Cultural citizenship as a normative notion for activist practices

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of a notion of cultural citizenship that can function as an activist tool for formulating claims against cultural exclusion. It claims to have captured such a notion in the definition of cultural citizenship as the ability to co-author the cultural context in which one lives. The argument proceeds in several steps. First, it argues that the agenda of relevant cultural issues should go far beyond questions of cultural groups and recognition as posed in most contemporary literature. For instance, cultural exclusion on a global scale as well as exclusion within groups and exclusions effected by commercialisation of cultural processes should receive equal attention. Second, the article argues for a ‘stand-alone’ notion of cultural citizenship, i.e. defining cultural citizenship as citizenship in the cultural sphere rather than as concerning merely cultural aspects of political citizenship. Finally, it assesses the potentials of the proposed notion of cultural citizenship as compared to several competitors in the field, viz. Kymlicka's liberal communalism, Sen's idea of cultural liberty, and approaches focussing on cultural participation.

Keywords:

• cultural exclusion
• cultural participation
• liberal communalism
• cultural freedom
• concept of culture

Notes

 1. It should be noted that outside the domain of political philosophy, for instance in Cultural Studies, such a broader agenda is clearly present (e.g. Miller 2007).

 2. ‘The components of knowledge (are) tacitly embedded in its shared examples’ (Kuhn 1969, p. 175).

 3. ‘Exemplary situations’ animate and structure the key concepts and the way a theorist constructs the problematic studied; they also reflect the ‘situatedness’ of social thought. The case of multiculturalism and national integration in Canada can be considered such an exemplary situation for theorising multiculturalism in the past decades.

 4. The innovative Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development uses this term to describe their mission. See http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/c_and_d/index.html

 5. Questions of ‘democratisation of memory’ are also highly relevant at the national and European levels. For instance, we need to revise the image of Europe as the home of all rationalism and Enlightenment, because then we conveniently forget out heritages of discrimination, slavery, colonial brutality, antisemitism and other forms of racism.

 6. For a useful overview of different strands of theorising cultural citizenship see Pawley (2008).

 7. Strictly speaking, my argument could also be termed one for ‘semiotic citizenship’, or ‘discursive citizenship’. However, such technical terms hardly resonate in contemporary public discussions and therefore would not help to make the idea of cultural citizenship an effective normative notion for activist purposes.

 8. The individual nature of cultural citizenship may also be criticised as being very much western. I would agree that it would be incorrect to assume something like a universal model of citizenship independent of differences in cultural traditions. However, this does not mean that we should repeat stereotypes such as that individualism is typically western. In all cultures there is the figure of the hero who stands up to culturally rooted forms of oppression such as slavery or discrimination. The stereotypes are fed by western and eastern ideologues. An example is the discourse on Asian values as expressed by various Asian leaders (e.g. from Singapore, Malaysia and, previously, South Korea), or the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’ as introducted by Samuel Huntington (1993) (see also Mamdani 2004, Sen 2005).

 9. The report and Background Papers are all available through the UNDP website http://www.undp.org

10. However, it should be observed that within the capability literature, the idea of cultural liberty has not been developed much beyond the 2004 report. In addition, there is a bias in the way in which the idea of cultural liberty has been elaborated even in that report, making it unnecessarily focused on group-related forms of cultural exclusion. For instance, Sen's two types of exclusion relate to ‘living modes’ of collectives and do not address the problems of dissidents or innovators who do not claim a new living mode. Nor does Sen's argument address questions of cultural incapacitation related to commercialisation. The idea of cultural freedom needs further elaboration to show its full potential for academic study, policy and public normative debates, and it needs to distance itself from the idea that culture is necessarily related to groups and identities.

11. See e.g. Pawley (2008) for a criticism of the narrow agenda of Kymlicka in discussing culture.

12. The idea of cultural citizenship includes the notion that it may be vital for emancipation that claims in the cultural domain are brought to public attention, calling for deliberation, change of attitudes, and policy action if needed. Such calls for public attention do not only derive from minority groups. Reviewing the borderlines between private and public is an ongoing process in the republic which conceives of itself as the autonomous construction of the associated citizens.

13. This attention to actual possibilities for cultural agency is also well covered by the idea of cultural liberty in the Capability Approach.

14. It may be argued that a fully developed idea of cultural liberty in the tradition of the Capability Approach could also lead to more such specific analyses of what cultural democratisation can mean in practice.