Cultural policy: issues and interrogations in an international perspective by Yudhishthir Raj Isar This essay was supposed to be a review of long-term entities) envision and enact in terms of cultural affairs, the trends in ‘international cultural policy’. Although it has latter understood as relating to ‘the works and practices of turned out to be something else, it is still worth pausing intellectual, and especially artistic activity’ (Williams, 1988: to inquire what that original brief might mean. ‘Interna- 90). Its analysis means studying how governments seek to tional cultural policy’ could denote two different things: support and regulate the arts and heritage. It also means ana- first, the evolution of norms and frameworks articulated lyzing how the latter are seen as ‘resources’ and used in the by international organizations and/or considered to be service of ends such as economic growth, employment, or good practice internationally; second, the emergence of social cohesion. Increasingly, this instrumental view of cul- different ‘cultural policy’ stances and measures in dif- tural assets means that the attention lavished on them and the ferent countries and regions (this second reading could money spent are increasingly justified in terms of ‘protect- of course subsume the first). Interested principally in the ing’ or ‘promoting’ the ‘ways of life’ that audiovisual culture second reading, I am in fact beginning to envisage a book- in the European Union setting for example, is considered to length cross-cultural survey of the topic. This project is express, shape and represent (Schlesinger, 2001). still only half-formed, however. What is more, neither my Yet such analysis insufficiently recognizes that official decades of direct experience in the policy-making arena, policy is far from being the only determinant of what we particularly at UNESCO, nor my current co-editorship might call the ‘cultural system’, as different economic of The Cultures and Globalization Series of publications, forces, such as the marketplace, or societal dispositions have (yet) afforded me scope for first-hand research. So and actions, notably civil society mobilization around cul- rather than generalize in ways that could only be im- tural causes and broader quality of life issues, impact on pressionistic, I have chosen to discuss not the ‘long term the cultural in ways that are often far more powerful than trends’, but rather some necessary preliminaries to a the measures taken by ministries of culture… At the fore- systematic inquiry into ‘cultural policy’ worldwide, in front of India’s contemporary cultural system, for example, the hope that my reflections may provide some useful ele- stands the popular culture generated and disseminated by ments of ‘global’ context for the Swedish national ‘cul- ‘Bollywood’ and other centres of film and television pro- tural policy’ exercise now under way. duction. The ‘policies’ of the ministries concerned impinge but superficially on this universe. Instead, they support in- Several issues concern me. First, the divided nature of re- stitutions of ‘high culture’, offer awards and prizes to artists search on ‘cultural policy’: on the one hand policy advisory and writers, and pursue efforts of cultural diplomacy (the work that concerns itself little with higher ends and values, latter in particular pales into insignificance in comparison and on the other so-called ‘theoretical’ analysis which has to the international reach of the private film industry). Fur- little or no purchase on policy. Why not bridge the divide, by thermore, in India as in many other multi-ethnic nations, combining the two streams? How to do so? My second set of cultural issues across the board are inscribed in terms so interrogations concerns ways of comparing ‘cultural policy’ narrow that they miss both the ways in which discourses trans-nationally. I shall suggest several axes of differentia- of nationalism, development, modernization and citizen- tion that appear relevant, but only tentatively, as I have yet ship have mobilized different forms of cultural expression, to settle on an overarching analytical framework. and the ways in which subtle hierarchies in these discourses trump officially sanctioned notions of ‘authenticity’ or ‘tra- A house divided dition’ (Naregal, 2008). What is understood by ‘cultural policy’ and ‘cultural po- It is not surprising, therefore, that the culture of the ‘cul- licy research’? My use of quotation marks so far signals my tural policy researchers’ – more often than not working as concern with the semantic bivalence of these terms, both of consultants for a public authority – is a mostly unproblema- which are deployed, broadly speaking, in two distinct sets of tized object, analyzed in more