The Representation of Power and the Power of Representation: Cultural Politics in Anthropological Museums and the Setting Up of the Custom Museum

This essay analizes the development, cultural politics & symbolism that lies beyond the substitution of the National Museum of Anthropology (branch of Spanish Cultures) into the Custom Museum. This resolution & the alleged reasons to get at this substitution point out several concepts which are worthwhile to be analized through an anthropological perspective: cultural diversity, a view of the past & the present, processes of change, ethnography & the use & representation of culture. In such a substitution there are meaningful ideological changes at different levels which point out not only to the cultural policy of a National Party but, more deeply, to new forms of life & thought of modem Spanish society, & tendencies, values & characteristics of the world we live in. They are the new values about the body & comsumption coming from the realm of fashion, the highlight of the cover in stead of the whole human being, the importance of the yellow press & the processes of elite magnification. There are interesting anthropological matters in & out of such museums & a discussion on the relationship of those with civil society. References. Adapted from the source document.