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Méta-documentation : patrimoine et pratiques documentaires

Laurence Provencher St-Pierre and Jean-Sébastien Sauvé

Inventorier, collecter et échantillonner les mémoires : le musée et les héritages singuliers

Thierry Bonnot
In anthropology, interactions between ethnologists and their interlocutors constitute scientific material for research, generating different types of documents: recordings, notes, images, films, and digital files. These documents have no informative value outside the ethnographic relationship through which they were produced. They cannot be considered raw data or sources. When the survey concerns heritage objects, whether or not they are in a museum, this question is compounded by a problematic dimension that can be summarized as follows: since material objects are part of a set of relationships, are they themselves documents or the crystallization of these relationships? What do the objects document? The history of their production, of a company, a region, and a family of industrialists? Or that of a collector, an investigation, a relationship with an anthropologist? This paper will attempt to answer these questions based on long-term field research, where ethnography has been brought to intersect with history, museology, and archaeology, particularly in the context of a donation and sampling of collections in the reserves of a museum in France.

Archives et documentation : le cas des organismes communautaires au Québec

Anne Klein
Archives can be considered a form of social documentation. They are therefore understood in terms of how they are constituted. This reveals that certain social groups are underrepresented or poorly represented in conventional archives, prompting the development of strategies and tools to address these gaps. In Quebec, the National Archives recently renewed its tools for acquiring private archives. Studying these tools should provide insight into the conditions under which archives are created as documentation. By focusing the analysis on the autonomous community movement that played a central role in the modernization of the province, it appears that these documents provide little information on the evaluation and acquisition decisions that leave the archives of community organizations scattered and difficult to locate. In response to this situation, several approaches exist: the Canadian integral archives system, of which Quebec archives are part; Anglo-Saxon community archives; and Francophone interventionist archival approaches. The latter, which focuses on actors and their practices rather than solely on their documents, as well as on valorization rather than conservation, appears to be a promising avenue for preserving the memory of Quebec’s community groups.

Des outils de papier aux gestes savants (de la documentation)

Jean-François Bert, Emmanuelle Chapron, Jérôme Lamy and Simon Dumas Primbault
This article explores the role of three “paper tools”—list, register, and file—in the production and organization of knowledge. Drawing on an approach that combines history and anthropology, the authors show how these material devices structure thought, standardize practices, and facilitate scholarly communication. Each tool thus allows us to examine the persistence of documentary practices, even in the digital age, where old and new methods of recording coexist. The study of these three tools reveals a “logistics of thought” in which paper shapes modes of reasoning, collaboration, and archiving.

Itinéraire d’un scrapbook : portrait de l’artiste en figure patrimoniale

Benoit Vaillancourt
At the La Pulperie Museum in Chicoutimi, several scrapbooks of press clippings trace the career of Arthur Villeneuve (1910-1990), a self-taught painter who became an emblematic figure in 1960s-1970s Quebec. Compiled by the artist and his wife Hélène in their home, these scrapbooks played a major role in shaping the fame of the “barber-painter” and in constructing the mythical narrative surrounding his life and work. This article examines Villeneuve’s documentation as both an instrument in the making of their celebrity and a marker of their ability to manage and transmit their public image. The analysis of these materials highlights the mechanisms through which a self-taught artist may become an object of collective memory and heritage.

L’infra-ordinaire de la documentation : une ethnographie des archives de la collection Jean-Marie Gauvreau

Laurence Provencher St-Pierre
This article presents an ethnography of documentary practices through the analysis of the archives of the Jean-Marie Gauvreau collection, a craft collection with a complex trajectory dating back to the 1930s. Today, the collection is housed at the Musée des métiers d’art du Québec (MUMAQ) and enjoys significant recognition, notably due to the prominent figure with whom it is associated. Jean-Marie Gauvreau (1903–1970), director of the École du meuble and later of the Institut des arts appliqués, played a key role in promoting craftsmanship and the teaching of applied arts in Quebec. The collection is accompanied by archival documentation accumulated over the course of its history. In museums, knowledge processes often remain opaque. The analysis of the Gauvreau collection’s archives, supplemented by storage-based observations and interviews with MUMAQ staff, sheds light on both past and present documentary practices. It highlights the gestures, tools, and actors involved in documentation. By delineating processes such as inventorying, classification, label writing, and cataloguing, the study assesses the conditions under which museum knowledge is produced. It reveals the tensions between the accumulation of data about objects and the dissipation of memory about collections. By attending closely to the infra-ordinary dimensions of documenting practices, this research contributes to an anthropology of documentation in museums.

