Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Museum Anthropology

Media

Part of Museum Anthropology

Title

Museum Anthropology

extracted text

Museum Anthropology
CANDACE S. GREENE

Abstract
Museum anthropology is a vigorous and growing perspective within anthropology.
It applies insights from cultural anthropology to the assessment of how museums
represent cultures, and increasingly looks to museum collections as the material
record of cultures over time. It is a theoretical approach, distinct from technical
aspects of museum operation, such as collections care and exhibit production,
although in best practice, each informs the other. Degree programs in Museum
Studies may include training in either theoretical museum anthropology or operational aspects, although more programs focus on the later aspect and are not specific
to the discipline of anthropology.

INTRODUCTION
American anthropology first developed in museums, and collections were
considered key sources of primary data as well as a core product of field
explorations. During the twentieth century, anthropology became disconnected from museums as the discipline relocated its institutional center to
universities and shifted its research interests to intensive local studies of
particular cultures and societies with an emphasis on original fieldwork
(Bouquet, 2001; Collier & Tschopik, 1954; Stocking, 1985; Thomas, 2010).
Anthropology has arrived now at a new conceptual and practical moment
when museums and collections are again integral to the discipline, with the
Council for Museum Anthropology that is an active section of the American
Anthropological Association. There is a large and diverse body of relevant
theory to be applied, there are numerous publication outlets, and there are
clear opportunities for mutually productive collaboration with the source
communities in which collections originated.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
In the past 30 years, anthropology has developed a new understanding of
museums, defining them as sites for the production of knowledge as well as
its dissemination to a wide audience.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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REFLEXIVE TURN
Renewed interest in museums was stimulated by the reflexive turn in anthropology. As places of public display of knowledge, they have provided an
ideal site for anthropology to examine itself. The discipline has found museums “good to think with,” reflective of intellectual currents and tensions
within the field. A series of key texts appearing in the 1980s and the early
1990s inspired researchers to conceptualize new ways to look at museums
and their anthropological holdings, focusing particularly on exhibits (Ames,
1986, 1992; Clifford, 1988; Karp & Lavine, 1991; Karp, Kreamer, Lavine, &
Lavine, 1992).
Museums and their role in public culture have become a frequent subject
for ethnographic analysis. These studies have applied classic anthropological
methods—observation, interviews, and archival research—to create a new
genre of reflexive museum ethnography. The overarching theme is the cultural and social politics of representation. Some key texts are the papers published by Clifford (1988, 1997), Haraway (1989), Handler and Gable (1997),
Macdonald and Fyfe (1996), Pearce (1992), and Stocking (1985) to name but a
few. These studies have examined museum and related heritage institutions
as sites for remembering (and forgetting), as evidence of social change, and
as the colonial legacy of shifting asymmetrical power relations. Exhibits and
displays in museums, expositions, and other venues have been a focal point
for many scholars who concentrate on how people interact with objects in
terms of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic experience. Scholars have dealt
critically with how visual representations have influenced views of cultures,
races, and gender in the past and the present, offered challenges to cannons
of authenticity, and presented nuanced explorations of commodification.
A rich literature examines collecting histories and the complex ways artifacts have entered museums and left them (e.g., Barringer, Barringer, & Flynn
1998; Byrne, 2011; Cardinal & Elsner, 1994; O’Hanlon & Welsch, 2000; Wintle, 2013). A common theme is the impact of colonialism, while other topics
are broader intellectual history, questions of how well collections represent
the material culture of source communities, and the bias evident in different
collecting strategies and resultant museum collections. For example, Gosden and Larson (2007) apply network analysis to the Pitt Rivers Museum
to demonstrate that museums are as much about social relations as they are
about objects.
Museums and the objects they contain have also been examined as part
of broader cultural processes in the modern world, including globalization,
nation building, identity, tourism, and appropriation (Handler, 1988; Kaplan,
1994; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998; Macdonald, 1998; Phillips, 1998; Rankin
& Hamilton, 1999). The processes by which objects become defined as art

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and the markets in which they then circulate have received substantial attention within anthropology (Gell, 1998; Marcus & Myers, 1995; Morphy, 2007;
Myers, 2001; Phillips & Steiner, 1999; Plattner, 1996). Tracing the life histories,
or “biographies,” of objects has proven a particularly productive strategy for
understanding not only their place within the culture of origin but also the
paths by which they arrived at museums (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986).
INDIGENOUS INTEREST
Indigenous people in many parts of the world have also rediscovered museums as sites of importance and locations where they are actively seeking to
reclaim their tangible and intangible cultural heritage. They have used museums to assert rights to self-definition in interpretation and to exercise cultural
sovereignty over objects. These processes have highlighted an often-troubled
history of anthropological engagement, for which museums frequently stand
as a visible symbol. Museums are acknowledged to have preserved a material
heritage that in many cases would otherwise have been lost, but also signify
histories of colonialism, repression, and appropriation (Edwards, Gosden, &
Phillips, 2006; Karp, Kratz, & Szwaja, 2006; Lonetree, 2012; Peers & Brown,
2003; Ziff & Rao 1997). While much attention has focused on human remains
since the passage in the United States of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, indigenous claims have been pursued worldwide
for the return of a wide array of museum materials; internationally the UN is
involved with museums as parts of human rights, intellectual property, and
social justice initiatives (Biolsi & Zimmerman, 1997; Canadian Museum of
Civilization, 1996; Fabian, 2010; Fforde, 2004; Mihesuah, 2000).
Museums are recognized as powerful sites of cultural representation, more
persuasive, and with broader reach than anthropological texts. Indigenous
people in many nations are asserting claims to self-representation and control
over curation. The inclusion of “native voice” in exhibits and collections management is now routine, and co-curation is common (Lonetree & Cobb, 2008;
McCarthy, 2011; Sleeper-Smith, 2009). Many source communities are developing their own museums, taking on the challenge of making meaning from
objects in ways that promise new insights from indigenous scholars working
in interdisciplinary endeavors (Isaac, 2007; Kreps, 2003; Stanley, 2007; Watt
& Laurie-Beaumont, 2008).
CURRENT TRENDS
Anthropology has experienced an explosion of interest in objects in recent
years. Objects have emerged as integral to sociality, an active agent in
social, political, and economic relations. This material turn, shared with

