On the Public Sphere

8/2/2019 On the Public Sphere

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On the public Sphere as a Cultural Political Idea, The Nordic Cultural

Model as an example by Peter Duelund

Peter Duelund & Nordisk Kultur Institut 2002. Publikationen er et paper til Wellingtonkonferencen om kulturpolitiskforskning i 2002.

Alle rettigheder forbeholdes. Mekanisk, fotografisk eller anden gengivelse af eller kopiering af teksten eller dele derafer kun tilladt i overensstemmelse med overenskomst mellem Undervisningsministeriet og Copy-Dan. Enhver andenudnyttelse uden skriftligt samtykke fra forfatteren/forlaget er forbudt iflge dansk lov om ophavsret.

Nordisk Kultur Institut | Amalievej 15 | DK-1875 Frederiksberg C

Tlf. +45 33 21 36 53 | [email protected] | www.nordiskkulturinstitut.dk

1. Introduction

As a framework of analysing cultural policy as a cross-disciplinary topic in the humilities mystarting point is Jrgen Habermas's theories of the public sphere and his later studies of system andlifeworld. Does it make sense to use these theories as a common theoretical framework for cultural

political research? What limitations and need for renewal do the theories contain? What are themethodological implications?

What is the significance of the answers to these theoretical questions if one empirically attemptscomparatively to uncover the basic aspects and development traits of the Nordic cultural policies?

With the last question I wish concretely to apply to my study of Danish Cultural Policy as a part ofthe comparative Nordic research project "The Changing Nordic Cultural Policies - Divergence andConvergence in Nordic Cultural Policies," which I have conducted for the cultural ministries in the

Nordic Countries in the last 5 Years. The final Report "The Nordic Cultural Model" are publishedin February 2003..

2. The public sphere as a cultural political idea

There are several elements in Habermas's theorising and conceptualising about the bourgeois public(Habermas 1962) which immediately demand substantial cultural political research interest. Themost essential ones deal with:

- The individual and political role of the arts in a democratic;- Cultural public sphere understood as a sphere for social practice and critical culture struggle;- Development of a conceptual apparatus about "publicity" and a "public" taking part and the

universal validity of rational forms of communication (universal linguistic pragmatism).

I shall briefly outline these elements - I could mention others - as background to understanding theirpossible relevance to cultural political research today.


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Peter Duelund On the public Sphere as a Cultural Political Idea

Nordic Cultural Institute | All rights reservedNordisk Kultur Institut | Amalievej 15 | DK-1875 Frederiksberg C

Tlf.: +45 33 21 36 53 | [email protected] | www.nordiskkulturinstitut.dk

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2.1. The Individual and societal role of Arts

Without art - no culture or education. Without culture or education - no democracy. In this sensefree artistic expression is an precondition for personal life insight and political democracy.

Firstly, the bourgeois public sphere as an idea and in its internal understanding was an expression ofthe combination of a cultural and political democracy and of the role of culture in a state governed

by law that still keeps its validity in welfare-motivated cultural policy in modern states governed bylaw. This applies not the least to the goals used as the basis for Nordic cultural policies after WorldWar Two.

The cultural public sphere was/is meant to secure both in the classic understanding of public sphereand in the modern welfare democracies, that the individual experiences of the citizens through thearts in their various forms are produced and presented without distorting and violating political oreconomic supremacy. This philosophical goal, for instance, acquires its clear constitutionalexpression in the European and Nordic tradition of authors' right.

In opposition to the representative public sphere in pre-modern society - when bishops, princes, andother religious and profane leaders politically and culturally ruled the public sphere and throughceremonies, carnivals, and other cultural manifestations were represented "before" the people - theestablishment of the public sphere that grew together with the Western European bourgeois societyin the 17th and 18th centuries means that citizens through a free press, publishing companies, publicconcert halls, theatres, opera houses, art museums, etc., in the everyday life world, andconstitutionally, create a sphere for artistic experience, cultural education, and political debate inthat order.

Thus, the most important task of cultural policy in a democratic state governed by law will be toestablish, maintain, and develop a network of cultural institutions that will allow for the multitudeof the citizens' individual cultural experiences to be expressed freely in the public sphere as

precondition for the development of a successful political democracy.

In the classic liberal perception of democracy, the cultural experiences are the starting point for thepolitical discourse and opinion shaping - not the other way round, as many modern politicalscientists and also cultural theorists are postulating.

That is why the primary task of cultural policy as part of the political democracy was and is toprocure the state subsidy schemes, the institutional forms, and organisational principles which will

optimise the possibility that no citizen is culturally excluded.

The cultural public sphere must be "representative". All artistic as well as cultural experiences mustbe freely expressed. Nobody must be delimited?? The arts were a medium for the aestheticmanifestation in the public sphere of individual life experiences. The cultural institutions were theframework for the artistic process of acquisition.

The individual life experiences and human insight were the starting point in the self-knowledge ofthe bourgeois public sphere. Art and politics were the necessary media of the life world.


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The free cultural and political public sphere was the goal; state machinery, cultural policy, andcultural institutions were the tool, even though instrumentalised Nordic cultural policy of the 1990soften proved the other way round in the political self-knowledge.

In the book"Kulturens misbrug" - "Culture abused"- I have shown how the tendencies of the

cultural political aim in the Nordic countries and in joint Nordic cultural policy from the 1960s tilltoday have been characterised by a development from cultural policy understood as a tool for thenation state construction process to a rational and instrumentalised abuse of cultural policy.(Duelund 1992: 14-32)

2.2. Public sphere as arena for social practice and cultural struggle

While the concept "offen"- in English "open" - originally refers to concrete physical features suchas landscapes, etc., the conceptual coupling in early 18th century Europe of"ffentlichkeit"and"ffentlich"- in English "publicness" and "public" - and in French "publicit"and "publique"-

begins to refer to social relations. The concept acquires philosophical and sociological meaning as

concept for a social order with social room for a societal debate, which is accessible to the citizens.

