Editor’s Note: De-Museumizing Migrations Without and Within

This, Fall 2011 issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, entitled "Contesting Memory: Museumizations of Migration in Comparative Global Context" includes papers presented at an international conference on "Museums and Migration" held on June 25-26, 2010, at the Maison des Science de l'Homme (MSH) in Paris. Co-editors Ramon Grosfoguel, Yvon Le Bot, and Alexandra Poli--who also served as the co-organizers of the conference with the support of MSH Director and President of the International Sociological Association, Michel Wieviorka--have done an excellent job summarizing the contributions of each author in the volume in the introduction that follows this editor's note. My purpose here is to briefly reflect on the contributions and the co-editors' reading of them as well, seeking to further understand the seemingly novel idea of "migration museums" in light of the purpose and mission of the present journal and my own substantive interests as framed by the sociology of self-knowledge and what C. Wright Mills called the sociological imagination--that is, the sociological perspective which enables its beholder to relate one's own and others' personal troubles to larger public issues. "It belongs to a museum" is an adage used in popular culture. It can have a double-meaning when used seriously, or sarcastically. Seriously uttered, it means that something is too rare and has too much value to belong to someone or someplace specific and is of a broad public significance, so belongs to a museum for all to see, experience, teach about, learn from, and simply enjoy. When used sarcastically, it is usually uttered when people think something has lost its current, practical use-value and is too "old" in the mundane sense of the word; so it belongs to a museum. In either case, when the object is museumized, it usually leaves the sphere of practical use for what it is, and turns into a more or less inanimate object of greater, or lesser, value, and simply put on display, passive to its surrounding, and for others to use for seeing, learning, teaching, experiencing, and enjoying--more or less. Applied to people themselves and their inter/intra/subjective experiences of self or others in social life, one may then think of a third, but related, meaning for the adage: becoming "museumized" can have this inter/intra/subjective meaning of one's or another's losing a sense of what one or another is or is worth--too much or too little--such that one finds oneself of no practical use or value when it comes to active participation in whatever one is currently engaged in, becoming merely a display object for oneself or others to--more or less--see, teach about, learn from, experience, and/or simply enjoy. Would one put something, someone, or a self/social experience in a museum, if it is already actively out there, and/or in here, everywhere, if one cares and learns to notice and see it as it is present and takes place everyday, everywhere--world-historically, and in the here and now? Would one then need a museum to show it, to teach it and learn about it, or more or less enjoy it? Does "migration" belong to a museum, for one or another reason? In addressing the above questions, we also need to recall that the English word "museum" comes from Latin, which itself originates from a Greek word (pronounced as Museion) named after Muses, who were regarded as patron goddesses of the arts and literature. "Museion"/"Museum" denote a place set aside for study and the arts and literature. While today the terms "museum" and "university" refer to different institutions, the identity of the purpose of modern-day museums and that of universities is apparent from the word's meaning as noted above. You go to both to learn, to "guide" / teach, and to educate yourself or others about something. You may have to pay a fee or receive a wage or salary, but at times it may be free and state-sponsored, using hired or "free" and volunteer work. …