Religious Diversity, Encounter and Prejudice

I said that I would come back to the Superdiversity conference at the end of June and there is one issue in particular that I have been reflecting on and would want to explore further.

The first plenary was by Gill Valentine and outlined a project that she was involved in around questions of prejudice. At the risk of simplifying considerably, the gist of her argument was that a number of recent studies had shown that in areas of high diversity the day to day contact between people was both polite and tolerant, with little evidence of tension or underlying prejudice. She noted that the research on which this conclusion was based emphasised observation in public places and the analysis of what she referred to as ‘encounters’ (I got the impression that this was something of a technical term in a particular strand of recent geographical thinking and I will need to follow this up). Her work, and that of the team of which she is a part, has been investigating this further in the UK and Poland by seeking out individuals and engaging in detailed in depth interviews. This work shows that out of the public sphere, in the privacy of an individual’s own house, then there remains a considerable level of unspoken prejudice. The public politeness and tolerance is seen as a necessity imposed on the individual by the norms of society (‘political correctness gone mad’, or something equivalent). For Valentine the discourse that her team has identified in private, the one in which prejudice still predominates, was implicitly seen as the ‘truth’ and the one to be noted, while that of the public spaces was fragile and uncertain.

I find this interesting, not least because my recent book is based almost entirely on the public discourses that Valentine appears to dismiss. First, it is interesting to note that there is other work out there which reinforces this, and one possibility for exploring this further is a paper by Susanne Wessendorf on ‘common place diversity’ which appears to link very closely with my own ideas. Wessenfdorf is working within IRiS so I will be following this up and will see what can be learnt from it. Second, Valentine’s work appears to suggest that my own analysis is flawed. That may be the case, but I do want to try and explore this further.

At the root of this, I want to suggest, is a methodological question. In a previous paper I proposed the possibility of three different discourses on religion within society that can be identified with three different data collecting methods. There is the discourse that is based on what people will claim in public as their ‘religion’ that can be seen in the census data and the debates around that, particularly in Abby Day’s work. There is the discourse that an individual will use about their own faith, that is complex, contradictory, and that is uncovered through in-depth interviews, narrative methodologies or something similar. And finally there is a wider ‘public’ discourse about religion in society, what we all basically assent to, that is what I discovered through observation and listening to public conversations on religion. In the paper I began with the three discourses and looked at possible methods for ‘hearing’ them. We could, just as easily, begin with a series of methods and ask what kinds of discourses are ‘heard’ through those methods. So, with the encounter literature in geography, for example, we hear ‘public discourses’. With in-depth interviews we hear a very different ‘discourse’, whether that is one of faith in terms of the analysis above, or prejudice in terms of Valentine’s work. The real question, however, is how far we should give priority to one of these discourses over the others and what kinds of hierarchy (whether explicit or implicit) should be given to these discourse, and by implication the methodologies that uncover them.

I am currently in the process of writing a Leverhulme bid that aims to test some of the claims made through my book. This has been relatively straightforward and has the advantage of being very easy to express. Leverhulme, however, like methodological creativity and I was not finding anything that I could get my teeth into at this level. The above discussion, however, raises a very interesting possibility. Was the discourse on ‘diversity’ that I found in the superdiverse neighbourhood of Handsworth a product of the superdiversity, as I proposed (by contrast to a discourse on ‘difference’ in the less religiously diverse neighbourhood of Highgate), or was it, perhaps, a product of the observational, encounter based, methodology that I was using. The project, therefore, could perhaps test both the impact of superdiversity on one axis, and the impact of methodology on another and see what happens at the various points of intersection. That would probably make quite an interesting and suitably sophisticated and original proposal that I would hope Leverhulme might be interested in.

