Culture and Citizenship

Nick Stevenson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780761955603, 9780761955597
• eBook ISBN: 9781446225868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

`Culture? and `citizenship? are two of the most hotly contested concepts in the social sciences. What are the relationships between them? This book explores the issues of inclusion and exclusion, the market and policy, rights and responsibilities, and the definitions of citizens and non-citizens. Substantive topics investigated in the various chapters include: cultural democracy; intersubjectivity and the unconscious; globalization and the nation state; European citizenship; and the discourses on cultural policy.

1

CULTURE AND CITIZENSHIP: AN INTRODUCTION

Nick Stevenson

Recent debates within cultural studies and citizenship studies might suggest that these areas have little in common. The term ‘culture’ is usually associated with a mix of public and private institutions including museums, libraries, schools, cinemas and the media, while more specifically being connected with the dialogic production of meaning and aesthetics through a variety of practices. Citizenship, on the other hand, is more often thought to be about membership, belonging, rights and obligations. In institutional terms the terrain of citizenship is usually marked out by abstract legal definitions as to who is to be included and excluded from the political community.

Indeed, under certain circumstances, claims to an identity and rights of residence should indeed be kept separate. A liberal view might propose that the rights of citizenship and substantive cultural commitments need to be clearly distinguished from one another. It has been the remit of cultural racism to argue that access to citizenship criteria depends upon particular cultural persuasions. Such a view then would warn against linking ‘culture’ and ‘citizenship’. However rather than suggesting that citizens’ entitlements are conditional on certain cultural criteria we might think of ways of bringing these ideas together to promote a more inclusive society. For example, as both Bryan Turner (1993) and Maurice Roche (1992) have argued, in addition to civil, political and social rights we might now start to talk of cultural rights. These dimensions expand legal frameworks and questions of governance into the cultural sphere. Yet how these rights (and possibly obligations) are to be elaborated remains an open question. Conversely, in cultural studies, many writers such as Douglas Kellner (1995) and Jim McGuigan (1996) have become closely associated with the need to respect the diversity of modern popular cultures, while linking them to more political and economic questions. Generally speaking the ground does seem fertile for exploring the interconnections between these different domains. To talk of cultural citizenship, as we shall see, invites a dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and maps out some of the key developments currently taking place within the modern world.

In particular, the notion that culture is now a key site of contestation forcefully brings questions of citizenship to the fore. As Beck (1992), Castells (1996) and Melucci (1996) have all argued the ‘cultural’ dimension can no longer be conceived as an add on after the ‘real’ dimensions of politics and economics have been satisfactorily explained. Whether we are talking about the risk society, network capitalism or the concerns of social movements, ideas of symbolic challenge and exclusion remain central. The power to name, construct meaning and exert control over the flow of information within contemporary societies being one of the central structural divisions today. Power then, as we shall see throughout this collection, is not solely based upon material dimensions, but also involves the capacity to throw into question established codes and rework frameworks of common understanding. This means that the locus of cultural citizenship will have to occupy positions both inside and outside of the formal structures of administrative power. To talk of a cultural citizenship means that we take questions of rights and responsibilities far beyond the technocratic agendas of mainstream politics/media. That is, we should seek to form an appreciation of the ways in which ‘ordinary’ understandings become constructed, of issues of interpretative conflict and semiotic plurality more generally. However, this can not be achieved without also appreciating how dominant systems and institutions seek to establish the power of master codes, meaninglessness and dominant viewpoints. Such a position then requires us to consider the ways in which more formal definitions of citizenship have been maintained within modernity. Such notions arguably join together sociology’s attempt to map the ‘big’ transformations of modernity with cultural studies’ attempt to capture more subtle shifts within meaning and aesthetics.

