interacció`06 - Diputació de Barcelona

Transcrição

INTERACCIÓ’06
Community cultural policies
Cultural Studies and Resource Centre (CERC)
Barcelona Provincial Council
Barcelona, 24 – 27 October 2006
DOCUMENTATION
2.
Biographic review and reading of the speakers´ recent work
Documentation Centre of Cultural Studies and Resource Centre
Barcelona Provincial Council
October 2006
Contents
Carlos Alberdi Alonso
Franco Bianchini
Texeira Coelho
Carles Feixa
Enrique Gil Calvo
Jon Hawkes
Jaime Lerner
Eduard Miralles
Antanas Mockus
Marta Porto
AbdouMaliq Simone
Alain Touraine
George Yúdice
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6
10
14
17
24
27
33
39
48
51
56
63
Carlos Alberdi Alonso
Carlos Alberdi Alonso started in cultural management at the Residencia de
Estudiantes in Madrid from 1986 to 1990 and was later Director of the Centro
Cultural de España in Buenos Aires during 1991 and 1992. During 1993 and 1994
he was Director of Culture at the Instituto Cervantes and from 1996 to 2002 he was
Technical Advisor for Cultural Promotion at the Spanish Agency for International
Cooperation, coordinating the network of Spanish cultural centres in Latin America.
From 2002 to 2004 he was Coordinator of the Culture Department at La Casa
Encendida in Madrid. Since May 2004 he has been Director General of Cultural
Cooperation and Communications at the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
Next we present a Report on the General Conference sessions «Europe for
Intercultural Dialogue» celebrated in Granada on 27 and 28 of April 2006. To find
the conference, go to the following link:
http://www.mcu.es/cooperacion/dialogoIntercul/
Original language:spanish
Introduction
The meeting «Europe for intercultural dialogue» is integrated in a series of meetings
about the cultural aspects in the European construction that was started in Berlin in
November 2004 and it continued in Paris and Budapest in May and November 2005.
The choice of intercultural dialogue as the subject in the fourth meeting is in
accordance with the arrangements for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue
which will be celebrated in 2008.
This event has been organized by the Ministry for Culture of Spain and has
consisted of two parallel meetings: on one side, the meeting of representations
from the Ministries for Culture of EU members; on the other side, a General
Conference with the attendance of about 200 representatives of the civil society
and cultural institutions and organizations from Europe and other regions.
The General Conference has consisted of four plenary sessions, which have tackled
successively the intercultural dialogue in the Euromediterranean scope; the
intercultural dialogue in the field of the relationships between the EU and Latin
America and the Caribbean; the role of the foundations, cultural associations and
civil society in the intercultural dialogue; and the role of the regions and local
corporations in the development of the intercultural dialogue.
This document presents a summary of the main ideas and proposals formulated
during the General Conference.
Intercultural dialogue: concepts
The notion of «intercultural dialogue», as well as the ideas of «dialogue between
civilizations» and «dialogue between religions» which are often interrelated in the
public debate, demands a deep exploration.
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The dominant discourse in the public sphere suggests that cultures are closed and
monolithic blocks. However, globalization is multiplying the fracture lines as it
changes the interaction conditions between societies and their cultural practices.
This can, in turn, generate tensions and give strength to the most extremist views.
Within intercultural dialogue there are simultaneous feelings of acceptance and
feelings of refusal.
Many phenomena and challenges to which Europe is facing nowadays, from
immigration to foreign relationships or security policies, have progressively tended
to explain themselves under the cultural or religious code, ignoring their
fundamental economic and political dimension and the need for taking measures in
regard to them. The respect to the State’s rule of law and to international law must
be in the basis of all the approaches to these issues.
Apart from the view of culture as a place for conflict and confrontation, there are
proofs all over the world of its positive contribution to the fight against poverty,
social exclusion and ostracism, the generation of social capital and its relation with
the elements of cohabitation, human rights and development.
History also offers continuous examples of cultural interaction, through which
artistic creation and thought have been configured throughout centuries. The
Mediterranean is a good example of this. In today’s context, interaction is even
more dynamic, but it is affected by the unequal sharing of resources.
Intercultural dialogue: context
For Europe, intercultural dialogue is expressed today in a triple level: within the
States, among the European States themselves and in the field of the relationships
with the rest of the world. None of these cases can work having on their basis
unequal or asymmetric relationships.
Cities are the everyday stage of experiences in intercultural dialogue and they come
to challenges with a strong cultural component. Regions also tackle intercultural
dialogue in their own policies and in the interregional cooperation practices in
Europe. Cultural policies in local and regional administrations have a key role in the
context of cultural diversity, which must be expressed by setting them in a central
position of the policies as a whole. The Agenda 21 of culture offers a guide for this
and, given its universal scope, also promotes the dialogue about shared interests
between regional and local administrations of different countries and regions.
There have been significant advances with regard to the intercultural dimension of
the European construction and the intercultural dialogue among the European
States. The European Commission intends to make intercultural dialogue a
horizontal priority in different political areas, specially in the new generation of
programmes which support education, culture, youth and citizenship. In this sense,
a significant initiative is the arrangement of the European Year of Intercultural
Dialogue in 2008.
Numerous initiatives contribute to give contents to the notion of intercultural
dialogue through new cultural cooperation ways between Europe and the rest of the
world. We can mention as an example the «Ibermedia» programme, which supports
Latin American cinematographic industry. The approval of the UNESCO Convention
on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions shows the
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confluence of the international cultural challenges, and becomes a universal
referent for the respect and cooperation between cultural expressions.
In all the levels, civil society must be acknowledged for its role as a confluence
space of differences and as a forge of new alliances and creative forms. The cultural
civil society must be able to take part in the definition of the new European
citizenship.
Intercultural dialogue: proposals
1. The approaches to intercultural dialogue should assume in all the cases that the
political, economic, social and cultural dimensions are complementary and it is
necessary a co-operation among them, within the respect for democracy, the
State’s rule of law, human rights and international law.
2. In all the levels, it has been observed the need of building platforms of
conversation among the fields of culture, human rights, education, social cohesion
and economic activity, which must be complemented with the promotion and
deepening of intercultural dialogue.
3. It should be made sure the cooperation among the different government levels
regarding the cultural and intercultural dialogue challenges in the heart of the
States. Given the centrality that the local space has, it would seem specially
significant to strengthen the role of the regional and local administrations and to
guarantee all the necessary resources for it.
4. As a committed and independent actor, the cultural sector must assume an
action directed to carry out a political and strategic contribution to the debate about
intercultural dialogue and European identity.
5. There is a need for a bigger recognition of the cultural dimension in all the
European Union policies, in application of the transversality clause in the 151.4
article of the EU Treaty. Following this line, it has been announced the presentation
of the European Commission Communication in 2007 about the relationship
between culture and the rest of the Community policies, something that confers
some centrality to culture.
6. It has been suggested that the EU should promote periodical meetings related to
the cultural aspects of the European construction, where representatives of three
sectors (government, private sector and civil society) get together. They should
agree on a long-term programme, avoiding reiteration and fragmentation, granting
the continuity from one conference to the next and each sector assuming its
respective responsibilities.
7. The programme of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue should inspire in
the good practices generated and articulated by the cultural operators. Its success
as a process will depend on the ability of the European institutions to promote
alliances between the cultural sector and the public administrations that promote
the event.
8. The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue should have continuity and should
be useful to establish the basis for a European cultural strategy.
9. It has been remarked the importance of creating a civil society platform for
culture, wide and qualified, to operate transversally with the other sectors, to make
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proposals and innovative and ambitious projects, and to exchange practices related
with intercultural dialogue inside and outside Europe.
10. Europe should be more receptive to the cultural production of other continents,
not trying to be a fortress and making easy the circulation of the cultural production
from the rest of the world.
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Franco Bianchini
Director of the Internacional Cultural Planning and Policy Unit and of the Master
European Cultural Planning at De Monfort University, Leicester. He is member of
the Comedia association with which he collaborates in the context of the
investigation project The Intercultural City : Making the Most of Diversity, centered
on the intercultural practices and the economic life of United Kingdom’s cities, a
project sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. He has acted as consultant
and investigator of strategies and cultural planning projects in several European
countries, representing institutions such as the Arts Council of England, the Council
of Europe, the European Commission and the European Task Force on Culture and
Development. He has given conferences about urban cultural policies and planning
issues in different countries like Ireland, Switzerland, Finland, Latvia, Russia,
Poland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Australia, Colombia, China and Japan. In
June 2001 he was put forward for the President of the European Parliament as
member of the group responsible for the European Cultural Capital of 2005.
Among his publications, it is worth mentioning:

«Cultural considerations in inner city regeneration» En: Culture and
neighbourhoods. Strasbourg : Council of Europe Publishing, 1995 p. 79-96

The Social impact of the arts / coautor Charles Landry. London : Comedia,
1995, 64 p

Planning for the intercultural city / coautora Jude Bloomfield. Stroud :
Comedia, 2004. 125 p

«A Crisis in urban creativity? : reflections on the cultural impacts of
globalisation, and on the potential of urban cultural policies». 12 p. Ponencia
presentada al simposio internacional The age of the city : the challenges for
creative cites, Osaka, 7-10 de febrer de 2004
http://www.artfactories.net/IMG/pdf/crisis_urban_creatvity.pdf
Next we present a fragment of the lecture Reflections on urban cultural
policies, the development of citizenship and the setting of minimum local
cultural standards and entitlements presented at the conference «Active
citizens – local cultures – European politics. Guide to civic participation in cultural
policy-making for European cities», organized by the European Cultural Foundation,
Interarts, SEE TV Exchanges, Ecumest in Barcelona on 22 September 2006:
Original language: english
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(...)
Urban cultural policies and citizenship today: some issues
In the contemporary urban context, characterised by increasing social and
economic polarisation and exclusion, nobody seriously believes any longer in
«trickle down» but this does not automatically mean that citizenship in this
emancipatory sense has returned to the policy agenda. In order to enhance
citizenship, urban cultural polices will have to confront the destructive features of
international competition which have distorted attempts at culturally-led urban
regenerations since the mid-1980s.
Cross-sectoral partnerships can harness private, public and voluntary sector
initiatives to civic goals. Each partner brings a different set of capacities and all can
gain from combining their particular strengths, including business where it is
committed to the local economy, a high quality workforce and a innovative
environment (Moss Kantor, 1995). In contrast to a communitarian approach, which
assumes that a preconstituted consensus exists- which in fact communitarians
construct through the criteria of selection of «representatives of the community»,
which screens out alternative voices- we are advocating a open-ended system.
This would be construct though the self-organisation of autonomous actors in civil
society with the city offering training, and actively soliciting projects and ideas in all
areas of urban policy. The model of the public competition and exhibition of
proposals used for architecture and urban design could be extended to transport,
economic development, social and cultural initiatives.
Cultural polices in many European cities during the phase of the «economic turn»
were successful in creating jobs in tourism, retailing and other consumer service
industries. These jobs, however, were frequently low-paid, part-time, deskilled,
characterised by inadequate legal rights and poor working conditions. In the late
1990s, in order to address economic and social polarisation and exclusion, cities
have to develop production-oriented strategies aimed at creating skilled jobs in
high value-added sectors of the local cultural economy such as design, fashion,
film, TV an publishing. In the face of the erosion of commitment by large firm to
specific places, some cities and regions have applied endogenous growth strategies
which seek to maximise the resources under local control, diversify products and
services, and exploit the locality’s distinctive qualities and strength. Such a
strategy puts greatest value on the creative potential of human-capital, since
people are relatively tied to a specific place and their capacities often underutilised. Therefore, training is a central feature o fan embedding strategy, so that
the city can produce and retain skilled people, and create a critical mass of small
firms, skill clusters, cultural milieux which are attached to the city.
Civic cultural policies which seek to tap the unrealised potential in the city, have to
address the socially disadvantaged and marginalised in a way that appeals to their
talents and draws on their incipient skills. Cities have to take account of «subcultural capital» of the dynamism in local youth cultures to tailor appropriate
facilities, technical and financial support services.
Likewise, cultural policies to enhance citizenship have to counter the growing
spatial polarisation of cities, concentrated poverty in «enforced communities» and
no-go areas. There have been various attempts to bridge the growing divide
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between lively city centres and impoverished, inaccessible peripheries. The
establishment of neighbourhood-based facilities can effectively be combined with
strategies aimed at democratizing access to city centre-based cultural provision.
Integrated policies on public transport, pedestrianisation, street lighting and
policing, like those introduced by many European cities in the 1970s, retain their
validity today. They could be highly effective if combined with strong outreach and
educational programmes and imaginative marketing by the cultural institutions
based in city centres.
The city authority, as an inclusive political space, cannot claim any longer to
represent «the community» as though it were singular rather than composite, in
constructing a local civic identity and public sphere. Such a public sphere has to be
both a multicultural and intercultural space, in which diverse voices can be heard,
protagonist speak for themselves, control the representations of themselves to
others, de-and reconstruct a common culture, as we as promulgate their own
distinctive cultures. City government, as the authority closest to the citizen, with
organises and delivers services, has a crucial function in mobilising the untapped
talents and creative capacities of the unrepresented and disorganised, and enabling
insertion into the local cultural economy. By providing civic training, it could
stimulate a more effective public presence of marginalised groups, which would
counteract racism and misrepresentation, and begin to reconstitute the public
sphere as a pluralist cultural space based on dialogue and social negotiation
between different voices, values and interests. This would also contribute to the
revival of local participatory politics.
In order to address the problems of social polarisation and political exclusion, cities
have actively to solicit the self-organization of ethnic minorities and other
disadvantage social groups and their access to the policy-making process, so they
can demonstrate the relevance of their ideas, aspirations and skills to the city’s
overall development. The city has a vital role in creating an intercultural space,
though establishing venues for cultural exchange, public forums for cultural, debate
and policy-making, and government (Bloomflield and Bianchini, 2004)
An embedding strategy, which capitalises on the unique features of the city and the
talents of its people, to prevent the haemorrhaging of skills and talent away from
the city, has to guard against the danger of reinforcing a closed mentality to the
cider world and «Ethnic» assertiveness of the purity or superiority of native
«insiders» against new comers. Thus, it has to embrace external influences, ideas
and outsiders and enable their creative integration in the public life of the city.
City governments have been more responsive than national governments to the
cultural needs and aspirations of grassroots groups and cosmopolitanism as a
positive virtue, as testimony to heir openness to the word and to next influences.
Festival have already provided fertile ground for his kind of celebration of diversity
and innovativeness, but all branches of urban life from architecture and the design
of housing to forms of shopping and recreation could benefit from such an infusion.
The development
authorities, which
urban system, can
which a genuinely
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of trans-European networks of co-operations between local
counteract the potentially destructive rivalry in the European
help to build new international relationships at local level –from
democratic and inclusive «Europe of the cities» could emerge.
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This will be based on multi-layered and overlapping sovereignties and a multifaceted concept of culture, not confined to the high culture narratives of national
grandeur.
In order to move towards this new notion of citizenship, however, a more
integrated approach to urban cultural policy-making is needed. This would rest on
a very broad anthropological definition of «culture» as «a way of life». Such a
strategy would audit and deploy all the cultural resources of the city, from its
physical layout and design, its architectural and industrial heritage, local craft
traditions, skill pools, arts, to the public spaces, educational and cultural
institutions, tourist attractions and images of the city which the interaction of
myths, conventional wisdom, cultural and media representations produce. It would
cut across the divides between the voluntary, public and private sectors, different
institutional concerns and different professional disciplines. It would involve the
development of more consultative and open approaches to policy-making and the
provision of more broadly- based forms of training for policy-making.
Such an
approach – defined by Mercer an Bianchini as «cultutural planning» (Mercer 1991;
Bianchini, 1991a and 1991b, 1996) could provide an imaginative and integrative
basis for future urban regeneration strategies. Such a strategy would have to
balance and integrate the economic, physical, cultural, symbolic, social and political
dimensions of the city. It would also harness the different types of creativity –
artistic, political, organisational, economic- present in civil society to strategic
development objectives. City authorities will have to let go of their prescriptive
power and prejudice in promoting some forms of cultural production over others
and recognise that creativity is a critical force in society which generates debate
and alternative solutions to problems.
To establish a more explicit and intellectually grounded legitimation for cultural
citizenship in the city, we need to retrieve the radical idea of the city as a project
for the widening of cultural horizons and enhancing the capacity to redesign
everyday life and the public sphere. This view was expressed by Nicolini, the
Cultural Assessor for Rome City Council 1976-85 when he defined the city as «a
system of life which develops desires». More recently, Jordi Borja, has reiterated
this view: «The city must be perceived as a cultural project. The city is a series of
collective projects. There is no social integration without participation in collective
projects.» (Borja, 1995, 41-2)
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Teixeira Coelho
He studied Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at Sao Paulo University
(Brazil), where he is Professor of Cultural Policies. He coordinated the Observatory
of Cultural Policies at the School of Communications and Arts School, directs the
University Cinema. He directed the Museum of Contemporary Art of Sau Paulo
University and the Centre for Art Information and Documentation of the Arts
Secretariat in the same town. From September 2006 he coordinated the Sao Paulo
Museum of Art (MASP). The MASP is considered one of the most important
museums of art in Latin America

Diccionario crítico de política cultural : Cultura e Imaginario. México :
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), 2000.
502 p

Guerras culturais : arte e política no novecentos tardio. São Paulo:
Iluminuras, 2000. 222 p.

«Gestión de la cultura, sociedad civil e impacto cultural de la cultura». En: II
Seminario de Economía y Cultura : la tercera cara de la moneda :
Montevideo, 1-3 diciembre 2004.
http://www.cab.int.co/cab42/downloads/joseteixeira.pdf

«Representaciones de la cultura con relacion a la violencia: cinco piezas
difíciles». En: Monica Serra. (Org.). Diversidad cultura y desarrollo urbano.
Sao Paulo : Iluminuras, 2005, v. 1, p. 35-52.
Next we present a fragment of the article A policy for the inert culture published
in the Argentine magazine Todavia, nº 4, April 2003. To find the complete article go
to the following link:
http://www.revistatodavia.com.ar/todavia04/notas/Teixeira%20Coelho/txtteixeira.html
Promoting and extending access to cultural goods is not enough to change the
present scenario. It is essential to undertake a cultural policy similar to ecological
policy, which is present in all dimensions of human life.
When discussing the possibilities of designing a cultural policy that collaborates in
the fight against violence and promotes social inclusion in search of a greater
quality of life, we always challenge ourselves with a question: in the era that
nurtured Nazism, Germany was, just like France or perhaps even more than France,
the densest cultural centre in the world; why did all that culture not stop the
horrors of that sinister period in the history of humanity?
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It is a question asked, above all, by those who insist on considering the economy as
the only or best lever for sustainable development and who, therefore, displace
culture, because they consider it incidental, on the periphery of the system. Given
that the design of all cultural policy must be based on the idea that culture must be
the master key to all public policy, it is necessary to be in a condition to be able to
answer this question.
One could attempt an outline of a response by posing, in its turn, another question:
where was that culture really, who actually participated in it? To use a current
expression, did all that culture we think of when evoking the German case form
part of a common culture or not? It is clear that culture, it would be better to say
cultures, do not all travel down the same road, but it is not enough to understand
the question and find a solution to it. And this happens because working with a
concept like that of common culture implies, from the outset, a mechanical vision of
the cultural process, which conceives it as something whose components are
displaced from one side to the other or become mixed, or are neither displaced nor
become mixed, as happens in a liquid dynamics problem. According to this
approach, which only considers the horizontal dimension of the cultural process,
culture moves along a given surface and the whole problem consists of knowing
why it is concentrated to a greater or lesser extent in one zone or another along a
determined line, on a plane that is supposedly uniform. From this vision comes the
belief that cultural democratization is first and foremost a question of promoting
culture. However, there is something more at play here.
It is possible to begin to see an outline of a more satisfactory response by paying
attention to the indicators that show that the world has gone on notably expanding
its «culturality», progressively, while the culture of life did not evolve in the same
way. Put another way, objective culture which is identified and registered in the
cultural institutions (museums, universities, libraries) has expanded enormously,
while subjective culture has not evolved in the least analogously.
The complicated expression «objective culture», which I take from Georg Simmel
(La filosofía del dinero, Madrid, Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1990) – although I
could do so from many others –, is not totally inadequate, even though here I
consider it more appropriate to use the denomination «objectivized culture».
Objective culture is that which habits and rules recognise as such: literature
legitimatized as good, opera, valuable cinema, the established modes of popular
culture, etcetera. Alongside this, objectivized culture is, more simply, that which is
projected outside of the field in which ideas gestate, which is extracted from the
profusion of the possible and assumes a specific material form in the limited
context of the real. Objectivized culture does not depend on a consensus to be
recognised, it is not completely codified. For example, objectively, and according to
the conception one has of «culture» (culture as what is opposed to that which
promotes barbarism), some television programmes or graffiti found in the city may
not be considered culture; but both cases are, by the way, forms of objectivized
culture: they are there. The term «objetivized» is perhaps less pretentious as it does
not suggest «something evident, which cannot be discussed», and simply proposes
something which is recognised as such, without establishing judgement values…
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(...) This objectivized and objective culture is what I prefer to call cultural inertia.
When we formulate questions like this about Nazi Germany and culture, what we
see is the inert cultural part. Cultural policy operates, at the start and always, with
the inert cultural part, a combination of empty forms offered as models to
individuals but that lack life and which individuals cannot enjoy. Objectivized
culture is like a cryonic freezer that maintains in a state of suspension the possible
forms of subjective culture. Forms that individuals think are alive when they have
knowledge of them, but which in fact had already become petrified a long time
before imagining they could exist, in the manner of an explosion of a galaxy
captured today by telescopes but which took place in the remotest past. When
questions are formulated like that of German culture and the Nazi crimes it is
towards this «freezer» that one is looking. The expression cultural inertia must be
understood in a considerably literal way.
There are different theories that try to explain why this separation is produced, but
here we cannot discuss them for reasons of space. It is, therefore, important to go
directly to the point and say that the only clear way of combating this situation is to
provide culture with all the empty forms of objectivized culture, which is achieved
by activating all the ways of being in the world and in life and all the categories for
seeing the world and life. In other words, it is about proceeding to the
culturalization not only of the representation of the world but of life – and this
includes education, as well as entertainment, politics and economics. Cultural policy
must be like ecological policy, which, by the way, is a cultural policy: it must
embrace everything, from all points of view, or if not it does not work. When this
does not happen, when we do not have a Greenpeace of culture – as a Spanish
friend says –, the weight of cultural inertia is too much for our poor superficial
policies of cultural democratization based on the idea of promotion. Nazi Germany,
just like other countries today, only had a gigantic cultural inertia. Transforming
this cultural inertia into active culture is a task as vast as that which confronts the
ecological movement. But it is no less possible for this.
However, one thing must be clear: the perfect identity between objectivized culture
and subjective culture must not be reached. It is not that it cannot be reached: it
must not be reached. Of course, it can be reached. Secular or religious totalitarian
states seek and achieve this identity. This does not interest me at all and I fly from
it in horror. To avoid it, culturalization of all the categories for seeing the world and
inserting in life must open up a great space to art. Culture is the rule, art is the
exception; it enjoys evoking Godard. In cultural policy there is a delicate game
between culture and art. Betting everything on culture means losing the bigger
game, perhaps the only one that matters. Placing all the chips on art means being
on the side of common culture. Good sense would suggest an agreement between
both things (but good sense creates nothing...). What is specifically known is that
all totalitarian regimes, secular or religious, insist on culture and fear art. This is a
clue.
To finish, these observations can be summarised in two or three lines: it is useless
to continue with the promotion of culture as it is practised today. Increasing the
«amount» of culture and the number of people with access to it, as well as the
amount of time that a person is exposed to culture, will not change the current
scenario much. It is better than nothing and better than many other things. But it is
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not enough. It is something that only increases cultural inertia. It is a superficial
cultural policy, when what is needed is a vertical cultural policy, in depth, that can
only be achieved if culture becomes an integral part of all the other processes and
spheres of human activity: education (above all education that, in certain countries,
is devoid of culture, although it may seem to be the contrary), health, economic
planning, law, entertainment, public security, industry and trade. Either cultural
policy assumes the form of ecological culture (being present in everything) or it is
condemned to not advance. Compartmentalizing culture into a ministry of culture is
to condemn it to a decorative effect or, in the best of cases, move at a snail’s pace
at a time when society needs high speed action. And this without forgetting that the
touchstone of this policy is art; in other words, variation, exploration and, taken to
the limit, violation, transgression of culture.
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Carles Feixa
Since 1988 he has taught Urban Anthropology and Youth Anthropology and History
at the Universitat de Lleida. He has specialised in the anthropological study of youth
cultures, undertaking field research in Catalonia and Mexico. He has also been
visiting researcher at CIESAS in Mexico and at the universities of Paris, California in
Berkeley and Rome. He forms part of the editorial board of the journals Nueva
Antropología (Mexico) and Nómadas (Colombia). He is also a member of the
Advisory Council of the Catalan Youth Observatory and coordinator for Hispanic
communities at the Youth Sociology Research Committee of the International
Sociological Association.