If at first you don't succeed

On 24th June I turned 52 and, having been in the academic world for just over 25 years, I am probably about half way through my academic career (which is clearly not the same as any career I may have in full time employment). I am also at something of a cross roads in terms of the direction of my current role within the University here in Birmingham. This is, perhaps a good time to come back to this blog and to try once again to see what I must do to make it work, both for myself but also, and equally importantly, to provide something that others might want to read and to follow.

I will continue to maintain the fourfold structure that I began the blog with, the 'Quartet' of the title. That is still relevant, but I may aim to be more flexible in the way I engage with the different strands. I need to allow more interweaving, but also more opportunity to talk about things that are happening around me that may not fit neatly into that particular categorisation. I may also, over time, add further strands, more strings to my bow if you like. I will, however, continue to make connections and try to construct the blog in a way that allows the reader to follow the different threads.

One of the things that I have done much more of since last posting  to this blog is to look at, and follow, a number of other newsfeeds and blogs. It strikes me that there are essentially two types of blog. In the first it is the topic that is of most importance. Either an individual is recognised as a leading expert in a particular field, or they are able to draw together material and links that provide an authoritative commentary on a particular topic (whether academic, political, cultural or whatever), or the individual has their own obsession (whether short or long term) that they wish to share with others. The other form is based much more around the individual, a particular personality, or somebody who has an interesting job or role that others wish to follow for whatever reason. The best blogs, of course, combine these, a clear focus on a topic and an interesting and well-informed personality providing the commentary. I know from the start, therefore, that this blog is never going to meet either of those criteria. My interests are far too varied to keep any single interest, and I am sure my style and personality is not going to set the world on fire. I will, however, aim to focus more on the second than the first. I want to provide an opportunity to chat, to explore, and to engage on a whole range of issues that will come up as I struggle with various intellectual and academic issues that engage me.

The other question I have considered is whether Twitter might be a more sensible approach. I am told that blogs are on their way out, declining in number, not being followed, and giving way to more immediate and interactive forms such as Twitter. That is all very well, I fully understand the reasons for this, both from the point of view of the authors and the readers. This does not, however, fit with my own needs, or really my own personality.

At the beginning of the week I attended the first half of a conference on Superdiversity run by the Institute for Research intoSuperdiversity (IRiS) here in Birmingham. This was a really great conference that brought together a truly interdisciplinary crowd to discuss a very wide range of issues around the theme of superdiversity. I will no doubt come back to some of the content from the papers over the next few weeks. The point I want to make here, however, is something about the way in which I tend to engage with conferences in general and how that relates to the question of Twitter or blog.

It may be a consequence of my dyslexia, but I find while I enjoy listening to the papers, I can never think of an appropriate question to ask immediately after any particular presentation. At one level I need to go back, in my own mind, over the argument, the illustrations, the issues raised etc. and to process the information much more slowly (which is also why I find conferences that are too crowded in terms of papers very difficult and why I also prefer to get out after a really interesting paper to be on my own rather than chatting inanely over coffee or lunch, but that is another matter). Secondly, I always find myself wanting to bring ideas from one paper into conversation with those of another, and both into dialogue with something that I have been reading recently, or something that I vaguely remember from last month, last year or whenever. My response to the issues would never by a single statement or a straight forward question. I need the time and the space to work through the ideas, to explain the connections, to try out possibilities and to see what happens when the theory from one paper is matched against the data or examples from another, and so on. I cannot say what I want to say in a limited number of characters, it just would not make sense. In those terms, a blog -a chance to work through in a reasonable length of text a series of related ideas - is probably the ideal medium. That then, is what I aim to do as I begin, once again, to get this blog up and running.

