MEMENTOES AS TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS IN HUMAN DISPLACEMENT
MEMENTOES AS
TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS IN
HUMAN DISPLACEMENT
DAVID PARKIN
Movements of persons therefore occur with or in relation to the objects to which people attach themselves. Such everyday movements need to be contrasted with those dramatically resulting from forcible human displacement, in which refugees, for instance, take what items they can both for immediate practical use but also in order either to re-establish or re-define personal and collective origins. 303
in coining the metaphor of human-object entanglement and assessing ethnographic literature on gifts, commodities and reciprocity, describes how personhood may be produced and distributed through exchanges. 304
Dramatic and less metaphysical expressions of human-object movement occur in the increasingly documented cases of human displacement, including those of refugees, in which peoples carry not only what they need for subsistence and exchange purposes but also, if they can, articles of sentimental value which both inscribe and are inscribed by their own memories of self and personhood. 304
those who have been displaced fear further displacement even years after resettlement. 304
people, dispossessed of their homes and in flight, are only too aware of the non-recurrent, unique and tragic nature of their displacement 309
claiming multiple provenances is that of an ethnic unity that is ‘recent, temporary and fragile’ (Turton, 1996: 106). It contrasts with that of the nation-state which may be seen as ‘the triumphant end product of an historical process of “nation-building”’ (1996). 311
The great social and cultural leveller at the point of forced displacement, however, is not the nature of a refugee’s national or ethnic identity, nor whether this comprises ideas of fixed or multiple provenance and a tradition of serial settlement, but whether he or she has the time to gather together enough of what is needed for practical uses as well as for perpetuating a personal and thence cultural identity.312
Parkin, David. “Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human Displacement.” Journal of Material Culture, vol.4, no.3, 1999, pp.303-320. Sage Publications,
