Evrard - Democratizing Culture or Cultural Democracy?
Evrard, Y. (1997) Democratizing Culture or Cultural Democracy?. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 27(3): 167-175.
The argument in this article is that debates about culture – which go beyond cultural policies to include, for example, the criticism of mass culture in defense of intellectual culture-may be grouped and structured around the conflict between two paradigms: the democratization of culture versus cultural democracy. This conflict comes to a large extent from the cultural field itself.
The aim of the author is to present the characteristics of the two paradigms and the origin of the dichotomy before seeking to identify their philosophical roots and show links between this dichotomy and those in other fields such as research on communication and consumer behavior. The paper concludes by showing how this conflict between two cultural paradigms may be viewed in light of the transition from modernity to postmodernity.
Yves Evrard “Democratizing Culture or Cultural Democracy?”