Museums, Society, Inequality explores the wide-ranging social roles and responsibilities of the museum. It brings together diverse perspectives from across the globe (including Australia, South Africa, Canada, Greece, the USA and the UK) which collectively seek to stimulate critical debate, to inform the work of practictioners and policy makers and to advance recognition of the agency of museums; their purpose, responsibilities and value to society. The notion that the cultural and the social are inextricably linked and more particularly, that museums have the potential to act as agents of...

"Museums and the Combating of Prejudice" addresses an increasingly significant issue for museums internationally but one which has, to date, received very little theoretical or empirical investigation. In recent years there has been a growing interest, within the academy, and amongst cultural policy makers and practitioners, in the social role, impact and responsibility of museums. It is possible to detect a growing confidence amongst practitioners, internationally, in articulating goals which position museums as agents of positive social change. The volume is not focused on a singular,...

Drawing together a selection of high quality, intellectually robust and stimulating articles on both theoretical and practice-based developments in the field, this reader investigates the closely linked areas of management and marketing in the museum situation.

Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums and related cultural organisations.

This volume of provocative and timely contributions, brings together twenty researchers, practitioners and academics from different disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts to explore issues surrounding the cultural representation of disabled people and, more particularly,...

The last two decades have seen concerns for equality, diversity, social justice and human rights move from the margins of museum thinking and practice, to the core. The arguments -- both moral and pragmatic -- for engaging diverse audiences, creating the conditions for more equitable access to museum resources, and opening up opportunities for participation, now enjoy considerable consensus in many parts of the world. A growing number of institutions are concerned to construct new narratives that represent a plurality of lived experiences, histories and identities which aim to nurture support...

This book explores how museums, galleries and heritage sites of all kinds, through the narratives they construct and publicly present, can shape the moral and political climate within which human rights are experienced. Through a series of richly-drawn cases, which focus on gender diversity and same-sex love and desire, Richard Sandell examines the ways in which museums are implicated in the ongoing struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex human rights. Museums, Moralities and Human Rights brings together for the first time the perspectives not only of those who...

This book explores how museums, galleries and heritage sites of all kinds, through the narratives they construct and publicly present, can shape the moral and political climate within which human rights are experienced. Through a series of richly-drawn cases, which focus on gender diversity and same-sex love and desire, Richard Sandell examines the ways in which museums are implicated in the ongoing struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex human rights. Museums, Moralities and Human Rights brings together for the first time the perspectives not only of those who...