Museums as a Means to (Re)Make Regional Identities: The Oltenia Museum (Romania) as Case Study

Liliana Popescu and Claudia Albă
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Liliana Popescu: Department of Geography, University of Craiova, 200585 Craiova, Romania
Claudia Albă: Department of Geography, University of Craiova, 200585 Craiova, Romania

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: In recent decades, ever more museums have begun to put a new emphasis on the education of the public, playing an important role in creating national or regional identities. This paper aims to assess the strategy chosen by the History Section of the Oltenia Museum in Craiova (Romania) to use knowledge, objects and narratives to create a sense of belonging and negotiate identities. Site visits, participant observations and discussions with museum curators, the analysis of texts and discourses were used in order to see if there is a master narrative related to regional identity and to determine the elements used to shape this identity. The results of this study point to the fact that there is an underlying master narrative of the exhibition, stressing the dominant understanding of Oltenia’s identity stemming mainly from cultural markers such as religion and language, while acknowledging wider European influences on the national and regional identity.

Keywords: collective memory; heritage; post-communist representations; narrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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