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a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, frames
a number of theoretical stances under diverse terms, such as materiality,
material culture, visual culture, and thing theory (Hicks, 2010). While much
of the research in anthropology is rooted in ethnographic observation or
archaeological fieldwork and analysis, the paradigm of materiality provides
a framework for the examination of extant collections in museums. This
is still a new research front for application in museum anthropology, with
methods not yet fully defined to interrogate the host of objects awaiting
study in the light of current interests. At present, the strongest engagement with collections-based research derives from programs in the United
Kingdom, whereas in the United States, programs focus more strongly
on engagement with source communities, primarily Native Americans.
A recent British workshop assessed the future of ethnographic museums
(Harris & O’Hanlon, 2013; Zetterstrom-Sharp, 2013), while one at the
Smithsonian looked at the engagement of indigenous people with virtual
access to collections (Bell, Christen, & Turin, 2013).
THE MATERIAL MOMENT
The reappearance of objects in anthropological research has broad roots but
sources of particular influence in museum anthropology include Appadurai’s The Social Life of Things (Appadurai, 1986), Glassie’s anthropological
folklore (Glassie, 1999), and Hodder’s approaches to archaeology (Hodder,
1986). Artifacts once again are recognized both as the material representation
of human actions, beliefs, and social institutions and as an active agent in
creating them. The literature on objects has now reached sufficient density
that a series of handbooks and readers on the nature of material culture have
been published. Those oriented toward anthropological concerns include
the volumes by Bennett and Joyce (2010); Candlin and Guins (2009); Hicks
and Beaudry (2010); Miller (2005, 2009); and Tilley, Keane, and Küchler
(2006). Much of the current work is densely theoretical, focused on defining
principles of object agency, rather than exploring the history or form of any
particular material culture.
Building upon Marcel Mauss’s 1925 classic critical analysis translated
into English as The Gift, scholars have revisited various dimensions of
exchange, ranging from individual or interfamilial exchanges to commodities passing through world markets, and the ways in which gifts affirm
social relationships. Comparative mapping of social and material worlds is
now the subject of many scholars. The study of how materials are collected
and transmitted also infuses work in cultural studies. Objects are central
in studies of how value is created and transmitted and the aesthetics of
actions and practices that inform the social worlds within which objects

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emerge. With long-held sensitivities to the material world, anthropologists
contribute to international and local discussions of heritage and connections
between tangible and intangible forms of culture (Bell, 2008; Bouquet, 2012;
Edwards, Gosden, & Phillips, 2006; Henare, Holbraad, & Wastell, 2007).
The field of visual anthropology has similarly begun to engage museum
collections. It has extended beyond early roots in filmmaking as an ethnographic method and the analysis of moving image records, to a broader
interest in photographs as both image and object (Banks, 2001; Edwards,
2001) and from there to a consideration of the anthropology of art, including
non-Western traditions and media (Banks & Morphy, 1997; Bouquet, 2012).
RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS AGENCY
Engagement with members of source communities, descendants of the
people among whom many museum objects originated, has stimulated an
interest in exploring the influence of indigenous people in the assembly of
collections. The major issues in this research topic were defined by O’Hanlon
and Welsch (2000), who made clear that overarching narratives of exploitation and appropriation have often obscured the active roles of indigenous
individuals in processes of exchange. Recent edited volumes bring together
new case studies on the topic (Byrne, 2011; Harrison, Byrne, & Clarke,
2013). Recognition of indigenous agency in the creation of older museum
collections remains a challenging domain for ongoing scholarship, requiring
peeling away constructed narratives of primitivism and disempowerment
(Bell, Brown, & Gordon, 2013). Engagement with descendants has proven a
productive strategy, providing both specific historical memories and more
general knowledge about the processes through which object exchange is
negotiated (Greene, 2001, 2013).
CO-PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
As noted, one of the most powerful forces drawing anthropologists into
museums has been indigenous interest. Communities around the world
that have been the source of collections are interested in engaging with this
material heritage; they seek to revitalize their connections with it in broader
and more complicated ways that go beyond claims for physical possession.
Initially conceived as an ethical obligation, often in response to repatriation
claims, anthropologists are beginning to develop a broader body of theory
as well as practice in relation to the co-production of knowledge about
museum collections, as the dialogue around objects offers a new type of
field site to consider how culture is questioned, researched, and constructed
(Isaac, 2007, 2011; Kreps, 2003; Lonetree & Cobb, 2008; Sleeper-Smith, 2009).

