What We Are Nostalgic For: Place-Making and Social Capital in Local Museums

What We Are Nostalgic For:Place-Making and Social Capital in Local Museums Megan Kathleen Hull Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Information University of Toronto 2025 Abstract What roles do local museums play in their communities? This dissertation addresses this question through a case study of the deep connection between the Sooke Region Museum and its community of Sooke, British Columbia. Employing ethnography, autoethnography, and an interdisciplinary framework, this research contributes to an understanding of the importance of local museums to community self-definition and place-making. I make connections between these place-making and self-defining processes by focusing on two key sets of literature – nostalgia and social capital – to make sense of how the museum mediates Sooke’s history and identity tied to resource extraction and its newer identity as a bedroom community. Logging and fishing, the mainstays of Sooke’s economy for decades, have been replaced with tourism and a bedroom community economy and identity, with an influx of new residents drawn by Sooke’s small size, affordable housing, and proximity to Victoria, BC. In Sooke, rapid population change has caused an identity crisis for many, creating tension between old and new ideas about what is important to the community. My research suggests that the local museum has provided a space for community members to develop individual and collective connections to Sooke and build a foundation of social capital with each other and with the museum. Despite being found in communities across Canada, local museums remain understudied and, I argue, undervalued and under-utilized. My research demonstrates that local museums contribute in vital ways to evolving small towns by 1) creating multiple opportunities for nostalgia to form between histories, places and people, and 2) developing local social capital through community-building. Inspired by scholarship that explores nostalgia, I argue that in its most positive and meaningful incarnation – when nostalgia respects the past while acknowledging its historiographic context – it is a powerful way that local museums connect with community members. Leveraging that nostalgia allows local museums to build social capital among community members, and between museums and their communities. By contributing to social capital, nostalgia can help museums facilitate the building of community identity and place-making, which in turn makes communities meaningful and responsive places to live.

Department dc:contributor.department

Information Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Hull, Megan Kathleen

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Krmpotich, Cara

• collective memory
• community museums
• local museums
• nostalgia
• social capital
• Sooke

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1807/145091

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/145091