Seeing culture from below: Counter-curating, counter-ethnography, counter-mapping

Abstract

This paper reflects on our mapping and database project britishmonumentsrelatedtoslavery.net, the first and currently most complete account of British representational public monuments related to British transatlantic slavery. It reproduces our headline findings and presents some new maps of the data. However, our main focus in this paper is on placing our project in a wider context of emergent practices and methods that inspired us. First, we note the exponential historical emergence of three connected critical, grassroots ‘counter’ practices across different institutions: of mapping, curating, and ethnography. We frame their critical commonality in their ‘counter’ approach to the nexus of what Benedict Anderson identified as three key ‘institutions of power … census, map, museum’, which have been central to conceiving and executing policy. Second, we prospectively identify some of the common structural causes that underlie this emergent assembly of instituent knowledge-making practices from below.