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FUTURE DIRECTIONS
While the topics laid out above will continue to engage the anthropology
productively for many years, others are likely to emerge.
COLLECTIONS AS RESEARCH DATA
Museums are databanks filled with objects available for study. However, will
anthropology be concerned with questions to which this data is relevant?
Two broad trends within anthropology suggest that museum collections will
again be viewed as research data. One trend is an increased commitment
to empiricism, emerging in the wake of dissatisfaction with postmodernism. Objects constitute observable data points, and those preserved
in public repositories are accessible for reexamination and verification.
Foundational work in museum ethnography and collaborative work with
source communities have provided a basis for placing these objects within
various frames of knowledge, ensuring that the new empiricism will be
anthropologically informed. The other trend is an increased interest in
the temporal range typically covered by ethnographic collections, some
100–200 years. This middle range is a compliment to the focus on the present
inherent in ethnographic observation and to the deeper time frames most
commonly investigated in archaeology. Ethnographic museum collections
offer a unique source of information reaching back some 200 years, covering
a period during which societies around the global changed dramatically.
Collections often represent the only possibility of recovering past native
voices and recognizing indigenous agency, too often silenced by the written
record.
THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM
Museums are committing major resources to providing online access to
collections in the form of digital images of objects, creating a new form of
engagement. Scholars are just beginning to examine the conceptual implications of online access to images, as virtual objects circulate in cyberspace.
This promises to be a field of lively debate engaging theory drawn from
media studies, visual anthropology, and materiality as well as wider learning
theory.
THE NATURAL HISTORY CONNECTION
Anthropology has long been uncomfortable with its historic and current ties
to museums of natural history. Late twentieth-century anthropological critiques of museums revealed the racist foundations for placing the study of

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non-Western people within a natural history paradigm, and museum-based
anthropologists have struggled to overcome this unhappy legacy. However,
museum anthropology is now beginning to reassess its relationship to natural science, acknowledging that the schism between nature and culture is a
Western epistemological construct not shared by all societies. Some anthropologists are exploring the positive aspects of positioning cultural materials
within natural history museums, such as serving source community interests
in exploring a fully emplaced heritage, facilitating interdisciplinary investigation of environmental change, and encouraging serious consideration of
traditional environmental knowledge.
THEORIZED PRACTICE
Ethnographic studies of museums have provided a foundation for theorized
museum practice, a specialized domain of applied anthropology. This perspective is now most often applied in the field of public engagement (i.e.,
exhibits and programs), as museums are major sites where anthropological understanding is presented to the public. An important question for the
future is the extent to which theorized practice can productively infuse and
inform wider museum practices, ranging from preservation to registration
and cataloging, or whether “best practices” developed in Western museums
should be widely applied as nations around the world expand their museum
capacity (Kreps, 2003; Lorente, 2012; Shelton, 2013).
NEW CHALLENGES
The full development of museum anthropology to meet its promise will
require overcoming challenges in both human resources and the appropriate
application of technology.
THE KNOWLEDGE GAP
Describing anthropology’s twentieth-century disinterest in museums, one
scholar noted “the social and the material parted company so radically (in
some places) as to produce a kind of knowledge gap between historical
collections and the intellectuals who might have been expected to work
on them” (Bouquet, 2001, p. 2). While universities now offer many courses
in museum and material theory, only a few have faculty able to provide
training in how to use museum collections as data collection sites within
broader anthropological inquiry. They lack either personal expertise or
hands-on access to museum resources. Yet before collections can be a useful
source of information for the questions of today, emerging scholars will

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have to envision new methodologies to interrogate data assembled in other
times for different purposes. Anthropology needs to develop systematic
training in collections use, more widely extending the type of training
now offered by the Smithsonian’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology under a series of grants from the National Science Foundation (see
anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute).
A related knowledge gap is expertise in material culture—the ability to recognize and assess artifacts on the basis of materials, techniques, and styles,
and a familiarity with their temporal and cultural associations. Long devalued in anthropology as a form of antiquarianism, a strong knowledge of the
material record is an essential skill to make meaningful observations and to
assess incomplete documentation in museum records.
THE RESOURCE GAP
A second major challenge is the general shortage of resources within
museums, and the direction of scarce resources toward public engagement
and technical aspects of museum professionalism rather than toward
anthropological concerns. Curatorial positions are being reduced in number
and influence. This resource shift limits access to collections for research
purposes and reduces the incorporation of anthropological thinking into
public engagement. Ironically as anthropology embraces the material turn,
museums are increasingly shifting resources toward digital surrogates
and online access, assuming that virtual access will serve audiences more
efficiently than physical access. Alarmingly, pressed by the high cost of professionalism, some universities are divesting themselves of anthropological
holdings or consolidating them within art museums. Unless anthropological
collections are viewed as essential to teaching and research, only a few
universities will be able to justify maintaining them.
TECHNOLOGICAL AGENDAS
Museum anthropology has yet to organize around any major agenda that
would articulate pan-institutional needs and define resource requirements.
At present, it is a largely theoretical, discursive field, defining issues and
implementing actions largely at the local level. Wider action will require a
broad vision of museum collections as a distributed record of the material
past, leading to greater collaboration among scholars and museums to make
that resource useful. Better information access and development of technological resources will surely be a part of whatever wider vision emerges.
Significant research on broad topics requires the use of larger sets of cultural material than any single museum can provide, but discovery of relevant

