Culture is perhaps one of the communication channels among citizens that has been little explored, despite being a fundamental policy for accommodating diversity. In times of financial crisis and growing economic differences among people, there may be diminished policy interest in socializing immigrant-related diversity into public culture. This context can even be an argument for justifying the need to promote culture economically, basically seen as a public expense after years of economic crisis. In this article, I would like to examine culture as a public investment in enhancing citizenship, especially when social circumstances increase the risk of losing social rights, of fostering social exclusion of immigrants and, in a nutshell, of devaluating citizenship.
Cultural citizenship in contexts of diversity
The interest in studying cultural citizen - ship within diversity contexts arises from the emergent debate regarding the best policy strategy to accommodate diversity. It is also derived from the perennial concern of ensuring the principle of equality in a society that tends to have a growing population (such as immigrants and citizens with immigrant backgrounds) with a differentiated set of rights and/or cultural identities (religion, language, cultural practices) and/or markers of difference in relation to the national majority (accent, skin colour, for instance). In this framework of discussion, cultural citizenship also becomes a working category.
When examining the link between citizenship, culture and diversity, culture is initially seen as a channel for citizens’ interactions and diversity inclusion, and cultural policy as carrying the function of enhancing citizenship. By introducing the focus on citizenship into the cultural policy/diversity nexus, I assume, then, that cultural policy programs foster a notion of citizenship. Two focuses arise within this nexus. First, culture is seen as a distributive good that has to meet the equality principle as a public good; second, culture is seen as identity, and then makes visible the tension between national identity maintenance and building with complex identities in contexts of diversity.
Considerations of cultural citizenship often revolve around the relationship between citizens and the institutions that give access to culture. This is why the debate on governance is growing. The basic premise orienting these emerging discussions is that, behind cultural policy programs, there is always an assumed conception of citizenship.
The production of citizenship has appeared on the agenda of cultural policy only recently, with the seminal work by R. Rosaldo (1999), who used it to describe citizens' initiatives to promote cultural spaces in areas of poverty and alienation. It has also been used in a very fundamental way by others, highlighting the debates on democracy and identity that it entails.
From a theoretical background, this research program is produced at the intersection of three ways of approaching cultural policies. From the point of view of citizenship studies, cultural policy basically means a policy of national identity and citizenship acquisition (naturalization). From the perspective of cultural studies, cultural policy essentially means the promotion and planning of artistic and creative activities. Finally, in terms of diversity studies, cultural policy designates the cultural integration of immigrants (with democratic values, common language, intercultural relations and civic norms). In this case, cultural citizenship may be seen as an effective mechanism to strengthen democratic values and national foundations.
When examining the link between citizenship, culture and diversity, culture is initially seen as a channel for citizens’ interactions and diversity inclusion, and cultural policy as carrying the function of enhancing citizenship.
Here, we see how cultural citizenship transcends the sphere of traditional cultural rights, as we enter into the realm of what we could call ‘cultural competencies’, in which states grant specific cultural rights based on collective history and contemporary policy.
Most use the cultural capital approach when conceptualizing cultural citizenship. The social capital literature is already known and extensive, but that based on cultural capital is perhaps less well-known. There are, in fact, some studies pointing at the role that cultural capital may play in the construction of cultural citizenship, and some that even examine the relation between social and cultural capital, premised on the hypothesis that cultural capital can influence social capital. In a broad sense, this debate revolves around the consumption of cultural goods and services. Cultural capital is linked to Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of habitus, namely “the provisioning of taste” or “consumption of specific cultural forms that mark people as members of specific classes”. The Canadian social scientist Sharon Jeannotte, for instance, employs Bourdieu’s categorization of cultural capital to distinguish three basic elements:
1, Embodied capital (or habitus), the system of lasting dispositions that form an individual’s character and guides his or her actions and tastes;
2, Objectified capital, the means of cultural expression, such as painting, writing, and dance, that are symbolically transmissible to others, and
3, Institutionalized capital, the academic qualifications that establish the value of the holder of a given qualification.
We can maintain from this cultural capital field of research that there is a real need to build a grammar of cultural citizenship when culture meets citizenship and citizenship meets culture, but also when diversity meets culture and citizenship. I will try to clarify myself within this literature, and to highlight analytically the semantic space where we can build this grammar.
