Paper short abstract:

Showing a few examples from natural history museums and ethnography from Italy and Scotland, this paper aims to illustrate the differentiation of knowledge regarding the nature-culture divide – embraced mostly in academic contexts – of people and institutions with different backgrounds and aims.

Paper long abstract:

After the birth of the contemporary academic disciplines of biology and anthropology between the 19th and the 20th century, the term “natural history” has been progressively abandoned, except for its usage in museal institutions and associations.

The absence of natural history programmes in universities and the long-lasting existence of natural history museums shows the different approaches that knowledge institutions have adopted when it comes to dividing the studies of nature from the so-called human sciences.

The nature-culture divide has been in fact prominent in some academic institutions, mostly in the realm of human and social sciences (Guillo 2015). On the other hand, the idea of this divide seems to be rejected by scientists (ibid.), as well as within new approaches and perspectives in the humanities. Also, it seems not to have been embraced fully outside of the academic environment.

Showing a few examples from natural history museums and ethnographic materials from Italy and Scotland, this paper attempts to show the persistence of an idea of undivided “natural history”, which merges humans and nature within the same historical and conceptual domain.

The paper also aims to illustrate the differentiation of knowledge regarding the nature-culture divide, an approach that has been sometimes embraced, sometimes contested, and sometimes ignored by people and institutions with different backgrounds and aims.

Guillo, Dominique. 2015. ‘Quelle place faut-il faire aux animaux en sciences sociales ?’ Revue francaise de sociologie Vol. 56 (1): 135–63.