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material is now a tedious process impeding research. Overcoming this limitation will require linking repository databases without flattening the complexity of cultural histories through imposition of overly standardized nomenclature. Numerous current regional efforts such as the Reciprocal Research
Network based at University of British Columbia (rrncommunity.org), all
largely developed to serve source communities, can provide case studies of
various models and difficulties in practice. Of related concern is the fact that
most museum documentation remains in analog form with digital catalogs
containing only a few fields of information.
New forms of technical analyses also have the potential to yield transformative new information about museum collections. The possibility to source
and date constituent materials offers enormous potential to increase the types
of research that could be undertaken with objects, with studies ranging from
dating of commercial dye stuffs to preferential use of avian species in religious regalia to the biological relationships revealed by strands of human
hair accidentally woven into baskets by their makers.
OBJECTS, KNOWLEDGE, AND POWER
The debates that are likely to occur within museum anthropology relate to
the many publics that museums serve, underlying ethics of anthropological
practice and the circulation of knowledge. Access enabled by digitization has
generated both conflict and creative collaborations, generating new thinking
about intellectual property (Bell, Christen, & Turin, 2013; Jackson, 2010).
Objects embody knowledge, and knowledge is powerful. The politics of knowledge control will be increasingly debated within museum
anthropology as two trends of the “information age” converge. One is the
increasing expectation for online open access to publicly held resources
such as museum collections. The other is the increased recognition of the
entanglement of intangible cultural heritage and material heritage, and
acknowledgement of the rights of source communities. Some community
members celebrate new forms of access while others express concerns about
public access to the knowledge that objects embody. Cultural traditions may
stress the importance of controlling knowledge, often along lines of age,
gender, descent, or social position.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGAGEMENT
Museum anthropology is beginning a profitable engagement with three
other disciplines: visitor studies, information science, and material science.
At present, museum ethnography and visitor studies stand as largely
separate ways of examining public interpretation in museums. An emergent

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cross-fertilization of method and theory should enrich both fields. An even
more promising engagement is now forming between museum computerization, thus far heavily focused on technical capacity, and theoretical aspects
of information science, which are beginning to include anthropological
insights on systems of knowledge. Material science has long had an impact
on archaeology, ranging from materials analysis to dating, and it offers the
capacity for similar application to a wider array of more recent materials in
museums as research questions emerge. Related biological analyses ranging
from DNA sequencing to isotope studies as well as more conventional
identification processes will also support more rigorous questioning of
received wisdom about past human-environmental interactions.

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reader. London, England: Routledge.
Phillips, R. B. (1998). Trading identities: The souvenir in native North American art from
the northeast, 1700–1900. Seattle, DC: University of Washington Press.
Phillips, R. B., & Steiner, C. B. (Eds.) (1999). Unpacking culture: Art and commodity in
colonial and postcolonial worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Plattner, S. (1996). High art down home: An economic ethnography of a local art market.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rankin, E., & Hamilton, C. (1999). REVISION; REACTION; RE-VISION; The role of
museums in (a) transforming South Africa. Museum Anthropology, 22(3), 3–13.
Shelton, A. (2013). Critical museology: A manifesto. Museum Worlds: Advances in
Research, 1, 7–23.
Sleeper-Smith, S. (Ed.) (2009). Contesting knowledge: Museums and indigenous perspectives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Stanley, N. (Ed.) (2007). The future of indigenous museums: Perspectives from the southwest Pacific. Museums and collections. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
Stocking, G. W. (Ed.) (1985). Objects and others: Essays on museums and material culture.
History of anthropology (Vol. 3). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Thomas, N. (2010). The museum as method. Museum Anthropology, 33(1), 6–10.
Tilley, C. Y., Keane, W., & Küchler, S. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of material culture. London, England: Sage.
Watt, L. J., & Laurie-Beaumont, B. L. (2008). Native museums and cultural centers.
In G. Bailey (Ed.), Indians in contemporary society. Handbook of North American
Indians (Vol. 2). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Wintle, C. (2013). Colonial collecting and display: Encounters with material culture from
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Museums and collections (Vol. 4, 1st ed.). New
York, NY: Berghahn Books.

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Zetterstrom-Sharp, J. (2013). The future of ethnographic museums. Anthropology
Today, 29(6), 27.
Ziff, B. H., & Rao, P. V. (Eds.) (1997). Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

