earticle

영어

This article focuses on the creation of the Museum of Man (Musée de l’Homme) in Paris and the foundational years of French anthropology. The Museum of Man was born in the dual context of reconfiguration of French colonial empire, which was both in apex and in crisis and the new synthesis of French anthropology drawing on the resources of both Durkheimian sociology and Maussian ethnology. As a museumlaboratory (musée-laboratoire), the Museum of Man functioned as an “administrative-scientific complex,” which aimed to develop an understanding of indigenous society as a distinct totality. In this sense, I would argue, the story of foundation of the Museum of Man can be better seen as the development of new forms of French colonial administration governed by the political rationality of colonial humanism.