Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses museums as a tool for communication between past anthropological research and contemporary source communities by focusing on a case study of the Info-Forum Database for Popular Culture Collections from the Middle East in the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses museums as means of communication between past anthropological research and contemporary source communities by focusing on a case study of the Info-Forum Database for Popular Culture Collections from the Middle East in the National Museum of Ethnology (abbr. MINPAKU), Osaka, Japan.

After obtaining knowledge and power in the late 1970s, anthropologists developed a new paradigm focusing on the mutual relationship between people in the research communities and their informants. Although anthropologists subsequently attempted several approaches to achieving this paradigm and creating mutual relationships, some issues regarding how to share past anthropological field research data remain. Concerning this issue, the effects of MINPAKU are noteworthy.

MINPAKU owns more than 345,000 ethnological objects from all over the world and has communicated with the source communities. In recent years, MINPAKU launched the Info-Forum museum project to maintain continuity and ensure the creation of a forum for sharing ethnic cultural assets from a global perspective. In this project, they created an infrastructure that allows researchers and people in the source communities can discuss the owned objects in cyberspace. I focus on their efforts related to the Middle Eastern collection, including objects collected by Motoko Katakura (1937-2013). I discuss how they designed a platform that allows people in the source communities and researchers to participate in this forum and to collaborate with contemporary researchers.