Hunting the gatherers : ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s / edited by Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

O'Hanlon, Michael, editor.

Welsch, Robert Louis, 1950- editor.

Series:

Methodology and history in anthropology ; v. 6.

Methodology and history in anthropology ; volume 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnological museums and collections--History.

Ethnological museums and collections.

Museums--Acquisitions--Melanesia--History.

Museums.

Ethnology--Fieldwork--Melanesia.

Ethnology.

Material culture--Melanesia.

Material culture.

Collectors and collecting--Melanesia--History.

Collectors and collecting.

Melanesia--Antiquities--Collection and preservation.

Melanesia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 pages) : illustrations.

Other Title:

Ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2000.

Summary:

Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Notes on contributors

Preface

1. Introduction

2. Gathering for God: George Brown and the Christian Economy in the Collection of Artefacts

3. Exploring Tensions in Material Culture: Commercialising Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870–1904

4. ‘Before it has Become too Late’: The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea

5. Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material Culture in British New Guinea, 1898

6. Collecting Pygmies: the ‘Tapiro’ and the British Ornithologists’ Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910–1911

7. One Time, One Place, Three Collections: Colonial Processes and the Shaping of Some Museum Collections from German New Guinea

8. The Careless Collector: Malinowski and the Antiquarians

9. Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow: A Paradigm Shift from Physical Anthropology to Art Styles

10. On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism

11. Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist

12. Epilogue

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781571818119

1571818111

9780857456915

0857456911

OCLC:

994873641