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Article ID: CBB271765604

Contested duplicates: Disputed negotiations surrounding ethnographic doppelgängers in German New Guinea, 1898–1914 (2022)

British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 55
Issue: 3
Pages: 297-318
Publication date: 2022
Language: English

URI: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/contested-duplicates-disputed-negotiations-surrounding-ethnographic-doppelgangers-in-german-new-guinea-18981914/BCEAE036B3140E806AA6D03309CAA154

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087422000243

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Science and politics Museums Material culture Germany, colonies Ethnography 20th century, early New Guinea

The issue of duplicates and duplication in ethnographic collection is frequently regarded as a process that begins and ends in the museum as a fundamental act of the process of curating. In contrast, this article maintains, this practice occurred all along the chain of collecting, where indigenous artefacts operated as items of exchange in the context of the colonial encounter. Using the example of German New Guinea, the article maintains that epistemological concerns, as symbolic currency both in terms of inter-museum exchange and in terms of contributing to individual and institutional prestige, guiding ethnographic intuitions had little influence on colonial resident collectors. Colonial residents, who resented the heavy hand of colonial and museum officials in Berlin, infused duplication with their own desires, which included commercial gain or the conferment of the many German state decorations. The colonized indigenous population benefited from the increasing demand for their material culture, which provided valuable items and bargaining chips in the emerging colonial exchange. Duplicates are identified as doppelgängers to explore the political tensions that emerged in connection with duplication among museum officials and European and indigenous colonial residents.

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Article Ina Heumann; Anne Greenwood MacKinney; Rainer Buschmann (2022) Introduction: the issue of duplicates. British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 257-278). unapi

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