Contesting Memory

Book excerpt: This Fall 2011 (IX, 4) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, entitled "Contesting Memory: Museumizations of Migration in Comparative Global Context," includes papers from the conference on "Museums and Migration" organized by the volume co-editors on June 25-26, 2010, at the Maison des Science de l'Homme (MSH) in Paris. The focus here is on questions of representation and social agency of both migrants and migration museum officials, adopting a comparative perspective on the complex and conflictive articulation between how migrants are represented by themselves and by museum institutions. Migrants are not passive but social agents actively involved in their communities and socially vigilant of the way they are treated, perceived and represented by the host society. They produce also their own representations that are often in conflict with Western hegemonic perceptions of their cultures and identities. Their strong presence in global cities and metropolitan societies today confronts the dominant society with issues of racial/ethnic discrimination and historical memory otherwise ignored by hegemonic Western views. Museums dealing with the history of slavery, migration and colonialism emerged as spaces of contestation, the term "migrant" itself being contested by long-established "minority" groups as one of the ways the dominant society still treats them as "foreigners" and "immigrants." Contributors include: Ramón Grosfoguel (also as journal issue guest editor), Yvon Le Bot (also as journal issue guest editor), Alexandra Poli (also as journal issue guest editor), Andrea Meza Torres, Lia Paula Rodrigues, Cristina Castellano, Estela Rodríguez García, Ilham Boumankhar, Véronique Bragard, Artwell Cain, Stephen Small, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal's Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR's homepage.