Research Article
Pots, Belts, and Medicine Containers: Challenging Colonial-era Categories and Classifications in the Digital Age
Abstract
With a specific focus on a material culture collection previously classified as Natal Nguni and Zulu at the Iziko South African Museum, this research article explores how digital spaces offer opportunities for changing the ways museums document and manage objects collected during colonial periods. This article draws attention to the highly constructed nature of museum documentation systems and the ways normalised colonial knowledge production practices are often replicated in digital versions of museums. Drawing on data I collected during workshops and interviews conducted 2016 – 2019 with descendent communities who self-identify as Zulu, I consider how their proposed, alternative categories, classifications, and information structures might take advantage of digital possibilities to change how museums construct knowledge about the people and cultures their objects are employed to represent. In conjunction with more rigorous repatriation and hiring policies, rethinking museum documentation systems is, as this article argues, an important step towards decolonising institutions.
Keywords
2020 (2)
Museum - Politics - Management
![](https://jcmcp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cover20202-674x1024.jpg)
Related Articles
Missing the Audience
Online Musicking in Times of COVID-19Journal of Cutural Management and Cultural Policy
Case Study
Journal of Cultural Management 2017 (1)
Case Study
Planning Creative Cities: Reflections on a Trend
Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy 2020 (1)
Essay
Journal of Cultural Management 2019 (1)
Essay
Kulturpolitik in der Demokratie
Journal of Cultural Management 2015 (2)
Research Article
Kritik - Niedergang oder Neuformierung?
Yearbook for Culture Management 2011
Essay
© 2024, Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy
Keywords
- aesthetics
- higher education
- cultural diplomacy
- career, professional role
- audience studies
- Business
- digitalization, digitization
- diversity
- empirical aesthetics
- entrepreneurship
- development, transformation
- ethics
- Evaluation
- festival
- film
- social change
- ideology
- staging
- communication
- Concert
- creativity
- culture
- arts organizations, cultural organizations
- fincancing the arts
- cultural history
- cultural economy
- art education
- cultural policy
- cultural sociology
- audience development, art education
- arts administration, arts management
- cultural industry
- cultural sciences
- art
- arts research
- curating
- artists
- leadership
- management
- marketing
- market
- media
- methods development
- museum
- music
- opera
- orchestra
- organization
- law
- social cohesion
- community arts
- state
- urbanism
- dance
- theater
- theory development
- tourism
- civil society, third sector