My aim, therefore, is to write something each week, drawing on issues, reading, conferences, thinking, etc. that have happened that week and to upload the blog first thing each Monday morning. Last time I managed to keep going for 10 posts. I am fully committed this time, to doing better than that and, hopefully, getting into a routine that will see me through the next 25 years of my academic career…

Discussing Religious Diversity

Late May, early June is not a good time within University life to find time for blogs. With examinations, in my case the proof reading and indexing of the new book, and preparing papers for a series of one day workshops and conferences. However, much of that is now past and I have something of a backlog of issues to write about. Here is the first, coming out of the CARD network workshop in Aarhus in mid May. This also forms the first blog in the series on 'Towards a General Theory of Religion', although probably in itself it does not address that directly. I was at a workshop in London on Tuesday on Religion and Census, and I am going to Turku next week to present a paper at a European Sociology of Religion conference on religion and superdiversity. All these will focus on the issue of diversity and so I will try and bring them together after getting back from Turku and at that point I will link them into the wider theme. Enjoy the comments below...

In late May I was invited to Aarhus in Denmark as a guest of the Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity programme, sponsored by the European Union. At this event eighteen  scholars from around the world gathered to share our understandings of religious diversity, to engage critically with the concept of religious diversity and to look at ways the study of religious diversity may develop in the future. The event consisted of a series of papers with plenty of time, between and following the presentations for conversation. The great thing about such workshops is, of course, the limited number of people and the ability to develop a conversation over an extended period of time. I would like to express my gratitude to the organisers at Aarhus, both for my own invitation and for the excellent organisation of the event.

It is not my intention here to give a summary of every paper or in any other way to speak on behalf of others at the event. I simply wish to draw out a number of themes that I felt to be important and to develop them as appropriate. In doing this I want to address, for a very personal perspective, the central theme of the workshop and of the wider CARD programme, that is the critical reflection on what is meant by religious diversity and what we, primarily as sociologists, can do to engage with that concept in our work.

The first theme was raised right from the start in the excellent opening address delivered by Peter Beyer. I will not summarise the full background analysis that led to this point, or suggest that this was Peter’s primary point, but it was the issue that struck me from his talk and one which came back time and again during the workshop. This was the question of what level of diversity we might be talking about in our studies. There is clearly diversity at international, national, regional and local levels, although much of that is still framed in terms of what became known in the workshop as the ‘big six’, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Such a list of major global religions does not, even in itself, offer any real recognition for more local religious traditions, religions that sit between and across the big six, indigenous religions, new religious movements, or the many different positions that Peter highlighted as versions of ‘non-religion’, including the obvious secularist traditions, but also areas where culture and religion become confused. Beyond this issue, however, which may well be a question of definition, it was also noted that there was considerable variety within all of the big six, and the many other religious traditions out there, that sometimes had profound effects. We had an excellent paper on the variety of Muslims (whether between Suni, Shia etc. or in terms of national origin) in Australia and the very different attitudes of those who have these sometimes very different identities. Finally there was the question of possible religious diversity within individuals, whether because of dual heritage, or more likely in the contemporary world, because individuals choose what elements of religious traditions they find most helpful/comfortable/challenging. Religious diversity, therefore, needs to be more closely defined and delimitated before it can be used as an analytic tool.

The second issue was the question of whether we should be talking about religious diversity or pluralism. The suggestion was that ‘pluralism’ implied some kind of ideological commitment to the idea of religious diversity, that it was not just a good think, but something that we should actively work to implement. It also implied that the relation between religions should go beyond mere diversity to active engagement and even possible unity as an ultimate goal. Sitting behind this distinction, and the way the discussion played out more commonly within the workshop, is the question of the religious commitment of the researcher. Some at the workshop were keen to uphold the traditional sociological position of methodological atheism, or perhaps agnosticism. Others were fully committed participants who were looking for more theological engagement with the issues. What was clear, however, is that practically all those present agreed that positive religious diversity was a good thing and should be encouraged in and of itself, that the religious bodies should engage with each other in a positive fashion and that this was ultimately good for the society, and perhaps even for the government (a number of those present worked on government sponsored projects and the question of the paymaster in these discussions was never far from the surface). One really interesting take on this issue came from a study of interreligious activity in Germany. This was one of the more neutral papers, so far as any commitment to religious diversity as a good things in itself went, but the analysis of the context and performance of interreligious engagement, drawing on a Goffmanesque analysis passed on performative elements in the dialogue, offer for me a fascinating way of engaging with the wider discussion.

