The Ethics of Collecting Trauma

Alexandra Bounia is Professor of Museology at the University of the Aegean, Greece. Andrea Witcomb is the Alfred Deakin Professor of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University, Australia.

List of Figures; List of Contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Why a book on the ethics of collecting contemporary trauma is needed; Part I: Natureculture traumas – 2. The crisis that binds us: The ethics of collecting trauma in ‘catastrophic times’; 3. A Future for Memory: Resurgence of culture-nature in the aftermath of 3.11; 4. Mapping memorialisation of pandemic experiences: Care, stewardship and guardianship; 5. Towards a higher standard: Museums, communities of trauma, and the public trust; Part II: Decolonising trauma – 6. Poetics, politics and ethics of collecting: Two Brazillian cases; 7. Engaging with colonial collecting practices today: Practising ‘epistemic disobedience’; Part III: The traumas of war, terrorism and forceful displacement – 8. Ethically contested exhumations in Eastern Zimbabwe: a compromise between spiritual approaches and scientific practices; 9. Silence and Remembering: Locating the Cultural Trauma of Terrorism in London’s Museums, Archives and Memorials; 10. Ethics of care in collecting spontaneous memorials; 11. Collecting (forced) migration: the ethics of collecting ‘neglected things’; 12. Afterword; Index.