Human Zoo
Human zoos (also called ethnological expositions or Negro Villages) were 19th- and 20th-century public exhibits of humans, usually in a so-called natural or primitive state. The displays often emphasized the cultural differences between Europeans of Western civilisation and non-European peoples. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on unilinealism, scientific racism and social Darwinism. A number of them placed indigenous people (particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and humans of European descent. Ethnographic zoos have since been criticized as highly degrading and racist.
Read more about Human Zoo: First Human Zoos, 1870s To World War II, Legacy of Human Zoos
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or zoo:
“Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)