Contrary to what we today understand by public sphere, namely the political and administrativepower machinery within the state, counties and municipalities, the classic concept of publicnessreferred to a sphere for social practice and cultural struggle.

The function of the public sphere as a cultural critical battleground and tool for the social mobilityof the bourgeoisie becomes especially evident towards the end of absolutism, when the bourgeois

public sphere in Europe - and later in the Nordic countries - organises and establishes itself frombourgois and the nethermost room of society and from the many new informal places of meetingsand gatherings. Everywhere it happens in critical opposition to, and in physical struggle with, theabsolutist and despotic state forms, on which absolute monarchy was founded.

In his analyses, Habermas attaches great value to demonstrate that the public sphere under classicliberalism and the political and cultural philosophy behind it does not, like the Danish national flag,theDannebrog, fall from the sky to a God-favoured people. It originates and progresses through

physical battle of culture with the premodern authorities.

The ecclesiastical and profane princes within the representative public sphere strove to hold theirground till the last within the narrow representative public sphere around themselves and theircircle. Within their closed cultural and political cycle no clear differences existed between the

private and the public. And the feudal overlords, princes, and bishops did absolutely not want theclosed cycle broken by the establishment of a sphere free from a free cultural and political dialoguebetween the private and state levels of society.

The establishment of the bourgeois public sphere in the Nordic countries and the rest of Europedemanded a struggle. The sociological precondition for the establishment of the public sphere wasthe new types of social life and the new social and cultural meeting places for the citizens in theFrench "les salons", the English "coffee houses" or the German "Tischgesellschfte".


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Theatres, concerts, and art exhibitions, beside the informal meeting places, constituted later on thesocial prerequisite for the bourgeois public sphere. This were where the new public meets as freeand equal citizens.

Habermas shows how in 18th century Europe a reading, listening, and reasoning public develops; a

public which through newspapers, periodicals, books, theatres, concerts, salons, coffee houses, artexhibitions, museums and other cultural institutions, becomes the precondition for the political

public sphere in the shape of parliamentary gatherings, etc., which rise during the 19th century.

Can the new cultural movements which prevail today in Nordic cultural policies be explained andunderstood as a contemporary parallel to the historical break of the bourgeoisie from the then feudalforms of institutions and formations of experience?

Are they a manifestation of social groups having been excluded in the cultural public sphere inNordic welfare societies?

Which new forms of institutions, culture subsidy agreements, and principles of organisation, shouldroom be created for the life experiences and aesthetic form expressions?

Among others, Gerhard Schultze, the West German cultural sociologist, has produced somesignificant theses about the developmental tendencies within the highly developed modern societieson the basis of an empirical study of West German society. The new societies, according toSchultze, from around 1980 take on the character of "societies of experience"; by this he means thatthe social action is dominated by a quest for experiences and immediate satisfaction of needs(Schultze 1992; Kaare Nielsen 1993: 135-163; Kaare Nielsen 1996: 137-170).

Is the same development the case in Nordic societies?

The individualised socialising patterns and aesthetic preferences of the new youth generations mustinvariably clash with the existing cultural institutional patterns of formation. That raises a numberof new cultural political problems which have many parallels to the cultural political struggles andconflicts of interest which took place in the European cultural landscape during the firstconstitutionalising phase and "grnderperiode"of the bourgeois public sphere. (Duelund & BilleHansen 1994: 20-30; Kaare Nielsen 1996: 175-187).

2.3. Publicity, public and the universal validity of rational communication

The concepts of "publicity", "public" and "rational communication" are key concepts in Habermas'sanalyses of cultural enlightment, critical argumentation and democratic political opinion shaping inthe classic bourgeois public sphere.

Is Habermas's concept of publicity and public applicable in empirical and theoretical analyses of therole of the publicity in the cultural industrial public sphere and empirical society of today?

Does the concept of rational communication have universal validity?

In the self-knowledge of the bourgeois public sphere, the public developed and sharpened - asmentioned above- their critical sense and a rational argumentative competence through the


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acquisition of what the publicity produced publicly in the form of books, art, periodicals,newspapers, etc. Writers, artists, composers, and other authors were subjected to the criticalevaluation and judgement of the public on the basis of what Habermas conceptualises as "rationalreasoning and argumentation".

In this lay the key to understanding the role and function of the publicity, cultural enlightment ogdemocratic development in modern societies.

The Danish media researcher Frands Mortensen has schematically summed up the cultural politicalidea of the bourgeois public sphere in the following way (see plate 1)

3. The structural change of the public sphere

The above thoughts are the ideal model for the vision about cultural, social, and political democracythat still serves as a justifying basis for important parts of public cultural policy in Europeandemocratic societies: The overall aim of cultural policy, the forms of subsidy and institution, and

organisational principles that are applied still to a great extent on foundations for ideas, concepts,and principles.

That is also the case with cultural policy in the Nordic countries and with the joint Nordic culturalpolicy after World War Two. (Bakke 1988, Duelund 1982)

The free development of thought should apply to all areas - in politics, art, religion, science, andeconomy, etc. It was in harmony with the economic, social, political, and cultural basic principles,individual understanding, and societal conception of liberalism.

That is also the case with the foundation of ideas, which lies behind the public function and role onwhich Habermas's analyses and conceptual apparatus primarily build:

- The economic precondition for the public sphere was/is actual free trade and freecompetition.

- Socially, the philosophy of the public sphere was founded on a production structure ofindependent businessmen ,who owned the means of production themselves and on aworking life without organised bindings for neither labour nor capital.

But what did reality look like then and now?

The answer in Habermas's analyses, which probably is well known to everybody in this forum, is anunequivocal No!

In the latter half of the book, which deals with the structural change and fall of the bourgeois publicsphere, it is described how the bourgeois society from the middle of the 19th century undergoes asocial, cultural, and political change which has undermined the real societal debate and the cultural,social, and political vision of the cultural public sphere.


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The material productions did not remain as preconditioned in the social self-knowledge in the handsof the individual citizens. The ownership of the means of production was centralised. The freecompetition of economic liberalism was replaced by national and international monopolisation. The

political debate free from supremacy was made difficult by private and collective interest groups.

