| Summary: | The Gift 2.0 - A Museological Study of donations of Objects and its Underlying Motives, is a study in order to explain why people choose to donate items for museums, rather than any other alternative.The empirical study consists of qualitative, semi-structured research-interviews conducted with seven selected curators from various museums, with extensive experience of the subject acquisition. I have chosen to only examine Swedish cultural-historical museums. The hypothesis that I assumed was first and foremost that the heritage sphere is what Pierre Bourdieu calls a field. The reason that people would donate objects to museums, is that the donation itself brings cultural capital to the donor, from people with the same habitus. Since I felt that Bourdieus theory of field, capital and habitus could not explain all the reason why people donate items to museum, my second hypotheses was that certain objects are what Annette Weiner called inalienable possessions, objects that at any cost may not be sold or bartered away. It is precisely the ability to keep the object outside of the commercial sphere that is the essential for an inalienable possession. Linked to this hypothesis I argued that museums act like a bastion of inalienable possessions, in which the donor can continue to keep the object while it has been given. My source material consists of the research interviews and secondary material that I have acquired during the study, consisting of literature, deed of gift and e-mail correspondence. I have analyzed both primary and secondary source material using my hypotheses. The results of this study verify that my hypothesis is valid to use as a musicological theory of gifts. The study is a two year master´s thesis in Museum and Heritage Studies.
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