Assembling an anthropological actor : anthropological assemblage and colonial government in Papua

This paper traces the networks through which particular practices of collecting cultures became imbricated in new relations governing colonial populations. It investigates the socio-technical arrangements associated with "practical anthropology" as they were enrolled in the Australian administered territory of Papua. The paper follows the assemblage of a new kind of anthropological actor: one which is framed in relation to new articulations of the administrative, academic and museum networks associated with a programme of "scientific administration" and the doctrine of "humanitarian colonialism". In particular, it focuses on the office of the Government Anthropologist and the ways in which "native culture" emerged as an administrative surface.