In the political understanding of liberalism, party members, not independent individuals, werenominated to the parliaments in the new representative democracies. In the change from the liberal"night-watchman-state" to the modern social state, the collective interest groups of theunderprivileged social groups - first the peasants' movement, later the workers' movement - appliedthe state governed by law to demand social rights and protection. The interest groups joined in stillmore areas in the regulating work of the social state.

The free citizens in the liberal, economic, social, and political self-knowledge did not become freecitizens under the structural change of the public sphere from the 18th century to today.

And most relevant in this connection: The cultural public sphere with private and public cultural

institutions did not develop neither within the bourgeois society nor within the Nordic welfare statesinto the democratic cultural arena, characterised by cultural multitude and an authentic productionof culture which was the original cultural political foundation for ideas of the public sphere.

Instead, according to Habermas, the arena today is characterised by consumption of mass culture,commercialism, and marketing culture with no authentic representation of the individual andcollective experience of the citizens.

The authors, who as creators of art were the truth witnesses of the culture of the life world in thebourgeoisie understanding of the public sphere, are under the structural change to a large extentpaid producers and communicators of culture in the new cultural industries. With Habermas'sconcepts, the public has developed from a reasoning public to a passive mass public.

According to Habermas, both in the cultural and political spheres a "re-feudalising" has takenplace.The critical function of publicity has been replaced by manipulatory communication to ananonymous mass public that no longer participates in an actual discussion. Cultural production andart are no longer an expression of communicative actions but goal-rational behaviour.

The citizens of the civic society must applaud to the new re-feudal political and economic powersystem where the state power machinery, the large capital formation, and the mighty organisationsand media constitute an integrated power factor.

If the analyses are valid, has the modern state governed by law thus lost any hope of building anddeveloping a democratic cultural and political foundation under the new societal conditions?

Has the possibility for developing a critical sense and building a just society, in which everybodyculturally can be heard and gain political influence, been stopped forever by the definitecolonisation by the systemic media of the various spheres of the life worlds?

Or has Habermas not seen that also the culturally industrialised society holds "pockets of lifeworlds" where both critical sense and authentic production and presentation of art have survived asan emancipatory possibility and an actual potential for resistance and development?


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Will it - to return to the sports allegory with which I began - still be possible that the field in bothTour de France andDanmark Rundtwill cross over the finishing line without it being to thedictation of the competitive capitalism and the cultural industries?

4. The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA)

From the point of view of cultural research, what is relevant in "Borgerlig Offentlighet" - "TheStructural Transformation of the Public Sphere"- is itsstructural modelfor the idea, role, andmeans of cultural policy.

The overall goal for cultural policy in modern democratic societies governed by law such as theNordic and European welfare societies is to procure, maintain, and develop a cultural public spherewith institutions and cultural subsidy schemes which optimise the possibility for the individualexperiences and social practice of the societal citizens free from supremacy to be expressedculturally through art, aesthetics, and other symbolic expressions.

What is cultural politically interesting in "The Theory of Communicative Action," on the otherhand, is the normative approach to an understanding of the role, challenges, and possibilities ofcultural policy.

Through the conceptual apparatus and architecture of the theoretical model, the research on culturalpolicy, such as I tried to interpret the theory, acquires analytical tools enabling it adequately todescribe and - at best - evaluate the concrete implications of a given cultural policy in order todiscern and eventually point out the need for changing the institutional framework in existence andthe development of alternative strategies.

Cultural political research can play a part in answering and enlightening such questions and produceknowledge that can be a part of the public discourse. But whether it is going to be different andwhatever cultural political consequences that may be drawn from the conclusions of the research,that is all up to the politicians and the other actors in cultural policy to decide. But the research,with a starting point in the theoretical work and concrete empirical studies, can set up models and

possible conditions for passable ways of renewal.

In Jrgen Habermas's theory on communicative action, the structural analysis of the structuralchange of the bourgeois public sphere has been developed further into a normative dialectic theoryof communication concerning the action rationalities that are important to the cultural developmentof the late modern capitalist society.

Habermas analyses the cultural development of the mutual developmental relations between thevarious action rationalities within system world and life.

Cultural political research defined as part of the hermeneutic research tradition, to whichHabermas's critical theoretical work ascribes itself, cannot reach objectively verifiable conclusionsas to what cultural policy in a given context exactly ought to do. On the contrary, hermeneuticcultural political research can develop concepts and set up models that can qualify the continuingdiscourse between the various actors of cultural policy concerning the consequences of a givencultural political practice, the social conditions for cultural practice, and what is possibly wantedfrom a change in the given practice.


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The action sphere of the research thus positions itself in the public sphere between the intimacysphere and the state, if we keep to the bourgeois public sphere model. The research may produceknowledge as to whether the artistic representation in the cultural public sphere is particular; i.e.reflects the foundation for experience of a limited social group. That was for instance the aim ofPierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel's extensive empirical investigation of the European art museums

and their public. (Bourdieu, Darbel 1991)

As is known, their conclusion was that the cultural political aim, institutional form, and culturalpractice of 1960s art museums in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy indeed wereparticular. Their institutional and aesthetic "codes" could only be "decoded" by a very limited partof the contemporary public. Other studies from that time proved a corresponding exclusion of largecivic groups in the literary institutions, theatres, concert halls, etc. of that time.

Are the foundations for experience of large Nordic civic groups excluded in their cultural practicetoday? Is the representation in the cultural public sphere particular? Topical empirical studiesindicate it is so. For instance has Svein Bjks in the study "Det muliges kunst"shown how the

contemporary Norwegian arts subsidy schemes exclude performing freelance artists to a largeextent. (Bjrks 1998)

In various studies carried out forCentralkommissionen fr Konstin Finland, Merja Heikkinen hasproved that the creative artists as a whole and young artists in particular have become delimited inFinnish cultural policy. (Heikkinen 1995; Heikkinen & Karhunen 1996)

In his music-sociological study of the situation of rhythmic music in Sweden, researcher TorLarsson has shown how for instance jazz and folk dance music, which used to be favoured greatlyon the musical scene in Sweden's folk parks, "Folkets huse", etc., have become delimited in themodernising and institutionalising process of the musical life that has taken place during the latterdecades. (Larsson, Svenson 1992; Larsson 1997).

