Missions, museums and scientific collections: when missionaries spread the word of science
Type: Workshop
Date: September 15, 2016
Location: France
Subject Fields: Anthropology,
Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, History of Science,
Medicine, and Technology, Religious Studies and Theology, Social
Sciences
With
the organization of this international workshop, we hope to gather
historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and other
researchers to come back on the ambiguous ties that might have brought
missionaries and scientists together in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Missions and sciences have long been considered as irreconcilable
opposites in the study of missions and sciences alike – whether we speak
of natural sciences or the study of man and mankind. European
missionaries often were under the suspicion of reading the world and its
inhabitants with “Biblical spectacles”, which necessarily led to
biased, erroneous, unscientific analyses and conclusions. Yet many
Christian missionaries stationed overseas nourished an unbounded
interest in anthropology, ethnology, botany, or geology, both as
amateurs and professionals, and therefore contributed to the development
of those sciences at home. Can one be a thorough scientist and an
avowed Christian? This question lies at the heart of the many tensions
and collaborations that led missionaries and scientists to work together
and confront their scientific materials and findings, notably at the
end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th
century. Missionaries could sometimes be precious sources of data for
armchair scientists, or even theoreticians of natural and human
sciences, thanks mainly to their privileged position as “in-betweeners”,
which allowed them to collect information, artefacts, stories and other
specimens that were widely sought after by European institutions. Such
collaborations could be translated into the integration of missionaries
to scientific networks that welcomed them on a national and
international stage (clubs and societies) and published their findings
in their journals and bulletins.
One of the most
obvious manifestations of this growing interest in collaboration was
probably the active role that some French, British or Swiz missionaries
played in collecting artefacts directly from their mission field, which
was of course made easier by their linguistic skills and their
connections among the indigenous populations studied: among their
potential converts, they could find willing contributors who would help
them fill the stocks of European museums of anthropology for instance.
This workshop wishes to examine those overseas collaborations, those
comings and goings between Europe and overseas territories, which have
not yet been thoroughly looked into by historians of missions,
historians of science and historians of museums. Another aspect this
workshop will echo is the interest missionaries often nourished in the
cultures and environment they came from, leading them to collect both
material and immaterial artefacts when they were on furlough. This
practice corresponds to the emergence of the study of folklore in many
European countries, which borrows its methods to the burgeoning sciences
of anthropology and ethnology in the second half of the 19th century.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Missions and natural sciences
- Missions and the study of man and mankind
- Missions and museums (both at home and in the colonies)
- Missions and European folklore
- Collaborations between missionaries and scientists, scientific institutions and museums
- Missionaries and professional and amateur networks of science
- Joint history of missions and sciences
Funding
is available to cover travel expenses and your staying in Le Mans.
Please send paper proposals (300-500 words, in French or in English) and
a short bio before September, 15, 2016, to Maud Michaud (Maud.Michaud@univ-lemans.fr), Serge Reubi (serge.reubi@gmail.com), and Vincent Vilmain (Vincent.Vilmain@univ-lemans.fr).
Contact Info:
Funding
is available to cover travel expenses and your staying in Le Mans.
Please send paper proposals (300-500 words, in French or in English) and
a short bio before September, 15, 2016, to Maud Michaud (Maud.Michaud@univ-lemans.fr), Serge Reubi (serge.reubi@gmail.com), and Vincent Vilmain (Vincent.Vilmain@univ-lemans.fr).
Contact Email: