Multiple notions of culture
UNESCO’s famous definition of culture states that culture refers to ‘the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses not only art and literature, but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions, and beliefs’. While this definition is very broad, it is by no means exhaustive or final. The definition and meaning of culture have been debated for at least two hundred years, but the concept is still characterised by a variety of understandings around which there is no clear consensus.
The most important distinction between different notions of culture is drawn between the narrow and hierarchical idea of ‘culture as high arts’ and the broad, relativistic idea of ’culture as a whole way of life’. Although some have argued that this distinction is no longer valid in most contemporary societies, the narrow ‘culture as high arts’ definition was traditionally linked to high-status groups and was broad, while the ‘culture as a whole way of life’ understanding was linked to mundane or vernacular cultural practices, or ‘everyday participation’, and therefore to lower-status groups.
However, the most influential debates in cultural sociology since the 1990s have shown that, in the present conditions, high-status groups adopt broad and tolerant tastes, while low-status groups tend to be more ‘univorous’ and intolerant, at least at the manifest level. In addition, researchers have pointed out that this steep division is further blurred by several intertwined trends, such as particularly increased cultural heterogenization, the intensification of global cultural production, and the widening of the sphere of what ‘culture’ is understood to include in the first place.
Meanwhile, the distinction between narrow and broad conceptualizations continues to be a challenge for cultural policy because different parties understand and utilize the notion in different, and sometimes contradictory, ways. Many researchers claim that cultural policy sets its goals from the viewpoint of ‘culture as a whole way of life’. In practice, however, most policymakers tend to fund ‘culture as high art’ and therefore reproduce existing social hierarchies by supporting cultural activities mostly associated with (and practiced by) higher-status groups.
In sum, notions of culture are not only multiple but also ambiguous. This means that it becomes important to investigate how people from different contexts understand the notion of culture. In the future, a key objective of cultural policy research should focus on better identifying the many and possibly contradictory notions of culture across different social groups. Such a bottom-up approach, applied in the INVENT project, can help policymakers match public funding better with different citizens’ understandings of what culture is. (RH)