Theories of Cultural Citizenship

How then might we talk of questions of culture and citizenship? The academic literature, leading up to the publication of this volume, has begun to explicitly debate many of the ways that these interconnections might be articulated. Renato Rosaldo (1994) writes of ‘the right to be different’ while enjoying full membership of a democratic and participatory community. From this view the solidified national community views cultural citizenship as a threat. A cultural citizen is a polyglot who is able to move comfortably within multiple and diverse communities while resisting the temptation to search for a purer and less complex identity. Conversely, John Urry (1995) suggests that we become cultural citizens through the growth of a ‘surface’ cosmopolitanism that has helped produce a certain ‘openness’ to the rich patterns of geographical and historical cultures the globe has to offer. On this reading, ‘cultural’ citizenship is more the product of the free mobility of goods and peoples than legally formulated rights and obligations.

The arguments of Rosaldo and Urry are an interesting starting point. Whereas Rosaldo connects up questions of citizenship to the public sphere and issues related to rights, Urry is more concerned to link the global traffic of goods and symbols to questions of consumption. This I think makes an important point in that to talk of culture and citizenship or ‘cultural’ citizenship is to be mutually concerned with both political as well as economic practices. That is, notions of cultural citizenship offer an opportunity to link the way changes in the economic and political sphere have had impacts upon the ways in which citizenship is commonly experienced. However, we could also argue that both Rosaldo and Urry connect culture and citizenship in ways which begin to think about difference and diversity within a shared community.

This point has been picked by Bryan Turner (1994) arguing that the postmodernization of culture and the globalization of politics have rendered much of the literature in respect of citizenship inadequate. First, the attack on traditional divisions between high and low culture poses serious questions in terms of the common or national cultures that might be transmitted by public institutions. The diversification and fragmentation of public tastes and life styles have undermined a previously assumed ‘cultural’ consensus. Secondly, the development of transnational spheres of governance, instantaneous news and global networks amongst new social movements has questioned the assumed connection between citizenship and the nation-state. These dual processes undermining, or at least calling into question, the correspondence that citizenship has traditionally drawn between belonging and the nation-state.

More recently, Jan Pakulski (1997) has argued that ‘cultural’ citizenship should be viewed in terms of satisfying demands for full inclusion into the social community. Such claims should be seen in the context of the waning of the welfare state and class identities, and the formation of new social and cultural movements focusing on the question of the rights of groups from children to the disabled. Cultural rights, in this sense, herald ‘a new breed of claims for unhindered representation, recognition without marginalization, acceptance and integration without “normalizing” distortion’ (Pakulski, 1997: 80). These rights go beyond rights for welfare protection, political representation or civil justice and focus on the right to propagate a cultural identity or life style. These claims, however, are likely to be as problematic as the implementation of social rights. Pakulski suggests that there is already a perceived backlash against ‘politically correct’ programmes and unease about bureaucratic attempts to regulate the cultural sphere.

Elsewhere, I have similarly argued that the demands for cultural citizenship both focus on the spheres of media and education and have been influenced by the dual processes of postmodernization and globalization. The partial break up of previously assumed homogeneous national cultures has opened questions of cultural inclusion and exclusion. To be excluded from cultural citizenship is to be excluded from full membership of society. This converts cultural citizenship into a more normative set of criteria:

Cultural citizenship can be said to have been fulfilled to the extent to which society makes commonly available the semiotic and material cultures necessary in order to make social life meaningful, critique practices of domination, and allow for the recognition of difference under conditions of tolerance and mutual respect. (Stevenson, 1997a: 42)

Such a view would argue that ‘cultural’ citizenship needs to include dimensions other than the recognition of difference. That is while the recognition, if you like, of our right to be different remains key, cultural citizenship also requires a set of public institutions that are both democratic and protected from the excesses of the free market. Arguably this points to the continued links between social and cultural forms of citizenship. In the section below, I seek to trace out what I consider to be the key questions at stake in this arena.

