Abstract:
The focus of this research is conceptual subject by making an understanding via revisiting and arguing formation and transformation of “museum” which have effected the creation of a discourse on “Local Community Museum” in Thai society in terms of dialectic interaction of its surrounding contexts over time. Besides, it endeavours to grasp the mode of perception and expression towards concepts regarding “museums” of people who are involved within the studied areas as well as the creation of its “signification” and “identification” through “representation” portrayed within spaces of the museum.
In this thesis, it can be catagorised into two related major themes: “museum and the nation” and “museum and local community”. The first part of the thesis is a review of existing fundamental concepts on “museum”, “nation”, “heritage”, “memory” and “knowledge/power”. It can be said that the National Museum is a technology of power exploited to construct and reproduce ideologies as well as discourses on “nation” which have been dominated by “episteme”. All these episteme and meta narratives that have scheduled of the conceptual framework of virtue, beauty, or truth of the Thai society are the monarchy and Buddhism. These crucial institutions have usually been utilised to establish and to exercise legitimacy let alone profits obtained by each group. What is more it has been drawn to be included in the reproduction of the structure of violence in the Thai society both symbolically and socially.
Thus, the second part of the thesis is to examine a “corollary” of the use of power which belongs to “nation-state” and “national museum”. This has resulted from referring to “objects” or “heritage” in order to support the making of “collective memory” which would result in the “national remembrance” and the “national identity” of nation’s citizens. These processes have been undertaken via emphasis and distribution of “knowledge” leading to the idea of hegemony. As a consequence, the “discourse on the Local Community Museum” can be regarded as a form of social movement to play an active role in combating the wide range of factors causing disadvantage whether to compete with, retort, and collaboratively interpret the meaning of the nation from the multiple viewpoints or to create some spaces for ordinary locals and their own self. However, ironically, it is worth note-taking that the being of “the local community museums” and the “discourse on the Local Community Museum” as the ideal type that they intend to become are still far irrelevant and away far from reality. So, visually, the presence of these studied local community museums has reflected collective nostalgia and aesthetics of involved groups per se.