Tracing the co-production of ecological crisis discources within and beyond museum vsits in Indonesia

Sakinah, Salsabilla 2026. Tracing the co-production of ecological crisis discources within and beyond museum vsits in Indonesia. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest within the global museum community in engaging the public with ecological crisis discourses, as an attempt to remain relevant in contemporary society. The interest is supported by museums’ cultural resources, which give them both the potential and the societal responsibility to serve as public repositories of knowledge regarding the climate emergency. Nevertheless, despite their interest and resources, museums are still not considered key players in influencing public discourse on the climate crisis and environmental sustainability. Existing scholarship has attempted to discuss the problem, but it remains largely theoretical, lacks empirical support, and is dominated by the Global North perspective. This thesis addresses these gaps by empirically analysing the co-production of ecological crisis discourses within and beyond a museum visit, from the perspective of Indonesia. It traces how museums stage ecological crisis discourses in their exhibitions, how visitors enact them during their visits, and how visitors restage the discourses beyond the museum walls. The three concepts—staging, enacting, restaging—constitute a connected analytical framework for following the depictions of ecological crisis from the museum into the wider world. Using a qualitative methodological approach, this study interviewed 17 museum staff and exhibition developers from four Indonesian museums, walked alongside 131 visitors during their visit—a method that combines the strengths of ethnographic observation and in-the-moment interviews—and conducted follow-up interviews with 35 walk-along participants six months after their visit. i Grounded in a culturally specific Indonesian context, the study introduces three Indonesian concepts that emerged from the discussion with the participants, which elaborates on the rarely discussed inner soul dimension in museography: menggerakkan (making people act, arousing or awakening the inner soul), penghayatan (the experience, feeling, and internalisation of something in the inner soul), and panggilan hati (the call from the inner soul to act). This thesis argues that the museums attempted to facilitate penghayatan through their exhibition designs, which, when successful, support visitors to extend their construction of critical environmental meanings during the visit. Beyond the visit, the remnants of penghayatan reached into the visitor's broader life, giving rise to panggilan hati. However, the museums’ hesitation to embrace the potential of menggerakkan, stemming from underlying ownership structures and institutional positionality, was a missed opportunity to support further collective environmental agency. It highlights the critical importance of museums revisiting and reconstructing how they stage ecological crisis discourses, as addressing this challenge will be vital to their future relevance and influence within global climate emergency discourse. This thesis extends the discussion of museums and their role in ecological crisis discourses by bringing to the fore a voice from the Global South, as an original contribution to the collective effort to decolonise knowledge in museum studies. By drawing on the underexplored Indonesian museum landscape, this research interrogates how museums in non-Western settings address ecological crisis discourses and how visitors respond to them, foregrounding activist practice, immersion, embodied engagement, and meaning-making.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 October 2026
Last Modified:	02 Oct 2026 10:41
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189920

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