«Construire le monde de demain» : l'ethnographie provençale à l'exposition universelle de New York (1939)

Abstract

«Building tomorrow's world» : the ethnography of Provence at the New York World's Fair (1939). This article reports on field work done in 1938 by Georges Henri Rivière and his team from the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, in Paris, at Barbentane-en-Provence, near Avignon. The work was designed to prepare a contribution to the World's Fair, in New York the following year. It high-lights the peculiar rhetoric of ethnologists at this time, divided between tradition and modernity. The description of the exhibition, the involvement of local players, relations with the press and even random events during the trip help us to understand the rationale underpinning an innovative project, both complex and multifunctional. From a historical point of view, it seems sufFiciently distant to serve as testimony to the gradual change from a largely backward-looking interest in folklore to a form of anthropology applied to local development, concerned about the future and active involvement in research.