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Popular collecting and the everyday self : the reinvention of museums?

documentary heritage
  • Other Name

    Leicester Museum studies (Series)

  • Description

    "Popular Collecting and the Everyday Self: The Reinvention of Museums? is an attempt to explore both the increase in and the breadth of popular collecting in Britain. It does this by examining the contexts of social change over the past twenty years. This change, it is argued, has led to a culture of social and material insecurity, in which collecting is used for the creation and defence of identity.

    The social theory of Guy Debord is employed as an underlying philosophy in which contemporary popular collecting is interpreted as an expression of a moral value system in a society driven by market forces. The social world and values of collectors are explored through their clubs. These, it is asserted, comprise an alternative society, one in which a legitimization of the collector's activities and preferences can be made and in which they develop a complementary reality." "Private popular collecting is also compared with that of museums, finding both potential and need for a closer relationship. It is argued that as collectors develop in sophistication, museums can partially redefine themselves through them. There are a number of areas in which collectors and museums are increasingly overlapping. Museums, it is proposed, should take advantage of this by valuing collectors in the wider community. Museums and collectors should converge to form a mutually beneficial knowledge-sharing forum, which can strengthen and deepen communal bonds, and act as an anchor in a changing and diversifying museum profession and in an increasingly individualistic society."--publisher information.

  • Place
  • Other Id

    AM221 MAR (Library of Congress Call Number)

    32609 (Cat ID)

    40459 (DBTextworks system ID)

    25119 (Presto content ID)

  • Department

Images and documents

Images

Catalogue

  • Object Type
  • Name/Title
    Popular collecting and the everyday self : the reinvention of museums?
  • Other Name

    Leicester Museum studies (Series)

  • Primary Maker
  • Contributor/Publisher
    Leicester University Press
  • Place
  • Date
    2001
  • Physical Description

    xi, 179 pages : illustrations, facsimiles ; 24 cm

  • ISBN/ISSN
    0718502671
  • Language
    English
  • Level of Current Record
    Bib record
  • Member Object

    1 item in this collection. View all items.

  • Subject Category
  • Content
    1.The concept, the book -- 2.The story so far -- 3.The society of the spectacle -- 4.'I collect, therefore I am': history and the social condition -- 5.From rubbish to representation: individuals and collecting -- 6.One big happy family? gender and collectors' clubs -- 7.The museum equation -- 8.Round and round they go: client-patron relationships -- 9.Conclusion.
  • Public Access Text

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

  • Subject Notes
    Paul Martin (1959-) is visiting lecturer and distance learning tutor in museum studies (material culture) at the University of Leicester and lecturer in Public History at Ruskin College, Oxford.
  • Collection Type
    General Collection
  • Copyright
    All rights reserved
  • Last Update
    06 Dec 2024
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