The Dimensions of Cultural Citizenship

During the past decade, questions of citizenship have come increasingly to the fore. This has been widely recognized as being connected to the growing crisis of the welfare state in Western democratic nations, the demise of actually existed socialism, the critical questioning of liberalism and social democracy and the development of informational capitalism. All of these social developments and others have helped put citizenship studies on the map. There is renewed interest across a range of academic specialisms in the study of citizenship. The question of membership and belonging in terms of our common rights and duties has arguably been heightened in an age where the liquidity of capital and the demise of communism have brought into question older Left/Right binarisms. This has led to the rediscovery of the politics of citizenship, which is neither tied to free market liberalism nor state socialism. Notions of citizenship then more sharply focus our attention on questions of rights, democratic participation and notions of duty as we move into the more uncertain terrain of the post-Cold War era. These debates open out key questions in respect of our political cultures, as the main ideologies that dominated the twentieth century come under increasing critical scrutiny from both inside and outside of the academy.

Yet to conceive of citizenship in these terms is both at once important and overly narrow. While it matters greatly whether we need to rethink our ideas in respect of social democracy and liberalism we also need to address the emerging ‘cultural dimension’ of citizenship. The emergence of new social movements and critical questions that can be related to ‘identity’ politics have been crucial in this respect. Social movements in respect of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability and others have all sought to interrupt the construction of dominant cultures. These movements have sought to challenge widely held stereotypes that once permeated the symbolic cultures of civil society. The deconstruction of ideas that have been associated with the ‘normal’ citizen has sought to widen the ‘inclusive’ fabric of the community while creating space for difference and otherness. Questions of ‘cultural’ citizenship therefore seek to rework images, assumptions and representations that are seen to be exclusive as well as marginalizing. At heart then these dimensions ask what does it means to belong to society, and how might modern society be made more ‘inclusive’? This not only adds more voices to the debate in terms of the maintenance of our collective identities, but also opens traditional views and practices up for critical scrutiny. Public issues as widely diverse as date rape, gay cinema, children’s rights, the black communities monitoring of the police, lad culture and wheelchair ramps all have issues connected to ‘cultural’ citizenship at their heart. Notably these issues have all been brought onto the agenda by political and cultural formations that have their organizational basis outside of mainstream political parties. This is not to argue that more mainstream agendas can not become hegemonically reformulated, but that the social forces that have pressed these issues, for the most part, have come from outside of establishment circles. Adding a cultural dimension to citizenship therefore points towards the deepening and broadening of questions related to the politicization of everyday life.

The discursive construction of these ongoing conversations has a further ‘cultural’ dimension. That is, the arena in which they are mostly likely to be fought out is within the media of mass communication. The progressive enframing of key political debates within print and radio, and the dominant medium television has been one of the major ‘cultural’ transformations of the twentieth century. The development of a sophisticated array of visual codes and repertoires that interrupt the agendas of more hegemonic institutions and cultures is an essential armament within the semiotic society. To have access to cultural citizenship therefore is to be able to make an intervention into the public sphere at the local, national or global level. The debate concerning young people’s ‘cultural’ literacy in respect of drugs could feature a range of debates including the national press, a school magazine and CNN news all at once. This issue may link reports of trans-national drug cartels, a debate of the risks involved in taking particular life style drugs, pronouncements by leading politicians and the views of young people themselves. This example then not only underlines the increasingly political nature of cultural questions, but the diversity of arenas that debate and represent these questions.

The other key social development that has ignited questions of cultural citizenship has been globalization. The ‘cultural’ aspects of globalization are by now well known and include a number of processes encompassing the growing intensification of the movement of people and symbols across national boarders. This has fostered a number of complex and often contradictory developments. The first and most obvious has been the growing penetration of the cultural sphere by economics and instrumental reason. Huge conglomerates specializing in the production of a range of cultural goods now dominate world markets. However new levels of cultural intermixing partially breaking down older more homogeneous cultures have also coupled this development. This has helped foster claims for cultural rights from a variety of sites including opera houses and organizations that aim to protect minority languages. An increasingly commercial as well as a more multi-cultural public sphere has produced claims for special protection from the domains of high culture and minority cultures alike. Processes of globalization then can be read ambivalently in that they have provided new zones of cultural intermixing while progressively commodifying the cultural realm. These claims for rights will primarily be addressed towards the nation-state, despite recent reports of its demise, as well as more trans-national and local levels of governance. The claim that we protect languages, cultures and aesthetic pursuits from the logics of both capital and the state are likely to be heard ever loudly as we progress into the next century.

