The Case for a Sociology of Museums

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. RGC, Culture, and Space

Abstract

History museums have undergone remarkable changes in recent decades. In an increasingly competitive edutainment marketplace, institutions which could afford to do so have replaced the once-uniform glass display cases and interpretive plaques with interactive digital installations and hands-on exhibits. At the same time, amidst increased awareness of the politics of representation, many institutions have stripped exhibits of explicitly racist, sexist and other biased content, and introduced at least some perspectives from historically underrepresented groups. As the architects of such transformations, curators make choices about which stories, artifacts and images to include and which to leave out. Such processes of inclusion and exclusion make museums particularly rich sites for the analysis of identity and inequality—particularly in terms of race, gender and class. While scholars in other fields have made inroads into the analysis of museums, relatively few sociologists in the United States have engaged in such analysis. This paper argues that museums are both socially and sociologically significant. A sociology of museums which is characterized by systematic discursive analysis, an ethnographic approach to visitor experiences, and an explication of the links between discursive and material processes has the potential to more clearly illuminate patterns of racial, gender and class inequalities.

Author

• Jackie Lee Hogan, Bradley University