000			02618nam a22002177a 4500
003			OSt
005			20240529101243.0
008			240529b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9781032120539
040			_cHuman Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission
050			_aAM 124
100			_aCoffee, Kevin _eauthor
245			_aMuseums and social responsibility : _ba theory of social practice / _cKevin Coffee.
260			_aMilton : _bRoutledge, _c2023.
300			_aix, 201 pages : _bblack and white ; _c23 cm.
500			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_aMuseums and Social Responsibility examines inherent contradictions within and affecting museum practice in order to outline a museological theory of how museums are important cultural practices in themselves and how museums shape the socio-cultural dynamics of modern societies, especially our attitudes and understandings about human agency and creative potential. Museums are libraries of objects, presenting thematic justification that dominant concepts of normativity and speciality, as well as attitudes of cultural deprecation. By sorting culture into hierarchies of symbolic value, museums cloak themselves in supposed objectivity, delivered with the passion of connoisseurship and the surety of scholarly research. Ulterior motives pertaining to socio-economic class, racial and ethnic othering, and sexual subjugation, are shrouded by that false appearance of objectivity. This book highlights how the socially responsive practitioner can challenge and subvert taken-for-granted motivations by undertaking liberatory museum work that engages subaltern narratives, engages historically disadvantage populations, and co-creates with them dialogical practices of collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting. It points to examples in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, not as self-contained entities but as practices within a global web of relationships, and as microcosms that define normality and abnormality, that engage users in critical dialogue, and that influence, are conditioned by, and disrupt taken-for-granted understandings and practices of class, ethnicity, sex, gender, thinking and being. Suitable for students, researchers, and museum professionals, Museums and Social Responsibility presents a comprehensive argument and proposes critical, reflective processes to the practitioner, so that their museum work may more effectively engage with and change their societies and the world.
650			_aMuseums--Social aspects.
650			_aMuseums and community.
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