argues that the science of anthropology is a “science of invention” rather than “science of discovery”. In her own words:

It is not reflective of the essential nature of cultural difference, but classifies and constitutes this difference systematically and coherently, in accordance with a particular view of the world that emerges in a specific place, at a distinct historical moment and within a specific body of knowledge (Lidchi 161-162).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Onshangla Zimik, M.Phil.
Doctoral Candidate
Centre for Comparative Literature and Translation Studies
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies
Central University of Gujarat
Sector - 29
Gandhinagar – 382030
Gujarat, India
onshangla@hotmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.