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From the Colonial Exhibition to the Museum of Man. An alternative genealogy of French anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

Benoît de l'Estoile
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Abstract

The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition, usually looked upon as an instance of colonial picturesque, may in fact be seen as a missing link in the history of French anthropology. Anthropology, both a symbol and an instrument of the new Native policy promoted by the organisers, played a key role in the project of displaying to the public the diversity of the peoples of the empires. The Exhibition provided a venue for anthropological conferences and opportunities for fieldwork, as it gave a prominent place to ethnographic documents, native artefacts and performers. In a sense, it appears as a rehearsal for the Museum of Man that was to be the heart of the discipline.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Anthropology , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , October 2003 , pp. 341 - 361
Copyright
© 2003 European Association of Social Anthropologists

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Footnotes

A related version of this text will be published in B. Stuchtey (ed.), Science and empire. Western Europe and the colonial world since 1800. Oxford University Press/German Historical Institute, forthcoming.