Gender and Materialities. How to Gain Access to Embedded Gendered Knowledge

Gender knowledge and gender order are also embedded in materialities. Beside that taken for granted knowledge from Gender Studies, in Sociology it is not that clear how we can gain methodological access to the empirical datum of embedded knowledge (in materialities).

In our study funded by the German Research Foundation on the production of inequalities in the dramaturgy of museums, we work with a practice-theoretical framework and the methods of unstandardized observation in public spheres of different types of museum. By working with a specific protocolling instrument, we collect on the one hand data of architectural elements, of ordering objects etc and on the other hand data of sensual and affective experiences in the social space of the museum.

We will contribute first finding from our research to the roundtable, focussing on the entry areas of museum as spaces of transition where gender play a central role.