Logan, Owen (2017) Fractured Culture: the Sociological Poetics of the Arts, Participation and Well-Being
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Citation: Logan, Owen (2017) Fractured culture: The sociological poetics of the arts, participation and well-being. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University. This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/36226/ Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html Fractured Culture The sociological poetics of the arts, participation and well-being Owen J. Logan PhD 2017 Fractured Culture The sociological poetics of the arts, participation and well-being Owen J. Logan MA Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research undertaken in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Social Science July 2017 Abstract In different countries participation in the arts has become a significant theme of government policies which foster the instrumentalisation of culture; Yúdice (2003), Belfiore and Bennett (2010), Eagleton (2014). Increasingly it is claimed that the arts have positive effects on social, political and economic well-being. The emphasis on people changing the arts ― common in the political discourses of 1970s ― has been substituted by arguments about the power of the arts to transform people’s lives. This study tests these claims comparatively. The main questions asked are: what are the differences between instrumentalism from above or below in the political order; and how do the world of the arts and letters and the world of politics speak to each other today? Through extended interviews, life stories and discourse analysis, based on fieldwork in Britain and Venezuela, the study demonstrates the complex moral interdependency between European notions of aesthetic virtue and political or civic virtues. The political structuring of these virtuous relations is shown to be morally tenuous. It is argued they express the institutionalised but inadequate compensations associated with the ‘good-faith economy’ (Bourdieu 1977). Politically these relations are problematic; among other things they discursively separate the mind from the body which means that time and other basic needs tend to be neglected. It is argued that this complex relationship between aesthetic and political virtue is a significant factor in Statecraft, and in unmaking the militant role of the organised working class. It is suggested that these dynamics are a contributory factor in the ascendancy of the political far-right internationally. To counter the influence of the good-faith economy this study proposes greater public participation in the funding processes which support the arts. Contents Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Appendix I David Harding: The Blessed Generation 37 Chapter 2. Literature Review: The Arts and Well-being 41 Appendix II Esther Salamon: Social Flatness in Art 69 Chapter 3. The Arts and Statecraft in Good-Faith 73 Appendix III Leigh French: From Real to Symbolic Violence 125 Chapter 4. The Limits of Dialogue: Structure and Agency in Sociological Poetics 128 Chapter 5. The Good Life Gone Wrong 172 Chapter 6. Techno-spirituality: Blue Skies and Britain’s Post-Industrial Voyage 193 Appendix IV Femi Folorunso: From the Fast Track to the Slow Track 242 Chapter 7. Doing Well in the Eyes of Capital: Cultural transformation from Venezuela to Scotland 245 Appendix V Janette Rodríguez and Oscar Sotillo: Arts and the Bolivarian Revolution 287 Chapter 8. Conclusion: Debating the New Spirit 290 Appendix VI Beheading the Spiritual Aristocracy 336 Bibliography 341 Acknowledgements My doctoral research was made possible by a studentship at the University of Northumbria. This support allowed me to examine the contemporary relationship between art and politics and to reflect, critically and systematically, on my experiences of working in the arts from the early 1980s. Some of the people I have encountered in that area of my life assisted me by discussing the research and reading various drafts as I wrote it up. I am indebted to all the interviewees mentioned in this study but I am particularly grateful to those who also helped me to write biographical narratives in the appendices. Although I did not draw so directly on their perspectives my thanks also go to Bill Dart, for discussing his experience as an art therapist; David Goard for talking about his experiences as an artist in residence; Rosie Gibson who worked for the Craigmillar Festival Society; also Julie Smith, Rob Hoon and Craig MacLean who discussed community education. I have relied on some colleagues and friends for a combination of political and academic discussion about content and style, Terry Brotherstone, Femi Folorunso and Philippa Hall, Alex Law, Kirsten Lloyd, Jonathan Robertson all deserve special mention. Their different critical perspectives were invaluable. My research in Venezuela was made possible by the Contested Powers research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. My thanks go to my colleagues and co-editors in that project, John Andrew McNeish and Axel Borchgrevink, I benefited enormously from their knowledge of Latin America and from our debates about theories and characteristics of power. Thanks also to Geoff Baker and Gustavo Borchert my co-convenors for the 2015 conference, El Sistema and the Alternatives, held at the University of London. To find such support for structural critique among musicologists and music educators was important and very encouraging. My enduring thanks must also go to my principal academic supervisor Ysanne Holt, Professor of Art History, ably assisted by my second supervisor Mark Cieslik, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, at Northumbria University. Only with their support could I have plotted a middle course that draws on both their disciplines. Lastly I must thank Vivian Robertson, brother to my patient companion Eleanor, the mother of Rosalie, our daughter born in the summer of 2014. Only with their help was I able to complete this thesis as Rosalie leant to crawl, walk, talk and ask questions. Declaration I declare that the work in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. Where the opinions, ideas and contributions of others appear they are fully acknowledged. A shorter version of chapter seven appears in Contested Powers:The Politics of Energy and Development in Latin America, Zed Books (2015). Ethical approval of this research was sought from the University of Northumbria Ethics Commitee in December 2010 and granted by the committee in 2011. The word count of the following text (not including endnotes, bibliography and appendices) is 96,225 words. Owen Logan 18 July 2017 Chapter 1 Introduction We must try to make possible a new, wider definition of art which includes the experience, the lives and the perspective of life of the working class, in which society is no longer embarrassed by creative play, in which society no longer fears the power of the imagination, in which making art popular and making popular art are drawn closer together. John McGrath (1984) 1 The statement above from John McGrath, (1935-2002) the playwright and founding member of the 7:84 Theatre Company, captures the central theme of this study; namely the class politics of fractured culture as it is manifested in the arts, and ideas of art. Why is it possible to think of culture as something brittle or broken? The name of McGrath’s company referred to the 1966 statistic that 7% of the UK population owned 84% of the wealth.2 By all measures this ratio has increased even more in favour of the rich. A comparison made in 2011 between equivalent cemeteries in Hampstead and Bradford reveals eight times the number of infant deaths in Bradford, an illustration of the growing inequality and segregation known as Britain’s ‘north-south divide’.3 The political far-right looks back nostalgically to a more culturally unified society. However the materialist approach to class which focuses on issues of ownership and economic rights, and which provided a name for McGrath’s theatre company, critiques the notion that culture has ever been unified. The imagined common culture of the past was in fact highly stratified by inequality. A materialist historiography of gender, slavery, serfdom, race, religion, caste, and class would take us back a very long way in the history of socio-economic structures of inequality, and also show that culture is not always fractured in the same way.4 Although the historical record is partly obscured by those same power structures which determined who could write, and whose voices constituted the public, it is clear that fractured culture is old and it is has been compounded by structural developments. What is relatively new ― dating back to the emergence of aesthetics as a distinct branch of European philosophy in the 18th century ― is the idea that the powers of the imagination associated with the arts have a role in overcoming inequality. For this reason the 18th century deserves attention in this thesis. Well into the 20th century the modest origins and education of long recognised talents such as William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Robert Burns (1759-1796) still provided evidence of the naturalness and necessity of inequality.