National Museums and the Shaping of Visibility and Legitimacy in Social Landscapes

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 3. Memory Politics & National Narratives

Abstract

Museums have gained increasing sociological significance as institutional sites where social structures, power relations, and collective identities are actively produced and contested, rather than merely preserved. Historically, museums developed alongside the modern nation-state through the expansion of capitalism, colonialism, and Enlightenment rationalism, functioning as instruments for expressing national wealth, authority, and prestige. Practices of collecting, classification, and exhibition function not as neutral representational strategies but as ideological and performative mechanisms that convert ordinary objects into cultural capital and contribute to the reproduction of social order. In the context of globalization, museums have expanded their institutional roles while simultaneously differentiating themselves through thematic specialization, yet they continue to play a central role in the formation of national identity by selectively rendering certain histories visible and marginalizing others. Building on this literature, this study conceptualizes national museums not as neutral representational spaces, but as institutional dispositifs that selectively produce visibility and invisibility. Through exhibition practices, architectural forms, and classificatory systems, museums determine which histories, cultural forms, and subjectivities are recognized as legitimate, while marginalizing or silencing others. This study adopts a comparative approach focusing on Tokyo and London, two global cultural capitals with distinct yet interconnected trajectories of imperial modernity and nation-building. By comparing these cases, the study examines how national museums operate as technologies of visibility that legitimize particular historical narratives while marginalizing others - especially in relation to colonial histories, cultural hierarchies, and embodied forms of national belonging. This research advances three guiding questions. It examines how national museums in Tokyo and London shape visibility and legitimacy within social landscapes through material culture. It investigates which historical narratives and cultural forms are rendered visible as “national” within each museum context. Finally, it analyzes how differing trajectories of empire and modern state formation inform museum-based strategies of legitimation.

Author

• Daseul Kim, Stony Brook University