Page 266 - Cultural Theory

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Cultural Citizenship
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
•••••••• Questions of

consumerism,

consumption and

policy

Nick Stevenson

The idea of ‘cultural’ citizenship is progressively developing in a field of
overlapping concerns that seeks to locate normative values within the cultural
sphere. Cultural citizenship’s central question is, how does the operation of ‘cul-
ture’ effect notions of justice and ‘difference’ within a post-modern and post-
national world? Typically, these ideas join together notions of corporate and
cultural power, the possibility of resistance, the unequal distribution of material
and cultural resources and attempts to reconcile questions of community with
those of plurality and difference. Cultural citizenship marks out an interdiscipli-
nary area of concern with its main contributors coming from sociology, political
theory, cultural studies and geography. These developments arguably bring
together previously falsely segregated debates and questions in new and exciting
ways. Here I aim to discuss what I shall call a ‘common’ cultural citizenship in
terms of questions of consumerism, consumption and cultural policy. If we are
to appreciate the relevance of questions of justice and recognition to the cultural
sphere, it is arguably in these contexts such values will need to take hold. While
issues of cultural citizenship can be pursued in other ways, these debates have
been chosen, given that they connect to some of the central concerns of sociol-
ogy and cultural studies.

Cultural Citizenship

T.H. Marshall (1949; reprinted in Marshall and Bottomore 1992), as is well known,
was concerned with the historical development of civil, political and social rights in
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