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The Ethics of Collecting Trauma: The Role of Museums in Collecting and Displaying Contemporary Crises book cover

1st Edition

The Ethics of Collecting Trauma The Role of Museums in Collecting and Displaying Contemporary Crises

Edited By Alexandra Bounia, Andrea Witcomb Copyright 2025
250 Pages 12 Color & 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

250 Pages 12 Color & 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

250 Pages 12 Color & 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The Ethics of Collecting Trauma offers an interdisciplinary dialogue on the ethics of contemporary museums that are involved in collecting moments of collective trauma. Including a range of international contributions, the volume explores the ethics of collecting material that documents contemporary traumatic events. The case studies focus on four categories of such events: forced migration;... Read more

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

 

1. Introduction: Why a book on the ethics of collecting contemporary trauma is needed     

Andrea Witcomb and Alexandra Bounia

 

Part I: Natureculture traumas

 

2. The crisis that binds us: The ethics of collecting trauma in ‘catastrophic times’.

Jennifer Carter  

 

3. A Future for Memory: Resurgence of culture-nature in the aftermath of 3.11 

Fuyubi Nakamura  

 

4. Mapping memorialisation of pandemic experiences: Care, stewardship and guardianship 

Laia Colomer and Edwin Schmitt 

 

5. Towards a higher standard: Museums, communities of trauma, and the public trust

James B. Gardner  

 

Part II: Decolonising trauma

 

6. Poetics, politics and ethics of collecting: Two Brazillian cases

Claudia Porto and Mario de Souza Ghagas  

 

7. Engaging with colonial collecting practices today: Practising ‘epistemic disobedience’ 

Andrea Witcomb  

 

Part III: The traumas of war, terrorism and forceful displacement

 

8. Ethically contested exhumations in Eastern Zimbabwe: a compromise between spiritual approaches and scientific practices  

Njabulo Chipangura 

 

9. Silence and Remembering: Locating the Cultural Trauma of Terrorism in London’s Museums, Archives and Memorials 

 Rhiannon Mason  

 

10. Ethics of care in collecting spontaneous memorials

Kostas Arvanitis  

 

11. Collecting (forced) migration: the ethics of collecting ‘neglected things’

Alexandra Bounia

 

12. Afterword

Sally Yerkovich  

 

Index 

Biography

Alexandra Bounia is Professor of Museology at the University of the Aegean, Greece.

Andrea Witcomb is the Alfred Deakin Professor of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University, Australia.

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