Collecting, colonisation and civic culture in southern New Zealand

Abstract

Colonial collections played an important dual role: they were key sites from which ideas about cultural difference were theorised and they were also the foundations of public institutions that were central in shaping civic culture. This article explores these dynamics through the history of the Otago Museum and, in particular, the very different types of collecting engaged in by the colonial bookman T. M. Hocken, the anthropologist H. D. Skinner, and the historian J. H. Beattie.