This research program is at the intersection of these three studies, and it interrelates their components in a particular way. Citizenship is the end to reach, and yet we will speak about framing, approaching, promoting citizenship. Culture is the means to reach citizenship, and with this will be considered as a channel for enhancing citizenship. Finally, diversity will be considered as a framework of interaction among people from different origins.
In such an interdependent system, I would also like to combine a bottom-up (cultural social practices) and a top-down (cultural policies and programs) approach to culture. This basically means, from a theoretical point of view, that I am interested in analysing the ways policy administrations and civil society manages interactions between citizenship, culture and diversity. It is from this background that I approach the concept of ‘cultural citizenship’ and I see it as becoming a strategic concept.
Culture is the means to reach citizenship, and with this will be considered as a channel for enhancing citizenship. Finally, diversity will be considered as a framework of interaction among people from different origins.
What this ultimately means is that ‘cultural citizenship’ is used politically for particular aims and one that also functions as a means to reach these aims. Following Stanley’s views, culture is a strategic good, in that it increases the capacity of citizens to manage change and therefore to govern themselves. It is this strategic role that justifies governmental investment in culture. We are basically stressing the importance of cultural promotion and planning in the making of citizenship; or even, two conceptions of cultural citizenship, we are seeking to bridge citizenship with diversity, while stressing the centrality of culture for an adequate understanding of citizenship. When we link citizenship with culture, we want to pay attention to the appropriate means to develop citizenship. ‘Cultural citizenship’, then, refers to the use of appropriate cultural resources to foster citizenship.
We can articulate a concept of cultural citizenship as implying that culture can become a way of increasing the participation of immigrants and interactions in the whole of society. And it may even become a way of changing citizenship regimes. However, we must say that cultural citizenship should not become a means of pretending inclusion in a community when in fact immigrants and their descendants are excluded from political and social citizenship. Cultural citizenship may be regarded as a means of reaching the aim of acquiring other citizenship statuses, and it is in this way that we want to focus on it as a tool for inclusion.
The meaning of inclusion here points to the promotion of immigrants’ participation in cultural practices – whether directly, through specific cultural mediators, or through existing networks in civil society (e.g., through neighbourhood associations, retailers, sports, etc.). It is broadly defined as a set of activities for making and using cultural products, goods, and processes that enhance citizenship. This argument that participation enhances citizenship and promotes inclusion in diversity contexts is not new and belongs indeed to one of the starting premises in immigration and cultural studies.
What is innovative is the line of research that tries to link cultural participation and citizenship. Initially begun as a quantitative concern for measuring citizenship participation in cultural activities, there has been very little qualitative research conducted on the topic. A promising line of research explores culture as a channel for political participation. It wonders if cultural participation is a basic building block of cultural citizenship or if it is a way to measure it. Participation is, then, considered as a means toward citizenship.
Cultural life as a human right
Other scholars explore artists’ interests in engaging with the cultures of their community, thereby shaping and contributing to the cultures in which they live. Most consider that this participation is a recognized right in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when it establishes “a right to participate in the cultural life of the community as a basic human right”. Here, problems arise within the debate regarding how to map cultural participation, in terms of measuring access to cultural activities.
[Inclusion] is broadly defined as a set of activities for making and using cultural products, goods, and processes that enhance citizenship.
Initially, participation was thought about in terms of modes of consumption and the use of cultural goods and activities. Some scholars suggest there are three categories of participation: creators, audiences and managers. Participation thus involves the creative and the productive, access and audience, and processes of management and decision-making. Finally, we can mention the seminal work linking diversity and cultural policy produced by UK-based Australian academic Tony Bennett (Cultural policy and cultural diversity: mapping the policy domain, 2011) when he states that “four principles are of paramount importance in developing such a revised vocabulary of citizenship.”
“The first of these consists of the entitlement to equal opportunity to participate in the full range of activities that constitute the field of culture in the society in question. Second is the entitlement of all members of society to be provided with the cultural means of functioning effectively within that society without being required to change their cultural allegiances, affiliations or identities. The third relates to the obligation of governments and other authorities to nurture the sources of diversity through imaginative mechanisms, arrived at through consultation, for sustaining and developing the different cultures that are active within the populations for which they are responsible. And finally, the fourth concerns the obligation, for the promotion of diversity, to try to establish ongoing interactions between differentiated cultures, rather than their development as separated enclaves, as the best means of transforming the ground on which cultural identities are formed in ways that will favour a continuing dynamic for diversity.”