The level of the system, which is home to the capitalist commodity economy and accumulation ofcapital as well as the bureaucracy of modern society, is characterised bystrategic behaviour, i.e. agoal-rational instrumental logic with the one goal to further maximisation of profit and an effectiveadministration.

In contrast to this, the life world is home to our cultural and social reproduction. In opposition to thestrategic behaviour of the system world, the life world is characterised by communicative actions.Through the communicative actions are reproduced:

- The cultural background knowledge of individuals and collectives, i.e. the cultural heritage - or inHabermasian terminology thefund of knowledge and insightthat is created by earlier collectivehistorical experiences and into which the individual is born.

- The norms and rules for social interaction that render it possible for individuals in a given culturalcontext jointly to co-operate and to maintain the social integration that is the precondition for the

joint community.

- The personal identity that constitutes the super-ego of the individual and gives the subject an


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autonomous action potential in relations to the cultural heritage and collective norms of thecommunity.

The three dimensions in Habermas's conceptual apparatus refer to the historical, cultural, andartistic dimension of cultural policy, about which I am going to talk briefly.

He produces theoretical arguments that a tendency towards colonising the life world is taking placeunder the late modern societal development. The economic and political media in the system worldare still colonising more and more life areas with these media with a goal-rationality and strategic

behaviour that is far from the communicative actions of the life world.

Art and culture are transformed from being media that ideally communicated the collective culturalforms of the life world, the individual identities, and the social integrational relations free fromsupremacy into a larger public sphere, into tools for the neo-liberal market mechanisms and new-conservative power hierarchies of the system world.

According to Habermas, this is not an irreversible process. That is why it is relevant to considerhow it is possible with political means to act against the colonising tendencies and to further aframework free from supremacy for the free expression of culture. Culture within TCA is notdefined as a dimension of all human relations but as a specific type of social practice in the lifeworld that under the process of modernising has become separated from other social forms of

practice such as the strategic political and economic behaviour at system level.

At the same time, Habermas's new conceptual architecture is reflecting to central differentiations ofsocial practice at life world level that have manifested themselves. (Kaare Nielsen 1993) [fnote 13]This is especially the case with the setting free of three relatively autonomous action rationalitieswithin the life world: The cognitively instrumental one, the morally practical one, and the aesthetic-expressive one, together with the corresponding developments of institutions: Science/technique,

politics/ethics, and art/culture.

4.1. The cultural context of cultural policy

Often this cultural background knowledge is implicit and unconscious to the individual and tosociety. We do not daily think about which of the behavioural norms and individual character traitsand cultural dispositions, that regulate our daily life, that can be traced back to cultural heritage and

passed down patterns of meaning. The cultural background knowledge, if we are to remain inHabermas's terminology, is also often unconscious in relations to the constitutional process of

construction in society.

That is why it is important for cultural research to uncover the cultural background knowledge andjoint understanding horizon, i.e. the special cultural tradition that creates the invisible frameworkfor our individual behaviour and values and in which cultural policy is worked out.

In a comparative study of art policy in the USA, the UK, France and the former USSR, Canadiancultural economist Harry Hilman Chartrand has shown how the state cultural political modelsconcerning the goals, subsidy schemes, art conceptions, and artists' status are characterised by andreflect the specific historical, cultural, and political context in which they are worked out.(Chartrand 1989)


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The American "Facilitator" modelreflects the US super-liberal cultural tradition and constitution.The state is to interfere as little as possible. Everybody is the architect of his own fortune/"Everyonehas a right to pursue his own happiness." That also applies to artists and artistic institutions.

In the UK"Patron" modelit is the role of the state in correspondence with the aristocratic cultural

heritage that individually appointed patrons in the form of Arts Councils distribute alms toindividual artists and artistic institutions. The ideal is that the cultural subsidy is distributedaccording to "The Arm's Length Principle", i.e. by the freely patronising arts council without

political interference. Oh dear! Politics and collective decisions are in UK cultural tradition anecessary evil.

Since the French Revolution and the Philosophy of Enlightenment, French culture has beencharacterised by the classic bourgeois public sphere model and a republican political structureemphasising the individual freedom rights. On the other hand, the state must acknowledge itsresponsibility. That is also true with cultural areas. That is why the first Ministry of Cultural Affairsin Europe, indeed in the world, was founded according to the so-called "Architect" model.

In the "Architect" model the state acknowledges its responsibility to procure framework for the freeexpression of culture and art, just as an architect resumes responsibility for the building of houses asframework for human existence. On the other hand, in correspondence with French freedomtradition, the state leaves it to the individual authors to fill out the framework, just as the architectdoes not want to interfere with the caf life once the caf is built.

Ever since the October Revolution, the communist vision was iron, steel, and engineeringcalculation to end the material poverty and create a just and solidary society by changing the publicmentality just as the engineers want to change the direction of the river. The cultural engineersworked out cultural policy first in the USSR and then in Eastern Europe with this political goal insight. That is why it corresponds with the Soviet cultural ambitions - one can hardly speak of acultural heritage for the first generations under communist rule, as their cultural backgroundknowledge to a larger extent originated from feudal Czarist Russia.

Cultural policy is thus characterised by the general cultural context and cultural heritage in which itis worked out constitutionally. This also applies for the Nordic countries that have not only a joint

but also a different cultural heritage that has characterised the working out of the cultural policy andthe various institutions, subsidy schemes, and organisational models that are applied.

