Merging Past and Present in the Museums of Harar, Ethiopia

Abstract

This research involves the fields of socio-cultural anthropology, material culture studies, and museology, and employs a multifaceted conceptual framework to view the nature of transactions between people and the objects in their environment. Specifically, this research documents the interactions among community members pertaining to the cultural objects managed by the museums of Harar, Ethiopia. In Harar, the multi-ethnic community has worked cooperatively and with limited resources to effectively manage tradition and modernity in the museum context. Based on case studies of four museums, the findings illustrate that the management of material culture in local African museums need not be storehouse practices, without intended goals, at both the individual and communal levels. The objects in Harar’s collections are, in fact, catalysts through which people define and redefine themselves. The present analysis also demonstrates that not all African museum collections have been initiated or maintained with Western models in mind. Instead, the present study reveals that the formal and informal activities that were initiated indigenously and integrated into the custodianship of local museums in Harar exemplify contemporary adaptations of cultivating practices that were built upon indigenous aesthetic preferences and local systems of alliances.