Paper short abstract:

Our paper questions the collaborative framework within anthropological and museum practices and asks to what extent the institutions and disciplines involved act as separate entities that struggle to mobilize artefacts in one direction or other. (Alexandra Urdea and Magda Buchczyk)

Paper long abstract:

Collaborative anthropological research within heritage institutions has been attracting substantive funding in recent years, but the social life and the effects of these collaborations have rarely been academically scrutinized (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2007). These collaborations are thought to facilitate new forms of knowledge practices and models of interdisciplinary partnership (Peers and Brown 2003). But to what extent do practices of 'revisiting' enable a wider impact, and allow more voices to be heard through the exhibition of artefacts?

We discuss the outcome of our PhD research project designed as an interdisciplinary reinterpretation of a Romanian collection in London. The examination of networks of researchers, museum curators and diplomatic institutions demonstrates the tangled nature of the exhibitionary symbiosis. We suggest that the museum holdings have accrued a history of shifting partnerships and representational agendas. Meanwhile, the exhibition discourse does not bring forth these discrete intentionalities; within the setting of museum rhetoric, the objects are made to speak with one voice.

We describe the position of ethnographers working within the current project and the negotiations of practice and power in which this work is situated. The recent incentives for collaborative projects coincide with a context of shortages of funding for both museums and the academic world, which entail an individualistic and competitive approach to knowledge production. How can these contradictory modes of behaving within the discipline of anthropology be accommodated? Such collaboration needs to be unpacked and understood within a wider spectrum of relations (Golding and Modest 2013).