Generally speaking, cultural policy in the Nordic countries after World War Two is worked out and

inspired by both the UK "Patron" model and the French "Architect" model. But generally, thecultural political models in the Nordic countries, as shown by Per Mangset (Mangset 1995) [fnote8], have a larger degree of corporativism and collectivism in correspondence with what we withoutcolonising anybody rightly can term a joint Nordic cultural heritage. In opposition to the UK Arm'sLength authorities, the own representatives of the arts are at table with the politically appointedmembers of the Nordic arts councils. In relation to French cultural policy, the Nordic countriesattach greater importance to cultural subsidy to institutions, movements, general education, amateurwork, and other collective cultural aims.

However, cultural policy in the Nordic countries is also to a great extent characterised by thedifferent cultural traditions and historical differences of the various countries. That is why it is


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important in the Nordic research project to describe these differences and to analyse how they havebeen implemented in the national cultural policies.

It is important to take this historical dimension as starting point if the divergences between thecultural policies of the various countries and autonomous regions are to be identified and defined.

4.2. The collective norms and behavioural rules

The collective norms and behavioural rules that regulate our daily life rarely take their directexpression in democratic cultural policy, since that would conflict with the individual human rightsas well as the basic cultural rights within the liberal cultural model of the bourgeois public sphere.The individuals within the liberal society must constitute themselves as public. The cultural normsand joint values should be developed through the free social intercourse and communicative actionsof the citizens. No state power or other system characterised by goal-directed strategic behaviourshould dictate them what to do. The cultural planning of the engineer is not accepted in ademocratic cultural understanding.

From a structural point of view, democratic cultural policy is democratic when only the formalstructures and institutions actually are present. But does that mean that the normative and social

preconditions for cultural democracy are present? Are judicial rules and formal institutions inthemselves a guarantee of cultural freedom and democracy?

Habermas's answer is No! Without a normative and communicative life world as resonator, theformal rules of the game carry meaning only to a limited extent. That also applies to the cultural

political sphere. Cultural institutions are notper se any guarantee for the free expression andmultitude of culture. It must roll in the blood of people as an internalised normative reality. Andthat is only developed if today's society contains non-colonised spheres for the free communicativeactions of individuals parallel to the coffee houses, salons, etc. of the earlier bourgeois society.

The securing of these free spheres constitute the cultural dimension of cultural policy in whichculture is defined sociologically as the values that render the social relations meaningful. In ademocratic cultural understanding, culturalpolicy is not about staging joint foundation for valuefrom above, as in the Engineer model, but about procuring social spheres free from supremacy inwhich the public freely can meet and through communicative actions develop norms and jointvalues without the a priori determined cultural strategy of the Engineer model.

As mentioned, one of the supposed common denominators in Nordic cultural policies and in the

joint Nordic cultural policy is that culture defines its sociological/anthropological meaning throughsubsidy and institutional framework for so-called "popular cultural activities" in the form of statesubsidy schemes for local cultural activities, amateur work, social movements, general education,etc.

In French cultural policy, this "broad" cultural dimension has been delimited from cultural policysince the writer and later Minister of Cultural Affairs Andr Malraux's attempt through "Maison dela Culture"to democratise the so-called high culture. But disregarding the well-meant intentions,the strategy of the "Maison de la Culture"remained a staged popularising from the system level.(Looseley 1995) [fnote 9]


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What is the case with Nordic cultural policy?

Does the "broad aim," being one of the documented common denominators in Nordic culturalpolicy, differ from the overall goals in public cultural policy in the other European countries or havethe Nordic countries "merely" aimed more resources in cultural policy to carry them out into

existence?

To what extent can the priority of the social cultural dimensions be explained by the character of theNordic cultural heritage of collectivity and social life world fixation - i.e. a priority bound bycontext?

Well-documented studies show that the "broad" cultural dimension carries high priorityeconomically and in the state cultural objectives, perhaps higher than in other European countries.

What status does the aesthetically expressive dimension have in cultural policies of the Nordiccountries and in joint Nordic cultural policy?

This problem is applicable to the 3rd life world sphere in Habermas's TKH.

4.3. Aesthetics and development of identity

A number of theoretical works from the latter years have thematicised the relation betweenaesthetics and social practice and its importance for the development of identity for the subjectunder modern societal terms.

Large parts of the modern art discourse have in its self-knowledge suspended any reference toeveryday experience and thus the importance of aesthetic development, to which Habermas art-theoretically refers in his discourse concerning the importance of the communicative practice formsfor the personal development of identity in modern society.

In contrast to this position, which has been strongly inspired by post-modern deconstruction of theindividual author as the aesthetic artefactor ??? subject and replacement with self-referential

processes of aesthetics, in later years - not least in German humanities and social sciences - anaesthetic research has developed that seeks to maintain the aesthetics to everyday experiencewithout reducing the aesthetic process of creation to social experience as reference framework. Thatmay be the case. But the aesthetic/artistic process of creation may just as well refer to the existentialexperience of the individual artist as to the discourses that are carried out internally within the

various cultural institutions.

Since the 1970s, in the Nordic countries, for instance at "The centre for cross-aesthetic studies" atAarhus University, Henrik Kaare Nielsen has maintained and developed such a position throughnumerous studies.

I shall not in this case touch further upon the aesthetic theoretical discourse - there are others whoare more qualified to do this. What is interesting in a cultural political research perspective is thatthe new aesthetic theoretical positions maintain that, also regarding modern art, it is the relations ofthe works to the expectational structures of everyday experience that play a leading role in theimportance acquired by the works in the reception of art. (Nielsen 1996: 58)


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Thus, the way is paved not only for a coupling of aesthetic theory to Habermas's theories about theimportance of the communicative actions for the development of identity for the individual - acoupling not carried out by Habermas himself. The way is also paved for the development of acultural political research paradigm that thematicises the social and cultural importance of aestheticsand the cultural political framework conditions under which the social meaning of aesthetics is

optimised without- and it is important to point out if aesthetic reductionism is to be avoided incultural political research - the putting aside, colonisation or marginalising of the own dynamics andown legality of aesthetics and the aesthetic creational process.

