The Dramaturgy of 'Experience-Oriented' Museums - A Mixed Methods Study on the Changes of Forms of Distinction in the Interplay of Providing and Acquiring Culture

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Nicole Burzan; Professorin Dr. Diana Lengersdorf
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 248999274

The study analyzes, if changing processes in museums are interrelated to changing processes in forms of distinction carried out in museums. The focus lies on two main challenges for museums: an increase of orientation on the experience of visitors and on making museums more accessible to a wider audience. Do museums lose their function of (sophisticated) cultural distinction? Are these traditional forms of distinction stabilized or can new forms be observed - in general? And which forms can be observed in specific types of museum? Which terms are necessary for new forms to develop?Particularly, the study is interested in the interrelation between the dimension of providing and acquiring culture. Firstly, by focusing on the possibilities for distinction that are provided mainly by arrangements of rooms and staging of culture. The second point of interest focuses the visitors practice and asks in how far this is relevant in situ for different forms of distinction. Findings from Sociology of Social Inequality and of Culture - in reference to Bourdieu - form the main basis of the research. Besides application-oriented research - which is a dominant perspec-tive - the study will bring in a praxeological perspective on changes in the relation of cultural practices and reproduction of social inequality.A mixed methods design opens up the possibility to combine qualitative methods (observation of rooms, interviews with management) to analyze the providing of culture with quantitative methods (observation and inquiring of visitors) to analyze the acquisition of culture. Furthermore, findings from qualitative data are applied to sharpen categories that are brought into quantitative analyses. The analysis is based on comparison, case-internal and case-external comparisons. The aim of analysis is to reconstruct types of experience-orientation and of distinction in museum, and to reach conclusion about practices of distinction in area of culture, with regard to social change.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants