So far, this conference has focused on research. Let us now devote our attention to issues of education and training in library and information science (LIS). Specifically, I will address issues of education in the field of digitization.1 During one of the keynote addresses yesterday, we were presented with examples of superbly crafted cultural heritage digitization projects, where the digitized collections and artifacts are lavishly presented and browsable in a creative visualization manner and based on, one would assume, the highest demands on technical standards. I, too, will be talking about digitizing cultural heritage artifacts, but in the form of student-run projects, at an undergraduate and master’s level, where the methods and the work process are the aim, rather than the finished digital product itself.
1900-talet skulle bli barnets århundrade, tänkte sig Ellen Key alldeles innan seklet bröt in. Idag, alldeles efter dess slut, finns det goda skäl att tänka sig 1900-talet också som ett folkbibliotekens århundrade. Biblioteksreformerna i början av 1900-talet markerade en tydlig vilja från statsmakterna att stödja och underbygga bibliotek avsedda för breda befolkningslager. Samma sorts vilja kom sedan till politiskt uttryck flera gånger under de följande hundra åren.
Konferenspaper som ger en översikt över hur relationen mellan staten och folkbiblioteken utvecklat sig mellan 1912 och 2012, uttryckt i offentliga dokument.
-
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.
Inledande kapitel som presenterar antologins helhet, bakgrund och ingående delar.
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 paper aims to reflect on the special character of the cultural field in relation to politics, policies and the political system. We usually talk about the notion of “autonomy” as one decisive feature in this relation. But what exactly does that mean? The fundamental research question may be posed thus; why is cultural policy such an awkward matter for the politicians? Drawing in the Swedish experience from the 1960´s and on this paper will try to rethink the relationship and to dig further into this problematic issue. The history of the Swedish cultural policy discourse will provide empirical input for a more principal and theoretical discussion. I am now in the process of finalizing an update of my book from 2005; Kulturen som kulturpolitikens stora problem [Culture as the big problem of cultural policy]. The update is caused by the fact that a new parliamentary decision on Swedish cultural policy was taken in December 2009. It is, therefore, high time to add a chapter on the period from 1996, when my first book stopped. The events during this last period make good reasons to rethink and reflect on what kind of difficult matter “culture” is for politicians and the political system, as compared to, e g infrastructure or economic policies. Several questions will be addressed. Cultural policy is very slowly changed. Why is that? Are there special circumstances regarding the special case of the Swedish welfare state model? Or is this inertia to be accounted for by the “autonomy”? Can it be so, that there is a fundamental unruliness in the activities of the cultural field that makes it difficult for politicians to act? We have also the diverse and contested character of the concept of culture itself to reckon with in this context. The research method applied in the paper rests on a thorough empirical investigation into the Swedish discourse on cultural policy during the last century (from my 2005-book and from the research done for the update). Obviously these empirical data will only provide the basis for a more abstract discussion in the paper per se which will be utilizing adequate and relevant theoretical concepts. Hopefully this will lead to some new thoughts and ideas about this sometimes a bit precarious relation.
Kapitlet behandlar statens relation till folkbiblioteken från det att de första bibliotekskonsulenterna inrättades 1912 till dags dato.
Kapitlet sammanfattar viktiga trender och mönster i bokens tidigare kapitel och pekar ut några intressanta forskningsuppslag.
Antologi bestående av åtta fristående kapitel som behandlar olika aspekter av svensk folkbibliotekspolitisk historia 1912-2012, samt ett avslutande reflekterande och framåtblickande kapitel.
Boken innehåller sex nyskrivna eller tidigare publicerade uppsatser som på ett grundläggande sätt introducerar historieskrivning, begrepp och teorier som är nödvändiga för studier av den moderna kulturpolitiken.
Bibliotekshögskolan firade 40-års jubileum 2012 med en rad olika aktiviteter som uppmärksammade institutionen och Högskolan i Borås. Jubileumsåret avslutades med en konferens som behandlade såväl utbildning som forskning inom fältet. Presentationer och behandlade seminariepapper vid konferensen publiceras nu i denna antologi. Det är en samling intressanta bidrag som ger en bild av forskningsfronten och aktuella utbildningsfrågor.
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.