What, therefore, did we learn? First that religious diversity is a fact of life in the current globalised world, and that it is going to grow, however we actually define that diversity. Second, that we need to look beyond the big six religions and look both at internal diversity within the religions, and the much more complex issues of individual diversities among both religious and non-religious people. Third, that this is an explicitly political, and I would argue ‘theological’, issue and that the question of where we stand, and as I said in one of the discussions, our motives and what we wish to get out of the studies, is of central importance. There is no simple theory of religious diversity in a globalised world. Economics, population movements, political positioning, local government policies, individual senses of identity and many other factors all come into play. It is even more essential, therefore, that out of this context networks like CARD who can engage in the wider theoretical and critical debates about diversity are essential, and it is good to be able to report that they are looking to gather again next year to take the discussions forward.

Care and Curation

In this post I want to go back to the conference on material religion in Durham. It always interests me how the programmes that are put together at such conferences always manage to juxtapose different and sometimes seemingly incompatible ideas, but still manage to spark new thoughts. It is the serendipity of the process that I find so fascinating, and which links through to some of my ideas around post-post modernism (see posting below).

One particular combination of papers at the conference triggered a particular line of thought for me. Both were very different in themselves. The first was by Amy Whitehead and drew on her fieldwork in southern Spain, where she is observing the way in which local people interact with specific shrines and statues of Our Lady. She was interested in the kind of issues related to subjectivity and relationships with non-human others that I looked at in the previous posting in this strand. The second was by Pamela Smart and focussed on the collecting practices of the De Menil family and in particular showed how their religious background and concerns led to a specific approach both to collecting in general and to that which was collected. The main purpose of Pamela's paper as I understood it was to show that Catholicism and modernism were not incompatible, especially when seen through the lens of the De Menil family's collecting. Both were excellent papers but it was one small element of each that particularly caught my attention and led me to reflect on our relationship with material objects in the light of my own interest in Dogon art.

From Amy's paper the element that struck me was the way in which the women associated with the shrine care for the statue. Traditionally these women would have been virgins, but that is no longer possible. What is interesting, however, is that these women are the only ones entitled to care for the statue in an intimate and very personal way when all the other people have been removed from the church. They change the clothes and even they have to hold up a sheet and look away while their leader changes the underwear. This is very intimate care representing very close contact with the statue that treats that statue as a real person, and a very special person, a person who is understood to be a Queen.

In Pamela's paper the point that she made, which particularly struck me, was that the private nature of the collection led to a particular emphasis on curatorial care of the objects within the collection. This involved restoration, stabilisation, and an attention to the needs of the object in terms of environment for storage and display. Pamela argued that such attention to care is not as clear in the case of public collections of different kinds, but was central to the whole ethos of the maintenance and display of the collection for these private collectors, even to the point of dictating the form of the building that holds the display. There is a personal element here, as with the statue from southern Spain, but this is the collector's personal attachment to the objects within the collection.

What I picked up from this particular juxtaposition was the different understandings of care and curation of objects in different settings and contexts. Linked to this is very clearly the idea of ownership. For the private collector it is the fact of personal ownership that leads to the emphasis on care for the object. In the case of the women at the shrine I might suggest that it is actually the ownership of the women by the statue that demands the level of intimate care that is seen in the ritual. But ownership is only one aspect. As with the wider themes of the conference and the questions of personhood and subjectivity, the issues around care and curatorship lead us right into the question of our relationships with the material, especially within the context of religion.

