Museums and the Active Citizen: Tackling the Problems of Social Exclusion

The aim of this paper is to attempt to determine the role of museums in combating social exclusion through facilitating active citizenship. It does this by presenting the results of an analysis that used a modified form of a model of citizenship created by Makela as a framework to explore the data generated by an empirical study. By focusing upon respondents in an holistic way, so understanding their experiences of museum based exhibitions and community development projects within the contexts of their lives, the study concludes that museums were able to overcome many of the barriers to active citizenship that were identified. However, it was also evident that they themselves were creating barriers as some were physically or intellectually inaccessible to a number of study participants. The most significant contribution of museums in developing active citizens was to provide a context for constructing a sense of identity and so develop greater self-confidence. The paper concludes that if the potential that museums have fostered is to be released government agencies need to work together.     

The Feminisation of Finance

Abstract

This article focuses on recent reconfigurations of the home as a space of financial calculation and speculation that requires new kinds of domestic labour. It considers the 2008 financial crisis, but redirects the analysis towards the ordinary and normalised presence of financial capitalism at the level of domesticity, home-life and the everyday ‘calculative agencies’ which households are now regularly called on to perform. It also examines the constitution of ‘women’ as a target group for personal financial products and services, and addresses the various strategies that promote financial inclusion as a means to secure individual responsibility, autonomy and entrepreneurial consumer participation in a financialised ownership society. The article argues that this feminisation of finance suggests a considerable challenge to received understandings of the relationships between gender and economy, production and reproduction, and life and labour.     

Gender and land rights in Murang'a district,Kenya

Conceptualising rights to land in a framework of legal pluralism, this article explores the historical nature of struggles over land by women and men in a situation of increasing land scarcity. It is argued that the manipulation of customary law and state law is instrumental in increasing gender and, more generally, social differentiation.