Cultural Resource in Action : Mobilization of Culture in Madagascar under French Colonial Rule

抄録

This article seeks to investigate the concept of "cultural resource," and elucidate active and dynamic processes that take place when some actor mobilizes and deliberately uses certain cultural items as resources to attain certain socio-political goals. In tackling this theoretical problem, this article explores, as a concrete case study, French colonial policy and its application to the colony of Madagascar at the interwar period, especially focusing on a magnificent "colonial ritual" organized by the French Government of Madagascar in 1938, which consisted in the transfer of the remains of the late Merina Queen from Algeria to Madagascar and its reinterment at the tomb of the former Merina palace. A detailed examination of this ritual reveals that at the heart of the theoretical theme of cultural resources lies a fourfold question of (1) "who" mobilizes (2) "whose" culture (3) as "whose" culture (4) "vis-a-vis whom."