"Peoples ethnographic": Objects, museums, and the colonial inheritance of French ethnology

French Historical Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 669-703

  Sherman, Daniel J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62749198169     PISSN: 00161071     EISSN: 15275493     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-27-3-669     Document Type: Article

References (155)

1. Michel Colardelle, "Que faire des arts et traditions populaires?" Le débat, no. 99 (1998): 117; ellipsis in original
2. Marcel Mauss, "L'ethnographie en France et à l'étranger," Revue de Paris, Oct. 1 and 15, 1913
3. See, e.g., Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, "Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda," in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, CA, 1997), 4
4. and John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, "Homemade Hegemony," in Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, CO, 1992), 265-95
5. Paul Rivet, "Ethnologie: Rapport préliminaire," in Congrès de la recherche scientifique dans les territoires d'outre-mer (Paris, 20-26 septembre 1937), 9
6. Paul Rivet, "L'anthropologie et les missions," in Congrès des Missions Protestantes, 9-11 June 1931 (Paris, 1931), 5
7. Jean Jamin, "Le Musée d'Ethnographie en 1930: L'ethnologie comme science et comme politique," in La muséologie selon Georges-Henri Rivière: Cours de muséologie, textes et témoignages (Paris, 1989), 113
8. James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Surrealism," in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 135-40
9. Jamin, "Musée d'Ethnographie en 1930," 111-12
10. Marcel Maget, "Remarques sur l'ethnographie française métropolitaine: Buts, méthodes, désignation," Bulletin de la Société neuchâteloise de géographie, t. 51, fasc. 2 (1948) : 58
11. Marcel Maget, Ethnographie métropolitaine: Guide d'étude directe des comportements culturels (Paris, 1953), xxxiv
12. Catherine Velay Vallantin, "Le congrès international de folklore de 1937," Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 54 (1999): 496
13. On Maget and his career, see Jean-Claude Chamboredon, "Marcel Maget et l'ethnographie des sociétés paysannes," Cahiers d'économie et sociologie rurales, no. 11 (1989): 47-55
14. Gérard Leclerc, Anthropologie et colonialisme (Paris, 1972)
15. Jean Copans, ed., Anthropologie et impérialisme (Paris, 1975)
16. Daniel Nordman and Jean-Pierre Raison, eds., Sciences de l'homme et conquête coloniale: Constitution et usage des sciences humaines en Afrique (XIXe-XXe siècles) (Paris, 1980)
17. James Clifford, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World (Berkeley, CA, 1982
18. paperback rpt., Durham, NC, 1992)
19. Jean-Claude Vatin et al., Connaissances du Maghreb: Sciences sociales et colonisation (Paris, 1984)
20. Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985)
21. Johannes Fabian, Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 (Cambridge, 1986)
22. and Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton, NJ, 1994)
23. Nélia Dias, Le Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro (1878-1908): Anthropologie et muséologie en France (Paris, 1991), 13-14
24. Dias, "The Visibility of Difference: Nineteenth-Century French Anthropological Collections," in The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture, ed. Sharon Macdonald (New York, 1998), 36-52
25. Daniel Jenkins, "Object Lessons and Ethnographic Displays: Museum Exhibitions and the Making of American Anthropology," Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994): 249
26. See, e.g., Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago, 1989)
27. Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA, 1991), chap. 4
28. Thomas, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (London, 1999)
29. Suzanne Marchand, "Orientalism as Kulturpolitik: German Archeology and Cultural Imperialism in Asia Minor," in Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition, ed. George W. Stocking Jr. (Madison, WI, 1996), 298-336
30. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, eds., Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture, and the Museum (London, 1998)
