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Cultural Polices for Diversity

The analysis of cultural policies in the time of globalization poses several challenges that need to be clarified before deepening their analysis and starting to formulate guiding questions.

Regarding the origin of the history of the public policies of culture, it is common to find in the analysis several approaches. We highlight three:

  • the question of ‘enlightenment’ or enlightenment,
  • the question of ‘national identities’,
  • and the question of ‘market’

Regarding the first, marked by the elite / popular duality, which has its roots in the eighteenth century, where you cultivated the mind with the same effort that the peasants cultivated agro. It delimits knowledge as the action of the elites and doing as the action of the people. Its essential tension is the possibility of extending the domain of knowledge to the people through “education” and “access to culture”. It is a problematic that arises in the eighteenth century, remains for the next two centuries, almost always as a movement that is led by the elites. Throughout the twentieth century it is questioned through popular education, social museology and the processes of participation of nomadic autonomies.

The second model, of the formulation of national identities, the tension is marked by the tension of the delimitation of boundary spaces, by the inclusion versus exclusion of the other. It gains relevance in the nineteenth century and extends largely through the twentieth century, finding in the French public policies, in André Malraux’s ministry its paradigmatic example. It is marked by the identity formation of the modern European nations, visible by the hegemony of national languages, which are consolidated through the processes of literacy, giving continuity to areas of religious influence or other inheritance and territorial legitimacy. Heritage is one of the fields of excellence in the affirmation of national identities, with the concern of defining national identities, styles or national schools, where regionalisms and local particularities are progressively integrated. It is a model that is strongly questioned by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which favors the autonomy of local communities.

The third model of public / private duality that marks practically the entire second half of the twentieth century, with UNESCO constituting a center of debate between the models of implementation of public cultural policies. The postwar era is the golden age of public cultural policy models, thanks to the strong influence of the central planning model, implemented by the French tradition, accompanied by eastern planning models and spreading to the new independent countries. in Africa.

The globalization process and the collapse of Eastern European cultural policies have led to two interesting, apparently contradictory, phenomena that mark our time:

  • In Europe and the so-called “developed” world, there has been a clear decrease in state intervention in the formulation of cultural policies, making the contradiction between cultural policies and cultural management evident. In the first, the purpose of intervention under the constitutional imperative tends to be replaced, in the practices of state organizations, by the idea of ​​equipment management and the fascination of “cultural entrepreneurship”. The role of the state is small in these cultural policies, with the concession of equipment and the distribution of financial support, refusing to intervene in universal access through active policies for the democratization of culture.
  • In turn, in South America and some African states, there was an emergence of alternatives of emancipatory cultural practices, strongly influenced by cultural diversity, marked by globalization processes, intense communication and the ideas of networks that created cultural policies. public services. Rebel model that has allowed us to look at alternative models of public cultural policies, as was, for example, the Brazilian cultural policy of the “points of culture” developed by Celso Turino in the Ministry of Gilberto Gil.

These models mainly serve us to delimit the problems. They do not exist individually, in a pure form, but overlap according to the internal games of cultural actors. It serves as a basis for seeking to lay the foundations for what could constitute an agenda for cultural policies in the 21st century, in Europe and in the global south:

If cultural policies were in the past important instruments of affirmation of national identities, their current diminution in economic narratives, which derive from the impossibility of measuring the economic value of values ​​and ethics, will tend to gain visibility as tools of social management, because they will be they give sustainability to the new values ​​and ethics that sustainability challenges carry.

Questions for the museum to debate

  • The issue of cultural policy, although absent in the grand narratives about Europe and the future of nations, tends to gain space in the field of international politics, as it is through them that readings on cultural diversity, human rights are being made.
  • Culture and cultural policy will tend to be the operative instrument of inclusive and participatory public policy to work with the issus of , human dignity, the principles of education, health, gender equality, social inclusion.
  • The issue of cultural policies will always be present in the analysis of processes and evaluations of sustainable development programs, both north and south. It will be through citizenship groups, their processes of organization, decision making, collaborative or hierarchical networking that actions can be implemented efficiently and durably. The cultural model will have to confront the market model to act as moderator of competitiveness actions. The results will depend on how the actions will be implemented and this depends on the conditions under which each agent acts.
  • Finally, cultural policies are present in the formation of new media. These new, interactive communication tools mobilize networks and disseminate ideas. The capture of normative and ethical principles is being influenced by how each culture attaches relevance to each topic disseminated across networks.