Introduction

This book is about the politics of culture in the continental European sense. The politics of culture differs from what is sometimes called ‘cultural politics’, which usually refers to the ideological meaning of art works, such as the partisan significance of form and content in a conflict-ridden context. The present book is not primarily concerned, if at all, with that particular conjunction of art and politics but, instead, with institutionalised politics from a sociological point of view. This focus is closer to ‘cultural policy’ than to ‘cultural politics’; but, in a curious way, it comes in between the other two designations. The difficulty with use of the cultural policy’ term is a tendency to neutralise politics, especially in a peculiarly English manner, as though policy formulation and enactment were just administrative processes rather than representing passionate differences of perspective and interest. In this respect, ‘the politics of culture’ acknowledges politics as a power struggle, a reality that is obscured by a neutralising usage of ‘cultural policy’. Controversy and critique, then, are integral to the subject matter of this book.