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Accepted Paper:

At home in the museum - an experiment in 'living ethnography'  
Inge Daniels (University of Oxford)

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the exhibition 'At Home in Japan' held at the Geffrye Museum in London in 2011, this paper explores how deeply embedded cultural stereotypes may be re-evaluated by encouraging active engagement with quotidian spaces, objects and images in the multi-sensory, spatial context of the museum.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the exhibition 'At Home in Japan - beyond the minimal house' held at the Geffrye Museum in London from March until August 2011, this paper (re)examines the unique possibilities the multi-sensory, spatial context of the museum offers for questioning deeply embedded cultural stereotypes. The exhibition, based on my monograph about contemporary urban Japanese homes (Berg 2010), juxtaposes the stereotype of the Japanese house, that has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style in the West, with the complexities and contradictions of real lives behind closed doors. Inspired by the literature about perception and the senses which argues that vision cannot be disconnected from the haptic experiences of the body in space, 'At Home in Japan' combines the use of photographs and written commentary with objects and sounds to recreate the atmosphere inside an urban 'mainstream' home. Through encouraging active engagement with these quotidian spaces, objects and images, we hope that visitors from various cultural backgrounds relate, through bodily memory, to another culture on an empathetic level instead of gazing at its exotic nature. Finally, we extended this experiment in 'living ethnography' beyond the museum by raffling the majority of the objects, sourced through donations made by participants in my 2003 ethnography and long-term Japanese friends, my personal collection, and purchases made during two shopping trips to Japan, in a free public event. The project, thus, highlights the need to rethink the nature of 'museum objects' and their role in disseminating performative, anthropological knowledge.

Panel P02
Exhibiting anthropology
  Session 1