Culturas juveniles en España (1960-2004). Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura.
Instituto de la Juventud, 2004. 233 p.

Jóvenes sin tregua : culturas y políticas de la violencia / Francisco Ferrándiz,
Carles Feixa (eds.). Madrid : Anthropos, 2005. 237 p.

De jóvenes, bandas y tribus. Barcelona : Editorial Ariel, 2006. 347 p.

«Jóvenes sin tregua» En: Jóvenes sin tregua : culturas y políticas de la
violencia. Barcelona : Anthropos, 2005. p. 209-234

«Del fantasma de las bandas a la realidad de los jóvenes» En: Cuadernos de
pedagogía, Nº 359, 2006, pags. 24-27
Next we present a fragment of the lecture Latin youths in Barcelona: futures
(im)perfect presented in the Jornadas Americat XXI, «Latin American Youth in
Catalonia» celebrated on 8 June 2006 in the History Museum of Catalonia and
organized by the Casa Amèrica Catalunya. The text is based on an investigation
developed last year from a Barcelona City Council request and directed by Professor
Feixa and which will be published soon under the title Latin youth in Barcelona.
Public Space and Urban Culture. To find the complete conference, go to the
following link:
http://www.anthropos-editorial.com/noticias/46_Jovenes.pdf
(…) In November 2005, the result of the research [Latin Youths in Barcelona. Public
Space and Urban Culture] was publicly presented at the Barcelona Contemporary
Culture Centre, in the seminar «Latin Youths: Public Space and Urban Culture»
(Barcelona City Council – Consortium of Childhood and the Urban World), which
took place over three sessions and had great impact. Both Latin Kings and Ñetas
were invited to the seminar, as we understood that we could not talk about them
without them. In the weeks following the seminar, Kings and Ñetas began to
debate the proposal to be legalized as youth associations, with our mediation and
the support of some Catalan institutions (such as Barcelona City Council, the Youth
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Council and the Human Rights Institute). The implications of this legalization, still
inconclusive, can be diverse, and the process is not free of tensions, both within the
groups and in Catalan society. Today, the conjunction of all the factors mentioned
in relation with the dynamic of the organizations themselves and the approaches of
some social agents, allows us to start rethinking the «gangs» as youth organizations
linked to Latin culture. In the discourse and in the actions of the Latin Kings
(Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation) and Ñetas (Asociación Ñeta) of Barcelona
we can see examples of it: «The integration of the Latin youth in Spain has been
and will be a difficult struggle as long as there is discrimination on the part of
Spanish society and media, and because of the lack of collaboration of many youths
who isolate themselves and refuse to change with the help and collaboration of
everyone in general. We Latin youths want and need you to value our cultures and
help us to integrate into society, with confidence and not marking out the Latin
youth as part of a criminal gang.»1
This statement is complemented by the proposals expressed by the organization in
relation to access to education, professionalization of youths and dignified living
conditions, and with the activities developed to this end: sports and leisure
activities, internal education, contact with different interlocutors of the host
community… Neither must we forget the weight in this process of the reduction of
fights and criminal acts linked to the organizations, which means a reduction in
sensationalist news and facilitates the involvement of the social interlocutors. The
press and television, which until the seminar referred to the groups in stigmatizing
terms, are beginning to devote space to this unusual process. Despite critical
opinions of other police bodies and of social services and criminal law professionals,
the Ministry for Domestic Affairs is driving a reform of the «Ley de Responsabilidad
Penal del Menor» (Criminal Responsibility of Minors Act), which for the first time
penalizes membership of youth gangs (although the law does not explicitly express
this, as it would be unconstitutional, it is clear that it is thinking only of the «Latin
gangs» – as if the youths of other social sectors do not form groups or commit
crimes). If the reform goes ahead as planned, it is probable that it will have the
opposite effects to those sought. As has already happened in the United States, El
Salvador, Mexico and Ecuador, the criminalization of gangs not only fails to
eliminate them but makes them into something endemic and strengthens the
authentic gangs (often led by adults and with obscure connections with power).
At the same time, the declarations of other social agents who have witnessed this
process show the resistance provoked by the possibility of a change of perspective.
In a work session with professionals undertaken in the framework of the
aforementioned seminar, different experts expressed their deep concern over the
conviction that «it is dangerous to legitimize these groups». This affirmation buries
the fears raised by the appearance of organizations since the beginning, but also
shows how profoundly rooted this «criminal-pathological» option is in the principles
that govern the social intervention of the public agents. And, indeed, it is
dangerous to legitimize these groups, because not legitimizing them and keeping
them on the margins of the socially acceptable offers a set of advantages to the
1
Taken from the paper «Cultures, Latino Youths and their problems» by a spokeswoman of «Almighty
Latin King and Queen Nation» presented at the Seminar «Latino Youths: Public Space and Urban
Culture» (Barcelona Town Council – CIIMU). Barcelona, 21 November 2005
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host society. In the first place, it allows it to maintain the fiction of the «other»
emigrant youth, bearer of a set of stigmas and shortcomings removed from those
of «our» native youths. The classification often added to the «Latin gangs» is that of
«imported», so that the deficiencies of the social and educational policies
(neighbourhoods with serious problems of marginalization, precarious insertion into
the workforce of the youth population, difficulties in the processes of emancipation
and access to housing, etc.) are blurred when these same deficiencies are
attributed to a concrete and distant group. This same fiction is maintained in
reference to the models of participation, assuming that there is a «respectable»
youth who accepts adult, participatory and, in this case, local logics, in
contraposition to the «other» youths who demand a rethinking of the rules of
participation. Moreover, the possibility of legitimising these groups means making
visible their complaints about the position that the host society offers to the
immigrated youths: labour conditions strongly marked by precarious work, or the
status of «illegal» in terms of access to employment and citizenship, among other
practices of exclusion.
The process of legalization initiated, with all its implications, is also not free of
tensions within the youth organizations themselves. The preference for invisibility,
or the advantages that this means in an environment that does not understand,
mistrust towards the social agents, or the conflicts between their different
tendencies, bring internal debates in which the idea of fear emerges again. Perhaps
legitimizing the host society also seems «dangerous» to Latin youths…
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Enrique Gil Calvo
Sociologist and lecturer of Sociology in the Universidad Complutense of Madrid
(Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología). He has published numerous books and
essays in magazines such as Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Revista de Occidente,
Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas or Revista de Juventud. He
collaborates in the magazine Claves de Razón Práctica and he is a columnist in the
newspaper El País.

«Los intereses culturales y la pasión por la cultura» En: Claves de la razón
práctica, Nº 93, 1999, pags. 19-25

«El destino del lector» En: La educación lectora : encuentro iberoamericano,
Madrid : Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2001, p. 13-26

«La lidia de Leviatán : ideología española, cultura pública y ciudadanía» En:
El Estado y los ciudadanos / coord. por Antonio Morales Moya, Madrid :
Sociedad Estatal España Nuevo Milenio, 2001, p. 205-220

Los depredadores audiovisuales : juventud urbana y cultura de masas.
Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) : Minor Network, 2001. 142 p.

El miedo es el mensaje : riesgo, incertidumbre y medios de comunicación.
Madrid : Alianza Editorial, 2003. 320 p.

