Reculturing Museums takes a unified sociocultural theoretical approach to analyze the many conflicts museums experience in the 21st century. Embracing conflict, Ash asks: What can practitioners and researchers do to create the change they want to see when old systems remain stubbornly in place?
Using a unified sociocultural, cultural-historical, activity-theoretical approach to analyzing historically bound conflicts that plague museums, each chapter is organized around a central contradiction, including finances ("Who will pay for museums?"), demographic shifts ("Who will come to museums?"), the roles of narratives ("Whose story is it?"), ownership of objects ("Who owns the artifact?"), and learning and teaching ("What is learning and how can we teach equitably?"). The reculturing stance taken by Ash promotes social justice and equity, -making change- first, within museums, called inreach, rather than outside t
