Title & Author:

Theorizing museums : representing identity and diversity in a changing world / edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Blackwell Publishers, [1996]
©1996.

Description:

236 pages : illustrations, black and white photographs ; 22 cm

Series:

Sociological review monograph series ; [no. 43]

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references at chapter ends, and index.
Theorizing museums : an introduction / Sharon Macdonald -- Part one. Contexts : spaces and times ; Museums and globalization / Martin Prösler -- How societies remember the past / John Urry -- Part two. Contests : differences and identities ; Museums as contested sites of remembrance : the Enola Gay affair / Vera Zolberg -- Into the heart of irony : ethnographic exhibitions and the politics of difference / Henrietta Riegel -- Seeing through solidity : a feminist perspective on museums / Gaby Porter -- Decoding the visitor's gaze : rethinking museum visiting / Gordon Fyfe and Max Ross -- Part three. Contents : classifications and practice ; The utopics of social ordering : Stonehenge as a museum without walls / Kevin Hetherington -- Maintaining boundaries, or 'mainstreaming' black history in a white museum / Eric Gable -- A Trojan horse at the Tate : theorizing the museum as agency and structure / Gordon Fyfe.

Summary:

Academic interest in museums is burgeoning, and no wonder. Museums appear to be part of the process of modernization, and self-consciousness about their social role in creating social order appears to be part of postmodernism. Authors in this intriguing collection rely upon a range of theoretical approaches--feminist, Foucauldian, poststructuralist, globalization, and world systems theory, among others--to make intellectual order out of museums' attempts to create cognitive and social order. Among the most successful contributions are those that provide detailed case studies within the theoretical frame. There are so many different and intriguing threads within this collection that one ends up agreeing with one article’s conclusion regarding the experience of museums, "museums are good to think with."

ISBN:

0631201513 (pb ; alk. paper)
9780631201519 (pb ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Museums Philosophy.
Museums Social aspects.
Museum exhibits.
Multiculturalism.
Museums.
Museums Exhibitions.
Musées Philosophie.
Musées Aspect social.
Musées Expositions.
Multiculturalisme.
Objets exposés.
Musées.
multiculturalism.
museums (institutions)
Museología
Museumkunde.
Museum exhibits Exhibitions.

Form/genre:

Exhibition
exhibition catalogs.
Catalogues d'exposition.
Instructional and educational works.

Added entries:

Macdonald, Sharon. editor, author.
Fyfe, Gordon. editor, author.
Sociological review monograph ; no.43]

Representing identity and diversity in a changing world

Holdings:

Location: Library main 110720
Call No.: ID AM7.T49; ID:96-B1784
Status: Available