Rethinking gender from the ethnographic museum. Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

The present proposed volume takes as its fulcrum the concept of gender, and in its most simple iteration asks: What happens when, we – that is, the varied individuals and communities who take a vested interest in the collections housed by ethnographic museums – think more deliberately from the objects in our museums? How might we theorize gender in ways that allow us to think our relationships to each other in Povinelli's (2011) ‘otherwise’ ways? Ultimately this volume brings together cutting-edge thinking in gender studies, material culture, and museum practice, centering the lens on the ethnographic as a critical category of analysis that continues to regiment how we organize the very collections in our museums.