Cultural Participation, Culture and Democracy

This chapter will address the possible implications of sociological insights into cultural participation and taste for cultural policy. Cultural policy aims to make those types of art it deems worthy of government support available for the public. We shall see that there are several criteria one can use in this selection process, depending on what one sees as the main benefits of cultural participation. If Bildung is a crucial goal, art will be evaluated primarily on its aesthetic excellence that is supposed to help elevate the audience morally and intellectually. Art is then seen as what some have called a sort of “cultural spinach” (Juncker & Balling, 2016, p. 233), considered to be so healthy that as many people as possible should acquire a taste for it. on the other hand, cultural policy can also aim for a less top-down approach and take people’s own cultural preferences and practices as a starting point rather than a cultural canon created by cultural gatekeepers. By taking stock of what we know about people’s tastes and participation patterns, I will address how existing cultural practices and their distribution across the population might inform cultural policy. Is canonized culture indeed superior to other forms and does it therefore deserve the support it gets? or are other types of culture equally meaningful to people, if not more? Where do we see cultural inequality and what could be done to diminish it if it is deemed unjust? What does the patterning of cultural participation tell us about current cultural boundaries and the underlying criteria people use for artistic appraisals? Answers to these questions will be addressed for the purpose of evaluating policy approaches aimed at enhancing cultural participation.