Open AccessSociomaterial intertwinements in Sami research
Author(s) -
Eva Silvén
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nordisk museologi
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2002-0503
pISSN - 1103-8152
DOI - 10.5617/nm.7729
Subject(s) - repatriation , exhibition , context (archaeology) , perspective (graphical) , sociology , meaning (existential) , power (physics) , anthropology , museology , aesthetics , history , visual arts , epistemology , art history , art , archaeology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
This article summarises a study about Sami related research and collecting at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, with focus on curator Ernst Manker and the period between 1930 and 1970, however, in a slightly broader time context. Manker was a productive and influential actor in the sociomaterial network that comprised a broad range of people and phenomena connected to Sami issues. His legacy (objects, photographs, exhibitions, scientific research, popular travelogues) is analysed both in its historical context and as a complex contemporary heritage, starting from questions about its possible essentialising or emancipating effects. Although based on an asymmetric power relationship between the Sami and the museum, the research and collections are characterised as culturally intertwined constructions. A postcolonial perspective is used to discuss ways of strengthening the Sami dimension of such heritage: physical transfers (repatriation) and promoting Sami knowledge and meaning related to the collections.