CANDACE S. GREENE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Candace S. Greene (PhD, University of Oklahoma, 1985; MA, Brown University, 1977) is an ethnologist with the Department of Anthropology in the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and works on special
projects with the Collections and Archives Program. Before joining the Smithsonian, she worked in museums in Texas, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. She
specializes in the study of Plains pictorial art and is particularly interested in
the issues of representation and the recognition of individual agency in historic art and material culture. She directs the Summer Institute in Museum
Anthropology, a graduate training program at the Smithsonian supported by
the National Science Foundation, which teaches research methods for the use
of ethnographic collections.
She is the author of many publications, including One Hundred Summers: A
Kiowa Calendar Record (University of Nebraska Press, 2009) and Silver Horn:
Master Illustrator of the Kiowa (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001) and senior
editor of The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). She curated a companion online exhibit Lakota
Winter Counts, which was honored by the United Nations with a World Summit Award and received a Webby Award in 2005.
RELATED ESSAYS
History and Epistemology of Anthropology (Anthropology), Arjun
Appadurai
Mental Models (Psychology), Ruth M.J. Byrne
Authenticity: Attribution, Value, and Meaning (Sociology), Glenn R. Carroll
Culture and Cognition (Sociology), Karen A. Cerulo
Misinformation and How to Correct It (Psychology), John Cook et al.
Micro-Cultures (Sociology), Gary Alan Fine
Cognitive Processes Involved in Stereotyping (Psychology), Susan T. Fiske
and Cydney H. Dupree
Empathy Gaps between Helpers and Help-Seekers: Implications for Cooperation (Psychology), Vanessa K. Bohns and Francis J. Flynn
Cultural Heritage, Patrimony, and Repatriation (Anthropology), Richard
Handler
Ethnography in the Digital Age (Methods), Alan Howard and Alexander
Mawyer

Museum Anthropology

15

History and Materiality (Anthropology), Rosemary A. Joyce
Exploring Opportunities in Cultural Diversity (Political Science), David D.
Laitin and Sangick Jeon
Funerary Practices, Funerary Contexts, and Death in Archaeology (Archaeology), Kirsi O. Lorentz
Visualizing Globalization (Sociology), Matthew C. Mahutga and Robert
Nash-Parker
Alternative Polities (Archaeology), Roderick J. McIntosh
The Material Turn (Communications & Media), Chandra Mukerji
Cultural Conflict (Sociology), Ian Mullins
Culture as Situated Cognition (Psychology), Daphna Oyserman
Production of Culture (Sociology), Vaughn Schmutz and Candace N. Miller
Culture and Globalization (Sociology), Frederick F. Wherry



Museum Anthropology
CANDACE S. GREENE

Abstract
Museum anthropology is a vigorous and growing perspective within anthropology.
It applies insights from cultural anthropology to the assessment of how museums
represent cultures, and increasingly looks to museum collections as the material
record of cultures over time. It is a theoretical approach, distinct from technical
aspects of museum operation, such as collections care and exhibit production,
although in best practice, each informs the other. Degree programs in Museum
Studies may include training in either theoretical museum anthropology or operational aspects, although more programs focus on the later aspect and are not specific
to the discipline of anthropology.

INTRODUCTION
American anthropology first developed in museums, and collections were
considered key sources of primary data as well as a core product of field
explorations. During the twentieth century, anthropology became disconnected from museums as the discipline relocated its institutional center to
universities and shifted its research interests to intensive local studies of
particular cultures and societies with an emphasis on original fieldwork
(Bouquet, 2001; Collier & Tschopik, 1954; Stocking, 1985; Thomas, 2010).
Anthropology has arrived now at a new conceptual and practical moment
when museums and collections are again integral to the discipline, with the
Council for Museum Anthropology that is an active section of the American
Anthropological Association. There is a large and diverse body of relevant
theory to be applied, there are numerous publication outlets, and there are
clear opportunities for mutually productive collaboration with the source
communities in which collections originated.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
In the past 30 years, anthropology has developed a new understanding of
museums, defining them as sites for the production of knowledge as well as
its dissemination to a wide audience.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

REFLEXIVE TURN
Renewed interest in museums was stimulated by the reflexive turn in anthropology. As places of public display of knowledge, they have provided an
ideal site for anthropology to examine itself. The discipline has found museums “good to think with,” reflective of intellectual currents and tensions
within the field. A series of key texts appearing in the 1980s and the early
1990s inspired researchers to conceptualize new ways to look at museums
and their anthropological holdings, focusing particularly on exhibits (Ames,
1986, 1992; Clifford, 1988; Karp & Lavine, 1991; Karp, Kreamer, Lavine, &
Lavine, 1992).
Museums and their role in public culture have become a frequent subject
for ethnographic analysis. These studies have applied classic anthropological
methods—observation, interviews, and archival research—to create a new
genre of reflexive museum ethnography. The overarching theme is the cultural and social politics of representation. Some key texts are the papers published by Clifford (1988, 1997), Haraway (1989), Handler and Gable (1997),
Macdonald and Fyfe (1996), Pearce (1992), and Stocking (1985) to name but a
few. These studies have examined museum and related heritage institutions
as sites for remembering (and forgetting), as evidence of social change, and
as the colonial legacy of shifting asymmetrical power relations. Exhibits and
displays in museums, expositions, and other venues have been a focal point
for many scholars who concentrate on how people interact with objects in
terms of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic experience. Scholars have dealt
critically with how visual representations have influenced views of cultures,
races, and gender in the past and the present, offered challenges to cannons
of authenticity, and presented nuanced explorations of commodification.
A rich literature examines collecting histories and the complex ways artifacts have entered museums and left them (e.g., Barringer, Barringer, & Flynn
1998; Byrne, 2011; Cardinal & Elsner, 1994; O’Hanlon & Welsch, 2000; Wintle, 2013). A common theme is the impact of colonialism, while other topics
are broader intellectual history, questions of how well collections represent
the material culture of source communities, and the bias evident in different
collecting strategies and resultant museum collections. For example, Gosden and Larson (2007) apply network analysis to the Pitt Rivers Museum
to demonstrate that museums are as much about social relations as they are
about objects.
Museums and the objects they contain have also been examined as part
of broader cultural processes in the modern world, including globalization,
nation building, identity, tourism, and appropriation (Handler, 1988; Kaplan,
1994; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998; Macdonald, 1998; Phillips, 1998; Rankin
& Hamilton, 1999). The processes by which objects become defined as art