31. Dominique Taffin, ed., Du musée colonial au musée des cultures du monde: Actes du colloque organisé par le Musée national des arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie et le Centre Georges-Pompidou, 3-6 juin 1998 (Paris, 2000)
32. and Alice L. Conklin, "Civil Society, Science, and Empire in Late Republican France: The Foundation of Paris's Museum of Man," Osiris 17 (2002): 255-90
33. Florence Weber, "Le folklore, l'histoire et l'Etat en France (1937-1945)," Revue de synthèse, 4th ser., 3-4 (2000): 458
34. See Isabelle Collet, "Les premiers musées d'ethnographie régionale, en France," in Muséologie et ethnologie, ed. Jean Cuisenier (Paris, 1987), 83-87
35. See Isabelle Collet, "Le monde rural aux expositions universelles de 1900 et 1939," in Cuisenier, Muséologie et ethnologie, 107-12, 115-22
36. and Shanny Peer, France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 World's Fair (Albany, NY, 1998), esp. chaps. 2-3
37. Daniel Fabre, "L'ethnologie française à la croisée des engagements (1940-1945)," in Résistants et Résistance, ed. Jean-Yves Boursier (Paris, 1997), 319-400, esp. 378
38. Dias, Musée d'ethnographie, 17
39. Donald Bender, "The Development of French Anthropology," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1 (1965): 140-42
40. Marie-France Piguet, "Observation et histoire: Race chez Amédée Thierry et William F. Edwards," L'homme, no. 153 (2000): 93-106
41. On disciplinary status, see Victor Karady, "Le problème de la légitimité dans l'organisation historique de l'ethnologie française," Revue française de sociologie 23 (1982): 19-25
42. Valensi, "Maghreb vu du centre," 227-44
43. Karady, "Problème de la légitimité," 33
44. Isac Chiva, "Entre livre et musée: Emergence d'une ethnologie de la France," in Ethnologies en miroir: La France et les pays de langue allemande, suivi du compte rendu du colloque "Ethnologie française, Mitteleuropäische Volkskunde" (Bad Homburg, 12-15 décembre 1984), ed. Isac Chiva and Utz Jeggle (Paris, 1987), 10-11
45. cf. Georges-Henri Rivière, "Musée et société, à travers le temps et l'espace," in La muséologie, 54, 56, 59
46. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, "L'Institut d'Ethnologie de l'Université de Paris," Revue d'ethnographie et des traditions populaires 23-24 (1925): 233-36
47. See also James D. Herbert, Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition (Ithaca, NY, 1998), 64
48. Jean Jamin, "L'ethnographie mode d'inemploi: De quelques rapports de l'ethnologie avec le malaise dans la civilisation," in Le mal et la douleur, ed. Jacques Hainard and Roland Kaehr (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1986), 46-47. Jamin's quotation from Lévy-Bruhl is actually a composite of two passages from consecutive paragraphs
49. Denise Paulme, "Préface à la troisième édition (1989)," in Marcel Mauss, Manuel d'ethnographie (Paris, 1989 [1947]), vi
50. On Mauss's influence, see also Chiva, "Entre livre et musée," 18-20
51. Dias, Musée d'ethnographie, 153-62, 199-205
52. Clifford, "On Ethnographie Surrealism," 135-36
53. Jean Jamin, "Les objets ethnographiques sont-ils des choses perdues?" in Temps perdu, temps retrouvé, ed. Jacques Hainard and Roland Kaehr (Neuchâtel, 1985), 53
54. Jamin, "Objets ethnographiques," 58, 64-65
55. Jean-Claude Galey, "A Conversation with Louis Dumont, Paris, 12 December 1979," in Way of Life - King, Householder, Renouncer: Essays in Honour of Louis Dumont, ed. T. N. Madan (New Delhi, 1982), 13-14
56. Louis Dumont, La Tarasque: Essai de description d'un fait local d'un point de vue ethnographique (Paris, 1951)
57. Rivet, "Anthropologie et les missions," 7
58. Mauss, Manuel d'ethnographie, 7
59. See also Jamin, "Musée d'ethnographie," 113
60. Herbert, Paris 1937, 52
61. Geneviève Breerette and Frédéric Edelmann, "Une rencontre avec Georges-Henri Rivière: Le musicien muséographe qui inventa aussi les écomusées," Le monde, Jury 8-9, 1979
62. Chiva, "Entre livre et musée," 12
63. Jean Cuisenier, ed., Hier pour demain: Art, traditions et patrimoine (Paris, 1980), 27-28, 55-59, 121, 127-37
64. Marie-Thérèse Duflos-Priot, Un siècle de groupes folkloriques en France: L'identité par la beauté du geste (Paris, 1995), 15-25
