Sociology of Culture Commons^™

A taboo is a prohibition placed on exposing what is good as well as what is bad. Indeed, prohibited by authority or social influences, taboos are rooted in an unconscious guilt and insulated from our psychosocial life-worlds by mediating institutions of religion and politics. Yet, in an age of secularisation and liberalisation, new mediating institutions of the taboo are emerging, particularly within contemporary museology. Presently, therefore, a number of time-honoured taboos are increasingly becoming translucent and, as a result, there is a new willingness to tackle inherently ambiguous and problematical interpretations. Consequently, an exhilarating phase of museological development has opened …