Curating Human Rights conceptualizes the human rights museum as a dynamic cultural-political genre that interacts with multiple social activist, state and corporate stakeholders.
Curating Human Rights conceptualizes the human rights museum as a dynamic cultural-political genre that interacts with multiple social activist, state and corporate stakeholders.
Drawing upon ethnographic and archival research on seven human rights museums in six countries, Ostow examines specifically what these museums do when they set out, or purport, to promote human rights. This includes the stories they visualize, display strategies, educational and other activities, internal structures, the way they position their visitors, the parameters of the human rights they address and the politics of pleasing their multiple stakeholders. The book also explores the contradictions and political and corporate pressure that contributes to foregrounding some human rights violations and ignoring or obscuring others. Ostow also examines the reactions to each museum in the local and national press, and by local visitors, politicians, donors and other stakeholders. The book ends with a discussion of the success and limitations of museums for promoting human rights, and policy recommendations to enhance their effectiveness. Curating Human Rights considers whether these museums are appropriate for, and effective at, promoting human rights - and if they address the pitfalls that have been identified.
Curating Human Rights provides new perspectives on the field of human rights education and activism and will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums, human rights, culture and communication.
Recenzijas
"The literature on genocide and human rights museums is in its infancy. In its historical reconstruction of six museums located in all corners of the globe, Curating Human Rights lays a massive foundation for anyone interested in the display of atrocity and trauma in the service of universal values.They will not be able to go past Robin Ostow's argument that the path from the former to the latter is crooked and uneven. A major accomplishment."
A. Dirk Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations, City College of New York, USA
"Robin Ostows enterprising and original survey of human rights museums registers the emergence of a worldwide trend and opens it to critical and sophisticated analysis. Why is the wave happening? What political work is being done through it? The book engages these questions and more and is an indispensable success in doing so."
Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University, USA
1. Introduction: human rights and the museums that display them;
2.
Displaying the transatlantic slave trade: from cultural nationalism to
universal human rights on the West Coast of Africa. The Maison des Esclaves,
Gorée Island, Senegal 1966-2023;
3. Reimagining citizenship and human rights
in a museum of land restitution: District Six Museum, Cape Town, South
Africa;
4. The Museum as a laboratory for a human rights-based future: The
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, UK;
5. From containing memories of
past violence to supporting a human rights-based revolution: The Museo de la
Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile: 2006 2023;
6. Corporate
citizenship and musealizing human rights: Coca-Cola and the Center for Civil
and Human Rights, Atlanta, Georgia, US;
7. Decolonization and Musealizing
Human Rights on the Canadian Prairie: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights
and The Museum for Canadian Human Rights Violations 2003 2023;
8. Human
Rights Museums: Their contributions and achievements in promoting human
rights. Their limitations and their challenges in the coming years
Robin Ostow is affiliated with the Sociology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada. She has published extensively on national museums, Jewish museums, immigration museums and human rights museums in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Most recently, her work has focused on these museums displays and their relations with the communities around them.
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