In this article I discuss the “philosophy of work” of an instrumental music teacher with multiple tasks in basic music education in Norway. This teacher is positioned in a small community school of music and art which has been honoured for manifesting a `best practice` for such schools. Through thematic narrative analyses of various data material, three pivots are identified in this teachers practice; the cultural life, the school, and the artefacts. After the researcher’s narrative: “The Music Teachers’ Everyday”, these pivots are discussed in a theoretical frame inspired by the thoughts of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger and Christopher Small. Finally, insights from this discussion are directed towards processes of professionalization in the field of performer-teachers.

This article investigates cultural policy for children in Denmark with particular focus on the period from the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1961. The analysis of cultural policy for children is based on concepts taken from the cultural policy research and the research in children’s culture. The aim of the article is to examine which views on children, youth and culture that have shaped the cultural policy discourse and how the views on children, youth and culture have influenced cultural mediation strategies. My hypothesis is that the view on children has influenced the way we perceive the user of culture in the broadest sense so that today cultural mediation strategies developed for children and young people is used in relation to the entire population.

This essay takes its empirical starting point in the cultural and library policy debate that took place right before the governmental election in Sweden, September 2006. The concern of the essay is two-folded. At first, we want to show how the appropriation of certain ideological and political concepts, in times of election, tends to organize the multiplicity of rationalities and subjects into binary relations. Such binary relation is often in Swedish cultural political climate defined as social-conservative versus neoliberal or conservative. As for the social-conservative formation, we connect the uses of concepts to an immanent idea of a national subject and historical coherence; whereas for the political right we connect the use of concepts to a wider neo-liberal turn in the Swedish political language. Secondly, in a political-philosophical reflection, we will argue that the contemporary decline of cultural policy discourse on the level of governmentality is not at all adequate. Rather, we observe tendencies that points to a more complex, web like, cultural policy that have taken it’s turn into other institutional positions, from where it can continue following a somewhat social-conservative agenda. However, we are convinced that the cultural policy debate, if it wants to remain vital, needs to discuss it’s meta-political, conceptual and form related issues, rather than keep dwelling on factual matters.

This article explores contemporary Swedish artists’ experiences of work–family conflict from a gender perspective. Sweden is a critical case as the country is well-known for its official gender equality policy stressing the importance of possibilities for women and men to balance family and paid work. The analysis of survey data collected from 2,025 Swedish professional visual artists shows their self-reported levels of work–family conflict to be generally low. Women artists, however, were found to experience more conflict than men artists. The results suggest that women face more pressure from the demands of both work and home than men. While an OLS regression analysis showed a relationship between the artists’ parenting responsibility and their perceived level of work–family conflict overall, for men artists this was so only at the second child. An unequal division of housework had negative consequences for women artists’ work–family balance, while the effect of being single was in this regard more pronounced among men than among women. This suggests that men, to a greater extent than women, depend on a spouse to handle the balance between work and family. Although much has happened regarding the gender issues in the art world, patterns of dependence and traditional gender roles in work and caring thus continue to persist, limiting individuals’ choices and actual ability to work as an artist, especially for women.

NKT har i flera inledningar de senaste numren kommenterat den svenska kulturpolitiken. Det har inte varit utan skäl. Sedan den stora utredningen tillsattes 2007 har kulturpolitiken faktiskt nästan oavbrutet befunnit sig i rikspolitikens brännpunkt på ett sätt som varit mycket ovanligt. Inte sedan 1960-talets genomgripande kulturpolitiska debatter har intresset varit så stort, både bland politiker, kulturutövare och debattörer.

Välkomna till det första numret av Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift som enbart publiceras elektroniskt! Därmed ansluter vi oss till den dominerande trenden inom vetenskaplig publicering. Nätet är den nya plattformen och papperet tycks helt förpassat till det förflutna. Även om en sådan förändring kan vara förenad med viss vånda, ser vi framtiden an med tillförsikt och har goda förhoppningar om att tidskriftens synlighet ökar därmed. Faktiskt ger de siffror över antalet nedladdningar från vår sida på idunn.no som vi hittills kunnat ta del av tydliga indikationer i den riktningen. Det känns mycket positivt!

