ABSTRACT
Human rights and equality discourses, developed over the last three decades, increasingly sit alongside many of the theoretical and social analyses informing critical understandings of both the heritage and museum sectors. These discursive and social interventions have taken many guises (Sherman and Rogoff 1994; Duncan 1995; Weil 1988; Vergo 1989); they have sought to make known the structures, rituals and methodologies that inform relations between objects, bodies of expertise and knowledge and they have made transparent the ways that systems of power and privilege are enabled within these methodologies. Through this process of unveiling, the (often concealed) power relationships between the object, knowledge and institutional frameworks have provided a rich and fertile ground for intellectual inquiry.