As I work through the material on the Dogon I can see both elements of this juxtaposition at work. For the people themselves there is a caring for the objects, within the shrines as part of the ritual, in their placing these objects within the cliffside caves to preserve them among the dead, and in their reuse of the objects at other times. The layers of sacrificial patina represent a kind of care, as do the addition of nails, jewellery and other additions. Finally there are also elements of repair that are seen on some of the objects that in itself is a sign of care. Repair can also be seen, depending on when it is undertaken, in relation to collectors (although it is often frowned upon as authenticity does not expect the collector to go quite this far in their care of the object). How the museums, galleries and private collectors also 'care' for the objects, and the different ways these different groups do 'care' for the objects is also a fascinating area of study. I am not sure I can offer any conclusions at this stage, but it has raised so many new questions for me about the relations between the human and the object in the case of Dogon art, and in many other contexts.

Teaching as a Protected Characteristic

Last week I went to Leeds to present some of the findings from the Valuing Teaching @ Birmingham (VT@B) Project to those who are taking part in this year's HEA Change initiative. VT@B was an Higher Education Academy supported project undertaken here at Birmingham University to look at the way in which the balance between teaching and research among academic staff was understood by the staff themselves. It consisted of a series of interviews with a wide cross section of staff, feedback from a web survey and a number of focus groups and discussions with senior managers within the University. The project led to a series of recommendations aimed at redressing the balance between the recognition of teaching and research in academic contracts within the University.

This is not really the place to go into the specific results in great detail. The overall conclusion, which will probably reflect many other research intensive universities (and others from the responses at the HEA event) is that as we approach the REF submission, many academics feel that teaching is being undervalued, at the day to day level within specific departments, when considering issues such as promotion, and in the wider messaging of the University, especially on the outward facing web site. With the emphasis on increase grants, however, an increasing discourse around student experience, and the importance of NSS and other elements of national league tables, then it was noted that this might be changing.

One interesting point struck me, however, as I was preparing the presentation for the HEA event, and that I raised in the final few minutes of the presentation. This was the similarities between much of the language and structures of discrimination that we had heard around teaching within the project and the debate that is happening more broadly around gender, race or sexuality within the whole field of equality and diversity. I am responsible, within the University, for our Equality Executive Group and like so many other Universities we have been struggling with things like the Athena Swan charters, questions of BME attainment gaps, recognition for our work on sexuality and even interfaith activities across the University. Within all these areas the question is not so much overt sexism or racism among staff or as an institution. Attitudes of that kind are very rare these days, although perhaps still too common for comfort. The issue in all these 'protected characteristics' is actually one of implicit prejudice.

I could perhaps take the example of religious faith as an example. Many colleagues, and even whole individuals, will claim quite legitimately that they have no faith position and that they do not take faith positions into account in relation to teaching, to promotion practices within the institution, in relation to research or in relation to expectations in terms of workload models or whatever it is. However, almost by saying that they are demonstrating an implicit prejudice and if they took the time to make themselves aware of the specific needs and experiences of people of different religious groups, then they would realise that whether it is in relation to prayer times, washing facilities, food provision, failure to recognise faith perspectives in learning and teaching, or whatever else it might be, by claiming to do nothing detrimental they are in fact limiting the chances of some of their students, or their colleagues who hold committed faith positions.

Another element of implicit prejudice comes through experiments which show that even those who have a good track record on, for example, race issues can still react differently (more quickly, less consciously) when confronted by pictures of individuals from different racial backgrounds holding guns. the prejudice is so ingrained that we do not always note that we display it. This has also been shown to be the case when names are added at the top of essays, or promotion documentation. Even if the individual is not known, our assumptions about gender, race, or perhaps even religion, will determine, perhaps only slightly, but still measurably, our response to the paper concerned.

