Paper short abstract:

The demise of the Museum of Man and the opening of the Musée du Quai Branly, dedicated to the arts and cultures of the so-called First Peoples, offers a revealing mirror of anthropology’s place in public debates – particularly contemporary ones about cultural pluralism and universalism in France.

Paper long abstract:

A historical perspective is essential to an anthropology of our contemporary world, and to a study of anthropology's role in shaping our self-understandings. In this paper, I want to focus on current changes in the museum world, with the demise of the Museum of Man and the opening in June 2006 of the new Musée du quai Branly, dedicated by the president of the Republic to the arts and cultures of the so called First Peoples (peuples premiers). 'Museums of the Other' offer a distorted, but revealing, mirror of anthropology, and of its place in public debates ; they shed light on contemporary debates about cultural pluralism and universalism in France.

While this debate is often looked at as a conflict between universalism and particularism, it is more fruitful to see it as involving two conflicting definitions of universalism : one that may be called an assimilationist universalism, and the other a differencialist universalism.

Assimilationist universalism, at first closely associated with evolutionist anthropology and Republican ideals of the Mission civilisatrice, both in the metropole and the colonies, is premised on a belief in the universal validity of a set of values and conceptions, that developed first in Europe, but are seen as an ideal to be followed by the rest of the world. By contrast, for differencialist universalism, local ways of being in the world, called 'cultures', are seen as the specific forms taken by a common humanity. This differencialist universalism, which began to emerge between the wars in association with new currents in anthropology, is now embodied in the UNESCO Universal declaration on Cultural Diversity. It is premised not only on the recognition of the diversity of cultures, but on the claim that this pluralism is in itself valuable, and needs protection against the forces of dissolution impinging on it. While the Musée du quai Branly is officially to embody French committment to this differencialist universalism, it is conflicting with the continued use of the language of assimilationist universalism, especially in the field of policies towards minorities.