Apprendre avec les objets : documentation et valorisation de la collection ethnographique de l’Université de Montréal (Note de recherche)

Violaine Debailleul, Ingrid Hall and Eugène Fournier
The Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal has maintained, since its founding, a collection of ethnographic objects comprising nearly 4,000 items. While the integration of the collection into teaching and research activities has varied over time, a renewed interest has emerged over the past fifteen years. Objects are increasingly being mobilized in courses, through various approaches that incorporate material culture to varying degrees. At the same time, exhibitions are organized. In this academic context, documentation plays a particular role, as it lies at the heart of pedagogical activities while also contributing to the valorization of the collection. This text aims to present the collection and its uses in order to highlight the richness it represents for the Department of Anthropology and beyond. It examines the history and nature of the collection, the challenges related to its documentation, the different ways of enhancing it, and, finally, the contemporary ethical issues that must now be faced.

Pratiques collaboratives de documentation au Musée de l’Holocauste de Montréal : les fonds des frères Gerhart et Herbert Maass (Note de recherche)

Marie-Blanche Fourcade
This research note explores collaborative documentation practices at the Montreal Holocaust Museum through a case study of the archival collections of the Maass brothers. Drawing on an ethnographic approach grounded in professional practice, it highlights how collaborative documentation can create a space for dialogue, sharing, and co-authorship. The experience conducted with Barbara Maass, daughter of Gerhart and niece of Herbert Maass, powerfully illustrates the impact of this collaboration, which made it possible to increase the visibility of the fonds and deepen knowledge of them, to foster new connections, and to strengthen the memorial and historical significance of the archives. This research note analyzes some of the impacts of this pilot project on the collection, the participants, and the transmission of memory. It shows how this documentation practice can strengthen collective responsibility and embed the preservation of memory within a sustainable partnership between the museum and the community.

Description et indexation critiques des documents dans la collection numérique Nipakanatik (Note de recherche)

Juste Roy, Jean-Sébastien Sauvé, Julie Lise Simard and Nancy Wiscutie-Crépeau
Within the Anicinabe Nation, the decreasing number of knowledge holders has led to viewing archives as tools for cultural revitalization. Historically, Anicinabe cultural objects were described by non-Indigenous people from Euro-Canadian perspectives, contributing to the weakening of ancestral language, knowledge, and memory. This research note presents the standards adopted by Minwashin for describing documents in the Nipakanatik digital collection. The organization has established a governance committee, the Mitonentcikan Circle, and has co-developed, with community partners, a metadata schema and a list of controlled subject descriptors. These measures enable documents in the collection to be described in ways that reflect Anicinabe perspectives and support the revitalization of the Anicinabe language.

IArtefact : un projet de mobilisation de l’intelligence artificielle pour la documentation d’objets ethnographiques (Note de recherche)

Sandrine Lambert and Martin Hébert
This research note presents the IArtefact project, conducted in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval between 2023 and 2024. Confronted with the relative underutilization of the department’s ethnographic collection—rich, diverse, and consisting of 465 objects—the project sought new pedagogical ways to re-engage these materials. It employed artificial intelligence systems (AIS) to automate and enrich the documentation of the social biographies of selected objects, within a research protocol consistently guided by human oversight. The results are presented as proof of concept, highlighting both the possibilities and limitations of generative AI for text and images in anthropological research. Beyond the specific information gathered on the objects themselves, the project’s main contribution was to stimulate renewed scholarly and pedagogical interest in the collection. More broadly, this research note reflects how digital technologies can foster dialogue between material culture artifacts and contemporary anthropological practices, resituating ethnographic collections as active resources for teaching, research, and critical reflection.

