ETHNOGRAPHY MUSEUM AND ITS STRUGGLED OF ETHNO- ETHNO-NATIONALISM ETHNO-NATIONALISM

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went to the museum of Melayu Patani spiritual leader, saw the objects and realized how they were the children of Melayu Patani nation. In this process, the consciousness of being Melayu emerged from the past affecting the imagined community among Melayu Patani nowadays.

The imagined community, on the other hand, is the effort of hegemony power in such a nation to build something “common” embedding to people’s consciousness and imagination, which generates the sense of belonging among each other. The process of establishing national identity used key common characteristics such as common religion, common language, and common culture to ease the process of producing similar imagination and facilitate the dissemination of the idea (Huntington, 1981). This framework has greatly impacted the role and objectives of the museum as a cultural element that is of service to the nation-building process either for those nation-states or ‘stateless nations’. As a result, national museums have become the location for the collection of the acquired sense of feeling, a combination of sharing memories among nation stakeholders, and being a hub of social, cultural and religious norms (Kaltsas, 2007).

Lastly, the museum has been increasingly used as one of the tools in the reconstruction processes of national identity by including indigenous as one of the new national identities.

Museums, in this sense, are a tool that offer a distinct perspective in the creation of the new definition of identities as they are the locations where the concepts of national identities and otherness are artfully shaped, validated, and circulated among the members of such ‘imagines community’ (Anderson, 1991).

2.2.4. ETHNOGRAPHY MUSEUM AND ITS STRUGGLED OF ETHNO-NATIONALISM

To explore the definition and role of ethnographic museums, it is worth discussing an example of academic work illustrated by Eidheim et al (2012) who experienced an ethnographic museum in Tromsø, Norway, which demonstrated a relation between museum and ethnopolitics. Eidheim et al (2012) recorded the setting process of an exhibition about Sami people under the name ‘Sápmi – Becoming a Nation’, which means ‘a nation without border or statehood’. The exhibition portrayed a central concept of the development of Sami

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ethnopolitical movement. While the political agenda of the Sami has never included the demand for ‘statehood’, their presentation of themselves as a nation without borders was considered problematic for some Norwegian, calling them Sami nationalism. Through self representation in the exhibition, Sami people achieved to present their own understanding of becoming a nation and obtaining a public voice in culture and politics. It also illustrated the ongoing struggles and the vision of the Sami, and presented a complex development from the past to the future of the ethnic group. The exhibition described the cultural and political awakening of Sami people in Northern Scandinavia, which represented not only to offer a new way of representation of indigenous people but also the struggle of Sami people for recognition and rights. Thanks for Appadurai (2006) who elucidate what Eidheim et al. (2012) has experienced as

“The representation of indigenous cultures in museums is politically and

socially loaded, as museums are a vehicle for the inclusion of indigenous communities in the national ethnoscape”, Appadurai (2006)

After the emergence of anthropology as one of the academic disciplines, artifacts which had been previously put and categorized on display by their scientific classification in the museum has been classified by their cultural significance, especially the objects that represent the ‘others’

have been considered as to possess more value and interests (Keurs, 2007 & Mohr, 2014).

As a result, in the late nineteenth century, many ethnographic artifacts were displayed in European museums (Mohr, 2014). However, the objective of ethnographic museums was being challenged as there were increasing movements calling for higher levels of inclusion within the society after many ethnic groups still struggling to cope with the damage and disadvantage that had been caused during the colonial era (Voogt & Kitungulu, 2008; Mohr, 2014).

For Voogt & Kitungulu (2008) and Mohr (2014), the debate about ethnography in the post-colonial era was divided into two courses. The first course is the process of bargaining for representation of ethnicity in public domains such as nationalism museums after independence.

