Collections as Relations

This book explores anthropological and global art collections as a catalyst, a medium, and an expression of relations. Relations—between and among objects and media, people, and material and immaterial contexts—define, configure, and potentially transform collection-related social and professional networks, discourses and practices, and increasingly museums and other collecting institutions themselves. The contributors argue that a focus on the—often contested—making and remaking of relations provides a unique conceptual entrypoint for understanding collections’—and ‘their’ objects’ and media’s—complex histories, contemporary webs of interactions, and potential futures. The chapters examine the local, translocal, and transregional relations of collections with regard to their affective, aesthetic, performative, and socio-moral qualities and situate them in the larger geopolitical constellations of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial settings. Together they investigate ongoing shifts in the relations of collections and collecting institutions by identifying alternative approaches to conceive of, and deal with, anthropological and global art collections, objects, and media in the future. The book is of interest to scholars from anthropology, global art history, museum studies, and heritage studies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Hansjörg Dilger is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.

Barbara Göbel is Director of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Honorary Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.

Lars-Christian Koch is Director of the Ethnologisches Museum and Museum fur Asiatische Kunst (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections at the Humboldt Forum. He is also Professor of Musicology at Universitat zu Koln and Honorary Professor at Universitat der Kunste Berlin and Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Germany.

Stephanie Schütze is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology in the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.

Alexis Th. von Poser is Deputy Director of the Ethnologisches Museum and Museum fur Asiatische Kunst (Stiftung Preusischer Kulturbesitz) and Honorary Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.