The basic descriptive definition of cultural citizenship depends upon considering ‘culture’ as a channel for framing, approaching, and promoting citizenship. We are particularly invested in situating this concept in contexts of diversity, and in considering cultural policy as a way to accommodate diversity. The argument I want to put forward, and that will help me to structure the interpretative framework, is that we consider not one, but three conceptions of cultural citizenship, according to each democratic citizenship tradition. We can consider each tradition as an ideal type that somehow overlaps in reality (in the concluding remarks I will suggest its potential applicability for analysing case studies in the future). Each tradition will offer a different answer, according to the four citizenship standards. Of course, we can imagine each tradition as drawing a certain model of society, but we will consider them analytically, and not as independent bases of societies.
Being rights-based, a liberal cultural policy seeking to make cultural citizenship will mainly focus on ensuring equality of access to all cultural goods distributed by authorities. Equality is thus understood in terms of distribution and access. Being identity-based, a communitarian cultural policy will focus on constructing a collective, shared public identity in making cultural citizens. It understands this collective public identity either in national terms or in terms of other public entities such as local or neighbourhood ones.
A republican tradition is focused on seeking citizen involvement in the making of society, from a cultural point of view, so it will develop participatory and creative capacities for making citizenship. A republican cultural citizenship will try to be involved in cultural planning and production. The liberal tradition will basically seek to promote the consumption of cultural citizenship. This means that a cultural citizen is a spectator of culture, and it is this consumption of cultural productions that need to be promoted. For instance, a liberal concern would include the lack of participation of nationals or immigrants in museums or theatres, and thus use of cultural offerings is considered an indicator of success. According to my understanding, what matters to a liberal are not only rights of access, but also the willingness of consumers and the types of choices offered. This is primarily because we are treating culture as a public good that is distributed by the administration.
A liberal concern would include the lack of participation of nationals or immigrants in museums or theatres, and thus use of cultural offerings is considered an indicator of success.
A liberal cultural citizen is not simply one who does not break the rules, but one who moreover uses the public goods that are distributed. The use of cultural goods is performed, however, not through involvement in creative activity, but only through viewing and consumption. Balancing supply and demand of cultural productions is what drives the promotion of cultural citizenship. A cultural policy seeking to promote communitarian cultural citizenship will mainly focus on national identity and tradition, on cultural heritage, and on insuring citizens’ feelings of collective belonging. It understands democratization of culture in terms of providing a shared, common identity through cultural rights.
At this point, we can, of course, follow a strict communitarian understanding of culture, underlining the clash between national tradition and identity and requests for diversity, or we can take a broader view of culture, including local or neighbourhood identity building, as well.
Whatever the approach to collective identity building, citizens are not mere consumers, but also producers of shared public culture. Regarding their participation in culture, they are not seen merely as spectators, but as community producers.
A cultural policy seeking to promote republican cultural citizenship will mainly focus on ensuring participatory channels for cultural production. It understands democratization of culture in terms of guaranteeing the participatory and creative capacity of citizens. Cultural citizens are basically seen as cultural producers. Creative citizenship supposes an appropriation by people of adequate resources for the creation, production, dissemination and consumption of their own culture.
Therefore, we go from the citizen-as-consumer-of-culture to citizens valued for their creative cultural capacity. Citizen participation strengthens the participation of institutions directly or through specific cultural mediators, as well as through the network of existing civil society (e.g. neighbourhood associations, traders, sports, etc.). To summarize, the liberal tradition sees citizens as cultural consumers, as citizen spectators (for instance, the liberal concern can be illustrated as “how many immigrants go to the museums in comparison to national consumers?”).
Meanwhile the communitarian tradition regards citizens as cultural players, as participatory citizens (for instance, the communitarian concern can be stated as “how many immigrants participate in the organisation of festivities and/or take part in the collective cultural events of their neighbourhood?”, which promotes their sense of belonging to their community, and community cohesion); and the republican democratic tradition of citizens promotes immigrants as cultural producers, as creative and participatory citizens (for instance, “how are immigrant artists promoted?” or even “how is culture channelling and mobilizing immigrant protests? Let’s say through music, painting, and so on).
