What's the problem again? The problematisation of cultural participation in Scottish cultural policy

Stevenson, David

doi:10.1080/09548963.2013.783172

Cited by 39 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…The lack of knowledge, experience, openness and/or willingness to learn that is represented as core components of the subject identity of the cultural non-participant presents theirs as a flawed subjectivity, problematises their agency, and represents them as being in need of the input of expert mediation in the form of cultural professionals in order to guide their leisure time choices. As the rest of the logics in the problem construction make clear, such state sponsored interventions would not only be for their own good, but also for the good of society (Stevenson, 2013).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(this is supported by the findings ofJancovich, 2015). Another said they didn't worry that despite the purpose of their job being about increasing the number of people coming to the theatre, they "don't even got to the theatre [themselves] as a choice" However, if it is considered that only 5% of the Scottish population attends the opera in any one year, and only 4% go to the ballet(Stevenson, 2013), then it is perhaps not surprising so few cultural professionals are themselves not participating with substantial swathes of that which receives state subsidy. What is unclear though, is why such patterns of cultural participation are problematic when exhibited by some but not others.When asked why it was acceptable for them to dismiss the unknown as being 'not for them' when they found this response so problematic in others, interviewees commonly stressed their individual agency and associated personal preferences:…”

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confidence: 99%

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The cultural non-participant: critical logics and discursive subject identities

Stevenson

2019

AAM

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Purpose The existence of so-called non-participants is a cultural policy problem in the UK and beyond. Yet, the very notion of a cultural non-participant seems nonsensical against the palpable evidence of lived experience. The purpose of this paper is to understand “who” a cultural non-participant is by first comprehending “what” the cultural non-participant is and why it exists. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on primary data generated in the form of 40 in-depth qualitative interviews, this paper employs a discursive methodology to explore the critical logics (Howarth, 2010) that underlie the problem representation (Bacchi, 2009) of cultural non-participation and in particular the discursive subject identity of the cultural non-participant. Findings Beginning with a discussion about how cultural non-participants are represented as socially deprived and hard to reach, the paper moves on to highlight how they are also presumed to lack knowledge and understanding about what they are rejecting. Their supposed flawed subjectivity is then contrasted with the desirable model of agency claimed by the cultural professionals who seek to change the cultural participation patterns of others. The paper concludes with a consideration of how the existence of the cultural non-participant subject identity limits the extent to which those labelled as such can meaningfully contribute to the field of cultural policy and obscures the extent to which such individuals are culturally disenfranchised. Research limitations/implications Because of the chosen research approach and the geographical limitations to the data generation, the research makes no claim to generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the discursive logics identified at alternative discursive sites. Practical implications This paper proposes a change in the language used by cultural professionals accompanied by changes in practice that abandoning the identity of the cultural non-participant would demand. Originality/value This paper challenges a taken for granted assumption that cultural non-participants exist “in the real”.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

The cultural non-participant: critical logics and discursive subject identities

Stevenson

2019

AAM

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“…We are definitely witnessing a participative turn in cultural policy (Bonet and Négrier, 2018), with public policy documents everywhere in the Global North stating, like the strategic program of the Finnish government, that ‘(c)ultural services will become more accessible, and the conditions will improve to allow culture to flourish’ (Government programme, 2019: 184). Whether public funding is considered to reproduce the existing hierarchies of society (Bjørnsen, 2012; Feder and Katz-Gerro, 2015) or to modify the social hierarchies by funding culture consumed by underprivileged groups (Belfiore, 2002), it remains unclear what kinds of returns cultural participation really generates and whether non-participation should be considered a problem in the first place (Stevenson, 2013) – or whether lamenting non-participation just further legitimizes existing social hierarchies. While Bourdieu often emphasized that disadvantaged groups should be given the ‘keys’ to assess culture through education, offering them ‘an implicit recognition of the right not to understand and to demand to understand’ (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1991: 94), it seems like in the case of some of the interviewees in this study, several overlapping and structural factors are an effective barrier to any influence that cultural consumption, or even carefully targeted cultural policies, could possibly have.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The slippery slope of cultural non-participation: Orientations of participation among the potentially passive

Heikkilä

2020

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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Research on cultural practices has highlighted the rise of different cultural consumption patterns that challenge the classic theories on class-based hierarchies. However, most scholarly work has focused on active, rather than passive, cultural consumers. This article aims to fill that gap by exploring the orientations of cultural participation of hypothetically passive cultural consumers in contemporary Finland. Existing research proves that culturally non-active groups are difficult to reach through quantitative methods, so this project will draw on qualitative data: 40 individual interviews on everyday life, cultural taste, knowledge and participation with a theoretical sample of people whose background profiles statistically predict cultural non-participation. This article finds three main orientations of participation, expressed as attitudes on different kinds of cultural practices and symbolic boundaries drawn – these orientations of participation are the social-mundane, the cultural-legitimate and the introvert-hostile. It is argued that while none of the orientations equals to cultural non-participation, the latter orientation stands out from the other two as drawing symbolic boundaries upward, highlighting that cultural participation remains a highly stratified and polarized field, also in an egalitarian society.

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“…She gives the example of policies that suggest training in order to increase women's workplace status rendering women's lack of training the problem (Bacchi, ). This way of thinking about policy analysis is gaining popularity, with studies exploring the problematization of drug policy (Manton and Moore, ; Pienaar and Savic, ), education policy (Gulson and Webb, ), cultural policy (Stevenson, ) and policy studies (Ureta, ).…”

Section: The Case Of Shit(ting) In Agra Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Problematizing Urban Shit(ting): Representing Human Waste as a Problem

Oberg¹

2019

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Shit(ting) as a problem is not an a priori position. It is made a problem through socially mediated discursive and non‐discursive practices. Problematizations of human waste promoted by formal governance institutions have dominated the conversation, while the ways in which slum residents experience shit(ting) as a problem receive considerably less attention. This article examines how human waste and its attendant practices are represented as a problem in Agra, India. Using Foucauldian‐based analysis, this research makes visible problematizations of urban shit(ting) and exposes the divergent logics employed by urban actors. Ethnographic interviews and document analysis reveal six ways in which various actors experience shit(ting) as a problem—as: (1) inconvenient; (2) dangerous; (3) contagion; (4) undignified; (5) polluting; (6) primitive. Inconvenience was the problematization invoked most frequently by slum residents, but never by governance groups, meaning that issues of inconvenience were absent from formal planning processes. This absence can, in part, be attributed to the toilet's ability to address multiple problems simultaneously. Findings from this research support the call to acknowledge the situatedness of urban inquiry through analysis of problematizations. In doing so, scholars and practitioners gain access to a more complete toolkit for developing and evaluating urban sewage initiatives.

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What's the problem again? The problematisation of cultural participation in Scottish cultural policy

Cited by 39 publications

References 8 publications

The cultural non-participant: critical logics and discursive subject identities

The cultural non-participant: critical logics and discursive subject identities

The slippery slope of cultural non-participation: Orientations of participation among the potentially passive

Problematizing Urban Shit(ting): Representing Human Waste as a Problem

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