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. Résumé: Le processus de réception inhérent au média "exposition" ne peut être dissocié des rapports interpersonnels dans lesquels sont engagés les visiteurs. La revue des études réalisées sur la sociabilité au musée montre que les phénomènes de réflexivité, tant en ce qui concerne les propriétés du média que les relations entre visiteurs, ont été négligés. Cette revue est suivie d'une étude de l'expérience sociale des visiteurs lors d'une exposition universelle du dix-neuvième siècle, à l'origine du musée moderne. Pour ce faire, les auteurs ont analysé le contenu d'une série de dessins humoristiques sur lesquels sont représentés des visiteurs interagissant les uns avec les autres. Il est soutenu que l'imbrication de trois niveaux de réflexivité a fait du média "exposition" un lieu de division et de différenciation sociale: 1) la réflexivité institutionnelle qui a fait de la foule une organisation auto-régulatrice; 2) la réflexivité individuelle émanant des interactions entre visiteurs et en vertu de laquelle l'exposition est devenue un espace stratégique de négociation de l'identité personnelle; 3) la réflexivité des magazines d'humour dont le rôle était de créer des catégories décrivant des façons d'interagir en public et de réduire ces catégories à de simples stéréotypes.

When Do Collective Memories Last?: Founding Moments in the United States and Australia

“…This section is drawn from and summarizes evidence and analysis presented in Spillman 1997, which also elaborates other dimensions of national collective memory and other aspects of national identity besides collective memory. 5 On exhibitions see, for example, Rydell 1984and 1993, Greenhalgh 1988, Breckin-ridge 1984, Mitchell 1984, Benedict 1983, Davison 1988b, and Niquette and Buxton 1997 Thus, the evidence grounding the following analysis is drawn from unofficial as well as official sources of various sorts, from many different groups, and includes documents from commercial sources and documents from critics. It also includes a substantial number of sources that were not produced for or directly related to the Philadelphia exhibition.…”

The Effects of Nutrients on Natural Organic Matter (NOM) Removal in Biological Activated Carbon (BAC) Filtration

“…However, in the latter case by covariance analysis, an alpha value of 0.052 would have resulted in a significant difference being determined. Furthermore, Niquette [6] in several studies could not find any improvement in biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) removal after phosphate addition, even though the initial phosphate concentration was very low. Croll [7] carried out a small number of pilot-plant experiments at Grafham, England, where one of two identical streams had phosphate added before GAC and the other had no added phosphorus.…”

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“…Recent work in the history of expositions and museums has started to move away from this bias towards curatorial intentions, and has begun to expand our understanding of the archive of the fair. Scholars have examined the experiences of visitors and performers (Niquette and Buxton, 1997;Marthur, 2000;Parezo and Fowler, 2007;Qureshi, 2011), debates and counterpropaganda movements stimulated by expositions (Hughes, 2006;Geppert, 2010;Britton, 2010;Stephen, 2013), tried to recreate the 'layout of the fair' and its pavilions in book form (Hollengreen, et al, 2014, p 6), and viewed fairs as miniature cities with real urban problems (Brown, 2009). This essay adds to such literature by proposing three interventions.…”