Enacting a Museum: How the Creation Museum Works as an Alternative Institution

• In Event: 548 - Theory Section Paper Session. Theorizing the Social: Studies of Science and Technology

Abstract

The Creationist social movement draws upon both religion and science as sources of authority. I shift the analysis of longstanding controversies surrounding creationism from courtroom battles and textbook-adoption squabbles to a new setting: a natural history museum. The Creation Museum (c. 2007) in Kentucky allows Answers in Genesis (AiG), the leading Young Earth Creationist (YEC) organization, to move religious beliefs out of the church and into a place where its credibility is grounded in the same technologies of display routinely found in natural history museums. What led up to the choice to build a museum, a physical site, in order to secure authority and legitimacy for YEC? How does it further the ambitions of AiG? To address this, I draw on interviews with movement informants and an empirical on-site analysis of the building form and exhibit content. I find the use of materiality is one means by which this movement is able to endure and adapt over time, withstanding widespread academic and broader mainstream cultural challenges. Cultural authority matters in social movements not just for mobilizing constituents or as a means to inspire political action but, also as a catalyst for leaders to enact alternative institution building as a successful movement outcome. By preserving the authority of the museum-form itself, while embedding in that place artifacts and interpretations that resist mainstream scientific worldviews, these creationists may succeed in securing cultural authority for creation science in the eye of the public by building their own efficacious alternative institution.

Author

• Kathleen C. Oberlin, Grinnell College