The Ritual Labor of Reconciliation

An Autoethnography of a Return of Human Remains

in Museum Worlds
Author:
Lotten Gustafsson Reinius Nordic Museum and Stockholm University lotten.gustafsson.reinius@nordiskamuseet.se

Search for other papers by Lotten Gustafsson Reinius in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Restricted access

ABSTRACT

Having a dual perspective as researcher of expressive culture and museum curator, I engage in the ceremonial aspects of repatriation through a practice-based “museology from within.” Focusing on a handover of human remains by the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm to indigenous claimants from Australia (2004), I combine material from my own participant observation with sources such as interviews and written and photographic documentation. The aim is to bring an autoethnographic perspective to a discussion on the ritual dynamics of repatriation. The transfer of custody and right of interpretation was accomplished with a ceremonial process, cocreated by museum staff and indigenous claimants. Drawing on differing cultural scripts as well as on improvised interplay, participants engaged in turn taking and intercultural translation of symbolic communication. Certain themes were ritualized redundantly, such as mutual exchange and reconciliation, but there also existed the more paradoxical copresence of seclusion and openness, closure and continuation.

Contributor Notes

LOTTEN GUSTAFSSON REINIUS holds a position as Hallwyl Visiting Professor of Ethnology at the Nordic Museum and Stockholm University. She is currently working on multidisciplinary cooperation in the research field of climate change and people in the Arctic. Her research interests lie at the intersection of expressive and material culture, media history, and heritage processes. As the former curator of globalization and director of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, she focused on the roles of collections in the globalized and postsecular society. E-mail: lotten.gustafsson.reinius@nordiskamuseet.se

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Museum Worlds

Advances in Research

  • Bauman, Richard, and Briggs, Charles. 1990. “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspective on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 5988.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Björklund, Anders. 2016. Hövdingens totempåle: Om konsten att utväxla gåvor [The totem pole of the chief: On the art of exchanging gifts]. Stockholm: Carlssons förlag & Etnografiska museet.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry. 1982. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Bring, Ove. 2015. Parthenonsyndromet: Kampen om kulturskatterna [The Parthenon syndrome: The fight over cultural treasures]. Stockholm: Atlantis.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Clifford, James. 2013. Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Faulkhead, Shannon, and Jim Berg. 2010. Power and the Passion: Our Ancestors Return Home. Melbourne: Koorie Heritage Trust.

  • Geertz, Clifford. (1973) 2000. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.

  • Gustafsson Reinius, Lotten, Eva Silvén, and Fredrik Svanberg. 2012. “The Sociomaterial Dynamics of Museum Collections.” Journal Nordisk Museologi [Nordic museology] 2: 97106. http://www.nordiskmuseologi.org/English/Svanberg.pdf.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gustafsson Reinius, Lotten, and Klas Grinell. 2013. “The King Is Dead. Long Live the King: Un-inheriting Modern Ethnography while Inheriting Objects of Ethnography.” In Beyond Modernity: Do Museums of Ethnography need Ethnography?, ed. Sandra Feracutti, 229239. Rome: Musei Luigi Pigorini.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Habermas, Jürgen 2006. “Religion in the Public Sphere.” European Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 125.

  • Hallgren, Claes. 2003. Två resenärer—två bilder av australier: Eric Mjöbergs och Yngve Laurells vetenskapliga expeditioner 1910–1913 [Two travelers—two images of Australians: Eric Mjöberg’s and Yngve Laurell’s scientific expeditions 1910–1913]. Uppsala: Kultur i fokus.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hallgren, Claes, ed. 2010a. Mänskliga kvarlevor: Ett problematiskt kulturarv [Human remains: A problematic cultural heritage]. Stockholm: Etnografiska museet.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hallgren, Claes. 2010b. “Eric Mjöberg and the Rhetorics of Human Remains.” In The Long Way Home: The Meaning and Values of Repatriation, ed. Paul Turnbull and Michael Pickering, 135144. New York: Berghahn Books.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Handelman, Don. 1990. Models and Mirrors: Towards and Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Hirsch, Marianne 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • KALACC (Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre). 2006. New Legend: A Story of Law and Culture and the Fight for Self-Determination in the Kimberley. Kimberley: KALACC.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Keane, Webb. 2005. “Signs Are Not the Garb of Things.” In Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller, 182205. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Klein, Barbro. 1995. “Introduktion.” In Gatan är vår: Ritualer på offentliga platser [The street is ours: Rituals in public places], 742. Stockholm: Carlssons förlag.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Kurkiala, Mikael. 2005. I varje trumslag jordens puls: Om vår tids rädsla för skillnader [In each beat of the drum the pulse of the earth: On contemporary fears of differences]. Stockholm: Ordfront.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lind, Elisabet. 2002. “Historien om det tatuerade maroihuvudet och ett halvt kranium från Tasmanien [The story about the tattooed Māori head and the half of a skull from Tasmania].” In Med världen i kappsäcken: Samlingarnas väg till Etnografiska museet [With the world in the suitcase: The routes of collections to Museum of Ethnography], ed. Wilhelm Östberg, 362371. Stockholm: Museum of Ethnography.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lindqvist, Sven. 2005. Terra nullius: En resa genom ingens land [Terra nullius: A journey through no-man’s-land]. Stockholm: Bonniers.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Ljungström, Olof. 2004. Oscariansk antropologi: Etnografi, förhistoria och rasforskning under sent 1800-tal [Anthropology of the age of King Oscar: Anthropology, ethnography, prehistory and racial research]. Hedemora: Gidlund.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Mjöberg, Lotte. 2006. Att sluta cirkeln: Aboriginerna, Eric och jag [Closing the circle: The Aborigines, Eric and I]. Stockholm: Carlssons.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Moore, Sally, and Barbara Myerhoff. 1977. “Introduction. Secular Rituals: Forms and Meanings.” In Secular Ritual, ed. Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, 324. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Myerhoff, Barbara. 1977. “We Don’t Wrap Herring in a Printed Page: Fusion, Fictions and Continuity in Secular Ritual.” In Secular Ritual, ed. Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, 199224. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Östberg, Wilhelm. 2010. Whose Objects? Art Treasures from the Kingdom of Benin in the Collection of the Museum of Ethnography. Trans. Charly Hultén. Stockholm: Etnografiska museet.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Shelton, Anthony. 2016. “European Ethnography and World Culture Museums.” Museumskunde 81 (1): 2027.

  • Singh, Kavita. 2013. “The Future of the Museum Is Ethnographic.” Paper presented at “The Future of Ethnographic Museums” conference, Pitt Rivers Museum and Keble College, Oxford, 19–21 July. https://soundcloud.com/pittriversound-1/kavita-singh.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Svanberg, Fredrik. 2015. Människosamlarna: Anatomiska museer och rasvetenskap i Sverige ca 1850–1950 [The collectors of men: Anatomical museums and racial science in Sweden approx. 1850–1950]. Stockholm: Historiska museet.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Tambiah, Stanley. 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual.” Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113169.

  • Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Westling, Rose-Marie. 2015. “Viloplats magasinet” [The storage as resting place]. National Museums of World Culture blog, 4 February. http://samlingar.varldskulturmuseerna.se/viloplats-magasinet-om-att-forhalla-sig-till-manskliga.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1266 558 21
Full Text Views 71 9 1
PDF Downloads 76 11 1