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and the markets in which they then circulate have received substantial attention within anthropology (Gell, 1998; Marcus & Myers, 1995; Morphy, 2007;
Myers, 2001; Phillips & Steiner, 1999; Plattner, 1996). Tracing the life histories,
or “biographies,” of objects has proven a particularly productive strategy for
understanding not only their place within the culture of origin but also the
paths by which they arrived at museums (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986).
INDIGENOUS INTEREST
Indigenous people in many parts of the world have also rediscovered museums as sites of importance and locations where they are actively seeking to
reclaim their tangible and intangible cultural heritage. They have used museums to assert rights to self-definition in interpretation and to exercise cultural
sovereignty over objects. These processes have highlighted an often-troubled
history of anthropological engagement, for which museums frequently stand
as a visible symbol. Museums are acknowledged to have preserved a material
heritage that in many cases would otherwise have been lost, but also signify
histories of colonialism, repression, and appropriation (Edwards, Gosden, &
Phillips, 2006; Karp, Kratz, & Szwaja, 2006; Lonetree, 2012; Peers & Brown,
2003; Ziff & Rao 1997). While much attention has focused on human remains
since the passage in the United States of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, indigenous claims have been pursued worldwide
for the return of a wide array of museum materials; internationally the UN is
involved with museums as parts of human rights, intellectual property, and
social justice initiatives (Biolsi & Zimmerman, 1997; Canadian Museum of
Civilization, 1996; Fabian, 2010; Fforde, 2004; Mihesuah, 2000).
Museums are recognized as powerful sites of cultural representation, more
persuasive, and with broader reach than anthropological texts. Indigenous
people in many nations are asserting claims to self-representation and control
over curation. The inclusion of “native voice” in exhibits and collections management is now routine, and co-curation is common (Lonetree & Cobb, 2008;
McCarthy, 2011; Sleeper-Smith, 2009). Many source communities are developing their own museums, taking on the challenge of making meaning from
objects in ways that promise new insights from indigenous scholars working
in interdisciplinary endeavors (Isaac, 2007; Kreps, 2003; Stanley, 2007; Watt
& Laurie-Beaumont, 2008).
CURRENT TRENDS
Anthropology has experienced an explosion of interest in objects in recent
years. Objects have emerged as integral to sociality, an active agent in
social, political, and economic relations. This material turn, shared with

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, frames
a number of theoretical stances under diverse terms, such as materiality,
material culture, visual culture, and thing theory (Hicks, 2010). While much
of the research in anthropology is rooted in ethnographic observation or
archaeological fieldwork and analysis, the paradigm of materiality provides
a framework for the examination of extant collections in museums. This
is still a new research front for application in museum anthropology, with
methods not yet fully defined to interrogate the host of objects awaiting
study in the light of current interests. At present, the strongest engagement with collections-based research derives from programs in the United
Kingdom, whereas in the United States, programs focus more strongly
on engagement with source communities, primarily Native Americans.
A recent British workshop assessed the future of ethnographic museums
(Harris & O’Hanlon, 2013; Zetterstrom-Sharp, 2013), while one at the
Smithsonian looked at the engagement of indigenous people with virtual
access to collections (Bell, Christen, & Turin, 2013).
THE MATERIAL MOMENT
The reappearance of objects in anthropological research has broad roots but
sources of particular influence in museum anthropology include Appadurai’s The Social Life of Things (Appadurai, 1986), Glassie’s anthropological
folklore (Glassie, 1999), and Hodder’s approaches to archaeology (Hodder,
1986). Artifacts once again are recognized both as the material representation
of human actions, beliefs, and social institutions and as an active agent in
creating them. The literature on objects has now reached sufficient density
that a series of handbooks and readers on the nature of material culture have
been published. Those oriented toward anthropological concerns include
the volumes by Bennett and Joyce (2010); Candlin and Guins (2009); Hicks
and Beaudry (2010); Miller (2005, 2009); and Tilley, Keane, and Küchler
(2006). Much of the current work is densely theoretical, focused on defining
principles of object agency, rather than exploring the history or form of any
particular material culture.
Building upon Marcel Mauss’s 1925 classic critical analysis translated
into English as The Gift, scholars have revisited various dimensions of
exchange, ranging from individual or interfamilial exchanges to commodities passing through world markets, and the ways in which gifts affirm
social relationships. Comparative mapping of social and material worlds is
now the subject of many scholars. The study of how materials are collected
and transmitted also infuses work in cultural studies. Objects are central
in studies of how value is created and transmitted and the aesthetics of
actions and practices that inform the social worlds within which objects

