Cataloguing Culture

Cataloguing Culture
Author: Hannah Turner
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Language: English
Pages: 260
Size: 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Weight: 420 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9780774863933
Availability: In stock
Price: €35.00
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Product Description

In examining how the technologies of museum bureaucracy - the ledger book, the card catalogue, the database - operate through a colonial lens, Cataloguing Culture shines a light on access to and the return of Indigenous cultural heritage.

How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations - much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism has operated through the technologies of museum bureaucracy: the ledger book, the card catalogue, and eventually the database. As Indigenous communities reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on the importance of documentation for access to and return of cultural heritage.