Paul Basu – författare

Exhibition Experiments is a lively collection that considers experiments with museological form that challenge our understanding of - and experience with - museums.

While many claims are made regarding the power of cultural heritage as a driver and enabler of sustainable development, the relationship between museums, heritage and development has received little academic scrutiny. This book stages a critical conversation between the interdisciplinary fields of museum studies, heritage studies and development studies to explore this under-researched sphere of development intervention. In an agenda-setting introduction, the editors explore the seemingly oppositional temporalities and values represented by these "past-making" and "future-making" projects, arguing that these provide a framework for mutual critique. Contributors to the volume bring insights from a wide range of academic and practitioner perspectives on a series of international case studies, which each raise challenging questions that reach beyond merely cultural concerns and fully engage with both the legacies of colonial power inequalities and the shifting geopolitical dynamics of contemporary international relations. Cultural heritage embodies different values and can be instrumentalized to serve different economic, social and political objectives within development contexts, but the past is also intrinsic to the present and is foundational to people’s aspirations for the future. Museums, Heritage and International Development explores the problematics as well as potentials, the politics as well as possibilities, in this fascinating nexus.

While many claims are made regarding the power of cultural heritage as a driver and enabler of sustainable development, the relationship between museums, heritage and development has received little academic scrutiny. This book stages a critical conversation between the interdisciplinary fields of museum studies, heritage studies and development studies to explore this under-researched sphere of development intervention. In an agenda-setting introduction, the editors explore the seemingly oppositional temporalities and values represented by these "past-making" and "future-making" projects, arguing that these provide a framework for mutual critique. Contributors to the volume bring insights from a wide range of academic and practitioner perspectives on a series of international case studies, which each raise challenging questions that reach beyond merely cultural concerns and fully engage with both the legacies of colonial power inequalities and the shifting geopolitical dynamics of contemporary international relations. Cultural heritage embodies different values and can be instrumentalized to serve different economic, social and political objectives within development contexts, but the past is also intrinsic to the present and is foundational to people’s aspirations for the future. Museums, Heritage and International Development explores the problematics as well as potentials, the politics as well as possibilities, in this fascinating nexus.

The first full-length ethnographic study of its kind, Highland Homecomings examines the role of place, ancestry and territorial attachment in the context of a modern age characterized by mobility and rootlessness.

With an interdisciplinary approach, speaking to current themes in anthropology, archaeology, history, historical geography, cultural studies, migration studies, tourism studies, Scottish studies, Paul Basu explores the journeys made to the Scottish Highlands and Islands to undertake genealogical research and seek out ancestral sites.

Using an innovative methodological approach, Basu tracks journeys between imagined homelands and physical landscapes and argues that through these genealogical journeys, individuals are able to construct meaningful self-narratives from the ambiguities of their diasporic migrant histories, and recover their sense of home and self-identity.

This is a significant contribution to popular and academic Scottish studies literature, particularly appealing to popular and academic audiences in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland

The first full-length ethnographic study of its kind, Highland Homecomings examines the role of place, ancestry and territorial attachment in the context of a modern age characterized by mobility and rootlessness.

With an interdisciplinary approach, speaking to current themes in anthropology, archaeology, history, historical geography, cultural studies, migration studies, tourism studies, Scottish studies, Paul Basu explores the journeys made to the Scottish Highlands and Islands to undertake genealogical research and seek out ancestral sites.

Using an innovative methodological approach, Basu tracks journeys between imagined homelands and physical landscapes and argues that through these genealogical journeys, individuals are able to construct meaningful self-narratives from the ambiguities of their diasporic migrant histories, and recover their sense of home and self-identity.

This is a significant contribution to popular and academic Scottish studies literature, particularly appealing to popular and academic audiences in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland