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Cultural Conflict: The Stories Dioramas Tell and Don’t Tell

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Book cover Natural History Dioramas – Traditional Exhibits for Current Educational Themes

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of conflict in understanding dioramas containing cultural representations, especially models or re-creations of indigenous cultures and actual people created for natural history museums. We use three specific examples of such conflict: African-Americans, South African Bushmen and Native Americans. The three cultural conflict examples used here stem from dioramas or depictions that have already been contested, modified, and/or removed. These examples are taken from different peoples of various cultures, languages, and social systems, but who share the experience of having their cultural realities misrepresented.

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Ash, D. (2019). Cultural Conflict: The Stories Dioramas Tell and Don’t Tell. In: Scheersoi, A., Tunnicliffe, S. (eds) Natural History Dioramas – Traditional Exhibits for Current Educational Themes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00208-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00208-4_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00207-7

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