The Museum of Other People

This is a history of the ways in which the world has been represented in museums of anthropology, with their displays of arts and artifacts, their dioramas, their special exhibitions, and their arrays of skulls and skeletons. Originally created as colonial enterprises to document the ''primitive peoples'' of the empire, what is the purpose of these places today? What should they do with the items in their custodianship? And how can one make sense of the story of material culture with or without them? Informed by a lifetime of research and scholarship, this is a subtle and original work which tackles the painful questions at the root of museums'' identities today. Adam Kuper illuminates these difficult truths with both heart and humanity; the result is a must-read for anyone concerned with the future of our past.

Préface
A contemplation of the hotly-debated significance - and future - of anthropology museums, from a global expert

Auteur
Adam Kuper was most recently Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and a visiting professor at Boston University. A Fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Kuper has appeared many times on BBC TV and radio and he has reviewed regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal.