Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Poetics And Politics Of Ivory Collecting And Display At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Arianna Wheaton Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

The museum paradigm shift, first identified by Weil (1990), is evident in the transformations of the poetics and politics of ivory collecting and display over the past 25 years. Based upon Igor Kopytoff's (1986) "biographical" approach to material culture, this thesis demonstrates how ivory in museums has accumulated substantial and diverse cultural meaning, priming it for fluctuation according to modern-day culture shifts. Evidence of fluctuations in the social understanding of ivory is based on a new political ecology, which recognizes that a socially constructed nature underpins wildlife conservation efforts and cultural responses to extinction, both biological and cultural. The interpretation …