«Retos de futuro para el estado de bienestar». En: Administración pública y
estado de bienestar / coord. por Manuel Herrera Gómez, Antonio Trinidad
Requena, Madrid : Civitas, 2004, p. 53-72
Next we present a fragment of the article The Eclipse of Social Capital published
in Claves de la razón práctica, Nº 164, 2006, p. 42-49
The concept of social capital is so attractive and at the same time so polysemic that
it is contradictory and equivocal. In principle, it refers to the association networks
that link citizens with public affairs. Conceiving it as a form of capital implies that it
is a resource able to satisfy private interests, but what is classified as social also
implies that it serves the general interest, or at least that it satisfies common
interests. For that reason, it is most common to identify it with free participation in
voluntary associations that articulate the so-called civil society. And in accordance
with what we could call Tocqueville’s theorem, it is assumed that the more
association fervour there is that invigorates democracies, the more satisfied the
public interest will be. Which leads us to think that social capital is the foundation of
participatory democracy.
However, the clientelistic or mafia networks can also be considered as a social
fabric of mutual aid and, of course, they do not constitute a motor of civil
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participation but, rather, a brake that represses it and makes it impossible,
generating an uncivil social cancer. For that reason, as happens with cholesterol, a
«good» social capital (constructive, beneficial) is distinguished in contrast to another
«bad» (negative, counter-productive) social capital. This prevents simply
establishing an equation between social capital and civic participation, as if both
magnitudes were directly proportional (more of one means more of the other and
vice versa), because things are more complex. (…)
The dimensions of social capital
As Herreros and de Francisco indicate, the generalization of the concept of «social
capital» is due to the influence of Robert Putnam, who has contributed to the
extension of its use. But as this same author points out, in fact its origin at least
goes back to Viscount Alexis de Tocqueville who, after his celebrated journey of
1831 to the USA, believed he had found the essence of democracy in the
association frenzy of the Americans. Since then there has been a tendency to
identify the solidity and prosperity of a country with the depth and density of its
association fabric (articulated fabric of free and voluntary associations), sometimes
also called the «third sector», for being the mediator between governors and
governed and being independent of both the market (profit-making association
relations) and the state (the obligatory association par excellence). This is why it is
considered that both economic prosperity and the quality of democracy depend on
the frequency and variety of non-profit making association relations (social, cultural
or civic) in which the citizens of a country freely and voluntarily participate.(…)
Putnam himself has always insisted on trust as a differentiating criterion of social
capital, which can be defined as mutual relations of generalized trust. And the other
way round, the mafias (negative social capital) are both the cause and effect of the
relations of public mistrust: the effect because they are a reactive mechanism of
protection and defence against mistrust, and the cause because their very
existence is a generator of mistrust. (…)
From here two different kinds of citizen trust must be recognised. When citizens
have great trust in each other they tend to associate, taking on mutual relations of
association reciprocity. This we can call horizontal social capital or civil social capital
(logically referring to the concept of «civil society» which is similar), as it links
citizens to each other symmetrically and equally. But in addition to this horizontal
trust between fellow citizens, there must also be another kind of vertical trust that
reciprocally links citizens with their authorities. This other asymmetrical dimension
of public trust can be called vertical social capital or civic social capital (in reference
to the concept of civic culture proposed by Almond and Verba), which favours
citizen participation. (…)
Therefore, combining the distinct possibilities of relative predominance of both
forms of social capital, we obtain four different models. First, the Nordic, typical of
Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which resents high levels of both civic capital and
civil capital. Then two opposed models, which exhibit high levels of one kind of
social capital and low levels of the other. This is what happens with the liberal or
Anglo-Saxon model, typical of North America and the United Kingdom, which is rich
in civil capital and poor in civic capital. But against this we have the opposed
bureaucratic, Jacobin or Rhenish model, typical of France or Germany, rich in civic
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capital and poor in civil capital. And, finally, there is the Latin-Mediterranean model,
typical of Italy and Spain, which presents low levels of both civic capital and civil
capital.
To summarise, we can understand social capital as a space of public trust which can
be broken down into two dimensions or axes of coordinates: the horizontal axis of
civil capital, consistent in relations of mutual trust that emerge from the
symmetrical links established between the citizens; and, perpendicularly, the
vertical axis of civic capital, consistent in the relations of reciprocal trust derived
from the asymmetrical links established between the authorities and the citizens.
Therefore, given this divergence between the peer symmetry of civil capital and the
disparate asymmetry of civic capital, although both dimensions of social capital are
close, they also present, however, great relative autonomy, which means that each
one of them differentially presents their own specific problems and risks.
Problems of civil capital
Let us start with the risks that threaten horizontal civil capital. The main one is that
of its fracture into fragmentary particularities (just as condemned by Ortega y
Gasset in his España invertebrada), which destroys trust in others, generates a
climate of generalized suspicion and distrust and encourages citizens to enclose
themselves in closed groups of sectarian interest or subject themselves to the
dispossessing protection of clientelistic networks or of notable despots. This is why
it has been possible to speak, as I have mentioned before, of two forms of social
capital, one positive or constructive, a generator of mutual trust (stamp clubs,
popular cultural centres, societies of friends of the country), and another perverse
and counterproductive, destructive of public trust and generator of mutual distrust
(secret societies, destructive sects, terrorist networks).
(...) But in defence of their partisan interests, these networks can come up against
one another in open conflicts of rights or identities which destroy the public interest
creating a serious social fracture. It is the unfortunate experience of our own
country, whose social capital is fractured by the particularistic sectarianism that
Ortega condemned. (…)
But in addition to the disintegrating particularism and organised criminality, another
serious problem that threatens social capital is its decline into xenophobia and
endogamy. This reveals the dual nature of social capital, which, like the god Janus,
always shows two faces, a cohesive inwards and another xenophobic outwards. This
explains that, from the point of view of trust or mistrust of others, many
association networks can be at the same time as positive as they are negative. The
more trust there is of our own, the more distrust there is of the others. This is what
happens with the football clubs, whose capacity for generating social cohesion is
constructive inwardly and destructive outwardly, as they sometimes sow
xenophobic hatred and unleash explosions of violence, as happens with the Italian
calcio and the sadly famous British hooliganism. From this evidence comes what we
can understand as the most insidious latent risk of all, which is that of declining into
ethnocentrism and endogamy as a perverse reduction to the absurd of social
capital.(…)
(…) However, in this same sense, horizontal social capital is based on exchange not
only of married couples (exogamy) but in general of all kinds of goods and services.
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And placing endogamic or ethnocentric barriers when exchanging between groups is
the worst way of reducing, devaluing or annulling reserves of social capital.
It is true that ethnocentrism cannot be completely avoided, as relations of
exchange (matrimonial, economic, social or cultural) are greatly facilitated when
they are proposed between culturally homogeneous segmentary groups. This is why
the most traditional or pre-modern community fabric tends to be enclosed within
itself through ethnocentric and endogamic barriers, aimed at excluding any possible
exchange with strangers. (…)
In this sense, the essential variable is the education level, as the more schooled a
social group is, the greater will be its capacity to maintain relations of exchange
with strangers. And as we ascend the social ladder we find ourselves with those
university training sectors which are already capable of maintaining cosmopolitan
relations with strangers placed at a great social distance: people of another cultural
identity, other ethnic roots, other professional training, another political affiliation
or other religious beliefs. And in this cosmopolitan social fabric, endogamy hardly
exists, as it is already substituted by a generalized exogamy. Unfortunately, these
sectors are still in a minority, as the majority of citizens lack sufficient intercultural
experience, and therefore still depend on their endogamic preference as an
acquired habit.
Problems of civic capital
In terms of vertical civic capital, the main risk posed is the opening of an
insuperable abyss between the authorities and the citizens, in such a way that the
latter completely misunderstand public affairs that so directly concerns them. One
can only talk of an authentically participatory civic culture when citizens assume coresponsibility for the good running of collective affairs that concern them, watching
and controlling the action of the authorities but also giving them their sincere
disinterested support as far as possible. The ideal model is of course that of
Athenian democracy or the primitive Roman republic, where all citizens felt called to
fulfil their duty to lend their services to the city, actively participating in the
collective debate of the agora or the forum. (…) But in our representative
democracies citizenship tends to be reduced to electoral participation, although
there is generalized absenteeism, while any responsibility is delegated to some
increasingly more distant and technocratic authorities that tend to escape citizen
control.
In this sense, the greatest danger of absenteeism has two extreme manifestations
which feed back into each other until forming an authentic vicious circle. On the one
hand, the authorities tend to fall into bureaucratic authoritarianism that distances
the citizen in order to treat them from on high as a subject deprived of rights.(…)
The decline of social capital
According to authors such as Robert Putnam or Francis Fukuyama, reserves of
social capital began to decline throughout the West from the 1960s, when they had
reached what they understood as the historical high point. It is what has been
called the decline of social capital: a supposed regressive trend in the relations of
mutual trust between citizens (civil capital) and between these and the authorities
(civic capital). It should be noted, above all, that this supposed trend is highly
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disputed, as there does not seem to have been any methodological agreement
about how to measure the social capital reserves held by a society. (…)
Something similar happens with the so-called «globalization», which is eroding both
the social capital and citizen participation. In terms of the latter, civism tends to
decline because citizens feel increasingly more dispossessed of their public
responsibility.(…)
But the effects of globalization on social capital do not come down to the erosion of
civic or participatory capital. In addition to this, the civil association fabric is also
being de-structured by the impact of neo-liberal globalization, whose effects on
social capital of the «civil» or horizontal kind are ambivalent. On the one hand, the
flexible employment being created in the emerging sectors of the new intensive
services in communication technologies is multiplying the frequency, density and
mobility of social interactions: above all, of the virtual interactions connected in a
network, as Manuel Castells notes. (…)
And in generating social de-structuring, globalization also produces another
perverse added effect, as is impeding the reproduction of family social capital. In
industrial society, the young inherited the social capital of their families of origin,
who helped them to emancipate themselves and form families after acquiring an
established position in the social structure. But in post-industrial society this is
increasingly more difficult. (…)
But probably the most severe fracture social capital is suffering in both dimensions,
civil and civic, is that caused by the impact of the multicultural conflict, also
ultimately derived from globalization. The migratory flows are transforming and
distorting the ethnic and cultural composition of the peoples who inhabit the most
developed countries, especially affecting the big cities and urban concentrations
spread over the five continents. And, in doing so, they are fracturing and perhaps
ruining the reserves of social capital held by these peoples, deposited over time.
But the impact of multiculturalism on social capital is at least triple.
First appears the question of citizen security, put in danger by the increase as much
of delinquency and criminality as of terrorism, all elements that are more or less
indirectly related to certain communities of immigrants or ethnic or cultural
minorities. (…)
Secondly, there is the competition for access to public services: social education,
health, housing, social services… As is logical, most of the immigrants and the
members of the minorities are demanders of public services. And as soon as their
right to benefits is recognized, they start competing with the local users of services
that get too overcrowded themselves, being incapable of taking care of such a
conflicting increase in the demand for social protection.(…)
And, finally, the worst effect of the multicultural impact emerges, which is the
fragmentation of social capital. As I mentioned before, horizontal social capital is
based on the relations of reciprocal trust established between citizens. But the
arrival in the same urban niche of family networks of different ethnic origins
threatens to fracture and fragment pre-existing networks of trust, quartering them
as if they were wedges of different woods introduced between their fibres. For this
reason, when this happens, the previous trust soon becomes new mistrust, just as
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a bad apple can ruin the whole basket. And once public mistrust has become
rooted, social capital is ruined, substituted by fear, uncertainty, xenophobia and
social panic.
The great challenge of social capital
Can immigrants and multicultural minorities be integrated? This is the great
challenge facing social capital. The optimists, such as the Canadian philosophers
who defend the right to recognition of collective multicultural identities (Taylor,
Kymlicka), sustain that the will of the citizens and authorities is sufficient for
minorities and immigrants to integrate completely in our societies without great
rejections. But the pessimists like Sartori sustain that this is not so: it is impossible
to integrate all these ethnic groups whose signs of collective identity are
incompatible with ours, as happens with Muslims. Who is right? Sartori, probably,
although his most provocative proposals are politically incorrect.
Let us look at what happened in Anglo-Saxon democracies (the USA, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand), which since their foundation have set themselves up
as host societies of immigrants. As Glazer and Huntington point out, in North
America cultural assimilation has been achieved with relative success in one or two
generations of almost all immigrants. But there are two or three notable
exceptions. The first exception is that of the aborigine or indigenous natives, that
have not managed to assimilate. The second exception, limited to the USA, is that
of African Americans (…)
Meanwhile, what happens in Europe? Our indigenous and black peoples have
always been the Jews and Gypsies, who have successfully resisted being
assimilated by European racism, remaining enclosed in their endogamic ghettos.
But for some years Muslims (the Turks in Germany, Pakistanis in the United
Kingdom, Algerians in France, Moroccans in Spain) have been added, who also
successfully resist being integrated by European ethnocentrism through endogamic
enclosure of their community networks of kinship.(…)
How can we confront this problem that seems to be without solution? John Gray
has proposed accepting the impossibility of fully resolving it. The multicultural
conflict is inevitable and one must start by becoming accustomed to it. Simply, the
North Africans and Subsaharawians are within their right, like any other ethnicity or
dissident group (Jews, Gypsies, etc.), to resist being integrated through official
assimilationism.(…)
What is to be done? John Gray proposes reaching a modus vivendi limited to
seeking the conversion of the open conflict into peaceful coexistence. In place of
confrontation with aggressive hostility, let us learn to live in peaceful harmony.(…)
In conclusion, for us to confront the fracture of social capital, open because of the
multicultural impact, mediating institutions must be created which build bridges
that close the fissures open in the civil fabric of the social capital, in such a way
that multicultural citizens can cross them one way or the other. What kind of
mediating institutions must be considered? Five different yet simultaneous and
complementary types can be distinguished, to make up what we could well call the
integrating pentagon.
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First of all are the public institutions themselves, which as well as providing their
services as such can also have a mediating function: civic centres, schools, medical
centres, courts, social services. Next are the private institutions, which on their own
initiative could carry out functions of intermediation: work, business (remember
their recent role in the regularization of immigrant workers), professional services,
networks of companionship and friendship... or exogamy itself, as a free agreement
between private parties. Also contributing actively or passively are the trading
institutions which bring together citizens from different identities: leisure,
consumption, housing, tourism, transport... In terms of the leisure institutions
(sport, music, cinema, fashion and other public performances), their role seems
more relevant as their power of appeal crosses cultural barriers with great ease
(one only has to think of the ritual of football, the only enthusiastic fervour common
to Christians and Muslims). And, finally, we have the civic institutions properly
speaking (parties, unions, foundations, social movements, non-governmental
organizations...), specifically charged with training citizens in the difficult art of
aggregating and articulating potentially opposed and contradictory interests and
identities.
But when I speak of an integrating pentagon, I am thinking of multilateral and
pluralist institutions that are capable of acting with a polyvalent logic, at the same
time public, private, commercial, leisure and civic. Such as the public libraries, for
example, in whose ambit intercultural readers’ groups can be created so that they
act as civic centres (…)
This is, in short, the best way of regenerating and revaluing social capital: that of
teaching citizens to love their city, which is the only way of getting them to learn to
love their fellow citizens. And to do so both with platonic love, focused on urban
and festive symbols that identify their city, and with carnal and erotic love, desirous
of making citizen exogamy the most fertile promise of mutual respect and collective
coexistence. It is what could be called the «Romeo and Juliet factor», as the only
way of breaking the exogamic taboo that impedes crossing the xenophobic barrier
of ethnic segregation. After all, the remote origin of social capital is in the taboo of
incest, which prescribes the matrimonial exchange of sons-in-law with daughtersin-law. For this reason, one can think that the current eclipse of social capital will
only be overcome when the exogamy of the intercultural crossover is generalized.
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Jon Hawkes
He is an independent advisor specialising in cultural issues. He has been Director of
Community Music Victoria since early 2001. He was the Director of the Australian
Centre of the International Theatre Institute for eight years (1991-1998), Director
of the Community Arts Board of the Australia Council (1982-1987) and founding
member of Circus Oz and the Australian Performing Group.
His reference work:

