The 2010 independence jubilees: the politics and aesthetics of national commemoration in Africa

In 2010, as many as seventeen African states celebrated their independence jubilees. The debates surrounding the organisation of these celebrations, and the imagery and performances they employed, reflect the fault lines with which African nation‐building has to contend, such as competing political orientations as well as religious, regional and ethnic diversity. The celebrations represented constitutive and cathartic moments of nation‐building, aiming to enhance citizens' emotional attachments to the country and inviting to remember, re‐enact and re‐redefine national history. They became a forum of debate about what should constitute the norms and values that make‐up national identity and, in the interstices of official ceremonies, provided space for the articulation of new demands for public recognition. A study of the independence celebrations thus allows us to explore contested processes of nation‐building and images of nationhood and to study the role of ritual and performance in the (re)production of nations.     

The Past under the Shadow of the Present: The Case of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History

The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which opened in 2012, has been the focus of a heated controversy between the progressive and conservative camps over the “proper” ways to represent South Korea’s turbulent history. I build on the relationship between heritage, collective memory and national identity, and argue that the division that typifies South Korean society has implications that extend beyond socio-political issues. Anchored within a broader discursive context, the museum became an important memory carrier involved in the process of debating the issue of national identity. Although no agreement has been reached regarding the “proper” historical narrative the site should exhibit, the museum has nevertheless offered an opportunity to shape a form of national identity that can embrace a more complex perspective on the country’s contemporary history. At present, though, this contentious site has demonstrated the extent to which the legacy of the conservative–progressive divide remains deep. I offer a discursive context that is useful for the study of current debates over heritage sites in South Korea, while the overall analysis illuminates the idea that the “present-centred” management of heritage in national museums can, potentially, play a part in the process of forming more intricate notions of national identity.     

Islamism and Iran’s Islamic Period Museum

The Islamic Period Museum of Iran was established, almost 16 years after the Islamic Revolution, as an addition to the previous National Museum building – the Iran Bastan, or Ancient Iran Museum – in 1996. By examining the components of state Islamism, the space of the museum and key exhibits, this paper reveals the analogous relationship between the museum and state ideology. That relationship suggests that the museum embodies fundamental ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in Iranian state Islamism. Those ambiguities and inconsistencies are only concealed, in the museum as in the ideology, by employing traditionalist rhetoric with regard to religion and identity.     

Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum

Museums are conventionally viewed as institutions dedicated to the conservation of valued objects and the education of the public. Recently, controversies have arisen regarding the representation of history in museums. National museums in America and Germany considered here, such as the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German Historical Museum, have become sites of contention where national histories and personal memories are often at odds. Contemporary art installations in museums which take historical consciousness as their theme similarly raise contentious issues about public knowledge of and personal interest in the past. When members of publics find that their memories of the past or their expectations for museum experiences are not being met, a kind of "distortion" occurs. The "distortion" related to memory and history in the museum is not so much of facts or interpretations, but rather a distortion from the lack of congruity between personal experience and expectation, on the one hand, and the institutional representation of the past on the other. This essay explores the possibilities for a redefined relationship between personal memory and history that is experienced in contemporary museums.     

Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).     

Performing the national territory: The geography of national‐day celebrations

The nation is a relatively abstract imagined community that is visualised through a variety of symbols as well as communicative and performative practices. In this paper, we explore how the national territory, one of the foundations of the nation‐state, is performed on national‐day celebrations and brings the nation into being. Drawing on ethnographic research on national days in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, we show how the state's internal administrative divisions and ethnic differences are at once made explicit but also subordinated to the nation. Moreover, we show how in such celebrations, potentially disruptive or competing affiliations such as ethnicity and regional loyalties are re‐imagined. Both the rotation of the central celebration and its replication all over the national territory carry the nation into the regions and integrate the regions into the nation‐state. The ‘co‐memoration’ turns participants and spectators from locals into national compatriots and thus not only performs nationality but also performs the relationship among nation, state and citizen, set within a particular territory.     

