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Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the concept of world culture in relation to anthropology. With the establishment of the National Museums of World Culture in Sweden, the anthropological understanding of culture has been progressively marginalised within this museum complex. What are the consequences of this?

Paper long abstract:

2016 was the year of the big museum debate in Sweden focusing primarily on the National Museums of World Culture. It started by the journalist and China expert Ola Wong, who in the major daily newspaper wrote about how the World Culture Museums had developed into megaphones of political ideology rather than dealing with knowledge about the world.

This paper addresses the concept of world culture in relation to anthropology, and the implications in the Swedish context. The National Museums of World Culture was created in the late 1990s as an umbrella for 4 museums housing global cultural heritage. Two of the four museums were ethnographical and formed part of the development of social anthropology as a discipline in Sweden. The Ethnographical Museum in Gothenburg was closed down in 2000, and reopened in 2005 as the World Culture Museum. The museum in Gothenburg was to become a brand new type of museum dealing with global questions, and to do so it was also perceived having to shed its ethnographical past. .

With the establishment of world culture, anthropology and the anthropological understanding of culture have been progressively marginalised within this museum complex. By 2016 when the museum debate started, there were hardly any anthropologists among its staff, let alone area specialist.

What happens when anthropological perspectives are removed from the concept "world culture"? What are the consequences for museums housing anthropological material and their relationship to the world? What is "world culture" after all?