Museums as participants in the market game: The political and economic context of the functioning of the museums
Journal Title: Przegląd Socjologiczny - Year 2017, Vol 0, Issue 4
Abstract
Under the influence of contemporary social and political changes, which have resulted in, inter alia, changes in the structure of museum audiences and their expectations, museums have had to implement new practices and tools which were previously not present in their fields of interest. These processes changed the definition of the mission of a contemporary museum and the way of communicating with participants of culture. Today a museum, like every other institution on the entertainment and leisure market, has to attract recipients of its offer. Museums thus engage in ever more close relationships with the field of economy. Moreover, the model of public financing of culture subjects the activities of museums to the current politics. This article discusses the ‘spilling over’ of the principles of the fields of economy and politics into the field of museums. The empirical material collected during the realization of qualitative studies among museum employees concerning their attitude towards the changes taking place in the sphere of museums, both in Poland and all over the world, provided the inspiration to analyse this issue. The following issues, taken from a wide range of issues related to the assessment of the museums’ place in the market reality, are examined in this article: sources of cultural and economic values generated by museums; the phenomenon of competition between museums; museum attendance as a criterion of the museums’ success; and the required models of financing museums’ activity. Theoretical considerations concerning relationship between the necessity of fulfilling museums’ social mission and the expected economic efficacy, as well as the museum’s status among other players on the leisure and entertainment market, were enriched by selected research results, which are treated as a local (Polish) commentary on the global changes taking place in the operation of contemporary museums.
Authors and Affiliations
Elżbieta Nieroba
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP263278
- DOI 10.26485/PS/2017/66.4/5
- Views 81
- Downloads 0
Polityki pamięci i tożsamości wobec (nie)chcianego dziedzictwa. Od Gdańska do Gdańzigu
This article addresses the question: How have the politics of memory, collective memory, and historical culture influenced the shaping of a city’s urban space and image? The analysis carried out so far shows that the way...
Psychologiczne i społeczne aspekty poparcia dla autorytarnej polityki
The main question of the article concerns the explanation of the phenomenon of support for authoritarian politics in Polish society. Authoritarian politics is understood as a system of government in which formal democrat...
Jacek Gądecki, Marcin Jewdokimow, Magdalena Żadkowska “I work here! A sociological study of work carried out at home on the basis of telework”/ Tu się pracuje! Socjologiczne studium pracy zawodowej prowadzonej w domu na zasadach telepracy, Kraków: Wydawnictwo LIBRON – Filip Lohner, 2017
-
„Dziecięcy zwrot” w socjologii i polityce społecznej
Increasingly, social research is devoted to the issue of age, with particular emphasis on the extreme stages of human life, i.e. childhood and old age. While sociologists in recent years have elaborated many works dedica...
Pułapka ekonomizmu. U źródeł dominacji neoliberalnej narracji modernizacyjnej w Polsce
The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of the symptoms and genesis of neoliberal economism, which plays a key role in the public discourse in contemporary Poland. The author examines its significance in many a...