Dynamics of cultural policy valuations in contemporary Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper questions the configurations in which contemporary European cultural policies attribute explicit positive values to culture. It begins with a reflection on the meaning of value, before identifying, through the analysis of a corpus of scientific articles, books and research reports as well as press articles, the numerous values identifiable in the history of cultural policies. From this collection, we propose a principle of classification into five major families of values: democracy, identity, well-being, aesthetics and economy. Finally, we describe the dynamics of emergence and transformation of the values attributed to culture in historical configurations, through three examples: the valuation of heritage, the conflicts over the values of democracy, and the values underpinning the concept of sustainable development. Our exploratory research shows that values already present in the twentieth century are becoming increasingly important in cultural policies, without taking precedence over values with which they can compete or, on the contrary, find a form of compatibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Values
• Europe
• cultural policies
• democracy
• cultural heritage
• sustainable development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This research focuses on the “explicit” values, as “promoted”, “attributed” to culture by cultural policies, in contexts of “democratic” regimes studied by the literature we have considered, thus necessarily “positive” in their formulations; we do not take this “positivity” for granted, but discuss it, on the one hand in itself, and on the other hand in interaction between a plurality of values (tensions).

2 “Democracy” was chosen, rather than “politics”, as politics is an extremely broad “domain”, whereas “democracy” can be considered as a value containing particular normative orientations.

3 “Economy” is understood here as the sphere of values related to power, competition and profit.