65. Collet, "Premiers musées," 68-73
66. Cuisenier, Hier pour demain, 151-54
67. Sibeud, "Fin du voyage," 192-94
68. Fabre, "Manuel de folklore français d'Arnold van Gennep," 3:3589, 3596-97
69. Weber, "Folklore, l'histoire et l'Etat," 460, 465
70. Velay Vallantin, "Congrès international de folklore," 486-92
71. "Les musées de folklore à l'étranger et le futur Musée français des arts et traditions populaires," Revue de folklore français et de folklore colonial 7 (1936): 59-61
72. On Varagnac's views and Rivet's speech, see André Varagnac, Définition du folklore, suivi de notes sur folklore et psychotechnique et sur l'agriculture temporaire, la préhistoire et le folklore (Paris, 1938)
73. with a preface by Georges-Henri Rivière; Velay Vallantin, "Congrès international de folklore," 494
74. Fabre, "Ethnologie française," 374-75
75. Peer, France on Display, 136-37, 142
76. and Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 163-69
77. Galey, "Conversation with Louis Dumont," 13
78. Rivet, "Ethnologie," 8-9
79. See Benetta Jules-Rosette, Black Paris: The African Writers' Landscape (Urbana, IL, 1998), 21
80. and Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago, 1991)
81. For the relationship between the state and provincial art museums in the nineteenth century, see Daniel J. Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, 1989), pt. 1
82. On Leroi-Gourhan's career and the Centre de Formation, see Jean Poirier, "Histoire de la pensée ethnologique," in Ethnologie générale (Paris, 1968), 132-33, 150-51
83. and André Leroi-Gourhan and Jean Poirier, Asie, Océanie, Amérique, vol. 2 of Ethnologie de l'Union française (Territoires extérieurs) (Paris, 1953), 946-47
84. On Rivière's connections with Leroi-Gourhan, see Isac Chiva, "George [sic] Henri Rivière: Un demi-siècle d'ethnologie de la France," Terrain 5 (1985): 83
85. Dominique Poulot: "Identity as Self-Discovery: The Ecomuseum in France," in Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, ed. Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), 70
86. and Gorgus, Magicien des vitrines, 205
87. See, e.g., François Loyer, "A Paris: Un musée- laboratoire," L'oeil, no. 190 (1970): 36-41
88. and Jean-François Dhuys, "Des travaux et des jours," Nouvelles littéraires, June 9-15, 1975
89. Rivière, "Musée et société, à travers le temps et l'espace," 63
90. Jean-François Leroux-Dhuys, "Georges-Henri Rivière, un homme dans le siècle," in Muséologie selon Georges-Henri Rivière, 21
91. Lebovics, True France, 153
92. Jamin, "Aux origines," 8-10
93. Gorgus, 67
94. Jamin, "Aux origines," 23-24, 30
95. Poirier, "Histoire de la pensée ethnologique," in Ethnologie générale, 139
96. Instructions sommaires pour les collecteurs d'objets ethnographiques (Paris, 1931)
97. Price, Primitive Art, 70-73, includes several extensive excerpts from the book and conveys the impression Leiris's account of the expedition's collecting practices left on the field
98. on Leroi-Gourhan, see Poirier, "Histoire de la pensée ethnologique," 150-51
99. On the Mission Dakar-Djibouti, see Conklin, "Civil Society, Science, and Empire," 283-84
100. and Rivière, "Musée-laboratoire," 149-52
101. and Weber, "Folklore, l'histoire et l'Etat," 454-55
102. Weber, "Folklore, l'histoire et l'Etat," 454
103. Duflos-Priot, Siècle de groupes folkloriques, 21-36
104. On race theory, see Claude Blanckaert, "Des sauvages en pays civilisés: L'anthropologie des criminels (1850-1900)," in Histoire de la criminologie française, ed. Laurent Mucchielli (Paris, 1995), 55-88
105. Clifford, "On Ethnographic Surrealism," 135-40
106. Conklin, "Civil Society, Science, and Empire," 258
107. de l'Estoile, "De l'Exposition Coloniale au Musée de l'homme," 464-66
108. Rivière, "Musées de folklore à l'étranger," 70
109. Michel Leiris, "L'ethnographe devant le colonialisme," Les temps modernes 6, no. 58 (1950): 373
110. Georges Balandier, "La situation coloniale: Approche théorique," Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 11 (1951): 73-75, citing Leiris's argument
111. On the influence of the manual, see Chamboredon, "Marcel Maget," 47
112. and Gorgus, Magicien des vitres, 161
113. Maget, Ethnographie métropolitaine, 171-72
