Museum Sociology - Perspectives For An Important Societal Institution

The study of museums is not yet an established field of sociological research, or even an acknowledged sub-discipline of sociology of art in most countries. The influence of society on museums and, vice versa, the influence of museums on society does not necessarily have to be researched from a sociological perspective; museology is usually considered part of the field of museum philosophy. Nevertheless sociology can be considered a highly relevant approach to museum studies. This presentation will describes the state of the art of a sociology that analyses the interrelationships between museums and society. This includes studies on the overall societal macro- and the individual micro-perspective, production, e.g. on the causes and development of exhibitions and collections, consumption and reception (e.g. on the causes and effects of museum visits and the visitors’ perception and evaluation of exhibitions), the contextualization of museums in a space-time continuum (e.g. the consequences of globalization, historicity and post-colonialism), the polarizations of museums between change and affirmation, changes from a traditional (hegemonic and heterotopic) localization to a postmodern (polysemic, polyvalent and non-heterotopic) relativism, and methodological categories of a museum sociology, with specific phenomenological, etymological, historiographical and critical-rational approaches. As a result, I will locate the museum in a sociological space bifurcated in a textualistic and in a contextualistic area. This phenotypical dichotomization characterizes as well museums as museum sociology.