The Sociomaterial Dynamics of Museum Collections

Abstract

The Sociomaterial Dynamics of Museum Collections is an overarching research idea, consisting of three separate projects, with aim of creating new knowledge about roles of collections and collecting in shaping of culture and society. The programme includes three national museums which have been crucial in defining Sweden, Swedishness, and surrounding world: Nordiska Museet (Swedish cultural history), National Historical Museum (history, archaeology), and Museum of Ethnography (the third/fourth world). In one study each, two ethnologists and one archaeologist focus on objects and issues that in some way have been pointed out as problematic but also seem to have a strong ability to create identity, social relations and both conflict and reconciliation: collections from indigenous peoples, human remains, and repatriation processes. The programme includes three separate and ongoing projects, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Swedish Research Council: The Construction of a Sami Cultural Heritage: Ernst Manker and Nordiska Museet; Headhunters, Museum Anatomicum and Social Dynamics of Collecting; and Rituals of Reconciliation in Postsecular Museum. Research questions and aim Swedish museums have many millions of objects from different times and places in world. The collections are foundation for a wide range of exhibitions and extensive educational activities. In addition, they constitute an infrastructure and a central resource for a great deal of research in humanities. Having long been regarded as unproblematic parts of a material and national cultural heritage, collections and collecting activity have to be understood and studied in new ways, in view of recent years' development of knowledge in humanities, paying attention to social roles of objects and function of museum collections in shaping society. At same time, both national development of a diverse society and globalization of cultural heritage demand radically changed ethics for how Swedish museums handle their acquisitions. Museum collecting is characterized not just by a physical materiality and its stewardship but also by cultural processes that shape and change collecting. Through selection process, in creation of classification systems, and in exhibitions, collections in their turn create culture and society. Their symbolic charge, way they are stored and moved around plays a great part in identity processes of different groups and their mutual relations. It is this interplay between social and material that we call the sociomaterial dynamics of museum collections. We proceed from premise that political and moral changes in society have their counterpart in breakpoints in museum practices. We have therefore chosen to

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