Inledning till aktuellt tidskriftsnummer.

Det nya nummer av Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift som du nu har klickat in dig på är ett till innehållet blandat nummer. Det presenterar artiklar om de mest skilda frågor som på olika sätt berör det kulturpolitiska området. De sju artiklarna handlar om bokpolitik i Europa, om arbetsvillkoren för konstnärer i Norge, om arkitekttävlingar i Sverige, om konstnärskarriärer för andra generationens invandrare i Norge, om en granskning av det svenska Konstfrämjandets syn på konstens värde, om musiklärarutbildning i Norge och om retoriken kring vad som är dålig kvalitet i konst.

This article aims to problematize and nuance the dichotomy between the intrinsic value of the arts versus their instrumental role, which is currently being debated within Swedish cultural policy on the national government level. Konstfrämjandets riksorganisation; an arts organisation whose art project Skiss illustrates this dichotomy, is here serving as a case study. The organisation receives a State grant for making art available to all. With the help of previous research dealing with the dichotomy between the intrinsic value of the arts and their instrumental role, I explore Konstfrämjandet’s view on the value of the arts, in relation to the view on the arts expressed within current national cultural policy documents. Which conflicts and agreements are there and what are the consequences? I further investigate the arguments used to legitimise the arts within Swedish cultural policy, and thus touch upon the legitimacy of cultural policy itself. The arguments used to entitle public grants to the arts are here further explored and problematized. In relation to the dichotomy between the intrinsic value of the arts and their instrumental role, a general view regarding the role of the arts and the artists’ roles in society is presented.

Recension av En mosaik av mening: Om studieförbund och civilsamhälle. Johan von Essen och Gunnar Sundgren (red.)

The purpose of the survey that this paper is based on is to obtain new information about the work and income conditions of working artists living and working in Norway. We have mapped the artists’ gender, age, and place of residence, as well as general and professional artistic educational background. We have studied differences both between and within the different artistic groups. Furthermore we have looked into different aspects of the artists’ income, including social security and pensionable income. The survey also shows that the development in real income from 1993 to 2006 among different artist groups is moderate compared with the income development of other occupational groups.

In this article, we discuss the role of organisational reforms in Nordic cultural policy, based on a case study of the cultural cooperation model (kultursamverkansmodellen) that was implemented in Sweden in 2011. For decades, Nordic countries have opted for organisational change as a means of fulfilling principal cultural policy objectives, such as the goal of providing universal access to art and culture. However, organisational reforms have rarely led to decisive changes of such a kind and appear rather as «organising for the sake of organising». As shown in the article, the cultural cooperation model provides an ample illustration of this tendency. How can this tendency be explained and what broader lessons about mechanisms that shape cultural policy in the Nordic countries can be derived from the case of the cultural cooperation model? Inspired by the perspective of critical realism, the article formulates six hypotheses that can answer these questions. The first is that organisational reforms have come to function as a substitute for the provision of economic recourses by the government. A second hypothesis is that cultural policy objectives tend to be ascribed a symbolic value rather than to be seen as dictates for action. Our third hypothesis is that cultural policy takes place within a consensus framework that prevents substantial changes to policy. The fourth hypothesis is that cultural policy is characterized by segmented institutional structures that work against substantial changes to policy. The fifth hypothesis is that that cultural policy takes the form of a politics of recognition and that various actors’ demand for attention by the state takes precedence over other aims. The last hypothesis is that cultural policy to a low degree is subject to voter control.

This article aims to systematically analyse the cultural policy of the Norwegian political party The Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, abbr. Frp). This party has been a dominant opposition party in the field of cultural policy in two different ways. One the one hand, Frp has represented the most visible and loud opposition to a cultural policy that is to a large degree marked by broad consensus. On the other hand, Frp?s stance on cultural policy is most often made visible by an almost unanimous criticism of their viewpoints. In this regard, the party has been an important one in the way they have influenced the public discourse on cultural policy. Through a suggested tripartite way of operationalizing oppositional cultural policy, the article analyzes both development and consistency of the cultural policy and politics of the Progress Party.

