Page 279 - Cultural Theory

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••• Nick Stevenson •••

‘popular’ culture, egalitarian in that there is still a need to promote the widest of
possible conditions of access to hierarchically organised cultures, and finally democratic
in that we need to consider how to promote constructive forms of dialogue and par-
ticipation across cultural divides. The idea here is that the commodification of culture
has provided cultural policy with opportunities (the flourishing of a variety of life styles
and the aestheticisation of everyday life) and dangers enforced patterns of social and
cultural exclusion. That is, cultural policy as cultural citizenship needs to recognise
that the ground that it currently operates upon is historically determined (there
seems little point in returning to the benign liberalism of the inter-war period) and
will necessarily work within certain limits determined by the wider society.
The idea of a cultural policy based upon democratic citizenship is not a new one.
The writing of Raymond Williams in many respects remains a considerable resource
from which we can continue to mine many useful ideas. In particular it is the idea
of common culture to which I want to return. For many this will seem like an odd
choice given the increasing power of the cultural industry and the development of
identity politics bringing enhanced forms of fragmentation. Surely better to give up
on the idea of a common culture as a homogeneous and repressive ideology that
would find few takers outside a few pipe smoking cultural conservatives. Yet if this
were what Williams meant by a common culture it would hardly be an idea worth
revisiting. For Williams (1989), a common culture had several aspects, but overall it
was an instituted culture of dialogue rather than agreement. To be able to talk
of a common culture did not mean the possibility of reimagining a fragmented
society as one of shared values and aspirations. The common element of Williams’s
argument concerns the ordinary ability of people to contribute, criticise and
re-interpret aspects of their culture. Within this process the meanings of ‘high’ or
indeed ‘popular’ culture are not fixed in stone but require open criticism by mem-
bers of the community. In particular we need to pay attention to the material con-
ditions and ideologies which aim to exclude different voices from full participation.
The second aspect of a common culture is the provision of institutions, which trans-
mit the knowledge, skills and resources which allow full participation. Here Williams
seems to be saying that it is the most class bound way of thinking which seeks to con-
nect high culture with a privileged minority. Instead works of literature (and other
aspects of the culture) need to become openly interrogated through genuinely
educated forms of dialogue. This is obviously different from saying Shakespeare is for
a minority, but also stops short from blandly saying he’s for everyone. Instead,
Williams is arguing that a community’s self-realisation depends upon ‘adequate par-
ticipation in the process of changing and developing meanings’ (Williams 1989: 35).
This is not possible without mutually recognising that everyone can participate, and
by seeking to secure the material and institutional means that might sustain such
participation. In other words, contrary to Bourdieu, full participation does not come
by simply providing working-class children with the adequate knowledge of the
appropriate repertoires of art criticism. Williams (1989: 36) goes considerably further
than this, insisting ‘that the culture of a people can only be what all its members are
engaged in creating in the act of living’. That is, for Williams, educational institutions
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