As the Danish aesthetical and cultural researcher Henrik Kaare Nielsen has pointed out, the conceptof aesthetics thus becomes relevant in a larger social and societal context. "When we act, weexperience, which brings about new revised action which again results in modification of theexperience up till now, and so forth." (Kaare Nielsen 1996: 11)

It is the task of the aesthetic sciences to analyse the own logic of aesthetics. It is the culturalpolitical research task to analyse the optimal conditions for an aesthetic production free from

supremacy. But that does not mean that the two paradigms cannot inspire each other. On thecontrary!

In this perception of aesthetics, there are many relations to Giddens's structuration theory, in whichthe main view is that societal structures neither are to be understood as objective matters nordetermined patterns, but as processual principles of organising that the actors create, recreate, andchange themselves as they go along as part of the social practice. (Giddens 1984, 1990, 1994) [fnote10] Our cognition of the world thus takes its form from a never ended process of construction.Giddens's structuration theory contains no cultural theory. Giddens's structuration process relates tosocial experiences, not to aesthetic ones.

The central concept, according to both Giddens and Habermas, that furthers the static and stiffenedfronts in cultural sociology is social practice - what Habermas terms the communicative actions(Kaare Nielsen 1996: 15). Thus the tendency is broken to think either in process or systemorientation, either in actor or structure orientation, either voluntary or deterministic, either at microlevel or at macro level.

It is important to cultural political research that in process orientation has to thematicise the relationbetween aesthetics, culture and politics, or"the connection between the infinitely small and theinfinitely big"- in reference to a sentence by Danish literature critic Georg Brandes.

Thus the classic cognitive epistemological schism between subject and object is transgressed. Thesubject is always involved in a mutual dialectic process. Scientific cognition is always subjective-objective, never one or the other. The concept of truth is not objective and metaphysical, but inter-subjectively manifested/Gestalt.

The processual and communicative understanding of science and the world has meant that post-modern theorists have made capital of the fact that our social and aesthetic cognition of reality is soarbitrary and fictive that only random social or aesthetic preferences can give greater importance toone statement about the world than others.


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For instance in post-modern cultural theory and deconstructivistic literary theory (Foucault,Barthes, Eco, and others), that has brought about the conclusion that the concept of the subject andthus the individual concept of the author is a survival from the past and an error in the conception ofart and developmental belief of modernism.

In an analysis of the status of the creative artists in international copyright law and its importance ascultural political instrument, I have shown how this post-modern angle on literary criticismcorresponds to the super-liberal economic development of theory that wants the copyright and othercultural political instruments abolished in favour of market-orientated art and artistic productionwithout regulating public measures. (Duelund 1998)

This aesthetic reductionism of reality misses the fact that cognition not only uses an aestheticrationality but also cognitive and aesthetic rationalities about which I shall talk briefly below inrelation to Habermas's theory of rationality.

On the other hand, the processual understanding of knowledge does not build upon an arbitrary but

upon an empirical cognitive process that will be acknowledged because of its capability to organisecollective experience in an inter-subjectively plausible way. (Nielsen 1996: 15)

Neither according to Habermas nor Giddens do scientific cognition and the scientific public spherefunction as a guarantee for truth but for the collective adaptation of experience as the criticalauthority to which other scientific cognitions must be able to legitimise themselves. That exactly isthe point of Giddens's concept ofdouble-hermeneutics as terms for the scientific process ofcognition in a port/post-traditional world. When we as researchers analyse the cultural actions and

processes we interpret something that already is interpreted - by the acting subjects and by otherresearchers.

Both Habermas's and Giddens's developments of theory are thus strongly characterised by anti-determinism. According to Habermas, this endeavour is expanded in the thesis that modern societalformation has split itself into two practice spheres,system and life world, that operate with differentrationalities and that are in conflict with each other.

Thesystem and its rationality are defined by the expansive own/eigen dynamics of the capitalaccumulation and state bureaucracy, and in the strategic colonisation of the life world by theeconomic and bureaucratic media.

On the other hand, the actor perspective ties to the communicative processes of the life world. In the

development of theory we talk about dynamic relations of conflict between system and life world -between the colonisation of the communicative life connections by the system - and the oppositionand attempt by the life world to re-conquer colonised area.

Exactly these dynamics tend to be extremely useful as an analytical starting point for culturalpolitical research at a theoretical as well as at an empirical level. In Habermas's theory it is in theconflicting relations between system and life world that his criticism of society takes its starting

point - in defence of the communicative actions of the life world as relevant medium for theregulation and development of modern democratic society - and on the other hand - in criticism ofthe tendency of formal systemic media such as money and power beginning more and more tocolonise and marginalise art, culture, and cultural policy.


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With Habermas (and Giddens) the most important point for cultural policy and cultural politicalresearch is this: The economic and bureaucratic media of the system may develop incorrespondence to an eigen-logical expansive logic. But this strategic rationality does neitherdepend upon itself nor is it absolute. After all, it is human actors - public, authors, and researchers -who through their actions create the colonised systemic strategies for action.

That is why it is also left to human practice with starting point in the communicatively organisedpractice of the life world to bring the colonisation to an end. Or: It is left to the cultural politicalpractice to work against the goal-rational, instrumental colonisation of art, culture, social norms,and personal development of identity which in the liberal democratic cultural understanding wascreated and reproduced through the communicative rationality of the life world.

In such a cultural political paradigm the task falls on scientific research to procure knowledge aboutwhich constitutional terms will optimise such a potential for resistance.

5. The potential of cultural policy in the modern state governed by law

In his analysis of the rise and fall of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas finishes in a pessimisticpresentation and evaluation of the emancipatorical possibilities of the public sphere. Cultural policydelimits and marginalises a free production of art with the starting point in the own experiences ofthe citizens. The reasoning and critical public degenerates into passive consumers of culture."Public relations" and manipulation techniques replace the principle of publicity.

In the theory of communicative actions the process of decay and fall takes place in a tension fieldbetween the strategic behaviour of the system, its maximisation of profit, and bureaucratic powerwielding - and the communicative reason of the life world, i.e. by will and competence to dialogueand exchange of experience along with arguments, not power and sanctions.

