Changing philosophies of action? Argentine’s cultural policies in the 21st century

ABSTRACT

How can the many institutional and ideological changes of Argentine cultural policy at the beginning of the 21st century be explained? This paper analyses how representations of culture, programs and public actions are translated into different ‘philosophies of action’ depending on the political stripe of each government and the agents of cultural policy. If the predominant philosophy of action during the whole period is ‘culture as an economic resource’, it coexists with other philosophies: ‘culture as show’, ‘a communication tool’, ‘social inclusion’ and finally ‘a factor of citizenship’.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• philosophy of action
• Argentina

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The ‘cultural battle’ was conceived as a confrontation by the people and the federal homeland, embodied by the ‘national and popular’ government, against the large corporations and the mass media characterized as concentrated centralists, with foreign interests and elitist.

2. In Argentina, [the] Internet was first marketed in 1995, and is currently used by half of the population. Both Facebook and Twitter (from 2004 and 2006, respectively) have played a key role in the distribution of information and cultural debates.

3. Une « philosophie d’action » est une « ‘problématisation’ ou manière dont est construite et ressaisie de manière intellectuelle et pratique » la cohérence de l’action publique. [A ‘philosophy of action is a “problemitizing” or way in which is constructed and reprised intellectually and practically’ the coherence of a public policy (Urfalino 2004: 14).

4. The provinces have a Constitution, elections and government branches (executive, legislative, judicial) of their own and the Argentine Constitution establishes that they are sovereign in their territories and precede those of the Nation.

5. Unless stated otherwise, we always refer to the budget of the SCN, defined administratively as the ‘characteristic organism’ and ‘prime directorial entity’ for cultural activity.

6. Peronism is a broader movement than the Partido Justicialista (PJ, [Party for Justice], including labour unions and other social organizations. During the Kirchner years there was an active forming of new groups of political militants who either changed the meaning of Peronism or entered into it without getting involved in the PJ.

7. Di Tella criticized Kirchner’s proposal to name the actress Nacha Guevara as head of the National Fund for Culture. He said that ‘culture is a circus.’

8. The total cultural budget which in 2009 was 0.44% grew each year until it reached 0.67% in 2013 (Ministerio de Cultura 2017b). The most detailed analysis of ‘National Public Expenditure Allotted to Culture by Type of Organisms/Programas (in current pesos)’ shows that, between 2001 and 2009, the ‘connected decentralized organisms’ had four times more funds than the ‘characteristic’ ones (of the SCN) and that the “cultural programs in non-cultural organisms received half of these latter ones. However, between 2011 and 2014, this relation changed drastically: the above-mentioned ‘programs’ began to have at least ten times more funds than the SCN and the ‘connected decentralized organisms’ between six and eight times more (Ministerio de Cultura 2017b).

9. Villas miserias are very poor districts where there is no access to public services like electricity, transportation or clean water.

10. In Argentina presidents are allowed only one re-election; to pull off a second one would have required changing the National Constitution on the basis of a call for a National Constituent Assembly.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rubens Bayardo

Rubens Bayardo  holds a PhD in Anthropology, and is also a teacher and researcher at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is the director of the Cultural Management and Cultural Policies program in the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina).

Elodie Bordat-Chauvin

Elodie Bordat-Chauvin is a CONICET postdoctoral research fellow at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) and associate researcher at the LAMES (Aix Marseille Univ.). She teaches in Sciences Po Aix. She won the Cultural Policy & Cultural Management Research Award in 2014 and published with Peter Lang a book from her thesis: When Cultural Policy Change, Comparing Mexico and Argentina in 2015.