Exploring Relations to Documents and Documentary Infrastructures: The Case of Museum Management After Austerity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v16i2.2781Keywords:
austerity, community asset transfer, expertise, actor-network theory, organizational culture, methodologies, document analysisAbstract
Interaction with documents and documentary infrastructure is part of the day to day reality of museum work. However, their constitutive and mediatory role is rarely foregrounded in empirical studies of museums. In part, this is because a defined theoretical and methodological framework for such an investigation has yet to be developed. This article outlines what a conceptualisation of documents as more-than-text informed by actor-network theory offers to studies of museums, particularly the potential of this method for investigating how documentary infrastructures influence daily practice and inform notions of possible action amongst museum staff. The insight that institutional practices operate ‘on the field of possibilities’ is Foucault’s ([1982] 2000: 341). However, as I outline in this article, actor-network theory took up this insight and developed it, drawing out its methodological and analytical consequences. Empirical material exploring the influence of Arts Council England’s Accreditation Scheme on someone new to museum work, drawn from a study of community asset transfer, a process whereby people new to museum work become responsible for the operation and management of museums previously run by local authorities, is used to demonstrate the potential of this approach.Downloads
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Published
30.07.2018
How to Cite
Rex, B. (2018). Exploring Relations to Documents and Documentary Infrastructures: The Case of Museum Management After Austerity. Museum & Society, 16(2), 187–200. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v16i2.2781
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Copyright remains with the author(s) of the article. This article can be re-used according to the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.