Building Social Museology: 50 years after the Declaration of the Round Table of Santiago (ICOM-UNESCO)

The fundamental concerns of social museology are reflected in numerous documents produced within and outside Museology. Examples include Declaration of the Round Table of Santiago de Chile (ICOM/UNESCO) 1972, Declaration of Quebec (MINOM-ICOM) 1984, Recommendation on the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, Their Diversity and Their Role in Society (UNESCO) 2015.

Thus, in the Declaration of Santiago de Chile in which the concept of an integral Museum is proposed, it is highlighted:

• That the museum is an institution at the service of society of which it forms an inseparable part and, of its very nature, contains the elements which enable it to help in molding the consciousness of the communities it serves, through which it can stimulate those communities to action by projecting forward its historical activities so that they culminate in the presentation of contemporary problems; that is to say, by linking together past and present, identifying itself with indispensable structural changes and calling forth others appropriate to its particular national context.
• That this approach does not deny the value of existing museums, nor does it imply abandoning the principles of specialized museums; it is put forward as the most rational and logical course of development for museums, so that they may best serve society’s needs; that in some cases, the proposed change may be introduced gradually or on an experimental basis; in others, it may provide the basic orientation.[1]

On the other hand, the 1984’Quebec Declaration recognizes the multiplicity of museological practices with social responsibility existing in different continents: local museums, neighborhood museums, community museums and others, extending the concept of “New Museology” beyond Ecomuseology.

Museology must pursue, in a contemporary world that tries to integrate all means of development, to extend its traditional attributions and functions of identification, conservation and education, to practices broader than these objectives, in order to better insert its action in those linked to the environment. human and physical.
In order to achieve this objective and integrate populations into its action, museology is increasingly using interdisciplinarity, contemporary methods of communication common to the whole of cultural action and also the means of modern management that integrate its users.

While preserving the material fruits of past civilizations, and protecting those who bear witness to current aspirations and technology, the new museology – ecomuseology, community museology and all other forms of active museology – is primarily interested in the development of populations, reflecting the driving principles of their evolution while associating them with projects for the future.[2]

In the 2015 UNESCO recommendation, member states are encouraged to assume the social responsibility of their museums, explicitly saying:

• 16.Member States are encouraged to support the social role of museums that was highlighted by the 1972 Declaration of Santiago de Chile. Museums are increasingly viewed in all countries as playing a key role in society and as a factor in social integration and cohesion. In this sense, they can help communities to face profound changes in society, including those leading to a rise in inequality and the breakdown of social ties.
• 17.Museums are vital public spaces that should address all of society and can therefore play an important role in the development of social ties and cohesion, building citizenship, and reflecting on collective identities. Museums should be places that are open to all and committed to physical and cultural access to all, including disadvantaged groups. They can constitute spaces for reflection and debate on historical, social, cultural and scientific issues. Museums should also foster respect for human rights and gender equality. Member States should encourage museums to fulfil all of these roles.[3]

In all these documents there is a continuity, which clearly indicates the development of the traditional functions of museology, the social responsibility of museums and the role they should assume in contemporary society, highlighting some of the guiding principles of Social Museology. In this way, Social Museology brings together different museological processes carried out by communities, groups and social movements, committed to human dignity, sustainability and cognitive justice, in the mobilization of actions aimed at combating exclusion, prejudice and various stigmas that collaborate to social segregation.

Thus, we can say that Social Museology is situated in the area of ​​knowledge of Museology, as part of ​​Social Sciences, within paradigmatic axes that maintain deep articulations and dialogues among themselves: – Museology at the service of society – characterized by structuralist, phenomenological, interactionist and Marxist approaches [4], recognized as the paradigm of New Museology, aggregating different trends of thought, centred on the relationship between heritage, territory and community: – Museology at the service of social and cultural diversity – characterized by post-structuralist and decolonial trends of thought [5], recognized by the paradigm of Social Museology, centred on the relationship between themes, challenges, territorialities and affirmative policies.

