Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

SOCIETY
n. – Equivalent in French: société; Spanish:
sociedad; German: Gesellschaft, Bevölkerung;
Italian: società; Portuguese: sociedade.
In its most general sense, society
is the human group understood
as a more or less coherent whole
in which systems of relationships
and exchange are established. The
society addressed by museums can
be defi ned as a community of individuals
(in a specifi c place at a specifi
c time) organised around common
political, economic, legal and cultural
institutions, of which the museum
is a part and with which it builds its
activities.
1. Since 1974 the museum has been
viewed by ICOM – following the
declaration of Santiago de Chile – as
an institution “in the service of
society and its development”. This
proposal, historically determined by
the birth of the expression “developing
country” and its identifi cation
during the 1970s as a third group of
countries between western and eastern
countries, sees the museum as an
agent for the development of society,
whether this be culture (the use of
the term going so far as to include its
literal meaning at this time of agri-
S
cultural development) or tourism
and economy, as is the case today. In
this sense society can be understood
as all the inhabitants of one or more
countries, or even the entire world.
This is the case for UNESCO, the
international promoter most committed
to the maintenance and development
of cultures and the respect
of cultural diversity, as well as to
the development of educational systems
– a category in which museums
willingly take their place.
2. If on fi rst sight society can be
defi ned as a community structured
by institutions, the concept of community
itself differs from that of
society, since a community is a group
of people living collectively or forming
an association, sharing a number
of things in common (language,
religion, customs) without necessarily
gathering around institutional
structures. More generally speaking,
society and community are generally
differentiated by their assumed size:
the term community is generally
used to defi ne smaller and more
homogeneous groups (the Jewish
community, the gay community, etc.,
in a city or in a country), whereas the
term society is often used in the case
of much larger and necessarily more
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