Negotiating Materiality: International and Local Museum Practices at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and National Museum‪.‬

INTRODUCTION The idea of a 'museum' most people are familiar with from reading the growing literature of Museum Studies is of an institutional complex that visually deploys material culture within a wider 'exhibitionary' paradigm. (1) However, this view is all too often not an 'anthropological' one: it obscures other museum work less visible to the general public that includes processes of collection, archiving, preservation and conservation: a series of practices that work to define museum artefacts and that can extend the scope and understanding of social relationships between persons and between persons and things. In this paper we examine the convergence of local, national and international interests around material culture in the work of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and National Museum? We consider the effects of various aspects of museum practice on the constitution of different types of material culture, and analyse the role of such 'objects' in the development and continuation of local social practices.