Museum, Field, Colony

This paper proposes a set of theoretical and methodological coordinates for examining the role of museums in relation to the development of colonial forms of governmentality associated with the fieldwork phase in anthropology. It draws on assemblage theory to show how our understanding of the different ways in which museums act on the social is increased when their operations are considered in relation to the different assemblages in which they are inscribed. It draws on Foucauldian theory to distinguish how museums act on the social via the public or in the form of milieus. These perspectives are complemented by Latour's account of the circulation of reference between fieldwork site and laboratory to account for the flows between museum, field and colony associated with colonial forms of governmentality. These arguments are illustrated by considering the development of the Musée de l'Homme in the 1930s in relation to the development of new forms of French colonial administration governed by the political rationality of colonial humanism.