A new book claims stressors such as climate trauma, corporate deceit, and
political incompetence accelerate the threat of societal collapse. This
statement lays the groundwork for exploring the arguments in Dr. Robert R.
Janes’ new work, “Museums and Societal Collapse.”
The book also addresses the unique role museums can play during a growing climate crisis.
“Social ecology is an integral and moral dimension of the collapse and crisis we face: that social and environmental issues are intertwined, and both must be considered simultaneously,” explains Dr. Janes, a visiting researcher at the School of Studies Museums of the University of Leicester. “Our collective inability to honour this relationship is at the root of our failure as a species.” Janes identifies six categories into which a number of key social threats fall, ranging from civilisational overshoot to Eco-modernism.
The era of modernity, along with technological and industrial advances, has also brought with it unsustainable economic growth, violence and wars, dispossession, and genocide. These factors combine with others, such as political incompetence and corporate deception, as governments around the world plan to produce more coal, gas, and oil than allowed by 2030.
Janes, the editor-in-chief emeritus of Museum Management and Curatorship magazine, examines these threats separately and together, calling attention to “the folly of humanity.” He asks, “Recognizing what we know about civilizational overshoot, ecological overshoot, climate trauma, political and corporate deception, and Eco-modernism, isn’t this crazy? Insanity is that we do not react with intelligence, courage, and promptness to face what is now described as an existential threat to our species, not to mention everything we have created throughout prehistoric history, oral and written.”
Museums, understood as guardians of bygone eras and bastions of conservation, occupy a unique space within society with untapped potential. Janes suggests that their role remains largely unexplored: “Museums have a much more lasting role to play in society by clearly demonstrating that no group or ideology holds the sole truth about how society should behave. A competent museum is testimony that a healthy society is a multitude of competing interests, aspirations, plans, and proposals that cannot be ignored in favour of economic utility.”
Janes also argues that museums’ ethical obligations include being open to influence and impact outside the museum, being responsive to citizens’ interests and concerns, and being fully transparent in meeting these first two expectations. The author explains, “Museums have the opportunity and obligation to provide the means of intellectual self-defence with which to resist the status quo and question the way society is governed.”
Breaking down concepts and theories concisely, Janes intentionally steers this conversation beyond the realm of museum and heritage professionals, underlining the need for a collaborative global response to the key threats he outlines. Although he paints a bleak picture, Janes – also the founder of the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice – insists that hope remains fundamental in the search for solutions: “As we think about the uncertain future of museums in a world beset by challenges unprecedented, it is clear that hope is an essential ingredient in any successful outcome for museums, although it is insufficient on its own. The underlying premise of this book is that each of us has something valuable to offer. There is no right approach. We cannot stop global warming, but we can confront the threat.”
The Museo de Málaga was formed in 1973. There are slightly over 2,000 pieces in the Fine Arts collection and over 15,000 in the Archeology collection.
