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Representing a cutting-edge study of the junction between theoretical anthropology, material culture studies, religious studies and museum anthropology, this study examines the interaction between the human and the nonhuman in a museum setting usually defined as 'non-Western', 'non-scientific' and 'religious.' Combining an on-site analysis of exhibitive spaces with archival research and interviews with museum curators, the chapters highlight contradictions of museum practices, and suggests that museum practitioners use museum spaces and artefacts as a way of formulating new theoretical stances in material culture studies, thus viewing museums as producers of theories together with affective engagements.
List of contents
List of illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction Chapter 1. What Thing Is This? Indian Storytelling Scrolls
Chapter 2. Curatorial Understanding of the Sacred within Museum Walls: Metalogues in Dialogue with Scholarship
Chapter 3. Manipulating Sacred Force: Scrolls and Copies
Chapter 4. Material Engagements in the Colony: Legacies and Changes in Perspective
Chapter 5. Reconstructing the Sacred: Temples or Museum Galleries?
Chapter 6. When Religious Power is Limiting: The World Museum in Liverpool
Chapter 7. For a Reappraisal of Phenomenology: A Perspectival Approach to Materiality
Conclusions: Returning to Museums
Appendix to the Pictures
References
Index
About the author
Valentina Gamberi was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology in Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, from 2019 to 2020. She is currently one of the recipients of the junior fellowship at the Research Centre for Material Culture in Leiden. Her English articles are featured in Culture and Religion, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Material Religion and Environmental Philosophy.
Summary
This study highlights the contradictions of museum practices and, at the same time, the potentialities that contemporary museums could offer for an engaging relationship between visitors and museum artefacts and for rethinking or, better, 'softening' specific approaches in material culture studies.