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emerge. With long-held sensitivities to the material world, anthropologists
contribute to international and local discussions of heritage and connections
between tangible and intangible forms of culture (Bell, 2008; Bouquet, 2012;
Edwards, Gosden, & Phillips, 2006; Henare, Holbraad, & Wastell, 2007).
The field of visual anthropology has similarly begun to engage museum
collections. It has extended beyond early roots in filmmaking as an ethnographic method and the analysis of moving image records, to a broader
interest in photographs as both image and object (Banks, 2001; Edwards,
2001) and from there to a consideration of the anthropology of art, including
non-Western traditions and media (Banks & Morphy, 1997; Bouquet, 2012).
RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS AGENCY
Engagement with members of source communities, descendants of the
people among whom many museum objects originated, has stimulated an
interest in exploring the influence of indigenous people in the assembly of
collections. The major issues in this research topic were defined by O’Hanlon
and Welsch (2000), who made clear that overarching narratives of exploitation and appropriation have often obscured the active roles of indigenous
individuals in processes of exchange. Recent edited volumes bring together
new case studies on the topic (Byrne, 2011; Harrison, Byrne, & Clarke,
2013). Recognition of indigenous agency in the creation of older museum
collections remains a challenging domain for ongoing scholarship, requiring
peeling away constructed narratives of primitivism and disempowerment
(Bell, Brown, & Gordon, 2013). Engagement with descendants has proven a
productive strategy, providing both specific historical memories and more
general knowledge about the processes through which object exchange is
negotiated (Greene, 2001, 2013).
CO-PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
As noted, one of the most powerful forces drawing anthropologists into
museums has been indigenous interest. Communities around the world
that have been the source of collections are interested in engaging with this
material heritage; they seek to revitalize their connections with it in broader
and more complicated ways that go beyond claims for physical possession.
Initially conceived as an ethical obligation, often in response to repatriation
claims, anthropologists are beginning to develop a broader body of theory
as well as practice in relation to the co-production of knowledge about
museum collections, as the dialogue around objects offers a new type of
field site to consider how culture is questioned, researched, and constructed
(Isaac, 2007, 2011; Kreps, 2003; Lonetree & Cobb, 2008; Sleeper-Smith, 2009).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
While the topics laid out above will continue to engage the anthropology
productively for many years, others are likely to emerge.
COLLECTIONS AS RESEARCH DATA
Museums are databanks filled with objects available for study. However, will
anthropology be concerned with questions to which this data is relevant?
Two broad trends within anthropology suggest that museum collections will
again be viewed as research data. One trend is an increased commitment
to empiricism, emerging in the wake of dissatisfaction with postmodernism. Objects constitute observable data points, and those preserved
in public repositories are accessible for reexamination and verification.
Foundational work in museum ethnography and collaborative work with
source communities have provided a basis for placing these objects within
various frames of knowledge, ensuring that the new empiricism will be
anthropologically informed. The other trend is an increased interest in
the temporal range typically covered by ethnographic collections, some
100–200 years. This middle range is a compliment to the focus on the present
inherent in ethnographic observation and to the deeper time frames most
commonly investigated in archaeology. Ethnographic museum collections
offer a unique source of information reaching back some 200 years, covering
a period during which societies around the global changed dramatically.
Collections often represent the only possibility of recovering past native
voices and recognizing indigenous agency, too often silenced by the written
record.
THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM
Museums are committing major resources to providing online access to
collections in the form of digital images of objects, creating a new form of
engagement. Scholars are just beginning to examine the conceptual implications of online access to images, as virtual objects circulate in cyberspace.
This promises to be a field of lively debate engaging theory drawn from
media studies, visual anthropology, and materiality as well as wider learning
theory.
THE NATURAL HISTORY CONNECTION
Anthropology has long been uncomfortable with its historic and current ties
to museums of natural history. Late twentieth-century anthropological critiques of museums revealed the racist foundations for placing the study of

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non-Western people within a natural history paradigm, and museum-based
anthropologists have struggled to overcome this unhappy legacy. However,
museum anthropology is now beginning to reassess its relationship to natural science, acknowledging that the schism between nature and culture is a
Western epistemological construct not shared by all societies. Some anthropologists are exploring the positive aspects of positioning cultural materials
within natural history museums, such as serving source community interests
in exploring a fully emplaced heritage, facilitating interdisciplinary investigation of environmental change, and encouraging serious consideration of
traditional environmental knowledge.
THEORIZED PRACTICE
Ethnographic studies of museums have provided a foundation for theorized
museum practice, a specialized domain of applied anthropology. This perspective is now most often applied in the field of public engagement (i.e.,
exhibits and programs), as museums are major sites where anthropological understanding is presented to the public. An important question for the
future is the extent to which theorized practice can productively infuse and
inform wider museum practices, ranging from preservation to registration
and cataloging, or whether “best practices” developed in Western museums
should be widely applied as nations around the world expand their museum
capacity (Kreps, 2003; Lorente, 2012; Shelton, 2013).
NEW CHALLENGES
The full development of museum anthropology to meet its promise will
require overcoming challenges in both human resources and the appropriate
application of technology.
THE KNOWLEDGE GAP
Describing anthropology’s twentieth-century disinterest in museums, one
scholar noted “the social and the material parted company so radically (in
some places) as to produce a kind of knowledge gap between historical
collections and the intellectuals who might have been expected to work
on them” (Bouquet, 2001, p. 2). While universities now offer many courses
in museum and material theory, only a few have faculty able to provide
training in how to use museum collections as data collection sites within
broader anthropological inquiry. They lack either personal expertise or
hands-on access to museum resources. Yet before collections can be a useful
source of information for the questions of today, emerging scholars will

