Meet Me at the Fair: Sociability and Reflexivity in Nineteenth-Century World Expositions

Abstract

The reception process of the exposition medium cannot be dissociated from the interpersonal setting in which the visitors are involved. This paper begins with a review of the studies done on sociability in museums. It shows that issues related to reflexivity, as they bear on both the properties of the medium and the relations between visitors, have been neglected. The review is followed by a study of the social experience of world’ s fair visitors in the nineteenth century, at the birth of the modern museum. This is done through a content analysis of cartoons showing visitors in interaction with one another. It is argued that the exposition medium became a space of social differentiation through linkages between three levels of reflexivity: (1) institutional reflexivity, which is related to the ways by which the exposition transforms the crowd into a self-regulating organization; (2) individual reflexivity of visitors’ interaction through which the exposition becomes a strategic space for the negotiation of self-identity; and (3) reflexive action of humour magazines, the role of which was to create categories of social interaction in public places and to reduce them to stereotypes.