Anthropology in Museum Local History Projects: Trends and Challenges

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the ways the anthropological tools and approaches are used in museum local history projects. Based on the study of several cases, the author shows that the implementation of the popular «anthropological» approach in museum projects faces a number of obstacles, presented in a number of oppositions: history vs memory, person vs place, individual vs universal, museum vs person. The paper demonstrates how anthropological material introduced into circulation is adapted to the museum or local history format, and how a person’s voice, gaze, and memory are alienated and neutralized in various ways by the project framework, causing the person to disappear from view and be replaced by a generalized image or silhouette. The identified obstacles are structural in nature, i. e. caused by inherent limitations of the format and «language» of the practices under consideration.