Cataloguing culture legacies of colonialism in museum documentation / Hannah Turner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Turner, Hannah, 1986- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)--Case studies.

National Museum of Natural History (U.S.).

Museums--Collection management--Case studies.

Museums.

Ethnological museums and collections--Case studies.

Ethnological museums and collections.

Indians of North America--Material culture--Case studies.

Indians of North America.

Museums and Indigenous peoples--Case studies.

Museums and Indigenous peoples.

Indians of North America--Material culture.

Museums and Indians.

Museums--Collection management.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 243 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Vancouver, BC ; Toronto : UBC Press, [2020]

Summary:

"How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing--hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations --much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism operates in museum bureaucracies. Using the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History as her reference, Hannah Turner organizes her study by the technologies framing museum work over 200 years: field records, the ledger, the card catalogue, the punch card, and eventually the database. She examines how categories were applied to ethnographic material culture and became routine throughout federal collecting institutions. As Indigenous communities encounter the documentary traces of imperialism while attempting to reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on access to and return of cultural heritage."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Writing Desiderata: Defining Evidence in the Field

On the Margins: Paper Systems of Classification

Ordering Devices and Indian Files: Cataloguing Ethnographic Specimens

Pragmatic Classification: The Routine Work of Description After 1950

Object, Specimen, Data: Computerization and the Legacy of Dirty Data.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Turner, Hannah, 1986- Cataloguing culture legacies of colonialism in museum documentation.

ISBN:

0774863927

9780774863926

OCLC:

1140783160