Vol. 155 (2025): Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia
Research Papers

Colonial vision and the decolonization of ethnography

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  • Maurizio Martinelli
Maurizio Martinelli
Responsabile degli Interventi in materia di musei, promozione e valorizzazione del sistema museale regionale - Regione Toscana, Settore Patrimonio culturale, museale e documentario. Arte contemporanea. Investimenti per la cultura
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-3842

Published 2025-12-01

Keywords

  • primitivism and eurocentrism,
  • inclusiveness neocolonialism,
  • property,
  • past

How to Cite

Martinelli, M. (2025). Colonial vision and the decolonization of ethnography. Archivio Per l’Antropologia E La Etnologia, 155, 117–138. https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-3842

Copyright (c) 2025 Maurizio Martinelli

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Museums, a creation of Western culture, are characterized by a traditional Eurocentric vision that, with the phase of colonialism, has introduced a reading from the artworks coming from «exotic» countries as products of «inferior» and «primitive» cultures, to justify the supremacist policy exercised towards them. The paper examines the history of ethnographic collections in museums, linking this interest to Colonialism and to aspects of Western culture from that period, leading up to current examples of museum decolonization. So, emerges that the real need is a revision of Ethnology and Anthropology museums, leading to a collective narrative of heritage through multiple perspectives from different cultural systems, of which museums must be a representation

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