Decolonized/ing Natural History and Ethnographic Museums: An Oxymoron

The thesis chronologizes and interrogates Western colonial epistemologies of anthropological and archaeological museum praxis and legacies in colonial, encyclopedic museums, and how the museums have shaped discourse and law, regarding race, sex and gender. It analyzes how natural history-ethnographic museums act as bridges between academia and the public due to their placement as institutions of knowledge production where politics, ethics and social perspectives are formulated, reified and reinforced. The paper argues that while natural history and ethnographic museums cannot be fully decolonized due to their inherent relationship to colonial histories, they are working towards confronting and revaluing these legacies under the frameworks of hope and historicity. It examines how decolonizing methodology shaped and continues to influence natural-ethnographic museum. Decolonization is oftentimes a fraught and incomplete process despite its intentions to increase diversity and confront its colonial legacies. The thesis also considers the impact of other current social movements, such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, on the decolonizing movement. The dialogic structure offers a unique Smithsonian Institution focused perspective, based on a series of interviews with three Smithsonian Museum staffers. The interviews are supported by case studies of other natural-history and ethnographic museums and works from museum and science and technology scholars and museum reports.

Author

• Barranco, Frances Lillian

Language

• en

Keyword

• Dialogic interview
• Encyclopedic museum
• Decolonizing
• Fallist
• Hope
• Historicity

Date created

• 2022

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Anthropology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Blomster, Jeffrey P
• Wagner, Sarah E

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/gh93h054r