The Fourth pillar of sustainability : Culture's essential role in public planning.
Melbourne : Common Ground : Cultural Development Network, 2001. 69 p.
Next the introduction of his work is offered:
There is a growing recognition among those who influence the way our society
manages itself that economic benchmarks alone are an insufficient framework upon
which to evaluate progress or to plan for the future. This awareness has led to the
development (and rediscovery) of a wide range of alternative ways of viewing and
analysing the performance of a society. All these new frameworks are based on a
commitment to expanding the consciousness of what makes for a society that
reflects and fulfils the aspirations of its citizens.
This paper will demonstrate that the concept of culture is an invaluable
tool that has been largely ignored in these attempts to reconfigure the
ways that governments plan the future and evaluate the past.
When culture is taken to denote the social production and transmission of values
and meaning2 and it is recognised that the expression of social purpose and
aspiration is at the heart of the public planning process3, then the connection
between culture and planning becomes clearer. So also does the potential for the
use of culture as a core element in the mechanisms that facilitate effective public
planning.
The introduction of the concept of culture into the theoretical and operational
frameworks of public affairs has an extraordinary range of potential benefits;
for example:
-
it formally identifies the aspirations and values of communities as being at
the foundation of society;
-
it puts a name to the profound undercurrent that has been recognised as
influential in many (possibly most) of the developing paradigms: virtually all
the revisionist planning templates are surrounded with the rhetoric of
consultation, interaction, community initiative – this recognition that
democracy requires that the active voices of communities be heard and
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accorded influence is a cultural phenomenon and can most readily be
understood and dealt with from a cultural perspective;
-
it brings clarity to the rather fuzzy concepts that have consistently impeded
the practical application of planning theories: ‘culture’ gives a name to the
processes we use to discuss our futures, evaluate our pasts, and act in the
present;
-
it brings together a range of concepts and issues that have, thus far,
developed in parallel: wellbeing, cohesion, capacity, engagement, belonging,
distinctiveness are all ideas that are being used in the current planning
debates without any significant success in developing an intellectual or
operationally functional model that integrates them. The concept of culture
provides the intellectual tools with which a more effective structure can be
built;
-
it provides an improved theoretical model: one that has the capacity to
integrate the full range of social relations and organisations within a
framework that is comprehensive, accessible, flexible and standardisable;
-
it makes it easier to clarify strategic objectives and implement strategic
operations: because the concept of culture encompasses the means through
which communities express their values, it makes it easier to conceive of
ways of integrating public expression into planning processes;
-
it improves the integration of public program management4: because the
concept of culture encompasses all stages of the process, from the
articulation of ideas through to their practical manifestation in the real
world, it creates a context in which cultural priorities can be addressed, in a
focussed way, throughout the public cycle – policy development, planning,
implementation, evaluation.
In demonstrating how the concept of culture can be most effectively applied within
the context of public planning, this paper will argue that:
-
governments’ useage and understanding of culture in their planning, service
delivery and evaluation activities have been limited and counterproductive;
-
carefully planned cultural action is essential for the achievement of
sustainabilty and wellbeing;
-
the engines of cultural production would operate most effectively through a
singular and co-ordinated setting within government management
structures;
-
the development of a cultural framework through which all public planning
can be evaluated is an essential step;
-
active community participation in arts practice is an essential component of
a healthy and sustainable society.
The paper is structured to reflect the three aspects of culture described in the first
section below:
- The meaning of culture: a useful and useable description of culture is
proposed; everyday useage of the term is examined; the growing awareness
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of the importance of social values being expressed and applied is noted; the
ways that governments have dealt with culture is explored.
-
The application of culture: the developing range of paradigms for
examining society and assessing its performance are examined. The role
that culture plays in each is identified.
-
The results of culture: ways that a cultural perspective may be practically
applied to the planning process are suggested and examined.
The main conclusion of this paper is that the new governance paradigms
and views of what constitutes a healthy and sustainable society would be
more effective if cultural vitality were to be included as one of the basic
requirements, main conceptual tenets and overriding evaluation streams.
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Jaime Lerner
He is an architect and urban planner with a long experience in the field of urban
planning and development, as well as in the political sphere. President of the Unión
Internacional de Arquitectos UIA in the 2002-2005 period. He was one of the
founders of the Instituto del Planeamiento Urbano de la Ciudad de Curitiba and he
participated in the development of its Director Plan. He has been Mayor of Curitiba
three times and Governor of the Paraná province twice. With the work of so many
years, he has turned his town into a national and international reference of urban
sustainability, for the development of its planning, transport, environment and
social programmes.
His recent work:

Acupuntura urbana. Barcelona : Institut d'Arquitectura Avançada de
Catalunya, 2005. 111 p.
In his website a section «Idéias» can be found, in which Lerner presents the force
ideas for an urban transformation model. Next these ideas are reproduced.
http://www.jaimelerner.com/
Original language:portuguese
Strategic view
Any city is an agent of transformation.
(…)
Any city, from the smallest to the largest, is an agent of transformation and the
example of one can reach out to its neighbours, like a domino effect, thus changing
the country. For this to become concrete, local power needs to be strengthened but
it is equally crucial that the managers of cities are the managers of change.
The city of today needs to complete an integration of functions whereby housing,
work and leisure are as closely related as in the city of yesterday. (…)
Have things happen
The present is ours and so is the responsibility to open up ways, looking not for the
distant ideal but for the possible now.
The seed of any big transformation lies in a small transformation – a little change
may be the beginning of a big one.
A necessary urban policy is the one able to induce transformations that happen
now, not those taking twenty years. (…)
(…) The present is ours and so is the responsibility to open up ways, looking not for
the distant ideal but for the possible now.
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Having things happen has to be a permanent goal of the decision-makers in cities.
It is therefore necessary to accept the simple, to turn the simple into the basis for
the future.
A clear view of the future objective is the best guide to present action.
(…)
Planning needs to be oriented towards people, not towards centralised bureaucratic
structures. It is necessary to decentralise, to simplify decisions, resources,
initiatives. It is necessary to have things happen. Now.
Shared cause
Fulfilling a collective dream, as a city is, requires creating a collective will, a shared
cause.
There is no problem that cannot be solved in a city because all problems have an
equation of shared responsibility.
Creating a collective will, a shared cause is the final and initial stage of any really
important action. (…)
Cities, as monuments do, have to represent this shared cause. Any city, whether
large or small, can be improved if its decision-makers are able to transform every
problem and every potential into a cause shared by the whole community.
Managing a city is therefore, above all, fulfilling the collective dream. However, this
requires a strategic view of cities.
(…)
A crucial point that allows a shared cause to happen is respect. A country does not
change with economic measures only. Economic measures are good but they need
support by the whole population. It is clear that there is some support because
people are consuming more and stability works for most of the population. Yet
there is still no good education, good healthcare, good transport for all, that is,
people do not feel respected in their everyday lives and do not therefore take their
share in responsibility.
This is the same rationale taken for a city: a shared cause stems from something
called respect. If you are respected you take your share in responsibility, you
become part of that shared responsibility that is not government, private initiative
and associations only but the citizen.
(…)
Place of meeting
Everything happens in a city as it is the place of meeting, the stage of urban living.
If I was asked today to summarise the function of cities in a single word, I would
say: it is meeting. The city is the place of meeting. A meeting that is to be
promoted in any activity of urban life. These activities have to be tightly linked with
each other and never be separated, whether in new or in already settled cities.
(…)
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Everything happens in a city as it is the place of meeting, of the great feast of
urban living. (…) The stage is able to foster the integration of the informal with the
formal sector.
(…)
The best way of integrating the informal city (shantytown, street sellers, abandoned
minors) with the formal one is through children—a slow process with long-term
results—and through increased exchange between high-income and low-income
population.
This can be done not only by administering space but first and foremost by
administering time. (…)
It is necessary to rationalise use by spreading it over time: street for parking,
street for a market, street for cultural animation, axis to distribute goods. Changing
stages are able to rebuild the lost picture and bring the past back to the street,
thus fostering animation. The streets of a big city need to be ready to accomplish
different functions 24 hours a day. No city in the world can afford to leave empty
for so many hours its best equipped areas.
(…)
The city has to be prepared as an open structure. A living organism that offers
space, living together, opportunities for everyone. And the street is the natural
stage for exchanging goods and services.
The society is the city. And the city is the street. Street in the sense of synthesis of
the city, street as the integration of functions. Street that is the soul of every
neighbourhood, the perfect stage for a living and working structure. The way at
which all cities start can also become the path of their future.
City and future
All cities are basically the same. The difference of the city of the future will lie in its
ability to reconcile itself with nature and with its inhabitants.
(…) The city of today is not much different from what it used to be 300 years ago,
perhaps because political and legal instruments usually progress at a slower pace
than technology.
There is therefore no reason to believe that within 20 or 30 years cities will be very
different from today.
What is going to make cities different is basically their ability to reconcile
themselves with nature and with their inhabitants.
The great revolution will be the reduction in scale of the employers. The reason is
the trend towards tertiarisation, the quick recycling of employment. This can be
observed with the self-employed and companies.
We need to think ever stronger of envisaging life and work altogether. (…)
If you are to invest in transport, in sanitation, you need to know where you are
going to. It is planning what helps and can directly lead to growth in the city.
A very doubtful contribution to contemporary urban planning has been the wrong
interpretation of the Athens Charter, which merely analysed the city but did not set
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up any rules. It stated that in the city there are the functions of living, working,
moving and recreating. Some interpreted it as if all this needed to be separated.
And there happened the tragedy. I repeat: there is no better invention ever than a
traditional street.
Identity and belonging
Belonging is the feeling of being part of the city, of identifying oneself with it.
The feeling of identity and belonging is crucial within a city.
In its original sense, belonging is much more than participation. Participation is
geared towards something political, a claim. Belonging is the feeling of being part,
of being a part of the city. Identity allows to deepen much more into citizenship
than through simple claims.
Rather than an ability, citizens have a vital need to create their own mental maps,
recalling facades, light rays, geographic landmarks, colours. They are signs of
identity with space, they are scenic frameworks of reference.
(…)
There was only one single public park in Curitiba in 1971, the Passeio Público,
dating from 1886. The city finished the 20th century and entered the third
millennium with a network of 28 municipal public parks and forests. The origin of
this boom was a historic decision that gave priority to preserving large areas over
allotting them in quest of momentary higher tax revenue. The parks bring together
sanitation and cultural leisure, each having its own characterisation.
Among them are, for instance, ethnic memorials talking about the plurality of the
formation of humankind, from the first Portuguese settlers to immigrants arrived by
the thousands in the 19th century, especially Germans, Poles, Italians and
Ukrainians.
The city follows the path and memory. It follows the path of transport. The path
and memory. Any city. Fostering the growth of this city through transport is
anchoring the future in memory, in identity, it is to be on the right track.
Need and potentiality
Thinking of an already settled city is like looking for its hidden drawing. It is like
erasing everything that disturbs on an old drawing.
(…)
The city means much more than a mere integration of functions. It means a
settling. This settling refers to the way of life and traditional and cultural values.
The new city needs to settle. This time for settling will allow necessary adaptation.
(…)
When dealing with urban problems it is important to act on both the cause and the
effect. Many understand that taking care of cities is good for nothing as long as
there is no solution to the causes stimulating ever more the concentration of large
cities. However, as long as the causes are not solved and the effects are still felt in
the cities something will have to be done during this transition. And quickly.
(…)
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A city can only be solved from the moment it knows what it wants, that is, from the
moment its decision-makers know what is crucial for its future. Everything is
important, but what is crucial?
Important is the problem of any person but crucial is that of a great number.
Important is the pothole or the sewer in front of a citizen’s house but crucial is
dealing with the problem of transport in a city.
Important is the access to a certain neighbourhood, crucial is the street system that
basically represents the skeleton of what the city wants to be.
Important is the square in a certain place but crucial is the considerable increase of
the percentage of green areas in the city.
Important is the aid to certain needful groups and organisations but crucial is
promoting a permanent job structure.
Let us not become confused with scale, since sometimes it is important to have
10,000 people at an opening but crucial is to gather 200 people at a social event.
Important is the plan, crucial is planning, that is people taking care of the city.
Important is the long term, crucial is now.
(…)
The century of cities
Central power directs, local power is the only able to give quick response.
The only power in the country able to give quick response is the local. Therefore the
21st century will be the century of cities. Whether big or small, each one will be an
agent of transformation.
(…)
The rediscovery of cities started crystallising towards the end of the second
millennium. Even in less developed countries the population is becoming urban. A
strategic view of cities is thus crucial, even as a development factor of countries.
A more generous view of the potential of cities means a more optimistic view of
humans.
Why are cities the response to the social agenda? An economic measure gathers
support for a certain time, but if the population does not share responsibility,
stability will be only one side of the problem within short time: people will ask for
more. In fact, countries will progress as their cities do.
Central power will never be able to spearhead care related to housing, health,
education or children. Central power directs. It would need to review directives in
depth and care for their fulfilment. My conception of central power is that it never
should deal with local problems.
Central power has to deal with the big national issues: technology, distribution of
the population over the geographic space, use of natural resources. Economic policy
formulas sometimes forget that development has a space base. What exists are
human settlements and their activities. (…)
It is therefore instrumental that each big city of the world engages with a way of
growing, a view of management, the stimuli for meeting between people, a way of
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aggregating and integrating the informal city, appropriate technologies and the
structure of the future.
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Eduard Miralles
He was Director of the Cultural Studies and Resources Centre of Barcelona
Provincial Council (1996-204). He has managed the biennial meetings Interacció
from 1996 to 2002. At present he is consultant of cultural networks and
international relationships of Barcelona Provincial Council, with specific
responsibilities in the Interlocal network of Spanish-American cities for the culture
and Sigma, of intermediate European administrations for culture and proximity.
He has collaborated as educator with multiple educational institutions, from 1992 to
1994 he was Vice-president of the European Net of Training Centres for Cultural
Administrators and member of the pursuit group of cultural administrators
formation of the European Council. Since the beginning of 2005 he coordinates the
technical group about information systems, indicators and assessment of the
culture committee of the Federación Española de Municipios y Provincias.