Morgawr: an experimental Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank craft based on the Ferriby boats

This paper reports on the construction of a full‐scale Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank boat based on the Ferriby boats. The boat, which was named Morgawr, was constructed in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, England, during 2012 and the first months of 2013, as part of a larger exhibition in the museum. This paper provides the background and context of the project, describes the process of building the craft, and reflects in particular on differences between Morgawr and the ‘hypothetical reconstruction of a complete sewn‐plank boat’ published in 1990 by Ted Wright and John Coates which formed the basis for this project.     

Exhibiting Cultures: Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum

Museums occupy many roles which are influenced by wider circumstances and changing conditions. This study deals with the case of Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum and the manner in which it is used to promote nation building in a multi‐ethnic and relatively newly independent state. In addition, it serves a political purpose and acts as an economic resource. The Asian Civilisations Museum illustrates some of the recent trends affecting the museum sector as a whole and also the particular challenges facing such institutions in a country like Singapore with its many distinctive qualities.     

The educational work of a National Museum: creating knowledgeable young citizens in Ottawa,Canada

ABSTRACT

This article explores the geographies of education at the National Museum of Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of the spatialization of children’s museum education, we highlight how the museum sought to inculcate in young Canadians knowledges about their country, its people, and natural resources. We situate children’s museum education within the broader context of Canadian nationalism, other museum activities, and public education in the capital. Focusing on the design and material organization of the museum, we highlight how the space of the museum, from the objects on display to the imposing grandeur of the building, sought to impress upon students the importance of the knowledge it conveyed. Finally, we illustrate how the museum’s programming aimed to provide children with knowledge of their national heritage, building citizenship through claims of development as destiny.     

From revolutionary heroism to cultural heritage: museums,memory and representation in Laos

ABSTRACT. Museum exhibitions in Laos represent two main strands of Lao national identity discourse. First, they glorify the ‘liberation struggle’ of the so‐called ‘Lao multiethnic people’ under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and therefore serve as important ideological tools for the current regime's self‐legitimisation. Second, they display the history and cultural heritage of the Lao nation, providing the postcolonial state with a narrative of historical continuity and civilisation that is focused mostly on the dominant ethnic Lao culture. This article explores the contradictions within official images of the Lao nation‐state and how these opposing strands of national identity compete or interact. Museums as key arenas of ideological tensions constitute illuminating fields of research on discourses of national identity in Laos.     

Identity formation through national calendar: holidays and commemorations in Pakistan

This article contributes to academic literature on the project of identity formation in a postcolonial nation‐state. The article argues that a nation‐state emphasising certain aspects of the past for commemorative or celebratory purposes, while suppressing or ignoring the memories of some other event or historical figure, are both parts of the same process. Both these processes, in different ways, seek to give a certain direction to the narrative about the history of the nation and the nation‐state. These aspects of national memory and amnesia have been explained through the prism of national/public holidays while foregrounding the case study of Pakistan. The article argues that although this process of shaping a specific narrative (referred to as commemorative narrative in this article by using Yael Zerubavel's work) is common to every project of identity formation, its peculiarity is more pronounced in a postcolonial state like Pakistan, which has certain cut‐off dates and ruptures but is, simultaneously, eager to emphasise continuities in its trajectory and antiquity in historical tradition. The study of the process of developing a national calendar in case of Pakistan will show that identity formation is a transient process in which various identarian values, political considerations and social processes play an important part. In particular, it requires an attempt on the part of the state to try impose a homogenising historical narrative by envisaging a national calendar, i.e. by announcing a national or public holiday. This helps accord prestige to persons credited as founding fathers or ideologues, ascribe solemnity to days remembering wars and festivity to mark independence or religious occasions. By discussing these themes in detail, this exploratory study of the history of national calendar will lend an alternative lens through which to look into the processes of identity formation in postcolonial nation‐states in general.     

