![Sample our Museum and Heritage Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5945/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Museum-Heritage-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to determine how socially excluded visitors to two museum exhibitions and two museum‐based community development projects use that experience to construct individual and social identities. In order to do this it will determine the ways in which the contexts of the exhibitions and community development projects were constructed and how and why visitors and participants make meaning in these contexts. To do this it uses the ‘circuit of culture’ as the basis of an analysis, the moments of which are representation, production, consumption, regulation and identity. The paper concludes that the process of defensive identity activity provides the mechanism through which participants and visitors mitigate their experience of exclusion and provides the basis upon which UK government policy using museums as agents of social inclusion might act.
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant no. R000223294). We would like to thank Glasgow Museums, Glasgow, UK, and Tyne and Wear Museums, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, for their support and assistance. The authors would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the Research Associates on the project, Gordon Urquhart and Emily Gilbert.
Notes
[1] Social exclusion has been defined by the British government's Social Exclusion Unit (which aims to coordinate social exclusion policy across the different sections of government) as: ‘a shorthand label for what happens when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown.’ Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Centres for Social Change, 7. A three‐stage process for museums and galleries to address this issue was proposed, developing access, outreach/audience development and then becoming agents of social change. A methodology is presented that envisages museums and galleries identifying socially excluded people and establishing their needs and then developing strategies to fulfil that need. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Libraries, Museum, Galleries and Archives for All, 9.
[2] Newman and McLean, ‘Presumption Policy and Practice’; Newman et al., ‘Museums and the Active Citizen’; and Newman and McLean, ‘Capital and the Evaluation of the Museum Experience’.
[3] Woodward, ‘Concepts of Identity and Difference’.
[4] Du Gay et al., Doing Cultural Studies.
[5] Burgess, ‘The Production and Consumption of Environmental Meanings in the Mass Media’; and Johnson, ‘The Story so Far and Further Transformations’.
[6] http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/ (accessed 24 March 2005); http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/ (accessed 24 March 2005).
[7] Kist is a variant spelling of cist, which was a box used in ancient Greece for sacred utensils.
[8] Software designed for the analysis of interview or focus group transcripts, which allows for the identification of themes within the data. Richards, Using Nvivo in Qualitative Research.
[9] The term social exclusion has a range of definitions; the one used for this study is that provided buy the UK Social Exclusion Unit (see note 1). However, an individual's experience of exclusion is personal to them and assigning to them the label of ‘socially excluded’ is problematic.
[10] The Indices of Deprivation 2004 are measures of deprivation for every electoral ward and local authority area in England. It combines a number of indicators that cover a range of domains (income, employment, health deprivation and disability, education skills and training, housing and geographical access to services) into a single deprivation score for each area. See http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_control/documents/contentservertemplate/odpm_index.hcst?n=3103&l=2 (accessed 24 March 2005).
[11] The UK Heritage Lottery Fund uses money from the National Lottery. It provides grants to support a wide range of projects involving the local, regional and national heritage of the UK. See http://www.hlf.org.uk/ (accessed 24 March 2005).
[12] Children at schools in England take the public examinations of GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) at 16 and ‘A’ levels (advanced level) at 18.
[13] The Children's Society describes itself as a Christian, child‐centred, social justice organisation. See http://www.the‐childrens‐society.org.uk (accessed 24 March 2005).
[14] These areas are included in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 2004, which identifies the most deprived areas across Scotland. It is based on 31 indicators in the six individual domains of Current Income, Employment, Housing, Health, Education, Skills and Training, and Geographic Access to Services and Telecommunications. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/about/ED/IAC/00016135/Deprivation.aspx (accessed 24 March 2005).
[15] See note 4; Thompson, Media and Cultural Regulation; and Hall, ‘Encoding/Decoding’.
[16] See note 1.
[17] Belfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion’.
[18] Vergo, The New Museology.
[19] Macdonald, Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum.
[20] Appleton, Museums for ‘The People’?.
[21] Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community, 40; and Dicks, ‘Encoding and Decoding the People’.
[22] See note 4 and Hall, Representation.
[23] Lidchi, ‘The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting other Cultures’.
[24] Urry, ‘How Societies Remember the Past’, 61; and Hetherington, Expressions of Identity, Space, Performance, Politics.
[25] See note 23.
[26] See note 4 and Mackay, Consumption and Everyday Life.
[27] Baudrillard, ‘The System of Objects’, 25.
[28] Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn, 26.
[29] Bourdieu, Distinction.
[30] Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’ and Gershuny, ‘A New Measure of Social Position’, 8.
[31] Reminiscence is defined as ‘the point of departure for memories’ (Urry, ‘How Societies Remember the Past’, 54, quoting Mellor, ‘Enterprise and Heritage in the Dock’).
[32] ‘Larn Yarself Geordie’ is a humorous book that teaches the reader how to speak the regional accent of those living in Newcastle upon Tyne, known as Geordies.
[33] Macdonald, Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum, 219.
[34] Dicks, ‘Encoding and Decoding the People’, 73.
[35] Morley, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies.
[36] See note 4; Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community; and Du Gay, Production of Culture/Cultures of Production.
[37] See note 28.
[38] Baumeister and Muraven. ‘Identity as an Adaptation to Social, Cultural and Historical Context’, 405.
[39] Cote, ‘Sociological Perspectives on Identity Formation’.
[40] Urry, ‘How Societies Remember the Past’.
[41] Mead, The Philosophy of the Present.
[42] McLean and Cooke, ‘Communicating Identity’.
[43] See note 28.
[44] Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 11.
[45] Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’.
[46] See note 38.
[47] See note 21.
[48] Anderson, Imagined Communities; Calhoun, ‘Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities’; and Phillips, ‘Imagined Communities and Self‐identity’.
[49] See note 27.
[50] See note 39.
[51] Parkin, Memory, 19.
[52] Schacter, Memory Distortion.
[53] See note 38.
[54] Bagnall, ‘Performance and Performativity at Heritage Sites’.
[55] Silverman, ‘Visitor Meaning‐making in Museums for a New Age’.