«Aproximaciones a la proximidad : tipología y trayectorias de los
equipamientos en Europa y en España». / coautora Montserrat Saboya. En :
1as Jornadas sobre Centros Cívicos y Servicios de Proximidad, VitoriaGasteiz, 2000. Vitoria : Xabide, 2000, p. 27-46
«Más promesas y menos obras … : por unas políticas culturales
performativas». En: Periférica : revista para el análisis de la cultura y el
territorio, núm. 2, diciembre 2001, p. 9-22
«Estrategias para la diversidad : ocho reflexiones sobre el diseño y la
gestión de proyectos interculturales locales y regionales». En: Políticas para
la interculturalidad, 2004. p. 9-12
«Elements de reflexió sobre la cultura, el territori I la proximitat»
[Document de treball]. Dins: Nous accents 2006 : Pla estratègic de cultura
de Barcelona. Barcelona : Icub, 2006. 4 p.
http://www.bcn.es/plaestrategicdecultura/pdf/Taula_Proximitat_mirada.pdf
Next we offer the lecture For an Organized Cultural Citizenship presented at the
conference «Active citizens – local cultures – European politics. Guide to civic
participation in cultural policy-making for European cities», organized by the
European Cultural Foundation, Interarts, SEE TV Exchanges, Ecumest in Barcelona
on 22 September 2006:
Original language:catalan
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Four reflections on the context
«Please touch» as a new guiding principle for relations between the state
and society
Broadly speaking, and beyond the strict field of culture, the state of relations
between what we know as «administered society» and what we know as «organised
society» is not in fact very healthy. Despite the fundamental role that the
association movement has in the consolidation of democratic systems, and
precisely because of this, the dialogue between the sphere of the administration of
the state (even at a regional, provincial or local scale) and the sphere of
organisation of society has been traditionally based on a theoretical and superficial
respect – to prevent themselves from mutually and reciprocally «touching» each
other as a guarantee of survival – which conceals at least two structural illnesses
which should be cured urgently: the insufficiency of formal legitimising mechanisms
of democratic representation and the corporate temptation of some fossilized
associations, with a decreasing social mass and excessive levels of dispersion and
fragmentation. Just as without a «strong» state (and yet decentralised,
participatory and subsidiaristic) democracy is weak, without an organised, flexible
and dynamic society, democracy is incomplete. Thus, it is necessary to defeat the
ancestral «do not touch» taboo as an essential condition for a real democratic refoundation. «Please touch» means, in this sense, accepting as just and necessary
the proposal of programmatic initiatives and the introduction of structural
correcting mechanisms from one party to the other. In the same way that the
organised society has the right and the duty to tell the administered society what
this does or does not do and the way it should do it, the administered society can
and must do the same with reference to associations. Also, or above all, at a local
scale.
The need to end with the «bad iron constitution» of the local cultural
association movement
The supposed vitality of the «local cultural fabric» requires, in this sense,
profound revision. Despite the lack of recent quantitative and qualitative studies on
the cultural association movement,2 there are three significant characteristics worth
mentioning:
•
The panorama of the cultural association movement is, in general,
heterogeneous, discontinuous and incomplete: traditional and scarcely
renewed associations with relatively low rates of participation coexist with
groups of scarce structural formalisation where there are young people
undertaking aesthetic projects of notable interest along with other old or
new associations which want to achieve some demands, ethnic minorities,
etc.3
2
Lack of data and reflection that, in itself, is a symptom of this deficient health. Some striking data: with
reference to Catalonia, the most “recent” data on the cultural association movement continues to be the
historical books Llibre blanc de la cultura of the Fundació Jaume Bofill (from the year 1986!) and the Guia
d’associacions, centres culturals i recreatius of the Fundació Caixa de Pensions (from the year 1990!). The
updated and in-depth analysis of the local cultural sector in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain continues to be a
pending issue.
3
An excellent modelization about the typology and the characteristics of cultural associations of the so-called
“third system” can be found in the works of the EMPIRIC project on culture, employment and third system,
coordinated by the Fundació Interarts in Barcelona during the period 1997-1999.
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•
•
The relative vitality of the professional association movement in the arts and
culture (associations that generally do not formulate their action at a local
scale) contrasts with the low or null presence of the association movement
linked to cultural consumption or practice (despite the exceptions of some
associations of theatregoers, friends of museums, library users or similar,
which respond to the imperatives of the market of these types of cultural
establishments rather than to the existence of a real organised contingent of
cultural volunteers). This lack of spaces for the organised cultural citizenship
is one of the true pending issues of cultural policies at an international
scale.4
Although the association sector, at a local level, probably is the agent with
greater capacity to generate cultural events and proposals addressed to the
community, the analysis of this offer from the point of view of the general
interest of the citizenship easily awakens an excessive degree of endogamy,
a trend towards reiteration and, in short, a generalised lack of attractions
and quality. To use an analogy, the citizenship is invited to a cultural feast
cooked by the members of the most active associations without any
preliminary discussion on the elements that make up the menu, which ends
as a reiteration of the personal obsessions of each cook, absolutely anodyne
for the fellow diners...
The perverse effects of low profile policies
Local policies for culture have generally approached the issue of associations,
participation, association movements, volunteering and/or the «organised» society
from a strictly tactical and conjunctural point of view. This general trend can be
illustrated through some systematic or paradigmatic ways of acting:
•
•
Understanding participation as a logic of management of cultural services
and facilities rather than a central element of the «programme» of the
cultural policy itself. People have spent more energy in discussing whether a
management fully or partially shared with the associations is better or not,
the quotas of representation in councils and committees, etc., rather than
understanding local policies in general (and cultural policies in particular) as
very powerful instruments of generation of organised citizenship. The
extreme case of this has been to conceive participation as a cheaper way to
provide public services.
With reference to the reality of Catalonia, of special note among the
illustrative metaphors of this trend are the houses of associations (spaces
mortgaged for life by the most vegetative and least synergic functions of
associations inclined to territorial corporatism) and the association
exhibitions or fairs (reiterative and static events for the self-affirmation of
the associations with low or null interest for the citizens who are not directly
concerned).
4
As an example, two pieces of evidence of the non-existence of a voice for the organised cultural citizenship
that goes beyond the corporate interests of the artistic guilds are, at a global scale, the debate on the project of
an agreement on the protection of the diversity of the cultural contents and the artistic expressions within the
framework of UNESCO (http://portal.unesco.org/culture/es/ev.phpURL_ID=11281&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html) and, at a Catalan scale, the debate on the
future Consell Català de les Arts i la Cultura (Catalan Council for the Arts and Culture)
(http://cultura.gencat.net/comissionatcca/documents.htm)
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Citizens must, therefore, retake the central stage in the political discourse and
reinvent the habitual ways of acting. Also turning upside down the most habitual
terms: from clients or users of public services to culturally active agents...
Cultural facilities as an instrument for the generation of an organised
cultural citizenship
First, it is worth saying that neither are the facilities the exclusive tool for the
generation of an organised cultural citizenship nor is the only function of cultural
facilities to be close to the citizens. Even in the case of libraries or multipurpose
centres, traditionally considered as such, the basic dynamic of the facility is
established based on a tension between proximity (speaking of the world in a local
key) and singularity (speaking of what is local in a universal key). In this sense, if
libraries are spaces orientated to knowledge, museums are spaces orientated to
memory, and theatres and art galleries are spaces orientated to imagination,
multipurpose community centres are spaces orientated to experience,
understanding these four concepts (knowledge, memory, imagination and
experience) as the four basic fields where the tension between proximity and
singularity generates and constructs.
To be more specific, the strategic importance of local spaces for culture in the
construction of organised citizenship adheres to at least three fundamental reasons:
•
•
•
Their «systole-diastolic» dynamic with reference to the cultural agents and
initiatives of the area. They have a special capacity, derived from their
symbolic potential, to capture unorganised people and poorly structured
initiatives and return them to their environment with greater consistency
and added value.
They have a fundamental role in the guided transfer from the passive usage
of a service or attendance at an activity to the more or less active
formulation of proposals and, in short, the more or less autonomous
assumption of total or partial responsibilities in management.
Similarly, they occupy a strategic place in the transition between the
personal initiative, the informal group with scarce organisational consistency
and the solidly structured association.
In this sense, it is worth reflecting on the following table. While the «x» marks the
boxes where policies have a more frequent effect (understanding participation
whether as «attendance at activities or use of services by the individual citizenship»
or as «the involvement in the management by structured associations»), the
shadowed boxes show the spaces that the policies of proximity must conquer in the
future:
individual
citizenship
attendance at
activities
use of services
non-formal groups
structured associations
X
formulation of
proposals
involvement in
management
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Some possible actions
Build information
movements
•
•
•
systems
on
the
territorial
cultural
association
Generating information and «global» knowledge for the whole of the
territory, but also «local» for each of the local realities
With special attention to the «sensitive» data: effective participation of the
members, production of activities and services, degree of cooperation
between the associations...
Giving special attention to the detection of emerging association phenomena
in the local cultural sector and to the «best practices» of support for the
cultural association movement from local policies.
Structure a network of «association innovation cores»
•
•
•
Conceived as quality specialised pools of resources and spaces for the
cultural associations of the area: management support, advanced data
transmission, technical resources bank to be lent or rented, tools of selfpublication and advertising, specialised training, etc.
Promoting the association renewal at a territorial scale. That is, promoting
cooperation between the existing associations, encouraging the renewal of
the members, fostering the consolidation of new associations, etc.
With economic resources for the support to innovative projects: periodical
calls with awards, dynamic of «houses of projects» in the community
cultural centres, etc.
Create associations of users of the cultural services in the territory
•
•
•
Clubs of users with high added-value services (specific activities, a periodical
newsletter, a card permitting commercial discounts, etc.) as exists in the
libraries.
Especially aimed at the users from community cultural centres, and also
open to the users of other cultural services and facilities existing in the
territory
With a decentralised structure (local associations) and legal entity capable of
sheltering the «non-formal groups» that foster initiatives with an undeniable
cultural interest
Promote cultural «second degree» inter-association structures
•
•
At a territorial scale (intersectorial): local arts councils, etc.
At a sectorial scale (supralocal): coordinating boards, federations, etc.
Design training programmes specific to those responsible for local cultural
services
•
•
Focusing on the construction of strategies for the promotion of cultural
association movements from the local cultural services
With a theoretical-practical workshop format that necessarily obliges the
production of a concrete project of intervention and the effective application
in the field
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Create the conditions for a major «university+culture» agreement
•
•
•
Promotion of cultural association movement within the framework of
universities
Generation of optional subjects on the management of cultural associations,
jointly organised with those responsible at a local cultural level
Curricular recognition and academic accreditation of the cultural
volunteering of students (within the framework of universities or the
associations of the territory)
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Antanas Mockus
Educated in the Dijòn University, France and in the National University of Colombia,
with a degree in Mathematics and Phylosophy. He was elected Mayor of Bogotá for
the 1995-1997 period and reelected for 2001-2003. He was Rector and Professor in
the National University (1991-1993 and 2001-2004), where he also worked for the
Politic Studies and International Relations Institute. Granted a doctorate Honoris
Causes in Phylosophy for the Paris University, in 2004. He has carried out research
studies in projects related to coexistence, a peace agenda for the civil society, the
law, moral and culture harmonization, the public university system, the education
theory, and the formal and non formal knowledge articulation.

