Narratives of human relations with nature in natural history museums

Abstract

The climate changes, we are currently witnessing, are not just technical issues whose solutions science is looking for. Researchers agree that we are dealing with a crisis of culture and imagination. The narratives on which modern societies are based have led us to a point where the Earth is no longer a place conducive to life. This paper examines how museum narratives present the relationship between humankind and nature. I argue that a sociological view of the museum may be a cognitively valuable approach to analysing climate crisis issues. In the following sections of the article, I present my approach to the narrative from a sociological perspective and the role of natural history museums, which are not just repositories of knowledge but active producers and reproducers of dominant narratives about the relationship between humans and nature. In the next part of the article, I specify the methodological assumptions of the research. The empirical material consisted of texts accompanying two exhibitions in natural history museums – critical discourse analysis was used in order to capture the propagated image of the world. The analysis showed that museums have tried to talk about nature in a new way – but they are not yet creating a new language to talk about our connections with nature and are using concepts from the anthropocentric dictionary.