The human zoo - the dark side of collecting

Abstract

The European way of classifying the world, from the Middle Ages, to the nineteenth century, set up his own, universal system by which one should determine what is valuable, and exclude what is unnecessary. In this system, naturally, the highest place in the hierarchy belonged to Europe and Europeans. As a result of such thinking assuming the superiority of one society over another, so-called "human zoos" were created, constituting the missing link in collecting at that time. We are talking about the places where living people played scenes related to life in their indigenous surroundings. This phenomenon for Europeans was a substitute for a journey to the “wild land”. For the first time, the human zoo appeared at the courts of the magnates who financed overseas expeditions to the "New World". His development is a nineteenth-century "living paintings" where for "50 cents you could travel around the world”. In principle, the human zoo can be compared to peculiar collector's collections. Undeniably, they were humiliating and degrading human dignity. This work aims to bring the topic of the problem to the attention and put it as a topic for a broader analysis on the ethical basis.