114. Armand Landrin and Paul Sébillot, "Instructions sommaires relatives aux collections provinciales d'objets ethnographiques," in La tradition en Poitou et Charentes, Congrès de Niort 1896 (Paris, 1897), 465-75
115. Instructions sommaires, 8; AMN, U2 ATP, Dossier Instructions provisoires pour la constitution des collections muséographiques d'ethnographie française, "Etude de l'équipement matériel: La monographie d'objet," Aug. 29, 1945, 1
116. Karady, "Problème de la légitimité," 32
117. Nicholas Dirks, "Introduction: Colonialism and Culture," in Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992), 3
118. Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, 80
119. Maget, "Remarques sur l'ethnographie métropolitaine," 41-42, quotation from 48
120. see, on this article, Fabre, "Ethnologie française," 396
121. Jacques Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1978 [1955]), 475-79
122. On the significance of this text, see de l'Estoile, "Science de l'homme et 'domination rationnelle,'" 315-18
123. See Peer, France on Display, 60-72
124. Jamin, "Aux origines," 22
125. Jamin, "Objets ethnographiques," 54
126. Jamin, "Ethnographie mode d'inemploi," 73-75
127. Instructions sommaires, 6
128. Maget, "Remarques sur l'ethnographie métropolitaine," 50, 53
129. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York, 1983), 28-35, 95
130. See André Desvallées, "Collecte en Aubrac," in Muséologie selon Georges-Henri Rivière, 185-87
131. Segalen, "Anthropology at Home," 86-87
132. Desvallées, "Collecte en Aubrac," 187
133. Maget, "Remarques sur l'ethnographie française métropolitaine," 54
134. Michel Foucault, An Introduction, vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978), 133; the phrase is the title of pt. 5
135. Jacques Gutwirth, "La professionnalisation d'une discipline: Le Centre de formation aux recherches ethnologiques," Gradhiva, no. 29 (2001): 25-41
136. Françoise Loux and Frédéric Maguet, "Introduction: Une perspective systémique," in Réinventer un musée: Le Musée national des arts et traditions populaires, Centre d'ethnologie française, Colloque 25 et 26 mars 1997 (Paris, 1999), 35
137. Leroux-Dhuys, "Georges-Henri Rivière," 28; for Rivière's opposition to the separate opening of the Galerie Scientifique, see AATP, series Galerie Scientifique, letter from Rivière to his successor, Cuisenier, Oct. 6, 1970
138. AATP, "Programme de la Galerie Culturelle," xv
139. Rivière, "Présentation," 274
140. See also Segalen, "Anthropology at Home," 85
141. Rivière, "Présentation," 267; AATP, ATP Musée-Galerie Culturelle inauguration, press release, May-June 1975
142. Collet, "Monde rural aux expositions universelles," 109-10
143. Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, 80, 89
144. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC, 1993 [1984]), 150-55
145. See Daniel J. Sherman, "Objects of Memory: History and Narrative in French War Museums," French Historical Studies 19 (1995): 49-74
146. Stewart, On Longing, 23
147. AATP, ATP Musée-galerie culturelle Inauguration, Press Release, May-June 1975. The photocopied press release includes a facsimile of Cuisenier's signature, emphasizing his authorship of these introductory remarks
148. Colardelle, "Que faire des arts et traditions populaires?" 116. Among the influences Colardelle specifically mentions are Basque and Catalan, but not Celtic
149. Michel Colardelle, "Du Musée national des arts et traditions populaires au Musée des civilisations - France, Europe, Méditerranée," Culture et recherche, no. 87 (2001): 8-9
150. Colardelle, "Que faire des arts et traditions populaires?" 116
151. See Nélia Dias, "Esquisse ethnographique d'un projet: Le musée du Quai Branly," French Politics, Culture, and Society 19, no. 2 (2001): 81-101
152. Alain Leauthier, "Comment construire un musée post-colonial," interview with Maurice Godelier, Libération, Apr. 20, 1999, quoted in Dias, "Esquisse ethnographique," 95
153. "Jacques Chirac critiqué au sujet des arts premiers devant l'Unesco," Le monde, Nov. 18, 2000
154. Alan Riding, "Chirac Exalts African Art, Legal and (Maybe) Illegal," New York Times, Nov. 25, 2000
155. "Accord avec le Nigeria pour les statues Nok du Louvre," Le monde, Feb. 8, 2002