Effects of Institutional Processes on Museum Practice

This thesis is an interdisciplinary literature review that illustrates the institutional processes by which museums are structured, using work from diverse disciplines including anthropology, sociology, economics, and art history. I provide a review of museums' funding structures, legitimating mechanisms, and bureaucratic modes of operation as a compliment to standard discourses on identity and representation within foundational anthropological work on museums. In addition, I offer a brief outline on the current state of museums within late capitalism, and explain how institutional and organizational theory is beneficial for understanding and expanding the contemporary discourse on museums. I incorporate academic work on institutions from the interdisciplinary social sciences to comment on how the museum's organizational form works to constrain and define the possible worlds of museum practice