In his latest major work"Faktizitt und Geltung. Beitrge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und desdemokratischen Rechtsstaats"(Habermas 1992) - "Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a

Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy"(Habermas 1996), Habermas works out the legal andpolitical implications of his theory about communicative action. The book is also a completion ofthe theoretical work on the public sphere that Habermas commenced with the bourgeois publicsphere almost 40 years ago.

In "Between Facts and Norms"(abbreviated to BFN), Habermas takes a more nuanced view of thedemocratic possibilities of the public sphere. The optimistic tones were already set in 1989 with the

UK publication of the structural change of the public sphere when Habermas in the new prefacewrites that during his work he had underestimated the resistance potential of the life world,especially the critical and reasoning potential inherent in the educational system which since the1960s has been expanded greatly. (Habermas 1994)

In BFN he argues that the public sphere in democratic states governed by law, even under theeconomic and bureaucratic tendencies to colonisation, can function as a sphere for a debate freefrom supremacy and therefore also can continue.

The public sphere in the form of the democratic state governed by law carries not only instrumentalrationality of objective and strategic action, but also communicative reason. That is why the


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possibility still exists for the state governed by law through legislation, subsidy and regulationschemes to work against the marginalisation of the communicative reason and to ensure that it notonly are economic and power political goals to which consideration is taken.

Thus, Habermas takes his starting point in the fact that the life world still is housing communicative

rationality and a set of joint values and norms that can be the beginning for people, through a jointdialogue, emancipatorically and through reason to find out which is right and wrong, what isdesirable and non-desirable.

Whether the arguments in the public debate are valid and legitimate is in Habermas's legalphilosophy defined inter-subjectively, i.e. from a set of joint values that exist among the individualsin society and not from a universal and metaphysical principle of validity or as in traditional legal

philosophy in which the normative and communicative aspect - the internal aspectof legislation - isdelimited.

Here Habermas is founded on a dualistic philosophy of legislation that includes both "facts and

norms" as preconditions that legislation can achieve the democratic effects as originally wereintended in the bourgeois public sphere. In democratic states governed by law, despite the colonisedtendencies, through social recognition collective legitimacy has emerged about what the legaltheorist H.L.A. Hart has termed the "internal aspect" of legislation.

Established procedures, rules of the game, constitutional legal machineries, whether reflecting thewill of God and religious power wielders or whether having been passed through procedures, willnot be legitimised and survive in the long run - unless the majority in a given society normally findsthat it must be so. That is what Hart terms the "internal aspect" of legislation.

Does the demand for legitimacy also hold for public cultural policy?

Are the preconditions of cultural legislation, public arts subsidy, cultural institutions, and theorganisational principles of culture also legitimacy based on collective social recognition if cultural

policy in modern states governed by law is going to survive in the long run?

Can the overall goal of cultural policy about "artistic freedom" and "the necessity of art" as many ofthe engaged advocates of artistic policy seem to think, be legitimised in universal legal principles -as Kant thinks?

If Habermas's latest theoretical work on cultural policy is applied to the Nordic welfare states and

other democratic states governed by law in the world, then the answer to the two first questions isan unequivocal Yes!

Just like other legislative and public subsidy schemes, cultural policy must be legitimised andsanctioned by social and normative recognition. If not, cultural legislation and other publicregulation schemes are not going to survive in the long run.

The same can happen for cultural policy. That is why the answer to the last question is that neitherartistic freedom nor basic copyright political principles, such as the rights of the authors, areexplained metaphysical or through natural right. Cultural policy and its basic principles must besanctioned through reasoning and discourse.


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That is why it is such an important task for cultural political research to contribute with knowledgeand insight that can qualify cultural political reasoning with a starting point in the assumption thatart and culture, as in the bourgeois liberal ideal model we began by describing, remaincommunicative actions reflecting and expressing the authentic experiences of the citizens.

If the scientific public sphere - of which cultural political research is a part, albeit a modest part -can procure consensus about the normative research paradigm, three of the most important tasks ofcultural political research today will be:

- To identify where in the tension field between system and life world should the Nordiccultural policy and the joint Nordic cultural policies rightly be placed.

- To describe, analyse, and evaluate under which constitutional and institutional frameworkterms art and culture express communicative actions to a greater extent than strategic

behaviour.- To intensify the scientific discourse about which theories and methods are relevant, if

research is to give a plausible answer to these questions.

6. Cultural Policy between System and Life World - methodological implications and issues to

discuss

The theories and the apparatus of concepts in the work of Habermas can and have been criticizedfrom several points of view.

The concept of rationality is to narrow in studies of the complex field of research on cultural policyand reductionistic in accordance to the modern variety of symbolic form of communication andartefacts.

- A lot of populations and cultural varieties have in reality been excluded in the public spherein its classical form.

- Theories of Communication i not applicable to analyse the real power structure in the worldand its implications for culture and the arts.

- The forms of communication in the theories of Habermas underestimate and marginalizesthe aesthetic paradigm and the autonomous potential of the fine arts and their role for humancognition.

In my opinion is Habermas's assertion that it is always possible - under certain constitutional andinstitutional preconditions - possible to create consensus through a true and real dialogue, throughcommunicative acts with equal partners the most problematic element in his theories and model.

This universal and rational idea of communication - the "universal pragmatics" which runs throughall of Habermas's scientific production, from when he conceptually divided the concepts "labour"and "interaction" in his work on "Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologi"(Habermas 1968) to hislatest work on the possibilities of cultural regulation in the democratic society governed by law"Between Facts and Norms"(Habermas 1996) - is one of the points which has resulted in thegreatest critical scepticism against his theoretical complex and conceptual apparatus.


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In post-modern linguistic and cultural theory the notion of the validity and universality of therational acts of communication is thus severely questioned. Rational argumentation and reasoningmay be necessary elements in the dialogue and communicative acts between individuals, but theyare hardly in themselves a form of communication complex enough to the shaping of, culturalcompetence, meaning and opinion in society or a guarantee of the maintenance of a cultural and

political democracy in a state governed by law.