or less functionalist terms. ways by two different families of researchers, and for quite The critical elements in such analysis tend to concern the divergent purposes. delivery or non-delivery of outputs (in turn generally just The first and most common understanding of ‘cultural the outputs of governmental action), but the premises on policy’ was neatly encapsulated many years ago by Augus- the basis of which those outcomes are defined, the values tin Girard (1983: 13) ‘as a system of ultimate aims, practical they embody, or the sometimes covert goals they pursue – in objectives and means, pursued by a group and applied by an other words the outcomes – are rarely questioned. authority [and]…combined in an explicitly coherent system. Totally different is a field of academy-driven scholarship Here ‘cultural policy’ is what governments (as well as other for which ‘cultural policy’ means 74 KULTURSVERIGE 2009 swecult_final.indd 74 08-10-28 13.15.29 ‘the politics of culture in the most general sense: it is licy’ remains deep. This divide was addressed by another about the clash of ideas, institutional struggles and power Bennett, Oliver, in an essay reviewing both the Lewis and relations in the production and circulation of symbolic Miller Reader cited above and the late Mark Schuster’s meanings…issues of cultural policy may usefully be con- book Informing Cultural Policy: The Research and Infor- sidered from the point of view of a critical and communi- mation Infrastructure. Each work represents a world ‘lar- cative rationality’. (McGuigan, 1996:1) gely oblivious to the preoccupations of the other’ (Bennett, 2004: 237), the first limited by ‘an uncritical attachment to In the same vein, Lewis and Miller see ‘cultural policy’ as a simplistic notion of the progressive’, while for the second ‘a site for the production of cultural citizens, with the cul- ‘what constitutes both cultural policy and cultural policy tural industries providing not only a ream of representations research seems broadly to be what governments, their mi- about oneself and others, but a series of rationales for par- nistries of culture, arts councils and related organisations ticular types of conduct’ (Lewis and Miller, 2003: 1). This determine them to be’ and is limited to ‘the investigation academic tradition emerged relatively recently – only in the of instrumental questions through empirical social science’ 1980s in fact, with the shift from analyzing the ‘culture’ of (ibid.: 242). Although he is happy to recognize multiple ap- ministries of culture within a primarily aesthetic paradigm proaches because of the ‘intellectual vitality’ that could be to doing so within a paradigm of representation and power. engendered by their encounter, Bennett still sees an unavoi- Influenced largely by cultural studies (as well as by critical dable ‘clash’ between two worlds that are, adapting Adorno, sociology, e.g., that of Pierre Bourdieu – who, paradoxically, the torn halves that can never add up to a whole. The arena disparaged cultural studies), this perspective is inherently for the clash in question is the English-speaking West; Ben- contestatory and critical: cultural policy is ‘cultural politics’ nett (with Ahearne, 2004) contends that it does not exist – and hence broadens its remit to include the workings of in France and Germany, where many public intellectuals the marketplace, usually in condemnatory terms as well as have contributed to cultural policy debate. His point is made the increasingly vigorous claims of ‘cultural civil society.’1 principally to challenge the claim to representativity of the As the ideological moorings of much of this work are radical Lewis and Miller Reader. Yet there is little evidence that, on leftist and/or libertarian in inspiration, constructive engage- the ‘continent’, the conversation between academic inquiry ment with policy-makers themselves is rarely on the agenda. and policy-oriented advocacy work is in reality less divided, In some cases, such engagement is deliberately shunned. despite Ahearne’s evocation, for France, of collaborations Not surprisingly, the findings of such scholarship tend to be between government and the likes of Bourdieu and de Cer- unpalatable to policy-makers; most of them cleave to overtly teau. These, he claims, ‘have played an important part in instrumental agendas. Also, it must be said, much ‘cultural the elaboration of what one might call a nationally available theory’ often expresses itself in terms so abstruse and con- critical cultural policy intelligence’ (Ahearne, 2004: 11). voluted to be incomprehensible to the policy-making au- Perhaps. But which policy-makers have attended to such dience. There are of course other, humanistic traditions of intelligence? How did they learn from