In the case of teaching, therefore, what we see in our data is the idea of teaching as a 'protected characteristic' among academics. We say all the right things. We assert as institutions that individual academics have as much chance of promotion or reward on their teaching as they do on their research. We claim to recognise teaching excellence in colleagues and at times of promotion etc. If we stop to think about it, and are clearly challenged to do so, then this is what we do. However, when we are under pressure to deal with a pile of forms, to sort out next year's work load, to think on the spot of who to recommend for reward or recognition (however that is done) at any one time, then across most research focussed Universities, and perhaps we could say most universities, we revert to type, and our implicit prejudices come to the for. I am probably as guilty of this as any other manager. The solution, however, is one of raising awareness, noting and drawing to the attention of boards and managers, asking our colleagues to stop and think about the consequences of their actions, becoming self aware. These are exactly the same solutions that we are learning to take on board for all protected characteristics and perhaps, in the University context, we need to add 'teaching' to that list.

Dogon Sculpture and Material Religion

Following the theme of the conference that I attended at Durham, I have been thinking about how far the various ideas around material religion can be applied to the Dogon sculptures and masks. Dogon material has always been recognised as being religious, but the exact nature of the religious element and the relationship between the religious and the objects themselves has tended to change over time.

 

One of the things that I am doing in the development of the book on the Uses of the Dogon is trying to track the development of ideas about the Dogon, their life and culture, their art, and, yes, their religion. Of course to talk of ‘their religion’ raises many questions that I ought to be addressing in another one of the strands of this blog. That is not where I want to go in this posting. Suffice it to say, for now, that by ‘religion’ at this point I am meaning interactions with the non-empirical, the other.

Historically the interpretation of masks, and to some extent of statues as well, has been dominated by Marcel Griaule’s classic work on myth. From his earliest work on the masks, through his conversations with Ogotommêli, to the work that Griaule and Dieterlen put into Le Renard Pâle, the complex myths that form the pinnacle of knowledge among the Dogon were assumed to be the basis for understanding every other aspect of Dogon life. It is not my place in this posting to question the myths themselves, or Griaule’s construction of the myth, but it is simply to note that both he, and those who followed him, assumed that an understanding of the myth would make sense of all aspects of the Dogon culture and life, including their material culture. All masks, therefore, all symbols and drawings on the fronts of houses, all sculpture and granary doors, all aspects of Dogon art, was understood in terms of the myths. Everything was a Nomo, a twin figure, an ark, or whatever it might be.

Over time, however, it was recognised that the myths did not relate easily to the principle forms of the sculpture, especially, for example, the maternity figures, the equestrian figures, or figures holding various day to day objects. A new understanding began to see the sculptures more in relation to ancestor figures rather than related directly to the myths. This was reinforced by what was known about the use that was made of sculptures in various shrines (and actually very little was known about the use of the sculptures as Griaule and his colleagues focussed so heavily on the masks and the dances that they tended to overlook other aspects of ritual and material culture). The figures were seen as representations, or repositories of the ancestors, a means or mode of communication between the living and previous generations. They were a source of power, or perhaps more accurately a conduit for the power of the other.

The latest thinking around material religion, however, as expressed in a number of different papers at the conference, aims to break down the distinction between the material and the spiritual, to see the object not as a container for the other, or for power in whatever form, but to see the relationship with the other being a relationship between subjective persons, to see the object as having agency in its own right. Are the sculptures representations of the ancestors? Are they conduits for the power of the ancestors? No, in this view they cannot be that. They are players within the religious field, subjective others in their own right, part of a complex relationship between human persons and non-human persons. Much current thinking around animism is focussed on this kind of interaction and the subjectivity, or the agency, of the non-human other.

I am not sure that I actually have the ethnographic knowledge to be able to provide a real rethinking of the role of sculptures as non-human others within the Dogon religious world. I can speculate, of course, and what fascinates me more than anything else in this context is the way older statues can be used and re-used. The work on the biography of the object (a different kind of subjectivity and relationship with the material) plays out in wonderful ways among the Dogon where objects, made many centuries ago, can be used within shrines, taken to the cliffs and ‘buried’ with the dead, rediscovered, reignited with power, and reused in ritual, perhaps many times over, before finally being collected by travellers and dealers and bought to the West for sale, collection and display.

