摘要：Museum and Society ( M&S ) was established in 2003 as a forum for researchers working on the social context of the museum. The first articles were the fruits of a seminar series organized in the late 1990s and sponsored by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Sociologists, historians, art historians, political scientists, anthropologists, museologists, and practitioners attended the seminars at Keele University, The University of Leicester, and Tate Liverpool. One function of interdisciplinarity is, of course, to bring differing perspectives to bear on intellectual and social problems. Another is to sharpen our understanding of what a particular discipline might bring to the table (and indeed take away for itself). Thus, for example, we might expect to see sociology adding something new not only to our knowledge of museums, but also more ambitiously, to our understanding of human society as a whole.