What is a museum for? The Magüta Museum for the Ticuna people,Amazonas, Brazil

Abstract

After working for several years in the Ethnography Section of Brazil's National Museum, Maria JussaraGomes Gruber helped found the Magüta Museum in the town of Benjamin Constant, in Amazonas (close to Brazil's border with Peru and Colombia). Jussara Gruber believed that an ethnographic museum, with objects selected, displayed and explained in ways that made sense to the Ticuna Indians of the area, would help them to sustain social and cultural values in the face of continuing colonization by non-Indian society. The Ticuna are one of Brazil's most populous indigenous groups, with some 95 villages mainly scattered along the banks of the Upper Solimões River and its tributaries. Ticuna efforts to establish land boundaries and reclaim their own territory have met substantial opposition from non-Indian loggers, landowners and storekeepers. In this article (compiled from a letter and subsequent telephone interview translated by Maria Renata Franco Peters and edited by Bill Sillar) Constantino Ramos Lopes explains his role as director of the museum and its significance for the Ticuan people.     

Museums as Societal Engines for Urban Renewal. The Event Strategy of the Museum of Natural History in Florence

Abstract

The paper aims to contribute to the debate on urban renewal, departing from the so-called Bilbao effect. Focusing on the resurgence of a societal function of cultural heritage, we discuss the idea of the museum as a societal engine through a case study. Although the literature has been mainly dedicated to assessing the economic impact of large art museums in former industrial regions, the paper focuses on a small scientific museum, the Museum of Natural History in Florence, and on its strategy of social enhancement through the organization of small- and medium-sized cultural events in the historical city centre. Through the application of social network analysis to 17 temporary exhibitions between 2000 and 2012 and the analysis of 790 events divided into three macro-areas (relations with territory, educational networks and scientific networks), the role played by the museum, the density and variety of events will be investigated. The resulting picture is that of a proactive museum located at the centre of a network of—mostly local—institutional actors that have effectively contributed to the re-vitalization of scientific knowledge and education as well as relations with the citizenship and the territory, therefore representing a valuable example of a societal enhancement of culture.     

PROJECTIONS OF RACE,NATURE, AND ETHNOGRAPHIC CHILDHOOD IN EARLY EDUCATIONAL CINEMA AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CANADA

In this article, we examine depictions of race, nature, and childhood in Harlan Ingersoll Smith's early ethnographic films at the National Museum of Canada. Created in the 1920s for a children's education programme, Smith's films construct ethnographic portraits of different Indigenous peoples in Western Canada. We demonstrate how museum education appropriated Indigeneity as a discursive resource to immerse viewing children in particular narratives of Canadian national heritage and development. The films worked through a complex double movement, bringing children in the Ottawa museum audience into association with Indigenous children based on shared experience as children while simultaneously differentiating Indigenous peoples as Other. The films inculcated white youth at the museum in a romanticized connection to Canada's prehistory through knowledge of the nation's Indigenous peoples as well as nature. In the films, the position of Indigeneity within the future remained ambiguous (traditional practices sometimes disappearing, sometimes enduring). Yet, despite Smith's uncertainty about colonial beliefs in the disappearance of Indigeneity, his films nonetheless presented the teleological development of the settler nation as certain. Our article highlights how thinking about children, as audience for and thematic focus of these films, extends discussions of the geographies of film, of children, and of settler colonial nationalism.     

The red line over European colonialism: comparison of the Macao museum and Hong Kong museum of history after their return to China

Hong Kong and Macao were once European colonies. A unique, hybrid culture of East and West now flourishes in these two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of China. Both cities opened new history museums in 1998, but they adopted remarkably different approaches in their representation of their complicated and politically sensitive history. The Hong Kong Museum of History (HKMH) represents history by closely following the orientation of traditional Chinese nationalism. The postcolonial characteristics adopted by the Macao Museum to reproduce history, in contrast, are likely amongst the richest of all history museums in China. What are the reasons behind the different historical representations by Hong Kong and Macao, which were both promised a ‘One country, Two systems’ policy by the Chinese central authority? This paper argues that both museums reveal two faces of a rising China; the one in Hong Kong emphasises national dignity, and the people’s identification with and loyalty to the nation when it is engaged in state building. The one in Macao emphasises the multiple roles in finding a balanced position to coexist with superpowers, forging friendships with developing countries and building an idealised image of a (re-)rising nation through historical construction. The difference between these two museums indicates the exceptional flexibility of China’s postcommunist regime in engaging in soft power diplomacy.     

