Museums and the Constitution of Culture

Marontate, Jan

doi:10.1002/9780470996744.ch19

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Theorists have examined the museum as ‘sites of contestation’ as influenced by a number of social changes (Dubin, 1999; Marontate, 2005). The controversies over the representations of the past and different histories are predominantly understood as the results of tension due to the challenges from social movements who make demands regarding the representation of ‘their culture’ and relativistic claims which threatened to dethrone claims to objective knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums

Jenkins

2012

Cultural Sociology

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In the past three decades, human remains in museum collections have become the focus of contestation. This paper analyses the construction of the issue in Britain. The literature on contestation in the museum primarily identifies external influences: the market, the pressure of social movements and intellectual currents. I propose an additional influence of internal activism. Drawing on empirical material, I demonstrate important campaigning activity waged by actors inside the institution. The activities of campaigning museum professionals in promoting this issue is a response to a crisis of cultural authority, which has come about after decades of unremitting questioning of the purpose of the institution. The museum is traditionally understood as contributing to the cohesion and reproduction of capitalist society, as reinforcing dominant ideologies. These observations raise the question as to whether this function continues when members of the sector disown and question their authority.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums

Jenkins

2012

Cultural Sociology

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“…This very particular and limited understanding of social relations in the industry prefigures a particular energy future through the recurrent trope of 'technoutopianism' that underlies it (Szeman, 2007). That such a narrative line dominates in this exhibition is hardly surprising, given the list of its sponsors, who were drawn almost exclusively from the oil industry.3 From the perspective of a critical encounter with social relations, both cultural sociology and visual culture studies offer reflection on corporate cultural sponsorship (Bourdieu and Haacke, 1995;Marontate, 2005;Scholette, 2010), showing, for example, how museums are under increasing pressure to tailor exhibitions to the requirements of external funders (Alexander, 1996;Rectanus, 2002). The particular instance of oil companies engaging in cultural sponsorship is a topic that has been highlighted and investigated in its own right.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…'Museology', Janet Wolff (2010: 6) writes, 'is one example of a new area … which has produced subtle and illuminating studies of the interplay of art object, institution, and social and political processes'. And indeed, museums are objects of interest both to visual culture studies (for example, see Bennett, 1988;Hooper-Greenhill, 2000) and to cultural sociology (for example, see Fyfe, 2006;Marontate, 2005). In line with 'boundary object' theory (Star and Griesemer, 1989), the 'Energy Exploration' exhibition, and the objects around which it is constructed, can be conceived as entities that have different meanings in each discipline, but which are common enough to be recognizable in each.…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Stewart¹

2016

The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology

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In 1996, the leading modern and contemporary art periodical, October, published the results of its 'Visual Culture Questionnaire' (Alpers et al., 1996), which was to become a landmark publication in the construction of visual culture as a field of study. Many of the individual responses to the questionnaire reflect on the boundary line between visual culture and art history, as, more recently, does Whitney Davis (2011) in his comprehensive General Theory of Visual Culture. The construction of 'visual culture' as an object of study involves a number of moves, in which visual culture studies seeks to distinguish itself from the range of existing disciplines that engage with visual objects-including Anthropology, Architectural History, English, Film Studies, Geography, History, History of Art, Modern Languages, Sociology. Visual culture studies steers a sometimes uneasy course of rapprochement with these disciplines, to which, in part at least, it also sets itself up in resistance. A number of programmatic early contributions to the Journal of Visual Culture (which was established in 2002) focused on the nature of boundaries between visual culture and other fields of study, discussing the desirability of policing and/or permeating such boundaries and reflecting on disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and even 'indisciplinarity'

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Creating heritage in the Australian historical miniseries 1978–1995

Schembri¹

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Museums and the Constitution of Culture

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums

‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Creating heritage in the Australian historical miniseries 1978–1995

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