ABSTRACT
Using case studies drawn from all areas of museum studies, Museums and their Communities explores the museums as a site of representation, identity and memory, and considers how it can influence its community.
Focusing on the museum as an institution, and its social and cultural setting, Sheila Watson examines how museums use their roles as informers and educators to empower, or to ignore, communities.
Looking at the current debates about the role of the museum, she considers contested values in museum functions and examines provision, power, ownership, responsibility, and institutional issues.
This book is of great relevance for all disciplines as it explores and questions the role of the museum in modern society.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |146 pages
Changing Roles of Museums Over Time and Current Challenges
part |95 pages
Who Controls the Museum?
chapter |21 pages
Exhibitions of Power and Powers of Exhibition
chapter |16 pages
Nuclear Reactions
part |106 pages
Museum and Identities
chapter |15 pages
Inspiration Africa!
part |106 pages
Communities Remembering and Forgetting
chapter |17 pages
Contesting ‘Local' Commemoration of the Second World War
chapter |13 pages
Collective Amnesia and the Mediation of Painful Pasts
chapter |22 pages
Mapping the Memories
part |78 pages
Challenges Museums and Communities in the Twenty-First Century
