Pratos e mais pratos: louças domésticas, divisões culturais e limites sociais no Rio de Janeiro, século XIX

Reply to ten comments on a paper published in the last issue of this journal. The discussion follows along six main lines: History museums, identity, ideology and the category of nation; the need of material collections and their modalities: patrimonial, operational, virtual; theater versus laboratory; visitors and their ambiguities; Public History: the museum and the academy.Resposta aos comentários de dez especialistas que contribuíram no debate de texto publicado no último número desta revista. A discussão orientou-se segundo seis tópicos principais: museus históricos, identidade, ideologia e a categoria de nação; a necessidade de acervos materiais e suas modalidades: acervo patrimonial, operacional, virtual; teatro versus laboratório; o público e suas ambigüidades; História Pública: o museu e a Academia

Questions of religion and cultural policy in France

This article explores how questions of religion have impinged on or informed various dimensions of culture-shaping policy in France. Firstly, it considers how religious references have been orchestrated in high-level attempts to frame secular national identities, but also how such processes have assumed quasi-religious forms and functions. Secondly, it analyses the changing place of religion in French educational curricula, and recent contested endeavours to introduce it as a cultural ‘fact’ into those curricula. Thirdly, the article examines influential framings of art policies in their relation to religion. It considers the pivotal function of religious fragments and debris in Malraux’s vision of the imaginary museum, and the use by Bourdieu of sustained religious metaphors to describe the sacralizing dynamics of secular artworlds. Finally the article examines in a long-term perspective the implicit and explicit cultural policies of religious bodies themselves in their attempts to act upon prevailing cultures