In this context, Social Museology is considered as an insurgent museology or at the service of the right to difference and the museums that identify with its proposals, are usually named according to the generating concepts or social groups involved in them: Ecomuseology, Community Museology, Indigenous Museology, Native Museology, LGBTQI+ Museology, Intersectional Museology and others.

Respecting and valuing differences is evident in the recognition that groups have different ways of musealizing and conceiving museums, multiple ways of expressing memory desires and promoting the diversity of museums and collections, as explained in the UNESCO Recommendation (2015).

In the different processes of museums guided by Social Museology, the community dimension, the recognition of the primacy of dialogic processes, the involvement with social, environmental and sustainability issues are always present. This community dimension of museums and museum processes presents itself as one of the main transformations in the field of Museology in the 20th century. Community museum practices are marked by localized experiences, by networks in favor of the valorization of memories and heritage, constituting an empirical movement of worldwide reach resulting from an accumulation of collective experiences claiming cultural, memorial and heritage self-management, appearing in a prominent way in America, Latin America, Southern Europe, Canada, Sweden and Japan[6].

Social Museology recognizes the ethical, poetic and political potential of museums (community museums, ecomuseums and other denominations), highlighting them as ways of promoting citizenship within the communities in which they originated. Social museums are characterized by welcoming and linking with the most burning social causes, constituting factors of integration and social justice.[7]

The School of Thought of Sociomuseology

Social Museology in its diversity of forms is one of the basic references of the School of Thought of Sociomuseology, which seeks to understand the rationality of theoretical, conceptual and practical changes in community-based and dialogic museology that characterize an increasingly significant part of the Contemporary museology.

Sociomuseology represents a considerable part of the effort to adapt museological structures to the constraints of contemporary society. The opening of the museum to the environment and its organic relationship with the social context that gives it life, has provoked the need to elaborate and clarify new relationships, notions and concepts that can account for this process[8].

These processes, which have a growing worldwide expression on the ground, highlight the social responsibility of Museums, assume the protagonism of communities and cultural heritage in its diversity as development factors, as highlighted by UNESCO recommendation (2015).

This new reality has had a significant impact on the academic and professional environment, manifesting itself in the increase in national and international scientific meetings dedicated to different forms of museology with a social matrix, as well as in the increase in undergraduate, master’s and doctoral university training in many countries, and consequent production of dissertations, theses and post-docs.

Sociomuseology is thus constituted as a School of Thought contemplating a disciplinary area of ​​teaching, research and action, privileging its articulation with the areas of knowledge of Social Sciences and Humanities[9].

The interdisciplinary approach of the Sociomuseology School of Thought aims to consolidate the recognition of Social Museology as a resource for the sustainable development of humanity, based on equal opportunities and social and economic inclusion. Sociomuseology bases its social intervention on the various dimensions of the cultural and natural, tangible and intangible heritage of humanity.

It is important, however, to consider that Social Museology and Sociomuseology do not aspire to have different statutes, where the first would correspond to Practice and the second to Theory, since, in this case, theory and practice are mutually supportive. What organically and dialectically unites the “doing and thinking” of Social Museology/Sociomuseology is the ability to critically think about Museology and the place that each one and each museal expression occupies in the reinterpretation of the world, in the understanding of the local and global challenges. This reinterpretation supports the definition of strategies that ultimately aim at overcoming the challenges faced in a non-neutral but committed way.

Sociomuseology is interested in the distribution of the tools of the heritage factory as an instrument for the struggle of peoples, for the right to memory, decolonial thinking and, for that, it draws up from a social work the inventories of cultural/heritage references that constitute themselves as communities of values that strengthen the paths for the construction of an epistemic justice.