«Anfibios culturales y divorcio entre ley, moral y cultura». En: Análisis
Político N° 21 (1994), p. 37-48
http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/revistas/analisispolitico/ap21.pdf

«Cultura, ciudad y política». En: Campos, Y. y Ortiz, I. (compil.), La ciudad
observada, Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores ; Instituto Distrital de Cultura y
Turismo—Observatorio de Cultura Urbana, 1998, p. 15-28.

«La pregunta por lo público desde la sociedad civil». En: V Encuentro
iberoamericano del Tercer Sector. Memorias Bogotá, 2001, págs. 51-61.

«Ciudad y democracia». En: Camino hacia nuevas ciudadanías, Bogotá,
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2002, p. 141-152.

«Dos caras de la convivencia. Cumplir acuerdos y normas y no usar ni sufrir
violencia», / coautor J, Corzo. En: Análisis Político N° 48 (2003), p. 3-26.
Next we present a fragment of the article «Co-existence as harmonization of
law, morality and culture» published in Prospects, XXXII, 1/121; March 2002.
p. 19-37.April 2003. To find the complete article go to the following link:
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/Prospects/ProspectsPdf/121s/121smock.pdf
Introduction
«Coexistence» is a concept born and adopted in Latin America that defines an ideal
life in common between culturally, socially or politically very different groups, a
viable life in common, a stable, and if possible, a permanent «living together»,
desirable per se and not because of its effects.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, «convivencia» is usually translated by co-existence, a
term that describes a peaceful life of ones and the others, especially as a result of a
deliberate option. Precisely, as an option contrary to war, it holds a connotation of
resignation when it comes to the acceptance of others. Perhaps as it happened
during the so-called peaceful co-existence, one lived with the other because one
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had to, because one had no choice. «Co-existence» reveals then two characteristics
that are common to tolerance too: on the one hand, it is desirable, and on the
other, it means – at a certain level – learning how to put up with things. A similar
nuance with co-existence, which is something that is deliberately opposed to
exclusion and that is reached with a certain resignation, appears in the translation
to French «Cohabitation». Nevertheless, and perhaps because of its origins, the
Spanish word «convivencia» ended up acquiring more positive connotations as it
suggested something intrinsically desirable.
To co-exist is for many people to get to live together without risks of violence and
with the expectation that they will take great advantage of their differences. The
challenge in co-existence is basically the same one as in tolerance and diversity and
it can be clearly found in the absence of violence. (…)
What leads us to tolerate diversity, and to assume it enthusiastically? What drives
us away from violence? A first positive – meaning provisional – response for now,
who’s nuances we will examine here. These range from the most philosophical ones
(the first four sections in this article), to my experience as a Mayor of Bogotá (fifth
section), and then the conclusions of a research carried out among youngsters
(sixth and seventh sections), to finally go back to a more philosophical issue, coexistence as tolerance mixed with esteem, facing the existence of many projects in
society and humankind (last sections).
Based on the positive vision reached before, I started my research with youngsters
and used as an initial concept for it the following: to co-exist is to respect the
common rules, to have social self regulation mechanisms that are culturally rooted,
to respect differences and to follow the rules in order to process them; it is also to
learn how to reach, to respect and to successfully renegotiate agreements.
Co-existence and Rules
Why would it be so relevant for co-existence to respect the rules? And which rules?
In order to talk about respecting rules we have to acknowledge that modernity
stresses on the differentiation between legal, moral, and cultural rules, between
law, morale, and culture. A legal sanction is not the same as the sense of guilt, and
none of these punishments is close to social repudiation. The same as the
motivation to behave in a certain way, produced by admiration for the written law,
its drafting and its enforcement can be different from the motivation produced by
the self-reward of conscience, and this again is different from motivation produced
by social recognition.
Thanks to this differentiation we could conclude that co-existence consists largely of
overcoming the divorce between law, morale and culture, which means, to
overcome the moral and/or cultural approval of actions that are contrary to the law
and to overcome the weakness or the lack of moral and cultural approval on legal
obligations.
The ability to reach agreements, to fulfil them, and to renegotiate them successfully
when needed, the moral and cultural disapproval on actions that are against the
law, and the moral and cultural approval on actions respecting the law, will be
recognised as keys for co-existence. A co-existence that, due to this connection
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that establishes a difference between law, morale and culture, and also due to the
central and unavoidable role of the law, will be called co-existence among citizens.
Co-existence and pluralism
In Colombia, and in more or lesser degree in many other countries, for many,
conscience and habits justify the violation of law. I have been lucky that I could
help correcting this through Government’s actions and pedagogy. After working for
more than ten years in teaching, I could apply part of what I had learned before
during the exercise of my duties as a Mayor of Bogotá (1995-1997 and now 20012003). This was the Citizenship Cultural Programme, that had clear results
regarding protection of life, respect of norms and civic behaviour as, for instance,
voluntary water savings. Besides that, in the three years that followed my first term
as a Mayor, I had the opportunity to carry out together with J. Corzo a research on
9th grade youngsters in Bogotá, the results of which were of a great help for the
second version of the Citizenship Culture Programme.
The idea behind this work, in a few words, is about societies that have reached a
harmony between law, morale and culture. This does not mean that law, morale,
and culture preach exactly the same; we would be talking about fundamentalism
that would not be compatible with cultural and moral pluralism, which are
commonly accepted ideals by the majority of contemporary societies, and very
clearly by ours.
One of the characteristics of the contemporary society is that individuals with
different moral criteria can still feel mutual moral admiration, I would characterise
moral pluralism like this. It is not only about each person establishing his/her own
rules, but about these rules bearing enough universality, enough coherence, or an
adequate esthetical expression, in order to cause the admiration of people having
different moral frameworks. For centuries, humanity has found it hard to assume
and understand this, therefore, we could understand that for a contemporary
society, it is also difficult to understand it.
Now, how can we make sure that pluralism does not convert into indifference
towards legal criteria? How can we avoid that it ends up being assumed as
«everything goes»? Harmony between law, morale and culture is when each person
chooses his/her moral and cultural behaviour, but within the limits of legal
behaviours. This option could be different depending on the person or community.
In other words, there is no moral justification for illegal behaviours, and if there
was one, it should gather a series of conditions. John Rawls, for instance, studied
these conditions in his work on civil disobedience (The Theory of Justice, chapter
VI). Some of them are: to assume in public the violation of law, to accept debating
in public on the intention to violate the law based on moral reasons and, secondly,
to accept recognising that the value given to the moral criterion is so high that you
would accept the legal punishment for violating the law.
The Colombian Constitution establishes the respect for cultural, creed, and custom
diversity, but within the respect of the law. In other words, «long live pluralism»,
but in such a way that morally justifies or leads to accept cultural illegality.
In the ideal democratic society, as it is shown by some periods in the life of certain
industrialised stable ones, the three regulation systems of the above mentioned
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behaviours – law, morale, culture – tend to be consistent in a sense that will be
explained further down. All morally valid behaviours in the eyes of individual moral
judgement are usually culturally accepted (the contrary is not necessarily true:
there are culturally accepted behaviours that some individuals refrain from adopting
for moral reasons). And, what is culturally permitted fits within what is legally
allowed (the contrary here is not true either: there are legally allowed, although
culturally unaccepted behaviours). In these societies, culture is simply more
demanding that law, and morale is more demanding than culture.
Divorce between law, morale and culture
I called «divorce between law, morale and culture» the lack of consistency between
the cultural regulation of behaviour and its moral and legal regulations; a lack of
consistency that is expressed through violence, such as delinquency, corruption,
illegitimacy of institutions, and weakening of the power, suffered by many cultural
traditions, and the crisis or weakening of individual morale.
So we get then to characterise Colombian society by a high level of divorce
between law, morale and culture. Systematic use of violence, outside the rules
defining the state monopoly and the legitimate use of it, or corruption, grow and
get stronger precisely because they become culturally accepted behaviours in
certain contexts. So, clearly illegal and frequent morally unacceptable behaviours
are then tolerated. In a later work, the strength held in Colombia by cultural
regulation has been highlighted: «The stability and dynamism of Colombian society
depend highly on the great power that cultural regulation enjoys in it; a regulation
that sometimes doesn’t fit within the law and that leads individuals to act against
their moral convictions».
Other nations, other continents, Europe itself, have been through situations of crisis
created by the divorce between law, morale, and culture. Generally, it was national
states that managed to establish a certain order that gave priority to law, and it
was through law – with, of course, a certain support given by morale and culture,
especially religion and ideology – that a high level of consistency between law,
morale and culture was reached.
In short, the divorce between the three systems is expressed in: a) illegal but
morally and culturally approved actions; b) culturally disapproved, but morally
judged as acceptable illegal actions; and c) Illegal actions that are recognised as
morally unacceptable but culturally tolerated and accepted. This divorce is also
expressed in legal obligations that are not recognised as moral ones, or that in
certain social environments are not incorporated as culturally accepted ones.
Citizenship Culture
The first Citizenship Culture Programme (1995 – 1997) stressed on cultural
regulation. A cultural regulation and its consistency with moral and legal regulations
that helped much to understand how to be healthy, non violent, non corrupt. It
consisted of recognising and improving cultural regulation through interaction
between strangers or between individuals and civil servants, being these stranger
to each other. Later on, there were initiatives that meant an interest in cultural
regulation within families (for instance, the fight against inside family violence).
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The coordination between institution and an understanding of the social process,
that are necessary in order to reach any results, depended greatly on institutional
and social appropriation of the very idea of citizenship culture. Recent legal reforms
(Bogotá’s organic statute, planning law and budget law) provided an institutional
appropriation of the notion and allowed it to acquire, since the beginning, a
prominent role inside the government’s team and towards the society, through
intensified communication (high interest of the media, partly due to the novelty of
the resources deployed).
The notion of citizenship culture aimed at encouraging mainly interpersonal selfregulation. Cultural regulation of interactions between strangers, in contexts such
as public transport, public space, public establishments and communities, was
highlighted, as well as cultural regulation in interactions between citizens and the
administration, given that what is public depends highly on the quality of such
interactions.
This is how the four objectives related to citizenship culture were defined, being
these the main priority and basic pillars of the city’s Development Plan:
1.
To increase the respect of co-existence norms.
2.
To increase the capacity of some citizens who will lead others into a
peaceful observance of the norms.
3.
To increase the compromise capacity and the peaceful solution of conflicts
between citizens.
4.
To
increase
the
citizens’
communication
capacity
interpretation) through art, culture, leisure and sports.
(expression,
Moral and cultural pluralisms should not mean dissolvent relativism. In order not to
see them as an «everything goes», we need to find a new way to relate individual
self-regulation and collective self-regulation(s): if others have partially different
rules than mine, this does not mean at all that I could or should become more lax
with my own rules. If I acknowledge that other cultural traditions are valid, this
does not mean therefore that I should weaken my interest towards elaborating and
intensifying my belonging to a specific tradition.
With the organised actions involving the idea of citizenship culture, there was a will
to try to identify something in this commonplace, in this set of shared basic
minimum rules that should allow to enjoy moral and cultural diversity.
The Citizenship Culture Programme included many educational actions directed to
citizens, in the framework of a common philosophy. It meant a great deal of crossinstitutional and multi-sectorial cooperation, mainly in the concept phase and in the
response action to unforeseen contingencies. Its total cost during the three years
1995-1997 was around 130 million dollars (3,7% of the city’s investment budget).
Citizenship Culture and the philosophy expressed in its objectives inspired also
many unplanned governmental actions, undertaken as a response to unexpected
situations. The consistency between the two parts of the governmental agenda –
