Bibliographie complète

This dissertation focuses on the culture of collecting as a social act. It begins by studying the discourse held by individual collectors and groups of collectors pertaining to their collecting practices. This examination reveals the motivations that justify the social importance of an essentially individualistic act, by connecting it to various collective benefits such as furthering historical knowledge, building national identity, and civic education. The collectors propagate a utilitarian vision of their activities, and rationalize a hobby that is often negatively perceived. This analysis exposes the characteristics that compose the image of an ideal practitioner, as well as the criteria established to determine the status of private collections and their components. The dissertation also considers collecting as a practice, and demonstrates that collecting consists of a series of acts that can be grouped into three main categories: acquiring, managing, and disseminating. It describes how, and from whom collectors acquired objects, and reveals the importance of local and international networks of transaction. It then highlights the care given to objects in the area of collection management: preparing, cleaning, hanging, storing, classifying, inventory, and cataloguing. Finally, it establishes the particular forms, occasions, and public to which collections are exhibited. The dissertation does not consist of a study of collections, but instead puts forward a cultural history of the practice of collecting. The objects amassed and classified (coins, medallions, stamps, aboriginal artefacts, archeological objects, works of art, autographs, books, rare documents, natural history specimens) are not considered in themselves, but rather as the product of a process that is the true subject of this research. It presents a critical reading of collecting and seeks to understand the aspirations, beliefs, values and representations of collectors, for collecting is a way to organize the world, and thus the collection reveals, through the choices made in the selection of pieces and the order in which they are placed, a way to see and understand this world. The practice of collecting is considered as a way in which to study male sociability, the significance of notions such as virility or the nation, and the importance given to history, sciences, and civic education.