Editorial

Abstract

This volume of Cadernos de Sociomuseologia, published under the general title "Themes of Social Museology" brings together fourteen contributions from authors from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Portugal, and the United States. These contributions explore interconnected issues that contribute to a deeper understanding of key areas within Sociomuseology.

They address the conceptual transition from New Museology to a more ambitious and diverse Museology now called Social Museology, drawing attention to moments of great relevance marked by the Recommendation for the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society (UNESCO, 2015) and, especially, the creation of an International Committee on this theme within the International Council of Museums (SOMUS/ICOM).

In this sense, based on previously unpublished documentation, is examined the hitherto under-discussed role of the International Movement for a New Museology (MINOM) in the conception of the Him Dak Eco-museum, the first and only official ecomuseum at that time in the United States, created by the Ak-Chin Indigenous Community in Arizona. Reconstructing the trajectory and stages that socially based Museology has gone through so far, certainly helps to better understand these processes. Realities that have broadened the place of museums in society, seen not only as guardians of material and immaterial memories, but also, and perhaps above all, as an institution where social responsibility guides the definition of its objectives.

Other authors reflect on the practices of different museum initiatives that clearly assume an anti-hegemonic and decolonial stance, in contexts of social stress caused by the living conditions of a large number of excluded communities, but where a permanent resilience resides in the pursuit of human dignity and cognitive justice. Some articles discuss how so-called normative museums, but which seek to integrate practices inspired by sociomuseology into their daily operations, and how this can increase their attractiveness among their audiences and the surrounding and/or involved communities.

This is a theme that reveals the complexity of the simultaneous presence of essentially different generating concepts, which meet at certain moments where the desire to express the social reality that gives them life is assumed.
The volume concludes with two interviews addressing issues of social activism, community leadership, and intercultural inclusion, while reflecting on future directions and emerging challenges for the field of Social Museology.

Judite Santos Primo