This article aims to investigate the rhetorics of bad quality in arts and culture. Its focus is how bad quality is described, what kind of argument is used and to what extent descriptions of bad quality have something general in common. The article uses as empirical data reviews of different kinds of cultural expressions in different public media. To compare this kind of public cultural valuation with a quality evaluation that is a part of cultural policy, the analysis makes use of funding decisions from the Norwegian Art Council in the applicants’ disfavour. It deals with instances when the elusive property of quality is not present and has as a vantage point contexts where there is room for and a need to argue for the badness of certain cultural expressions. What kind of vocabulary is at hand for such negative discourses? In what ways can a piece of art or culture be conceived as bad.

In the article our aim is to analyse theoretically the questions: (1) what is the relevance of institutional approach in research about cultural policy and cultural institutions, and (2) how do the modern cultural institutions change. Cultural policy and cultural institutions cannot escape the strong mechanisms for change in their environments. The continuous urge to change and adapt to new conditions causes dynamics and instability and permanence in the institutions. Our empirical references concerning Nordic countries is twofold: On one hand we consider cultural policy making as an institutional formation taking place in concrete historical contexts; on the other we refer to cultural institutions in a traditional sense. By analysing institutionalist theories we will present reflections on what might be the contribution of this theoretical tradition to understand and explain developments in cultural policy making and in traditional cultural institutions. We ask if Nordic cultural policy has proven its resilience to globalization and neoliberalism in spite of the economic crisis of the 1990s. The main idea is that the concept of path dependency can be used as an explanation for cultural policy resilience. – In the analysis one argument is that the Nordic model has been changed in a liberal direction, but changes are not significant enough to replace the original model. We argue that the Nordic model is still far less resilient towards changes that lead to a less on public funding based cultural policy towards more marked based ideas. However, after the economic crisis was over at the end of the 1990s, some of the things been changing. For example, more public funding is targeted to support instrumentalisation of art and culture to strengthen national economic competitiveness.

This article discusses models of governmental library development co-funding. Specifically the article compares strategies used by national bodies in Denmark and Sweden in order to assert the governmental influence on development in municipal public libraries. Both countries uses support via development grants as model of co-funding. This model enables the national government to control the development in the municipal libraries. The model has New Public Management (NPM) characteristics, as the system aims to strengthen competition between libraries. Governmental influence on public library development is evident in both Denmark and Sweden. However, the article identifies both differences and similarities in both the means and the ends of governmental influence in the libraries. Two distinct strategies for influencing the municipal (local) libraries can be identified in Denmark and Sweden. Both countries make use of development grants that can be won only after application in competition with other libraries. This means that both countries uses an NPM oriented strategy in order to gain national influence at the municipal level. Both countries use impact as a major success criterion. However, the strategies used in order to obtain this national impact (spreading the project results) are different. Denmark uses a strategy that privileges the “best” libraries. In turn, this means that the biggest, most experienced application writers are most likely to be rewarded with funding in form of a development grant. This strategy tends to reward the largest libraries. Sweden rewards cooperation. The strategy used by the Swedish Arts Council creates a pressure for libraries to coordinate their efforts. In turn it gives the county libraries the task to find partners and to persuade the local libraries to take part in the project they have formulated. This strategy makes it difficult for individual local libraries to shape the direction of the Swedish Library development.

This article discusses a model that can be used in order to analyse notions on literature promotion in public libraries. The model integrates different issues which interact with how literature promotion is understood and thought of in public libraries. Besides cultural policy we regard the logics of new public management (NPM) and professional logics in the field of public libraries. Cultural policy along with the identification of underlying logics present among politicians, government officials, managers and librarians/promoters of literature, play an important part in creating an understanding of literature promotion in Danish libraries. Thus the basic premise for the development of the model is that cultural policy (Policy) has an important influence on notions on literature promotion and other activities in public libraries, but that cultural policy must be seen in some kind of interaction with the logics of the profession (Profession) and NPM (Public management). The article further examines interrelations between Policy, Profession and Public Management. The article identifies a consensus between the NPM logic and the professional logic of the librarians regarding issues of measurement and visibility, and between cultural policy rationales and the NPM logic regarding the view on users. Finally a conflict regarding the goals of policy and librarians is identified. The article concludes that NPM as a means does not colonize the ends of cultural policy and literature promotion, but that the instrumental aspects of cultural policy in the field of public libraries have difficulties gaining access to the practice in public libraries.

