Home> Archive> 2013> Volume 3 Number 4 (Jul. 2013)
IJSSH 2013 Vol.3(4): 407-410 ISSN: 2010-3646
DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2013.V3.271

The Disciplinary Power of Museums

Ka Tat Nixon Chen

Abstract—Museums are powerful. Museums can discipline the mindset of people. Owing to the fact that people in general consider museums are reliable sources for gaining knowledge and understanding their surrounding, this facilitates museums to exercise their disciplinary power. This paper is to look into the ways how museums discipline the mindset of people. The research methodology used for this study is purely qualitative. The validity of this paper lays in those primary data collected through personal communication with administrators of museums, and is supported by secondary data from books. The findings are that museums can discipline the mindset of people to make them believe in a hierarchy of social and world order, to scope their understanding of their relationship with the world and to instruct and to edify them. Based on a situation that people in general consider museums are reliable sources, this paper raises the concern of the neutrality of museums as disseminators of knowledge and facilitators of making people understand themselves and their relationship with their surrounding at large.

Index Terms—Museum, discipline, to create a social and world order, to instruct and to edify, to understand the world.

Ka Tat Nixon Chen is with Tourism and Hospitality Division, Mahidol University International College, Thailand (e-mail: nixon.che@mahidol.ac.th).

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Cite:Ka Tat Nixon Chen, "The Disciplinary Power of Museums," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 407-410, 2013.

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