5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In the second half of the 20th century, debates about the museum institution and its underlying colonial and androcentric logic proliferated. These criticisms were sustained at various levels: theoretical, professional, and from the social and historical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. From there, concepts such as new museologies, critical museologies, community museums, or sociomuseology emerged, all of which highlight the importance of rethinking the relationship between museums and society. In the last decade, these debates have been taken up by global institutions (ICOM, 2019; ICOM, 2020) to think about a new definition of the museum according to the challenges of the 21st century, related to decolonization, feminism, sustainability, and the need to diversify memories and heritages. From these debates, this session hopes to invite researchers to present their work on museums and their transformations concerning various themes: participatory museums; feminist museums; decolonial museums; and inclusive museums, among others, in the expectation of calling for a broader reflection on a sociology of museums in the era of the Anthropocene.