The provision of a pluralistic and electrically charged public sphere would seemingly have resonance in this regard. The availability of public places where ideas, perspectives and feelings can be shared in modern societies is crucial for the development of the self, the creation of social movements and the fostering of a critically informed public more generally. Again the spaces and places where this sort of interaction can take place may combine different kinds of communication from face to face interaction to that of a more mediated variety. Open-ended and reflexive forms of dialogue can be as much a part of the Internet as it can the local town hall. However there are many other pressures within modern society that would seek ideological closure and ensure topics for debate that do not receive the chronic forms of scrutiny they evidently deserve. The provision of public spaces, in terms of a genuinely ‘cultural’ citizenship, that have achieved at least relative forms of autonomy, needs to be added to and preserved against more colonizing impulses.

The questions raised above have an obvious connection to issues of cultural policy. This area has been one of growing concern both within and outside of the academy. States and societies face choices in terms of the museums they fund, the mix of public and private forms of television they allow and the languages they teach in the classroom. These policy areas then arguably broaden the remit of public governance into the domain of culture. Cultural policy is centrally concerned with the kinds of ‘culture’ that are deserving of public protection and the kinds of policies that are best fit to achieve these objectives. These questions, as I have commented elsewhere, are likely to require fresh forms of thinking to accommodate the mixing of popular and elite culture (Kenny and Stevenson, 1998; Stevenson, 1997b). Since the advent of postmodernism it is no longer automatically clear the sorts of culture that should be offered public forms of protection. This poses the question as to what set of public criteria would indeed be applicable to the domain of cultural policy? While this inevitably raises questions of quality, diversity and democracy the unfreezing of the ‘cultural’ domain does not automatically tell us which of these principles have a priority over others, and the order of their importance. Now that cultural policy can no longer be simply the preserve of an elite culture or left to the market to define the tastes of the vast majority of the population these questions come increasingly to the fore.

Finally to raise issues of culture and citizenship is to be intimately concerned with the potential creativity or otherwise of the self. To be concerned with the ‘cultural’ dimensions of citizenship then is to try and foster the social conditions that make such creativity possible. The twin threats of bureaucratization and fundamentalism even within advanced industrial economies should not be underestimated. That is, it is not enough to point to processes of cultural democratization, as important as these might be, but one should also be concerned with questions related to meaningfulness, quality and aesthetics. These dimensions could come into play in the funding of adult evening classes, centres for inter-cultural understanding and meaning, and the development of places and spaces within audio and visual culture that can be opened up to more experimental purposes. The arrival of more niche-marketed cultures has not yet displaced some of the predictable and conformist features of mass culture (Stevenson, 1999). This again necessitates a set of normative criteria that would point to the evident danger of allowing our common cultures to be determined by more instrumental agendas.

While the specific way of linking these issues remains my own they do provide a context for most of the concerns available within this volume. My thoughts here are perhaps an initial example of one of the available ways we might have in tying them together.

Social Theory and Citizenship

A useful starting point for thinking the links between culture and citizenship lies with social theory. The chapters by Turner, Crossley, Elliott and Frosh consider many of the theoretical issues at stake in the ‘cultural’ turn in citizenship studies. In p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Culture and Citizenship: An Introduction
• 2 Outline of a General Theory of Cultural Citizenship
• 3 Citizenship, Intersubjectivity and the Lifeworld
• 4 The Reinvention of Citizenship
• 5 Psychoanalysis, Identity and Citizenship
• 6 Citizenship, Popular Culture and Europe
• 7 Cultural Citizenship and Urban Governance in Western Europe
• 8 Three Discourses of Cultural Policy
• 9 Feminism and Citizenship
• 10 Extending Citizenship: Cultural Citizenship and Sexuality
• 11 Disability and Cultural Citizenship: Exclusion, ‘Integration’ and Resistance
• 12 Youth Marginality Under ‘Postmodernism’
• 13 Race, Multi-culturalism and Difference
• Index