Large scale cultural events often have idealistic aims of affecting participants and spectators in a positive manner, by widening public’s cultural understandings and horizons. The ‘Open Port’ motto chosen for the Stavanger region as European Capital of Culture in 2008 explicitly signalled such ambitions. This article takes the idea of a positive link between exposure to broad-ranging cultural events and tolerance for cultural diversity as a starting point. Nevertheless, there is seemingly little empirical support in the research literature for such a postulate. On this background we suggest a different line of arguments, based on the idea of relative deprivation. Rather than expecting positive change in the beliefs of those more exposed, this alternative hypothesis presumes that inhabitants away from the main centres of artistic and cultural activities, could react. They will often see themselves as left behind and kept out from the grand events, it is contended. In this way we hypothesise that local inhabitants living outside of the central areas will react negatively, by becoming less sympathetic. Special survey data from the region for the period 2007-2009 indicate empirical support for this alternative hypothesis, based on the idea of relative deprivation. At the same time there is little evidence of a possible link between higher exposure and increased tolerance. Multiple regression analysis with an index of cultural scepticism as the dependent variable shows basically no change in attitudes for those living close to main centres of Stavanger 2008 activities. At the same time there is a significant increase in cultural scepticism among local inhabitants living farther away from the central axis. Moreover, results from surveys at the national level confirm a picture of stability in cultural scepticism for Norwegians in general during the same period. This makes an explanation of the observed change for inhabitants living within the larger Stavanger region but outside the central axis, especially challenging. Although the empirical patterns are consistent with the idea of relative deprivation, these findings could not be regarded as a strong test of the hypothesis at this stage. Further research, in alternative settings and with supplementary measures is needed.

Book laws are gaining momentum as a cultural policy tool in Europe. The EU has for some time contested price regulations of the national book industries in the form of fixed book prices as exemptions from free competition. However, fixed price regulations in the form of a book law, are accepted, as it is a cultural policy law, and therefore a national concern. A book law is intended to preserve diversity of publications and distributions outlets, in the form of book shops, throughout the country. In addition, it is meant to preserve book production in national languages. This article presents the European countries that have a book law and fixed prices on books, and contrasts these with the Western European countries that have a free price on books, to see which regulations best protect cultural policy values. The comparison shows that free prices on books lead to increased sales of fewer titles and lower prices on selected best sellers, while fixed prices help support more titles in the market, a lower average price for all books, and maintain a magnitude of bookshops throughout the country. Measured by cultural policy indicators, our study supports the claim that book laws protect cultural policy values to a higher degree than free competition in the book industry.

There are numerous discussions on how the emergence of the concept of creative industries (CI) has influenced different policies and developments during the last decades. This change has not been much analysed in its broader social and institutional context. The aim of this article is to analyse the change of policies due to the gradual process of CI ideology taking root using the principles of the social innovation concept. Using Tallinn as a case study the authors explain how there has been an intertwining and amplifying of applying foreign experiences in policy-making on one hand and local initiatives on the other. Describing the process of Tallinn’s CI policy formation, the authors follow the planning period of becoming European Capital of Culture in 2011 (Tallinn 2011) as a central signpost in this nearly ten-year period. Regarding methodology, the authors use document analysis, in-depth interviews and also secondary data from the completed studies and mappings on creative industries in Estonia and in Tallinn.

Recension av Musik och politik hör ihop. Diskussioner, ställningstaganden och musikskapande 1965-1980, av Alf Arvidsson; Musikhus i centrum. Två lokala praktiker inom den svenska progressiva musikrörelsen: Uppsala Musikforum och Sprängkullen i Göteborg, av David Thyrén.