Économie et valorisation du livre de seconde main : une étude de la bouquinerie sur les quais de la Seine

Lu Chen
This study examines the socio-economic model of bouquinistes along the Seine quays, a distinct segment of the second-hand book market. Based on micro-entrepreneurship and operational flexibility, this system enhances the value of books through manual and intellectual work: sourcing, restoration, and scenography. This material, aesthetic, and relational transformation tends to offset the depreciation often observed in other distribution channels. Pricing results from an interaction between objective criteria (condition, rarity) and relational factors. Guided by informal mechanisms, such as the “rule of three”, this market operates as a self-regulating system. Negotiation frequently transcends purely economic considerations to incorporate logics of gift-giving. Positioned between flea markets, physical bookstores, and online platforms, this model resists digital competition through its in situ experience, expertise in selection and valorization, and relational exchange. Its sustainability lies in its capacity to generate value that is simultaneously economic, social, and affective.

L’anthropologue, les singes et la caméra : des images animalitaires à une anthropologie visuelle multiespèces

Gaspard Renault
While multispecies ethnographies involving non-human primates have gained ground across the social sciences in recent decades, visual anthropology has shown relatively little interest in the epistemological issues raised by such a shift. In light of this observation, this paper sets out the theoretical and methodological framework for a multispecies visual anthropology. Drawing on a historical overview of representations of monkeys and of debates in anthropology and primatology concerning the use of cameras and images, it first situates this project at the frontier between the social and the natural sciences. It then revisits the results of a study carried out in primate rehabilitation centres in Bolivia, highlighting the value of a multimodal approach for thinking about the role of animalarian images. Finally, it explores the aesthetic and narrative intentions of a documentary film project developed as an extension of the study. Overall, the paper argues for the value of a multimodal and cinematographic approach to accounting for the affective logics that underlie relationships between humans and animals within the dynamics of nature conservation.

Beltrame Tiziana N. et Yaël Kreplak (dir.), 2025, Les réserves des musées. Écologies des collections. Dijon, Les Presses du réel, 376 p.

Gil Chataigner

Bounia Alexandra et Andrea Witcomb (dir.), 2024, The Ethics of Collecting Trauma. Londres et New York, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 235 p.

Karine St-Denis

Debary Octave, 2025, Retourner le monde. Arts, anthropologies, ressemblances, illustrations d’Aurorre Lopez. Saint-Étienne, Éditions Créaphis, 224 p.

Francine Saillant

Provencher St-Pierre Laurence, 2025, Collections et collectionnement : une ethnologie du quotidien muséal. Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, coll. « Chaire Fernand-Dumont sur la culture », 172 p.

Pia Torregrossa

Turgeon Laurier, Yves Bergeron et Martin Fournier, 2025, Encyclopédie des patrimoines de l’Amérique française. Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval ; Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 524 p.

Alexandra St-Yves

van der Grijp Paul, 2025, Art Collecting and Gifts to Museums: An Anthropology of Donations. New York, Taylor & Francis, coll. « Routledge Research in Museum Studies », 202 p.

Catherine Barnwell

Alevêque Guillaume, 2023, Le lever des Pléiades. Sur le chemin des ancêtres à Tahiti. Bruguières, Éditions Dépaysage, coll. « Sous l’écorce », 303 p.

Antoine G. A. Cailloce

Chao Sophie, Karin Bolender et Eden Kirksey (dir.), 2022, The Promise of Multispecies Justice. Durham, Duke University Press, 284 p.

Mehdi-Benjamin Quittelier

Jaffré Yannick, 2025, Trois gouttes de sang comme une fleur, photographies de Clément Chapillon. Marseille, Le bec en l’air, 128 p.

Daha Ka

Trépied Benoît, 2025, Décoloniser la Kanaky–Nouvelle-Calédonie. Toulouse, Anacharsis, coll. « Essais », série « Libre pensée », 288 p.

Florian Lebret