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

have to envision new methodologies to interrogate data assembled in other
times for different purposes. Anthropology needs to develop systematic
training in collections use, more widely extending the type of training
now offered by the Smithsonian’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology under a series of grants from the National Science Foundation (see
anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute).
A related knowledge gap is expertise in material culture—the ability to recognize and assess artifacts on the basis of materials, techniques, and styles,
and a familiarity with their temporal and cultural associations. Long devalued in anthropology as a form of antiquarianism, a strong knowledge of the
material record is an essential skill to make meaningful observations and to
assess incomplete documentation in museum records.
THE RESOURCE GAP
A second major challenge is the general shortage of resources within
museums, and the direction of scarce resources toward public engagement
and technical aspects of museum professionalism rather than toward
anthropological concerns. Curatorial positions are being reduced in number
and influence. This resource shift limits access to collections for research
purposes and reduces the incorporation of anthropological thinking into
public engagement. Ironically as anthropology embraces the material turn,
museums are increasingly shifting resources toward digital surrogates
and online access, assuming that virtual access will serve audiences more
efficiently than physical access. Alarmingly, pressed by the high cost of professionalism, some universities are divesting themselves of anthropological
holdings or consolidating them within art museums. Unless anthropological
collections are viewed as essential to teaching and research, only a few
universities will be able to justify maintaining them.
TECHNOLOGICAL AGENDAS
Museum anthropology has yet to organize around any major agenda that
would articulate pan-institutional needs and define resource requirements.
At present, it is a largely theoretical, discursive field, defining issues and
implementing actions largely at the local level. Wider action will require a
broad vision of museum collections as a distributed record of the material
past, leading to greater collaboration among scholars and museums to make
that resource useful. Better information access and development of technological resources will surely be a part of whatever wider vision emerges.
Significant research on broad topics requires the use of larger sets of cultural material than any single museum can provide, but discovery of relevant

Museum Anthropology

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material is now a tedious process impeding research. Overcoming this limitation will require linking repository databases without flattening the complexity of cultural histories through imposition of overly standardized nomenclature. Numerous current regional efforts such as the Reciprocal Research
Network based at University of British Columbia (rrncommunity.org), all
largely developed to serve source communities, can provide case studies of
various models and difficulties in practice. Of related concern is the fact that
most museum documentation remains in analog form with digital catalogs
containing only a few fields of information.
New forms of technical analyses also have the potential to yield transformative new information about museum collections. The possibility to source
and date constituent materials offers enormous potential to increase the types
of research that could be undertaken with objects, with studies ranging from
dating of commercial dye stuffs to preferential use of avian species in religious regalia to the biological relationships revealed by strands of human
hair accidentally woven into baskets by their makers.
OBJECTS, KNOWLEDGE, AND POWER
The debates that are likely to occur within museum anthropology relate to
the many publics that museums serve, underlying ethics of anthropological
practice and the circulation of knowledge. Access enabled by digitization has
generated both conflict and creative collaborations, generating new thinking
about intellectual property (Bell, Christen, & Turin, 2013; Jackson, 2010).
Objects embody knowledge, and knowledge is powerful. The politics of knowledge control will be increasingly debated within museum
anthropology as two trends of the “information age” converge. One is the
increasing expectation for online open access to publicly held resources
such as museum collections. The other is the increased recognition of the
entanglement of intangible cultural heritage and material heritage, and
acknowledgement of the rights of source communities. Some community
members celebrate new forms of access while others express concerns about
public access to the knowledge that objects embody. Cultural traditions may
stress the importance of controlling knowledge, often along lines of age,
gender, descent, or social position.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGAGEMENT
Museum anthropology is beginning a profitable engagement with three
other disciplines: visitor studies, information science, and material science.
At present, museum ethnography and visitor studies stand as largely
separate ways of examining public interpretation in museums. An emergent

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

cross-fertilization of method and theory should enrich both fields. An even
more promising engagement is now forming between museum computerization, thus far heavily focused on technical capacity, and theoretical aspects
of information science, which are beginning to include anthropological
insights on systems of knowledge. Material science has long had an impact
on archaeology, ranging from materials analysis to dating, and it offers the
capacity for similar application to a wider array of more recent materials in
museums as research questions emerge. Related biological analyses ranging
from DNA sequencing to isotope studies as well as more conventional
identification processes will also support more rigorous questioning of
received wisdom about past human-environmental interactions.

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CANDACE S. GREENE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Candace S. Greene (PhD, University of Oklahoma, 1985; MA, Brown University, 1977) is an ethnologist with the Department of Anthropology in the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and works on special
projects with the Collections and Archives Program. Before joining the Smithsonian, she worked in museums in Texas, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. She
specializes in the study of Plains pictorial art and is particularly interested in
the issues of representation and the recognition of individual agency in historic art and material culture. She directs the Summer Institute in Museum
Anthropology, a graduate training program at the Smithsonian supported by
the National Science Foundation, which teaches research methods for the use
of ethnographic collections.
She is the author of many publications, including One Hundred Summers: A
Kiowa Calendar Record (University of Nebraska Press, 2009) and Silver Horn:
Master Illustrator of the Kiowa (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001) and senior
editor of The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). She curated a companion online exhibit Lakota
Winter Counts, which was honored by the United Nations with a World Summit Award and received a Webby Award in 2005.
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