On the other hand as Habermas has pointed out in his essay "Further Reflections on the Theory ofPublic Sphere" (Habermas 1996), the public sphere in a democratic society governed by law,is theonly model, which allow us to discus also this critical elements and makes it possible in areasonable dialoque to clarify the conceptual and theoretiocal misunderstandings .

So my answer to the overall issue of this presentation - does it make sense to apply the theories ofHabermas as a critical framework for research on cultural policy- is Yes!

The overall goal for cultural policy in modern democratic societies governed by law such as the

Nordic and European welfare societies is to procure, maintain, and develop a cultural public spherewith institutions and cultural subsidy schemes which optimise the possibility for the individualexperiences and social practice of the societal citizens free from supremacy to be expressedculturally through art, aesthetics, and other symbolic expressions

The overall goal for research on cultural policy is to clarify under which constitutional conditionsthe purpose of cultural policy have the optical chances to be realised.

The model of cultural policy in the sense of Habermas are illustrated in plate 1 "The ConstitutionalParadigm of Culture".

On the operational and empirical level their is a lot of issues to be clarified in the years to come.That is on of our main methodological issues for discussion and hopefully for clarification of the

joint Nordic research project that we are about to undertake.

References

Bjrks, Svein & Mangset, Per (red.): Kunnskap om kulturpolitikk. Utviklingstrekk i norskkulturpolitikkforskning. Norges forskningsrd. KULTs skriftserie nr. 56. Oslo 1996.

Bourdieu, Pierre: La distinction. Les ditions de Minuit. Paris, 1979.

Bourdieu, Pierre; Darbel, Alain: Cultural Works and Cultivated Disposition, in: Pierre Bourdieu andAlain Darbel: The Love of Art. European Art Museums and their Public. Polity Press. Cambridge.1991

Bourdieu,P.& Wacquant, L.J.D.: Den kritiske ettertanke. Det norske Samlaget. Oslo 1993a.

Bourdieu,P.: The Field of Cultural Production. Polity Press. Oxford 1993b.


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Cummings, Milton C., Katz, Richard S.: "Relations Between Government and the Arts in WesternEurope and North America" in Cummings, Milton C., Katz, Richard S.: Whos to pay for the Arts?The international search for models of support. New York: ACA Books, 1989.

Duelund, Peter & Dyekjr, Thomas, Spillet om ophavsretten. Pengestrmmene i de ophavsretlige

forvaltningsorganisationer ("The Game of Copyright. The flow of money in the collectingsocieties"), (Kbenhavn/rhus: Nordisk Kultur Institut/KLIM, 1996).

Duelund, Peter & Hansen, Trine Bille: Hvor str vi nu?. KLIM/Nordisk Kultur Institut. rhus.Kbenhavn 1994

Duelund, Peter (red.) Kulturens spndetrje, NordREFO, Nordisk Ministerrd, Kbenhavn, 1992

Duelund, Peter (red.): Kulturens brug eller misbrug?, NordREFO, Nordisk

Duelund, Peter (red.): Kulturens Politik, bd.: 1-17. KlIM/Nordisk Kultur Institut. rhus.

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Duelund, Peter, Dyekjr Thomas: Spillet om ophavsretten ( The Game of Copyright),(Copenhagen, Aarhus: Nordic Culturel Institute, 1996) Duelund,

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Duelund, Peter: "Enlightment and Telematics:" in Cronberg, Duelund m.fl. (ed): DanishExperiments Social Constructions of Technology, The Danish Social Science Research Council,Copenhagen, 1991

Duelund, Peter: "Enlightment and Telematics" in Cronberg, Duelund m.fl. (ed): DanishExperiments Social Constructions of Technology, The Danish Social Science Research Council,Copenhagen, 1991

Duelund, Peter: Cultural politics in the light of the EEC in Lise Lyck, Denmark and EECMembership Evaluated, Pinter Publishers ( London, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992.).

Duelund, Peter: Cultural politics in the light of the EEC in Lise Lyck: Denmark and EECMembership Evaluated, Pinter Publishers, London, St. Martins Press, New York, 1992.

Duelund, Peter: Det indre marked og kulturen, (The Internal Market and Cultural policy),(Copenhagen, Ministry of Culture. 1989)

Duelund, Peter: Kunstens vilkr - om de kulturpolitiske tendenser i Danmark og Europa (The Stateof Art - trends in cultural policy in Denmark and Europe), (Copenhagen, Akademisk forlag, 1994)

Duelund, Peter: Tilskuer eller deltager? Om alternativer til kulturindustrien, Nordisk Ministerrd,Kbenhavn, 1982.


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Heikkinen, Merja: Promotion of Creativity. Cultural Policy in Finland. National Report. EuropeanProgramme of National Cultural Policy Reviews. Council of Europe & the Arts Council of Finland,259-293;384-395. Helsinki 1995b.

Habermas, Jrgen: Strukturwandel de ffentkeit, Suhekamp Verlag. Franfurt a. M. 1962

Habermas, Jrgen: Faktizitt und Geltung. Suhrkamp Verlag. Franfurt a.M.1992.

Habermas, Jrgen: Further Reflections on the Public Sphere", in: Calhoun, Craig (ed.): Habermasand the Public Sphere. The MIT Press. Cambridge. London 1992.

Habermas, Jrgen: Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, Bd 1-2, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurta.M., 1981.

Langsted, Jrn (eds.): Strategies. Studies in Modern Cultural Policy, rhus University Press, 1990.

Marshall, H.G.: Citizenship and social Class, London 1950.

Milton C. Cummings Jr. and J. Mark Davidson Schuster (eds.): Whos to pay for the Arts?, ACABooks, New York, 1989.

Robert H. Holton (1998). Globalization and the Nation State. London: MacMillan Press LTD.

Schuster, J. Mark Davidson: The search for international models: Results from recent comparativereseach in arts policy in Cummings Milton C., Katz Richard : Whos to pay for the Arts. Theinternational seach for models of spport. ACA books. American Council for the Arts. New York,1989. pp.15-43.

Documents

On the Public Sphere