Producing global awareness? An analysis of Norwegian pupils’ negotiations of images in a museum exhibition

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on Norwegian pupils’ negotiations of meaning in images of social inequality in A World at Stake, a circulating museum exhibition in Denmark, Norway and Sweden that addressed the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. More specifically, the article focuses on the pupils’ engagement with two images in the exhibition. By investigating how the pupils negotiated the meaning of those images, the authors demonstrate some of the ways in which the pupils’ reported engagement and responses had the potential to foster critical debate relating to the North–South divide in terms of poverty and affluence. Drawing on critical visual methodology, the authors discuss their findings of how the pupils used their experiences to make sense of the images, situate their social identities within a globally and socially unjust world, and, by implication, the potential for two images to inspire them to reflect on their roles and responsibilities in the wider world. The authors conclude that although the pupils’ social identities to varying degrees were mobilized, AWAS spurred engagement and reflections that helped the authors to understand how the pupils saw themselves, their roles and their responsibilities beyond the Global North.

KEYWORDS:

• critical visual methodology
• Millennium Development Goals
• museum exhibition
• Norwegian pupils
• social inequality

Acknowledgements

Professor Michael Jones and Professor Stuart Aitken are thanked for very helpful comments on draft versions of this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers for constructive remarks on the submitted revised version.

Notes

1 According to Headey & Fan (2008) and Rice (2008), the Ethiopian hunger crisis was a result of the world food price crisis in 2007–2008.

2 The MDG campaign ended officially in 2015. However, some of its subtargets, such as reduction in global poverty, are enforced and continue within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) campaign, which lasts until 2030 (United Nations 2016).

3 Danida refers to Denmark’s development cooperation under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. Norad is the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

4 Unpublished document titled ‘En verden på spil’, 12 January 2009

5 In cases where pupils were unable to finalize the puzzles into recognizable images, the museum educator revealed the initial image through an A3-sized laminated print.