Culture is a central concept for the Scandinavian radical right parties, but little research has been done on the cultural policy of these parties. This article is a comparative overview of the party programs of three Scandinavian radical right parties published during the latest decade. It relates the cultural policies of the radical right to the predominantly welfare-based corporatist cultural policy of the Scandinavian countries. Through a discursive policy analysis two problem representations have been identified: The view of multiculturalism as a threat to national culture and the view that public funding is a threat to freedom. The parties share a common understanding of cultural policy, with minor differences. There is an underlying conflict in the discourse: While the parties argue that the political governance of art needs to be limited, they are, at the same time, deeply involved in how cultural expressions and cultural life should be defined. By shedding light on the radical right cultural policy agenda it may be possible to politicize the cultural policy discourse overall and acknowledge the ideological dimension of cultural policy.

This study aims to identify and analyse how aesthetic reading was problematised in Swedish educational policy 1940- 1962, in order to create a better understanding of the politics of reading in an era that has been of great importance for how reading is understood in contemporary Sweden. The empirical material consists of reports from three school commissions, laying the foundation for the new compulsory and comprehensive school that was introduced in 1962. The reports have been analysed using a discursive methodological framework, focussing on problematisations of aesthetic reading. The main problem that aesthetic reading was meant to solve, according to the analysis, was a lack of aesthetic taste. There is a shift in emphasis during the period from problematisations of what to read towards problematisations of how to read. Thus, the solution to the problem of aesthetic reading during the period transformed from a governing of taste to a governing of skills. Educational and cultural policy shares the problematisation of aesthetic upbringing, made possible by its roots in modernist ideas of general character formation and the ideals of free public education. We argue that research on the politics of reading in Sweden can be reinvigorated by exploring the governance of cultural practices emanating from policy fields other than explicit cultural policy

Cultural policy has seen a shift from attention to the producers of culture to consumers of culture, often called the participatory turn. Widened participation is a common argument for subsidising publicly funded arts; however, when realising participation as a policy goal, it can be fraught with tension. This paper aims to expand the knowledge of how cultural institutions resist participation. When is participation seen as problematic or undesirable, and why? How do cultural institution workers legitimise limiting participation? The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with civil servants and managers of publicly funded cultural institutions in Gothenburg, Sweden, focusing on rationalities of balancing values based on problematisations of participation and discourses around the institution's core mission. The respondents balance serving the public and the cultural field, popular knowledge and expert knowledge, and their professional and private roles. The article offers a model for understanding when certain balancing acts are more likely to occur than others. Ultimately, resistance towards participation relates to different ideas around the governance of culture.

The European Union nominates cities as European Capitals of Culture in order to highlight the richness and diversity of European cultures and the features they share, as well as to promote greater mutual acquaintance between European citizens. For the chosen cities, the nomination creates a possibility to promote the cultural identity, originality and diversity of the region and city. The empirical focus of the article is on three cities which were chosen as European Capitals of Culture for 2010 (Pécs in Hungary), and 2011 (Tallinn in Estonia and Turku in Finland). The cities utilize various strategies in emphasizing and representing their cultural diversity. All of the cities stress their location as a historical meeting place of different ethnicities and nationalities. Additionally, the cities stress their architecture as an expression of multicultural layers of the cities. In the cities, cultural diversity is related to the global imagery of popular culture, street culture and contemporary art. In addition, the cities stress the canon of Western art history as a base for common Europeanness compounded of various nationalities and regionalities. One essential strategy is to represent different minorities and their visual culture as signs of cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is a complex and political concept. Its definitions and representations inevitably involve power structures and production of cultural and political hierarchies. Hierarchies and political tension are bound to the concept even though it is often introduced as equal and anti-racist discourse.

France is often considered as a country that leads the way as an “exemplary country” in cultural policy. Scholars also talk about a specific “French Ministry of Culture Model”. In this article I discuss several characteristics of French cultural policy given by cultural policy researchers. Are these characteristics scientifically fruitful and/or valid? I have focused upon the following questions: (1) Is it true that France was the first country in Europe that established a ministry of culture; (2) how centralized is French cultural policy in reality; (3) how well founded is the conception that French cultural life is predominantly controlled by the Ministry of Culture, without any arm’s length between politics and the arts; (4) how powerful is the minister of culture personally, and is it still fruitful to talk about a “monarchistic” French cultural policy; (5) is it true that France has given high priority to culture in its government budgets since the establishment of a Ministry of Culture (1959), and that the cultural budget nearly doubled in 1982; (6) has French cultural policy generally disapproved of the “extended concept of culture”, and finally (7) was André Malraux really a great minister of culture? In the article I describe and discuss the development of French cultural policy historically, keeping the abovementioned questions in mind. I draw lines back to the 19th and early 20th century, but I focus particularly upon the period between 1945 and 1990. The article concludes that several more or less taken-for-granted characteristics of French cultural policy are debatable and ready for modification.