To simply treat these objects as illustrations of the myth, however wonderful and complex that myth is, or as bit parts in ancestor cults, conduits of power, or even as aesthetic masterpieces within the museum, is ultimately to undervalue them as non-human others, objects with life and with power, part of a long historic relationship with many different human others and part of a contemporary relationship with the collector and observer. It is this that, somehow, I think we ought to rediscover…

Dogon Art at the Liverpool World Museum

This is the first of three postings under the theme of Uses of the Dogon. As I have explained below (Post 1), that is the title I have given to the book I am currently writing on the way in which the Dogon people have been represented in different kinds of discourse (anthropological, art historical and tourist) in the West. What I want to use this strand of the blog for, therefore, is to comment on things that I am reading and visits that I am making that have a loss relationship to the book, but may not actually be included within the text itself.

The week before last I visited Liverpool World Museum with my partner to look at the Africa gallery and to see the Dogon items that are held by the Museum. Last week I attended a conference at Durham, organised by the Sociology of Religion section of the British Sociological Association, on the theme of Material Religion. These three postings, by way of catching up with myself, will pick up themes that come from these two experiences.

So, back to Liverpool, I must begin by offering my thanks to Zachary Kingdon, the curator of the Africa Collection at Liverpool for giving his time to show us around the gallery and taking us out to the store to see the other Dogon items. Liverpool has a small collection of Dogon pieces, all acquired during the 1960s when the then curator used money given to the museum to rebuild its collection after damage during the war, to buy a number of objects on the open market to, in many ways, ‘complete the collection’. The Dogon items, however, did not ‘complete the collection’ and, I assume the same was true of many of the other items bought at this time. This was because the ‘collection’ as it had developed in Liverpool really never should have contained Dogon items in the first place. It was a collection largely put together by a Liverpool merchant, Arnold Ridyard, who travelled the coast of West Africa from Sierra Leone to Angola accepting donations from, and making purchases from, local Africans in the different countries visited. It is only by some abstract notion of ‘African Art’ that Dogon pieces would have been seen to add to, or ‘complete’ such a collection. It is an understanding of what Zachary has called the ‘canon’ of African Art. That the Dogon are seen as an essential part of such a canon is, of course, interesting and relevant to the book, but of little direct relevance to Liverpool.

Zachary has done some very interesting work on the African donors to the original collection and the current gallery within the museum makes a significant point of placing the African individuals back into the story of the collection and its position within Liverpool. Even the Congo material, which was largely purchased by Ridyard, emphasises the role that local African research assistants played in going from village to village asking about the use and relevance of the Nkisi nail figures. This placing of the African individuals, both men and women, at the centre of the story, and recognising their links to Liverpool, where some came to study, or sent their children to study, provides a very different kind of narrative that gets beyond the ‘art/artefact’ debate. It gives a coherence to the gallery and an interest that is historical as well as cultural.

Unfortunately, however, in the middle of the gallery sits a display of items from Benin. These probably could not have been ignored, they are of excellent quality and very impressive items in themselves, a few bronzes and a series of ivory tusks. One of these, on the wall apart from the others, was collected before the British expeditionary force arrived and could well have been a gift to an earlier merchant. The majority, however, came from the violent activities of the British and represent plunder rather than gifts or the result of trade. I did not feel that this distinction was really brought out clearly enough in the display.

At the end of the gallery, on the other hand, some of the items bought in the 1960s are set aside, including a wonderful seated Dogon figure. These are set aside as evidence of a different kind of ‘collecting’ from the bulk of the exhibition and while this makes a useful point, and while most of the items are one-off, because of the way they were purchased, and so could not form part of a wider display of a particular people or region, I did feel the distinction was somewhat false. That, however, is a personal opinion and I still have to say that this was one of the most imaginative and informative exhibitions of African cultural artefacts that I have seen in recent years and would be highly recommended.