The Emergence of New Contact Zones? Ethnographic Museums, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the Digital Age

Grimme, Gesa und Nowak, Katharina (2022): The Emergence of New Contact Zones? Ethnographic Museums, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the Digital Age. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie - Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Bd. 147, Nr. 1-2: S. 33-51

Abstract

In recent years, James Clifford's (1997) notion of museums as contact zones seems to have finally arrived in Germany's ethnographic museums. However, many of the newly established collaborative projects faced setbacks in 2020, as working with others on collections became impossible because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally not known for their digital progressiveness, museums suddenly embraced communication software and online platforms in order to stay in touch with their project partners. Apparently, the pandemic accelerated the digitization of the museum. In this article, we examine the implications of digitalization for German ethnographic museums as a contact zone. Through our conversation with Andrea Scholz since 2021 curator for transcultural collaboration at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and an expert in digital collaboration we explore what epistemological effects an expansion into the digital might have on the collaborative production of knowledge for which museums strive today. After situating the recent push for both digitalization and collaboration within the growing engagement with the colonial histories of ethnographic museums, we consider what digitalization means for collaborative projects and the unequal relations of power that continue to underlie them. Revisiting Clifford's concept, Robin Boast (2011) reminds us that, as long as the authority remains with the museums, the contact zone is an asymmetrical space. Reconstructing our conversation, we discuss how digital exchange and networking might facilitate the permanent inclusion of divergent postcolonial perspectives that might help to overcome these unequal power relations.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde
• Themengebiete: 900 Geschichte und Geografie > 900 Geschichte
• ISSN: 0044-2666
• Sprache: Englisch