Page 281 - Cultural Theory

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••• Nick Stevenson •••

provider of cultural goods and individuals the best choosers. The problem with
Willis’s contribution to policy analysis is that it fails to take account of the power of
the market to privilege certain consumers over others, and to help shape and deter-
mine certain tastes. While there is much to this criticism, I think Willis could be read
as saying that policies are needed to empower young people who might become
excluded from the market and give them the confidence to become producers of cul-
tural goods in their own right. These arguments, while populist, remain important in
that they deconstruct the assumed superiority of much high culture (is ballet really
superior to punk?), and potentially enable some young people access to a wider range
of cultural repertoires, thereby expanding cultural literacy. Most music cultures are
commercial cultures and I am likely to become experimental in respect of my tastes
if I am not overly prohibited by cost. However, if we refer back to Bourdieu’s concern
about different forms of capital, then we could equally argue that such a strategy
could well compound social exclusion. If we remember, it was Bourdieu’s concern
that a radical cultural policy should enable working-class people to ‘appreciate’ high
art. Willis’s proposals then might be criticised in that he simply assumes that for
most people visiting art galleries, listening to classical music and reading modernist
literature is out of bounds. Willis then actively reproduces the idea of high and pop-
ular culture as inevitably disconnected without any bridges between them. Hence,
whereas middle-class people may choose between the ‘educated’ and the ‘popular’,
working-class people are more restricted in the range of repertoires they are able to
access. We should be clear that this remains a restriction from full cultural citizen-
ship. Here again, I would return to Williams’s idea of a culture in common. Williams
(1958) was rightly critical of the idea that high culture belonged to the educated
middle-classes, however, Willis reproduces this idea by reinforcing the prejudice that
the lower orders are better served by the market and the middle-classes by the art
gallery. Williams’s radicalism remains in that he correctly perceived such a situation
could only be addressed by social and institutional change. The guiding feature of
cultural policy for Williams is the ability to be able to promote dialogue across a
number of cultural divides, and not the reproduction of class based prejudices about
the cultural capacities of the excluded. As Terry Eagleton (1990) has argued, the
cultural preferences of excluded and marginalized populations may become refor-
mulated once they have transcended their social condition. While ‘culture’ may
indeed become formed through processes of struggle and oppression it does not mark
its producer or consumer with an ‘essential’ identity.
Many of Raymond Williams’s critics have been concerned that the idea of a com-
mon culture effectively silences subordinate voices. Williams’s politics were mainly
concerned with reconnecting questions of class and a literary artistic culture rather
than focusing on questions of ethnicity, gender, multiculturalism and sexuality.
Indeed there is a growing literature which strongly suggests that Williams can be
found wanting on most of these topics and concerns (Jardine and Swindells 1988;
Milner 2002). We might argue that the point is not to build a common culture, but
to work out ways of empowering marginalised positions within the policy arena.
However, recently Bhikhu Parekh (2000) has argued that a multi-cultural society
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