Vikki McCall

Museums and the ‘new museology’: theory, practice and organisational change

Abstract The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain. There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an ‘old’ to a ‘new museology’ that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings from 23 publically funded museum services across England, Scotland and Wales are presented to explore the roles of professional and hierarchical differentiation, and how there were organisational and managerial limitations to the practical application of the ‘new museology’. The ambiguity surrounding policy, roles and practice also highlighted that museum workers were key agents in interpreting, using and understanding wide-ranging policy expectations. The practical implementation of the ‘new museology’ is linked to the values held by museum workers themselves and how they relate it to their activities at the ground level.

Exploring the use of large sporting events in the post-crash, post-welfare city: A ‘legacy’ of increasing insecurity?:

Large-scale sporting events are a major part of urban policy and regeneration strategies in the UK and globally. These events court as much controversy and criticism from academics and community groups as they are coveted by local and national governments. While they claim to have lasting long-term benefits for the host cities, neighbourhoods and ergo residents, evidence shows that effects are often scant, oblique or, conversely, negative. This has new significance in the context of austerity. This paper offers original empirical evidence of the experiences surrounding the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014. A series of diaries and focus groups with those living and working in the East End of Glasgow revealed hope of a positive impact on the East End, but this coincided with anxiety and feelings of exclusion around the Commonwealth Games 2014. It explores the current form that urban social policy takes in the post-crash, post-welfare context, as exemplified by the Commonwealth Games. The paper goes on to raise questions about the real winners of large sporting events.

Cultural services and social policy: exploring policy makers' perceptions of culture and social inclusion

In post-devolution Scotland, New Labour added to the role of ‘culture’ by introducing ideas of social inclusion to policies concerning cultural services. Ten years later, with the SNP minority government in the Scottish Parliament, do policy makers think social inclusion still has a role within cultural services? This paper shows policy makers’ understandings of ‘culture’ and social inclusion are vague, general and complex. This has encouraged policy makers to think of cultural services as resources to fulfil wider economic and social objectives. At the same time cultural services are placed at an individual level, with cultural services seen as “generators of wellbeing”, rather than agents of social change. Social inclusion and cultural meanings are linked to individualistic causes of poverty and related to the SNP’s economic focus in Scotland. This complexity impacts on the interpretation and implementation of policy and has resulted in the cultural agenda being seen as less of a priority within the new SNP administration.

Culture and the Scottish Household Survey

In 2007 the Scottish Government introduced an outcomes based approach to culture set within a National Performance Framework. One of the main data sources to measure “culture” in Scotland is the Scottish Household Survey (SHS). In this article, the SHS and its “Culture and Sport” Module are explored to show how useful the data is within the Scottish Governments economic agenda. This way, the paper reflects on the usefulness of the main data source used to understand cultural activity within Scotland. There are general difficulties measuring “culture”, but overall the SHS provides adequate national data for Scotland on cultural participation and attendance. However, the SHS cannot provide in-depth local level information and provides limited data on non-participants. Other surveys in Scotland and England give some example practices that could be incorporated to improve survey outcomes. Overall, the SHS is a useful policy tool but more could be done to utilise the data it can provide on the Scottish cultural sector.

Between the Social and the Spatial: Exploring the Multiple Dimensions of Poverty and Social Exclusion

Exploring poverty and social exclusion has been an ongoing central theme in sociology. The need ‘to understand why poverty survived amidst affluence’ (p. xvii) sets the foundations of this multi-authored edited collection, which attempts to develop the multi-dimensional aspects of poverty and social exclusion. What makes this book different from a traditional conceptual piece is the attempt to make spatial dimensions central to the study of social relations. The book is divided into two parts, with the first part exploring poverty and social exclusion. Paugam begins the first chapter with an exploration of intergenerational poverty ideas on an international level. The author develops a typology on the elementary forms of poverty including integrated, marginal and disqualifying. This understanding is still at quite a high abstract level, but interesting nonetheless. For chapter two, Atkinson looks at income, health and multi-dimensionality. He aims to go beyond the sole dimension of health and aggregate health and income. This chapter is very detailed on the statistical methods used to achieve this, which shall be of delight to some readers and not to others. Overall however, the chapter’s findings have the potential to inform future research on health policy. Chapters three and four, written by de Neubourg et al. and Berghman and Debels respectively, are particularly engaging. They are easily accessible and highlight gaps in current policies. De Neubourg et al. provide strong evidence to show that, if poverty is measured solely in monetary terms, this leaves out many individuals who are not identified as experiencing poverty but still suffer from deprivation. Berghman and Debels argue, very convincingly, that although there has been a social exclusion focus in EU policy, this has been illogical and had little practical implementation. Thus, both these chapters have an implication for policy development at EU and national levels, including the way that we perceive, define, measure and help those experiencing deprivation. Lis and Soly give a historical analysis of care partnerships in chapter five, while Van Trier analyses André Gorz’s new encouragement of unconditional income guarantees in chapter six. Both chapters have interesting points to make, but are difficult to relate directly to the spatial element that is the stated purpose and focus of the book. The sociology of space is discussed by Kesteloot et al. who introduce the second half of the book by exploring how sociologists have generally failed to include space in their analysis. Space can never be singled out from its relative and relational effects,