Mediating legacies of empire in the post-imperial museum

ABSTRACT

Throughout the Balkans, the history museum remains a crucial site where memories of an imperial past are molded, rationalized, and integrated into the wider arc of nationalist narratives about a country and its people. The legacy of the Ottoman Empire is particularly fraught in Greece, where this period is almost always classified as ‘post-Byzantine’ within the context of government institutions. In this paper, I set out to trace the legacy of the Ottoman Empire as it has been mediated in multiple museum sites throughout the country. I will primarily focus on two case studies: The National Historical Museum in Athens and the Museum of Ali Pasha and the Period of Revolution in Ioannina. Comparing these two sites and their practices of display bring into sharper focus the dynamics of how historical memory plays out in a central versus regional sphere of belonging and identity.     

"A wealth of historical interest": the medical artifact collection at the University of Western Ontario

Along with a teaching collection, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, began accepting medical artifacts for a historical museum in the early 1920s, although it never developed into more than an unofficial collection until the 1970s, when it was transformed into the Medical Museum and Archives at the University Hospital. In the 1990s, the artifacts were dispersed among several local institutions. The remaining objects at the university have been now reorganized as the Medical Artifact Collection. While these objects were once used to educate students about the practice and philosophy of medicine, they are now used to teach students about local, medical, Canadian and public history.     

A Forgotten Legacy: The Romanov Patronage of Finland’s Early Art Collections

The earliest art collections of Finland’s National Gallery came into being when, as the Grand Duchy of Finland, it was an autonomous part of imperial Russia (1809–1917). The prevailing view of Finnish museum studies, however, sees the Finnish Art Society, the precursor of the Finnish National Gallery, as being modelled on exclusively European cultural institutions. The history of the Society and its collections have thus been seen as resistant to any alien eastern influences, and as an attempt to differentiate Finnish culture from Russian art collecting practices. Drawing on the theoretical shift in cultural studies from the conception of stable, clearly demarcated cultural identities of nation states toward less rigidly defined identities, the aim of this essay is to reconstruct the hidden Russian presence in Finnish museum historiography. Based on original unpublished sources, my study shows that the earliest support of Finland’s cultural infrastructure was given by the Romanov patrons Nicholas I, Alexander II, and Alexander III. By exposing the absence and physical erasure of “imperial identity” in the official Finnish museum narrative, I reveal how museums can at once elevate particular discourses and practices while marginalizing other historical processes in a nation’s cultural past.     

时代、文化资本与支配权:对张謇创办南通博物苑的再思考

面对19世纪末中国空前的民族危机和剧遽社会变迁,张謇选择了"实业救国"、"教育救国"的道路。南通博物苑作为张謇教育事业的重要组成部分,是其教育救国思想的具体体现。张謇在南通博物苑创办过程中实现了资本的文化化和文化的资本化双重过程:一方面,将经济资本转化为文化资本;另一方面,又将文化资本转化为其象征资本的一部分,使其获得更大社会权力,从而能够按照自己的政治理想对地方社会进行塑造。张謇对于作为文化资本的南通博物苑的支配主要体现在三个方面:藏品内容及知识系统的构建、博物馆教育作用的树立及对参观者的规范。张謇对文化资本的支配表面上是其个人意志的体现,由其政治理念所驱动;而深究,终不免受时代和机构属性等因素的制约与影响。     

Untangling the different components of Norwegianness*

ABSTRACT. National identity is under scrutiny in Europe. A new non‐ethnic conception of the nation to replace the traditional ethnic one is needed. National identity is therefore undergoing a public reconstruction. This article is based on narratives of “Norwegianness” that emerged in a qualitative interview study of white majority Norwegians who live in multicultural suburbs in Oslo. I respond to an overlooked need to analytically untangle different components of “Norwegianness” as phenomenological knowledge, to decouple its different constituents from each other. In order to analyse qualitative data where notions of “Norwegianness” and “non‐Norwegianness” are at play, their different aspects must be clarified. I identify multiple discursive oppositions that researchers ought to keep apart, and distinguish between civic aspects (citizenship), cultural aspects, and ethnic/racial aspects. I suggest that everyday notions of the national are fruitfully studied as discursive space constituted by a series of overlapping, but sometimes mutually contradicting, oppositions.