CULTURAL DEMOCRACY
The concept ‘cultural democracy’ (or ‘cultural pluralism’) was formulated for the first time in the now already classic work of Augustin Girard and Geneviève Gentil ‘Cultural development: experiences and policies’, published in 1972. According to Matarasso and Landry (1999), this concept has its roots in several 19th-century cultural movements as well as inter-war initiatives in working communities. But the blurring of boundaries between elite and popular culture in the 1960s and, in particular, the activities of the counter-cultural movements in this period played a crucial role in its establishment.
The starting point of the concept of cultural democracy is that there is a multitude of cultures in a society. Consequently, in this view, the task of a genuinely democratic cultural policy should not be to acculturate all members of the community with the elite culture, as was the case in the democratisation of culture approach. Instead, cultural policy should strive to create prerequisites for all citizens to produce and participate in the culture in which they are socialised.
The differences between the concepts of democratisation of culture and cultural democracy are manifold. They are, first of all, reflected in their different understandings of culture. Democratisation of culture equates culture with elite art, which represents legitimate culture and is transmitted through public education. On the other hand, cultural democracy adopts an anthropological understanding of culture: culture is seen as constituted of multiple values, practices and objects. In other words, in this view, all cultures are seen as legitimate.
Secondly, in contrast to the top-down approach characteristic of the democratisation of culture, cultural democracy works bottom-up. It presupposes that various communities produce, disseminate, and communicate their own forms of culture. Thirdly, besides democratising the reception of the arts, cultural democracy is concerned with providing access to the means of cultural production and distribution.
Furthermore, in the understanding of cultural politics implied by cultural democracy, it is necessary to overcome the limits of the arts and the approach that limits itself to democratising access to them. It is important to recognise that everyday expressions of people represent culture and involve people in debates about values, identities, and society. To that extent, it can be said that if the democratisation of culture approach strives to make culture available to people, cultural democracy is about making democracy through culture.
However, as argued by Evrard (1997) if everyday expressions of people represent culture, then the question arises about how judgments of quality within this paradigm can be made. The questions that also need to be answered are: is there something that can be considered non-culture, and how can the dangers of relativism and populism be avoided?
In contrast to numerous theoretical discussions about cultural democracy, public funding agencies did very little to support its practical application. One of the main reasons for this was the difficulty in limiting the domains of culture deserving of governmental support. The comprehensiveness of the cultural democracy agenda also made it financially unsustainable, especially during the oil crises of the 1970s. Over time, this led to the emergence of new cultural policy paradigms, such as the conception of culture as a tool of sustainable development in the 1980s and the conception of creative industries in the 1990s. However, recently, there has been a renewed interest in the ideas and practices of cultural democracy, as evidenced by, e.g., Wilson, Gross, & Bull, 2017. (PC)