Our essay addresses the way of thinking cultural policy that Augustin Girard was instrumental in working out and managing within the confines of UNESCO. This way of thinking lies behind the strategies of cultural policy of the industrialized countries in the period following the Second World War, which makes it legitimate to talk about a joint philosophy of cultural policy that transcends national borders. Girard’s basic philosophy and approach is that cultural policy needs to create the conditions for a decentralized and pluralistic ‘cultural democracy’ in which the individual can play an active part. Thus, we argue that the motivation and foundation for Girard’s way of thinking cultural policy is based on a democratic diagnosis of the present, which is implicit in his way of thinking and needs to be explicated and developed further. Departing form Girard’s Cultural development: experiences and policies we clarify what Girard’s way of thinking cultural policy involves and imply. Next, we address a distinct impression we have that Girard’s overarching democratic approach has been toned down to the advantage of the “managerial” aspect of his thinking. Our task in this part of the essay is to assess the instrumental aspect of Girard’s way of thinking and the ultimate purposes that motivates this way of thinking. The relation between these two aspects is unsettled in Girard. Thus, we ask whether Girard’s way of thinking isn’t itself a striking expression of the nihilism he combats, in that it furthers the very features of modernity that it wants to remedy, i.e. the progressive degradation of moral and social relation through processes of capitalization and instrumental rationality. The answer is that it is not, provided that his concern for cultural democracy and the development of a democratic culture is not forfeited.

This essay investigates historical conditions of merging practices which connect academic research and cultural, artistic activities. In the first section, notions such as immaterial labour, cognitive capitalism, and accumulation cycle are introduced and these terms are set in relation to dialectics of space. The concept of Converging Space, proposed in the second section of the article, signifies an unstable space by the side of capitalism’s incorporation of immaterial labour and institutionally ordered social relations. University and regional cultural policy in Western Sweden are two specific cases which further clarify the notion of converging spaces. In the third section, exile, conceived as a multi-layered semantic field, serves to designate mobility and mobilization across contemporary segregative urban landscapes and hence constantly exposed to the dialectics between material space, the institutionalized space and the flux of labour and commodities. The final and concluding part of the essay discusses the intersections between immaterial labour, exile as a semantic field outside accumulation cycles and local, transient organizational forms which open up a space for emerging practices.

Late modern society seems to be inescapably permeated by a conflict between universalizing and particularizing dynamics. The article discusses this basic condition from the perspective of late modern identity formation and its implications for the development of democratic politics. A critical discussion of a number of prominent positions in the theoretical debate on identity opens the argument. In the wake of this critical discourse, an alternative position based on contemporary critical theory is suggested, and the potentials and risks of late modern identity work are outlined in relation to the perspective of democratic civil society. The article concludes that identity-based processes of politicization are fragile and unpredictable, but that they nevertheless form necessary preconditions for creating and maintaining the necessary popular engagement in developing universal democratic civil society. Finally, the potentials and limitations of a European cultural policy in relation to the characteristics of late modern identity work are briefly discussed.

This article discusses the challenges that cultural policy in the Nordic countries faces in regard to the cultural diversity of contemporary society – not only in the shape of a variety of ethnic minorities, but also represented by the differentiation of the ethnic majority into a multiplicity of lifestyle groups. The article criticizes the predominant politico-cultural polarization on this subject where both nationalistic-monocultural and multiculturalistic positions tend to corner themselves into static and particularistic versions of identity politics – the perspective of which seems to be societal fragmentation. Consequently, an alternative, more dynamic concept of identity is presented from which – so it is argued – an adequate late modern cultural policy should take its departure, thus combining the recognition of diversity and the perspective of developing a dimension of cultural community on the level of society as a whole.