human zoo
Sign in to saveAlso known as human exhibition, human exposition, ethnological exhibition, ethnological exposition
public exhibit of members of a foreign nation
Described at
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Wikidata facts
- Part of
- colonial exhibition
- Image
- Jardin d'Acclimatation Hottentots.jpg
- Significant event
- Internationale Koloniale en Uitvoerhandel Tentoonstelling
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- Commons category
- Human zoos
- facet of
- scientific racism
- described at URL
- historischdenken.hypotheses.org/6612
- significant person
- Sarah Baartman
- significant place
- Crystal Palace
- has characteristic
- objectification
- topic's main category
- Category:Human zoos
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
A group of Igorot people displayed during the St. Louis World's Fair, 1904 The Selk'nam people of Tierra del Fuego, brought to the 1889 Paris World's Fair by Belgian whaling entrepreneur Maurice Maître
Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, was a colonial practice of publicly displaying people, usually in a so-called "natural" or "primitive" state. They were most prominent during the 19th and 20th centuries. These displays often emphasized the supposed inferiority of the exhibits' culture, and implied the superiority of "Western society", through tropes that depicted marginalized groups as "savage". They then developed into independent displays emphasizing the exhibits' inferiority to western culture and providing further justification for their subjugation. Such displays featured in multiple colonial exhibitions and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “human zoo” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.