Thesis Chapters by Zsuzsa Nagy-Sándor
MA Thesis, 2020
Museums are inherently in the business of serving future generations: they collect, safeguard, an... more Museums are inherently in the business of serving future generations: they collect, safeguard, and pass on the evidence of our natural environments and cultural practices for posterity. But the legacy of humanity includes things, such as plastic, inequality, and exploitative economic systems, that have negative effects on people and planet, and will make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for future generations to live their lives in peace, health, and relative prosperity. Museum collections can be resources to inform our decisions today, based on the lessons of the past, in order to make better choices for the future. As public institutions they also have a duty to lead the way in imagining a more sustainable path for humanity. They also contribute to the local economy and can play a role in the sustainable development on their urban context. Museums across the globe are rising to meet this challenge of the twenty-first century. This research looks at the ways in which museums are doing so in Hungary. Through interviews and questionnaire responses, the understanding of what sustainability means to professionals across the sector is analyzed, examining the ways in which museums are consciously or unknowingly acting for sustainability, as well as the challenges that hinder further sustainability-oriented developments. The findings of the research help understand how the Hungarian museum sector can overcome some of these binding challenges by understanding that the pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, social,) are interconnected and apply to both audience-facing museum activities as well as internal operations and management. They also show how bringing sustainability into the museum can catalyze positive change that can support the long-term sustainability of the institution as well.
Thesis Supervisor(s): Dóra Mérai External Reader(s): Caitlin Southwick (Ki Culture)
Papers by Zsuzsa Nagy-Sándor
Museums are inherently in the business of serving future generations: they collect, safeguard, an... more Museums are inherently in the business of serving future generations: they collect, safeguard, and pass on the evidence of our natural environments and cultural practices for posterity. But the legacy of humanity includes things, such as plastic, inequality, and exploitative economic systems, that have negative effects on people and planet, and will make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for future generations to live their lives in peace, health, and relative prosperity. Museum collections can be resources to inform our decisions today, based on the lessons of the past, in order to make better choices for the future. As public institutions they also have a duty to lead the way in imagining a more sustainable path for humanity. They also contribute to the local economy and can play a role in the sustainable development on their urban context. Museums across the globe are rising to meet this challenge of the twenty-first century. This research looks at the ways in which museums are doing so in Hungary. Through interviews and questionnaire responses, the understanding of what sustainability means to professionals across the sector is analyzed, examining the ways in which museums are consciously or unknowingly acting for sustainability, as well as the challenges that hinder further sustainability-oriented developments. The findings of the research help understand how the Hungarian museum sector can overcome some of these binding challenges by understanding that the pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, social,) are interconnected and apply to both audience-facing museum activities as well as internal operations and management. They also show how bringing sustainability into the museum can catalyze positive change that can support the long-term sustainability of the institution as well. Thesis Supervisor(s): Dóra Mérai External Reader(s): Caitlin Southwick (Ki Culture)
Cultural Sociology, 2018
In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban reviva... more In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban revivals, leading to the acceptance of traditional Hungarian folk singing as a performing arts genre. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews, this study shows how contemporary Hungarian folk singers navigate (define, learn, police) different forms of authenticity within the field of folk music. While we find that objectified authenticity – heritagized classification systems – is the dominant form of symbolic capital, the broader symbolic economy of authenticity is complicated by competing definitions of folk singing as, variously, culture, heritage, and art. Third-person authenticity is more highly regarded, but it is more difficult for contemporary urban folk singers to achieve because they were not socialized in peasant communities. Therefore, they use objectified authenticity such as ‘original recordings’ as a proxy for learning about living folk culture. Although objectified authenti...
Cultural Sociology, 2018
In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban reviva... more In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban revivals, leading to the acceptance of traditional Hungarian folk singing as a performing arts genre. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews, this study shows how contemporary Hungarian folk singers navigate (define, learn, police) different forms of authenticity within the field of folk music. While we find that objectified authenticity – heritagized classification systems – is the dominant form of symbolic capital, the broader symbolic economy of authenticity is complicated by competing definitions of folk singing as, variously, culture, heritage, and art. Third-person authenticity is more highly regarded, but it is more difficult for contemporary urban folk singers to achieve because they were not socialized in peasant communities. Therefore, they use objectified authenticity such as ‘original recordings’ as a proxy for learning about living folk culture. Although objectified authenticity constrains the agency of artistic expression, it affords discriminatory creativity (choosing one’s own repertoire) and rationalized creativity (adapting traditional material to external values and contexts).
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Thesis Chapters by Zsuzsa Nagy-Sándor
Thesis Supervisor(s): Dóra Mérai External Reader(s): Caitlin Southwick (Ki Culture)
Papers by Zsuzsa Nagy-Sándor
Thesis Supervisor(s): Dóra Mérai External Reader(s): Caitlin Southwick (Ki Culture)