This understanding of Museology is not unique in itself, particularly in the field of Social Sciences. Indeed, in recent decades, with particular emphasis from the 70s of the last century, the Social Sciences have been facing profound transformations, at the pace of social and political changes, caused by the neoliberal model that characterizes the contemporary world. We think about the emergence of Public Sociology (Michael Burawoy)[10], Public Anthropology (Robert Borofsky)[11], Public Archeology (Charles McGimsey[12] , Camila Wichers[13]), or Public History (Robert Kelley)[14], among others. Currently, these areas are recognized for the contribution they have given to the understanding of social processes, as a theoretical approach, but also as a strategy for overcoming challenges, both new and old. In all cases, the local dimension of the issues addressed is present, in its territorial and human implications.

As a result of an identical process, Museology (which was understood as a more or less elaborate technique for creating and maintaining museums and collections), has not only been recognized and assumed as part of the Social Sciences, but has also been constitute itself as a “public” museology.

Sociomuseology, as a School of Thought, therefore assumes a consistent historicity, the dimensions of a consolidated practice, a progressively more robust theoretical body, a social need to understand practices in the field, while asserting itself as an area of ​​training and scientific research in the field of Social Sciences, walking and dialoguing with them, in their specific fields of intervention. It is, therefore, a disciplinary area that privileges the understanding of the transformations brought about by the emergence of social museums and the explanation of museological, political and technical practices committed to emancipatory processes oriented to the improvement of the quality of life, to respect for the right memory and for the promotion of citizenship of different social groups.

Notes:

[1] Mesa redonda sobre la importancia y el desarrollo de los museos en el mundo contemporáneo: Revista Museum, 1973 / José do Nascimento Junior, Alan Trampe, Paula Assunção dos Santos (Organización). – Brasília: IBRAM/MinC; Programa Ibermuseos, 2012.v.2 ; ISBN: 978-85-63078-25-4

[2] Declaração de Québec – Princípios de Base de uma Nova Museologia 1984, http://www.minom-icom.net/reference-documents

[3] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/museums/recommendation-on-the-protection-and-promotion-of-museums-and-collections/

[4] Clovis Britto (2021) “As palavras continuam com os seus deslimites”: reflexões sobre Sociomuseologia e linguagem de especialidade (Words continue with their non-limits”: reflections on Sociomuseology and specialty language) in Teoria e Prática da Sociomuseologia, Org Judite Primo, Mário Moutinho, Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, ISSN ISBN-13 : 979-8683520359, Lisboa

[5] Idem

[6] Hugues de Varine (2021) Prefácio in Teoria e Prática da Sociomuseologia, Org Judite Primo, Mário Moutinho, Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, ISSN ISBN-13 : 979-8683520359, Lisboa

[7] Hugues de Varine (2020) El ecomuseo singular y plural: un testimonio de cincuenta años de museologia comunitaria en el mundo. ICOM Chile.

[8] Mário C. Moutinho, (2007) Definição evolutiva de Sociomuseologia Proposta para reflexão, Cadernos de Sociomuseologia V. 28, N. 28Actas do XII Atelier Internacional do MINOM , Universidade Lusófona, Lisboa

[9] Idem

[10] Burawoy, M. (2005). For Public Sociology. Soziale Welt, 56(4), 347-374. Retrieved September 17, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40878618

[11] Robert Borofsky ,An anthropology of anthropology: is it time to shift paradigms?, Center for a Public Anthropology (2019) DOI: 10.31761/pa-oas1.19aaoa, ISBN: 978-1-7322241-3

[12] Charles Robert McGimsey, (1972) Public archeology (Studies in archeology), Seminar Press, ISBN-13: 978-0128724507

[13] Camila Moraes Wichers, (2016), Sociomuseologia e Arqueologia Pós-processual: conexões no contexto brasileiro contemporâneo. Cadernos de Sociomuseologia nº 7-, Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, Lisboa, 31-55

[14] Kelley, R. (1978). Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Prospects. The Public Historian,1(1), 16-28. doi:10.2307/3377666