Museums and Social Responsibility: A Theory of Social Practice

Museums and Social Responsibility explores the contradictions within museum practice and its impact on society, highlighting the ways in which museums shape attitudes and understanding about human agency and creative potential. It argues that museums can be important cultural practices that challenge dominant concepts of normativity and speciality, and proposes critical, reflective processes to practitioners to engage with and change societies and the world.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 202 pages
Publication date: 23 December 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Museums, as cultural institutions, hold a unique position in shaping the socio-cultural dynamics of modern societies. They serve as repositories of objects, presenting thematic narratives that reinforce dominant notions of normativity and specialization, as well as attitudes of cultural depreciation. By categorizing culture into hierarchical structures of symbolic value, museums present themselves as objective entities, driven by the passion of connoisseurship and the assurance of scholarly research. However, this façade of objectivity conceals ulterior motives related to socio-economic class, racial and ethnic othering, and sexual subjugation.

This book aims to shed light on how socially responsive practitioners can challenge and subvert these taken-for-granted motivations by engaging in liberatory museum work that encompasses subaltern narratives, engages historically marginalized populations, and collaborates with them in dialogical practices of collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of practices across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, recognizing them as part of a global web of relationships and as microcosms that define normality and abnormality, provoke critical dialogue, and influence, are conditioned by, and disrupt established understandings and practices of class, ethnicity, sex, gender, thinking, and being.

Museums and Social Responsibility is an invaluable resource for students, researchers, and museum professionals alike. It offers a comprehensive argument and proposes critical, reflective processes that can enhance the practice of museums in promoting social responsibility and equity. By embracing the power of museums to challenge and transform societal norms, we can create a more inclusive and equitable world where cultural heritage is celebrated, and diverse voices are heard and valued.

Weight: 334g
Dimension: 155 x 234 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032120539