ABSTRACT
The study of difference, ethnic as well as cultural, lies at the very roots of anthropological knowledge. The process through which difference comes to be seen, named and exhibited, however, is historically and culturally situated, such that one can retrace lines of both continuity and rupture. This chapter examines the visual processes of constituting racial difference, and their theoretical and epistemological presuppositions. When and why does racial difference begin to be represented when previously it had not been? And what was the role of exhibiting difference? Here I examine the close links between the anthropological study of racial difference and the constitution of collections, museums and exhibitions. I also explore the relationships between collections and anthropological knowledge, and the place of both within a broader complex of visual representations.
