Seite - 240 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Band 3:2

240 | www.limina-graz.eu Chiara Zuanni | Heritage in a digital world chaeologists.1 On the other side, archaeological work was redefined as aim- ing to understand “the past in social terms” (Tilley 1993, 4), leading to also suggest that this “emphasis on polysemy and material culture as a multivocal code breaks down the very possibility of the archaeologist legislating once and for all on the meaning of the past and opens out the possibility for new forms of understanding” (Tilley 1993, 4). In museum studies, since the late 1980s, the work of Michel Foucault, post- colonialist critique, and Pierre Bourdieu prompted also a sound review of museums’ social and political role. Foucauldian approaches to the history of the museum (Hooper-Greenhill 1992; Bennett 1995) evidenced the role museums have performed in sustaining and promoting the ruling power, firstly with post-Renaissance princes and monarchs, and then within the modern state, where they have become one of those regulating institutions criticised by Foucault. The contribution of Bourdieu rediscovered in the early 1990s (1984; 1991) emphasised how museums are strongly rooted into a Western bourgeois’ ideology and represent a culture that not everyone could appreciate, given everyone’s different cultural capital. Post-modern critiques suggested that museums’ narratives were responding only to a part of the society, calling for more self-reflexivity in museum practices (Vergo 1989); while, post-colonial studies discussed further the role of museums in shaping the identity of modern nations (Anderson 1991). The influence of social sciences and media studies prompted also a reconsid- eration of museum audiences, which Karp delineated in 1992, writing that “the best way to think about the changing relationship between mu- seums and communities is to think about how the audience, a passive entity, becomes the community, an active agent” (Karp et al. 1992, 12). During the 1980s and 1990s, this increased attention to the publics of her- itage led also to examine and theorise the presence of the past in the pub- lic sphere. The work of David Lowenthal (1985; 1998) contributed to the foundation of what will become the field of heritage studies, while Raphael Samuel (1994; 1998) emphasised the role of the historical past in the pre- sent, contributing to the growth of public history. In parallel, public ar- chaeology also emerged as an academic discipline (Merriman 1991; Ascher- son 2000; Schadla-Hall 1999; Merriman 2004), concerned with the multi- ple relationships between publics and archaeology in the public sphere (in 1 These relations were discussed by Ian Hodder (1982; 1991; 1999), Mi- chael Shanks, and Christopher Tilley (Shanks/Tilley 1992; Shanks, 1992; Tilley 1993; Shanks 2012).