Sociomuseology books now available at Amazon

29.10.2013

Sociomuseology 1: New Focuses / New Challenges

Cristina Bruno, Mário Chagas, Mário Moutinho, Editors

This book brings together a series of articles dealing with different aspects of Sociomuseology, the new scientific field representing the efforts to suit museological facilities to the needs and conditions of contemporary society.

The process of opening up a museological facility, as well as its organic relation with the social context that infuses it with life, leads to the need to identify, structure, and clarify these relations as well as the social actors, the values and the concepts behind this process. Sociomuseology is thus concerned with mankind’s cultural and natural heritage, both tangible and intangible.

What characterizes Sociomuseology is not so much the nature of its premises and its goals –as is the case of other areas of knowledge– but its interdisciplinary focus which incites it to draw from other consolidated areas of knowledge, particularly from the social and human sciences, development studies, social services, and urban and rural planning.

These articles by renowned researchers and practitioners from Brazil and Portugal appear here in the English language for the first time. They represent a joint effort by the Museology Department of the Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias with professors from UNIRIO (Universidade do Rio de Janeiro), USP (Universidade de São Paulo), and UFBA (Universidade Federal da Bahia).
Paperback $8.99

Sociomuseology 3: To Understand New Museology in the XXI Century

Paula Assunção, Judite Primo, Editors

When I was doing my bachelor’s degree in museology at the University of Rio de Janeiro I heard from a teacher that the new museology was already an “old lady”. It was the mid 90’s, almost 30 years since the world of museums had been shaken by progressive initiatives that fought for the creation of better conditions for local communities to take control of their future by means of work with heritage.

Ecomuseums, community museums and local museums had multiplied in countries such as France, Canada, Spain, Portugal and Mexico. They had their own specificities, but shared a lot in common: the concept of the integral museum adopted in the Round Table of Santiago of 1972; a political view based on grass-root approaches and community development; the spirit of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who advocated for the conscientization of men, much before the concept of empowerment was developed in the English speaking world. Paperback $7.19

 

Sociomuseology 4: To Think Sociomuseologically

Paula Assunção, Judite Primo, Editors

Since its creation in 1985, the International Movement for a New Museology (MINOM ), an affiliated organization of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), has contributed to museology with reflections and practices related to the use of heritage as a tool for social change.
For the occasion of the 22nd ICOM General Conference in 2010, MINOM joins the discussions on the theme Museums for Social Harmony with great enthusiasm. We understand issues such as community action, emancipation and solidarity to be paramount to achieving social harmony. 
Whether social harmony concerns tolerance, mutual trust or dialogue, in our view it is not possible to ignore political aspects that also form the basis of social interaction- and by extension shape heritage and museum work. Harmony should look in the direction of equality rather than that of conformism.   
Paperback $8.99