The movement was the result of the process of nation-building which cultural assimilation of the majority often overwhelmed the minorities particularly in post-colonial countries and multi-ethnicity territories. For example, Davidson (2005) found that the disagreement in the storytelling of slavery in the South African Cultural History Museum were prohibited. The history in South African Museums during the apartheid was presented solely from the perspective of the white (Davidson, 2005), which caused many upsets and finally brought the

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major change of narrative after the abolition of segregation system. As Lonetree (2012) said for native people, a museum could be a space to realise pain. These facts have pushed the concept of ethnography in the second course: if the process of nation-building, including the process of cultural assimilation, in multi-ethnicity nations failed to satisfy parties, minorities would become “Ethnic Separatism” (Connor, 2004) and some of them will be a ‘marginal people’ who struggle to expel their blurry identity (Connor, 2004 & Wungaeo, 2007). In this sense, those ‘marginal people’ of a nation without statehood will become an antagonist who tries to use every agent to prevent their ethnic identity and even launch a flight with the majorities. The struggle of minority Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Karen National Union (KNU) resulted in the establishment of the Karen’s liberation army against Myanmar and its majority, Burmese, for instance (Preecharush, 2015).

A study by Andrew (2010) who travelled to Bermuda to observe its heritage and museums examined how and why people in the island use maritime culture to generate identity and community. After World War II, the birth of post-colonial nations arrived with the fight for civil rights and ethnic re-determination. In this sense, Museums were subjected to the question about their legitimacy to speak on behalf of indigenous and minorities, while concerns about social exclusion and public policy, as well as political agendas, influenced ‘new museum’

studies and practices. Decentralized methods were developed to open a collaborative exchange in finding the way to present exhibitions and to form a new way of communication, such as the method of ‘appropriate museology’ (Kreps, 2008) to venture benefits for local communities.

By doing so, museums were moved from a marginalized, irrelevant position in local settings to a pivotal one. This model supports community heritage by ameliorating the way heritage is used to form identity, which includes a sense of ownership.

Hence, the study used Bermuda maritime heritage as an example of how a community mobilizes shared heritage to address the problem of social exclusion, as well as to construct national and collective identity. Shared heritage in maritime activities, according to Andrew (2010), fosters highly localized identities of people in Bermuda, which are generated and shown in the museums. To achieve this, the research suggests that curators should shift their concentrate from the museum-centric position to the community heritage, which is a common ground between museums’ interests and communities. Using this methodology, in which the study called ‘heritage ethnography’, the museums would present heritage that is authentic and

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relevant to the community, which will help the community to formulate their own identity through the museums’ work.

In the case study of Native Americans, Lonetree (2012) tried to identify local museums as a platform of Native Americans to make their self-determination and cultural possession and the way they “decolonized” in order to express the truth about their heritage and identity. The study focused on the relationship between museums and indigenous people in the United States, which pointed out that indigenous people were interested in making local museums in their community. The study found that the ways to manage the museum were made by indigenous people themselves, signifying a shift of museum management in placing importance on ethnic minorities to administer their artifacts and accompanied narrative, rather than being the witness of the curators (Lonetree, 2012).

However, ethnographic museums are used not only for those minorities who have been pushed to be a marginal people but also for the majorities. The museums, especially ethnographic museums, helped construct national identity for the imagined community by providing a space for inquiry as they incorporated the expressive and destructive compulsions stimulated by nationalist movements. Kezer (2000), for example, studied ethnographic museums in Turkey during the process of nation-building and concluded that museums were pivotal didactic space for the expression of the official republic narrative by transforming monuments related to the old-order to neutralize the museums in order to offset their political and cultural significance, easing the formation of the new national ideology (Kezer, 2000).

Most ethnographic museums today attempt to be a living and interactive space which house collections of objects to tell the cultures, practice, and values of a society or communities. The voice of authority in the museums has repositioned from curators and scholars to community members or first-hand witnesses of the locality where the objects were derived. Furthermore, as communities’ members have become part of the presentation process, many oral and traditional expressions that have been neglected are becoming points of interests for the audiences, such as performing arts, rituals, and festive events. In other words, today’s ethnographic museums have become sites of community’s collaboration to articulate in dialogue with visitors in order to express their heritage and identity (Fromm, 2016).

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2.3 THE STRUGGLE OF MELAYU IDENTITY IN DEEP SOUTH