Collections as Relations: Contestations of Belonging, Cultural Heritage, and Knowledge Infrastructures(Routledge Studies in Anthropology and Museums)

This book explores anthropological and global art collections as a catalyst, a medium, and an expression of relations. Relations—between and among objects and media, people, and material and immaterial contexts—define, configure, and potentially transform collection-related social and professional networks, discourses and practices, and increasingly museums and other collecting institutions themselves. The contributors argue that a focus on the—often contested—making and remaking of relations provides a unique conceptual entrypoint for understanding collections’—and ‘their’ objects’ and media’s—complex histories, contemporary webs of interactions, and potential futures. The chapters examine the local, translocal, and transregional relations of collections with regard to their affective, aesthetic, performative, and socio-moral qualities and situate them in the larger geopolitical constellations of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial settings. Together they investigate ongoing shifts in the relations of collections and collecting institutions by identifying alternative approaches to conceive of, and deal with, anthropological and global art collections, objects, and media in the future. The book is of interest to scholars from anthropology, global art history, museum studies, and heritage studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Collections as Relations (Hansjörg Dilger, Barbara Göbel, Lars-Christian Koch, Stephanie Schütze and Alexis von Poser) PART I: Identities and (Re-)Orientations of Belonging 1. Reorientating Provenance: Identifying Te Arawa Māori Works Cross-institutionally as a Decolonising Approach to Collections Research (Elizabeth Cory-Pearce) 2. Shared Soundscapes: Everyday Archiving and its Potentials for the De-mocratization of Anthropological Collections (Ingrid Kummels and Gisela Cánepa Koch) 3. “No One Had Ever Asked me to Tell the History of White People”, Translation and Enactment in an Artistic Collection on the Colonial Encounter (Thiago Oliveira da Costa and Andrea Scholz) 4. Materialising Relations? On Objects and Orientations in and out of the Museum (Magdalena Buchczyk) PART II: Cultural Heritage and Property Disputes 5. Collections between History, Law and Justice: Reflections on the Debate about Restitution, Colonial Provenance, and Ownership (Larissa Förster) 6. Colonial Cultural Heritage as Disputed Heritage? The Case of Cameroon and Germany (Richard Tsogang Fossi) 7. The Collection of the Ayoreode in the BASA Museum as Glocal Space (Carla Jaimes Betancourt, Karoline Noack and Naomi Rattunde) 8. Towards Democratising the Production of Knowledge: Collaboratively Researching Sensitive Collections from Namibia (Julia Binter) PART III: Epistemic Cultures and Knowledge Infrastructures 9. The Afterlives of Gold Artefacts from Southeast Asia (Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz) 10. Challenging the Jacobsen Collections from the American Northwest Coast and Alaska. A Long Duree of Multilateral Engagement and Complex Relationships 1881-2021 (Viola König) 11. Vegetal Entanglements across Collections: Flowers and Medicinal Herbs in Chinese Art and Material Culture (Juliane Noth) 12. From Index Cards to Digital Catalogues: Incomplete Object Documentation as Reflection Space (Quoc-Tan Tran) Afterword (Sharon Macdonald)

About the Author :
Hansjörg Dilger is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Barbara Göbel is Director of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Honorary Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Lars-Christian Koch is Director of the Ethnologisches Museum and Museum fur Asiatische Kunst (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections at the Humboldt Forum. He is also Professor of Musicology at Universitat zu Koln and Honorary Professor at Universitat der Kunste Berlin and Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Germany. Stephanie Schütze is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology in the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Alexis Th. von Poser is Deputy Director of the Ethnologisches Museum and Museum fur Asiatische Kunst (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Honorary Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.

Review :
“Now that colonial objects can no longer be seen as mute, but speak to us in multiple voices, it is acute to attend to the roles they play and relations they establish. Collections as Relations is a rich and novel approach to think the complex politics of collections.” Amade M'charek, University of Amsterdam “Tailored for scholars and professionals in anthropology, history, art, and cultural heritage, the book explores nuanced facets of cultural identity, colonial legacies, and museum ethics, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue across multifaceted subjects in cultural studies and heritage preservation.” Maryam Mansab, Department of Museum and Antiquities, Zanzibar “Collections as Relations is itself a fascinating collection that shows just how productive collections can be for exploring relations of multiple kinds. These include those that reveal forgotten, suppressed and ambiguous histories, as well as those that open up possibilities for activating new relations.” Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin