ABSTRACT
In her study of the nature of collecting in the European tradition, Susan Pearce identifies ‘a need to open up the study of collecting to a range of interpretations, and to bring investigation of its significance into the mainstream, as part of our understanding of social life as a whole’ (1995: 3). In focusing on the practice, poetics and politics of collecting, Pearce highlights the psychology of collections and the particular manner in which meaning and value are inscribed in the relationships between Europeans and the material objects they collect. Pearce (ibid.: 4) defines collecting as:
a set of things which people do, as an aspect of individual and social practice which is important in the public and private life as a means of constructing the way in which [Europeans] relate to the material world and so build [their] lives. It is essentially an investigation into an aspect of human experience.
