This paper provides an analysis of the status of museums in discourse on ‘culture and development’. It is motivated by the argument that the fields of museology and development are converging because development is increasingly concerned with cultural factors while museums have been reconceptualised as agents for development. It would thus follow that museums are central to debates on culture and development. But an analysis of museological and culture and development discourse shows that despite overlaps in concerns with issues such as social inclusion, cultural diversity and bottom-up methodologies there is little cross-sectoral awareness of such commonalities. Surprisingly, museums are largely excluded from culture and development debates because they are perceived as Western, irrelevant to contemporary development challenges and institutions contributing to social exclusion. However, an analysis of issues encountered by development actors when dealing with cultural factors shows that participatory approaches to museology can actually provide useful insights to the field of development. This invalidates the exclusion of museums from culture and development debates and provides a rationale for increased cross-sectoral collaboration.

Museums are described as places that build understanding between cultures. They can as easily be zones of mis-understanding and friction. This paper examines three instances when groups in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and India come into conflict with museums and professionalised heritage regimes. What seems at first to be local vs. global conflicts are embedded in very complex local politics.

‘Making Differences’ is the lead project of a new research centre that I established at the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, in October 2015. This is the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage – CARMAH.1 Funded primarily by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, with further support from the Humboldt University, the Berlin Museum of Natural History, and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (which is responsible for Berlin’s national museums), CARMAH is, as far as I am aware, the world’s largest concentration of museum and heritage researchers taking a specifically anthropological approach. By this we mean that we work, on the one hand, in depth locally and usually ethnographically – to understand specific cases and actual practice on the ground; and, on the other, that we investigate comparatively and internationally. Bringing together these two levels of focus allows us to achieve an analysis that is attuned to institutional and national differences, while also able to identify and map broader dynamics of museums and heritage in the contemporary world. By doing so, our hope is to contribute new approaches to both the analysis and work of museums and heritage.

"What good are museums? How do they contribute to society? What measures do we have for gauging their impact? Can their role be modified to better serve the cultural needs of an ever-more complex society? These and other related questions..." In 1998, the American Association of Museums, as well as the International Council of Museums organized a conference on museums and sustainable development. This article was one of a selection contained in a publication assembled by ICOM Canada.

This is a conference paper presented At the National Museum of Prehistory in Taiwan in November 2018. This paper is about shared governance with communities outside museums, and the critical global importance of heritage management. Here is the description of the conference:"This conference is also dedicated to the opening of the new archaeological museum at Tainan, which will be a branch of the National Museum of Prehistory. All its collections will be from archaeological sites excavated within the Tainan Industrial Park during the last 20 years or so, which covers a long history from 5000-3000BP. The conference theme is to stress the importance of combining archaeological research with cultural anthropological approaches, in combination with museum studies, in order to generate greater public interests of archaeological investigations. Another aim is to explore different ways of constructing current Austronesian identities through archaeological and museum studies of these collections."

Conference Programme: Throughout its history, the museum has always had a profound impact on human knowledge, identity and politics. As an institution it has shaped our view of the world and been crucial in spreading everything from humanism and tolerance to nationalism and other political agendas. Today, its influential position remains but meets new demands in a changing world.