the planned and the improvised one – contributed greatly to the social assimilation
of the concept. The achievements in citizenship culture matters are still locally and
nationally seen as the main accomplishments of this government.
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An absolutely crucial element in multiplying the effects of Citizenship Culture
actions was their extremely high visibility for the society, due mainly to the mass
media. These were not paid campaigns, but innovative and attractive ways bearing
a highly visual and psychological impact. Particularly in conflicts occurred in the city
with refuse collectors, taxi drivers, coach, minibus and public bus companies, and
with the national government on disarmament. The more appropriate, sincere and
franc the communication was, the best positive results were reached. Perhaps the
case with greatest limitations in communication was disarmament via legal ways. It
was also the case featuring the highest number of obstacles.
(…)
Research among youngsters on citizenship co-existence
In the research carried out among 9th grade youngsters in Bogotá, responses given
by a sample of 1.400 youngsters to more that 200 questions were analysed using
multiple correspondence analysis techniques. In the research, co-existence was first
described as a combination of obedience to rules, a capacity to celebrate and
honour agreements and trust. Obedience to rules was specified in greater detail as
an obedience to three types of rules: legal, moral and cultural ones. We tried to
find out what happened when there were tensions between these regulatory
systems and how intolerant young people were with moral and cultural pluralism.
We wanted to submit the initial viewpoint to comments and empirical fine tuning.
We used an instrument of more than 100 questions (some of them with 40 subquestions). The multiple correspondence analysis allowed us to identify the
response groups that best predicted each other. Obviously, the results were very
influenced by the initial questions. Nevertheless, the reflection effort was exposed
to stubbornness and sometimes, to the counterintuitive character of conclusions
that derive from the data.
Research Results
The two main factors for co-existence showed to be the capacity to reach and
honour agreements and the respect for laws. Nevertheless, respecting the law
foresaw better the absence of violence carried out by youngsters or directed
against youngsters. This research influenced the second version of the Citizenship
Culture Programme that stressed more on democratic culture, especially in
acknowledging what is good in it, as well as the norms and the decision making
democratic procedures.
We concluded saying that for co-existence, agreements were more important than
rules and within those rules, harmony between law and culture showed to be highly
important. The research confirmed that cultural shift, more than the moral criterion
shift, could help in improving co-existence. It is obvious that the questions were
biased by theory; which means that this is not a conclusive proof, but it is an
argument for discussion. In Latin America, there is a rising awareness trend and,
somehow, the Citizenship Culture approach reveals that «we are doing well in terms
of awareness». Perhaps what is difficult is managing to adopt habits and behaviours
that are consistent with someone’s convictions. Everybody knows that we should
not kill, but culturally it is an external regulation issue.
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The final result was that, if we look upon co-existence in a positive way, what
better defines it is the capacity to reach and honour agreements. And if we use the
violence and the urgency to reduce this violence focus, the most important thing is
to learn how to respect and follow the rules, especially the law.
So for instance, an unexpected result was the coincidence in a single factor of
cultural regulation and the usefulness argument. The response «it is justified to
violate the law when there is an important economic benefit» coincides greatly with
«it is justified to violate the law when it is common practise to do so» or «when
others do it». At least, in this historic moment, for Bogotá’s young school students,
we can probably say that cultural regulation summarises the practical learning; it
does not go against it. Nowadays, common practise is not a barrier against
practicality, as it used to be in other times. Other examples of counterintuitive
results: trust did not show to be an important co-existence predictor (with the
exception of the response «when I reach an agreement, I trust the other in
honouring it»). We expected that co-existence would be perceived as trust: obeying
rules and agreements would generate trust, and trust would then generate a
greater respect for rules and agreements. But, at least within the studied group,
trusting and non trusting individuals co-exist approximately the same.
There is another result that stems from the statistical analysis of the responses to a
social sciences classic question: Would you accept as a neighbour people of a
different religion, different region, different nationality, people with AIDS,
impoverished or indigenous people? It is a list of categories directed towards
understanding how tolerant a person is. In this same question, corrupt people, drug
dealers, guerrilla soldiers and paramilitary were included. We hoped to obtain two
pluralisms, but we only had one: the young individual who tolerates indigenous
people and people with Aids as neighbours, tends to tolerate also drug dealers,
guerrilla soldiers, paramilitary and corrupt people.
Pluralism has turned into «everything goes». Nevertheless, what is marvellous about
the invention of written law, about all processes of debating laws during their
drafting, and about the constitutional guarantees to minorities, is that all these
exist to protect pluralism, but not up to a point where it becomes an axiom that
ruins the validity of the constitutional framework itself.
When we compared obtained data on pluralism with violence variables, a direct
relationship between these factors became clear: despite the tendency to assimilate
tolerance with «everything goes», intolerant individuals have a slightly higher
probability to use violence or to be a victim of it.
In terms of the agreements’ lesser association with violence, it is preferable to
completely neglect them (difficulty to reach them or even acknowledge them) than
reaching what we have called an «order without law», characterised by a preference
to norms together with an ignorance of the law due to cultural reasons.
(…)
Some conclusions
Co-existence would seem to depend mainly on the so-called «empire of the law».
Nevertheless, what’s central here is not exactly the law: it is the consistency
between cultural, moral and law regulations. What counts are the justifications to
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obey or disobey the law, or the example given by the others, or what is customary,
or the only way to reach the goal. Then, the main stress is not on the law itself, but
on how the law is accompanied by culture and morale. It is exactly here where the
law’s own strength is not sufficient, where in order to reach co-existence, it is
essential to get the support of traditions and/or ethnic and cultural transformations.
Each time legislation is drafted, a process (preferably voluntary) of cultural and
moral shift should be launched. For this, the new drafted law should seem fare, at
least for a majority of citizens.
Culture is expressed through tradition, especially as long as tradition enjoys some
credit. Tradition serves as an expression of culture, especially when it «obliges»
supra-subjectively, when it expresses authority, generating then a sense of
obligation.
This authority of culture, at least in part, is moved aside by the technical availability
associated to the project. More and more, we can represent, get to know, and
outline – and therefore dream of technically shaping – even the most sacred or
intimate aspects of cultural reproduction. Economic reproduction wanted to change
substantively, based on changes in only one of its dimensions (the property of the
production means), ignoring its relation with cultural reproduction. The best
inspired dreams, directed to groups that are morally and culturally closer to certain
ideals, inspired and still can inspire totalitarianisms such as German fascism or
Stalinism; this has made many of us more modest. But it is clear that the
challenges facing co-existence are also about a better understanding (and a more
careful transformation) of the relationships between economic and cultural
reproduction. Can production and education be transformed some day
simultaneously and consistently? Many societies have already moved forward in
building a cultural framework that acclimatizes, stimulates and gives sense, in a
long lasting way, to productivity.
In short, the action of building a positive conceptualisation of co-existence, guided
by a reflection on rules and agreements and by trying to modify in the practice
some citizens’ behaviours in Bogotá, was submitted to an empirical comparison
with 1.400 Bogotá youngsters. Because of its importance in the positive concept of
co-existence and due to its capacity in foreseeing non-violence, two dimensions
were highlighted:
•
To respect the law, on top of immediate utility and tradition;
•
To enjoy norms and to respect the law even when it involves tensions with
one’s moral convictions, and to admire the advances in national or local
laws.
To learn how to reach and honour agreements and more especially to renegotiate
successfully non honoured agreements, or to end up respecting others as equals, or
to learn how to democratically resolve tensions between morale and law, were not
such important variables as regards to reducing violence, but they gained
importance in characterising positively co-existence.
Post data: From religious tolerance to attraction towards diversity, the «cultural
amphibians»
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Tolerance towards diversity has transformed into an enthusiasm for diversity and a
growing awareness of the fact that – under certain conditions, whose study was the
main objective of the present work – diversity is a source of human wealth that can
be enjoyed in a fertile and durable way. When cultural diversity is simply
preserved, it becomes an unexploited wealth. It is fundamental that, besides
preserving differences, we promote or encourage contact, dialogue, exchange,
cross fertilisation.
Diverse cultural contexts are ruled by diverse systems. A «cultural amphibian» is a
person that moves in a competent way in different contexts, the same as the
chameleon, and at the same time, as an interpreter, he/she makes fertile
communication possible between these contexts. In other words, he/she transports
fragments of truth (or morale) from one context to another. The cultural
amphibian, chameleon, and interpreter at the same time facilitates the necessary
process of selection, classification and translation for the circulation of cultural
wealth.
For this matter, it seems necessary to reach a harmony between the regulating
systems – law, morale, culture – as the one described, that is compatible with
moral and cultural pluralism. Perhaps continuing to build up the project of a
humanity that is interested and delighted by its diversity, although also questioned
by it, would be helped by the presence of the cultural amphibian, either as a
generalised identity for the humanity, a cross national great community, a rather
exceptional representation, or as an ideal representation that’s never fully
accomplished.
The integration of the moral fund in different traditions facilitates the amphibian’s
actions, in which morale and culture coincide and are expressed with an exemplary
purity or perfection, showing to different cultures’ stakeholders the possibility and
the fertility of what would have been perceived in other times as a contamination.
The amphibian, as he/she weaves links and facilitates the recognition of human
unity elements, within the mosaic of traditions and projects’ plurality, can be seen
as a sort of moral integrator for Humanity.
The mutual knowledge – with a capacity to get involved morally and culturally, as
the «cultural amphibian’s» figure tries to describe it – seems to be a condition for a
more possible and more fertile co-existence between what is culturally diverse.
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Marta Porto
Journalist, postgraduate in Strategic Planning and Information Systems, with
Master’s degree in Information Science. She holds different public offices, private
and in international organisms, always leading processes in the social field. Within
these activities stand out the Direction of Cultural Planning and Coordination of the
Secretaría Municipal de Cultura de Belo Horizonte, MG (1994-1996), the Regional
Coordination of the UNESCO Office in Rio de Janeiro (1999-2002) and the Direction
of Social Responsibilities of Grupo Takano (2003-2004). Nowadays she is Director
of (X)BRASIL, information office about public issues, and member of diverse
committees and international committees linked to the socio-cultural area.

Investimento privado e desenvolvimento : balanço e desafios / Marta Porto
(ed.) Rio de Janeiro : Ed. SENAC Rio : (X) Brasil, 2005. 135p.

«Recuperar a dimensão política da cultura : nosso principal desafio» En:
Pensar Iberoamérica: Revista de cultura, Nº. 7, 2004
http://www.campus-oei.org/pensariberoamerica/ric07a03.htm

«Brasil em tempos de cultura : cena política e visibilidade» En: Pensar
Iberoamérica: Revista de cultura,Nº. 8, 2006
http://www.campus-oei.org/pensariberoamerica/ric08a08.htm
Next we offer the article Brazil and the myth of Plato’s cavern published in the
Instituto ArteCidadania’s web on 14 August 2005. To find the article, go to the
following link:
http://www.artecidadania.org.br/site/paginas.php?setor=1&pid=423
Original language:portuguese
We enter the 21st century with all scientific and technological possibilities of
overcoming our situation of economic and social inequality. Unfortunately, Brazil’s
reality does not confirm this theory. We run second worldwide at deaths caused by
fire weapons (UNESCO 2005), we have 25 million living in extreme poverty and
inefficient formal education. Malnutrition, death of teenagers due to precocious
pregnancies and poorly assisted abortions as well as murders in a countryside living
in permanent conflict are the daily rate in our country.
Our historical inequalities remain a challenge for all generations. This picture is
confronted with the wealth of our elite, our first-world consumption habits, the
modernity of our cultural icons and our large cities. We thus accept the
unacceptable: the invisibility of our poor, our shortcomings, our gloom and our
deep inequality. Luxury overcomes the uncomfortable smell of waste.
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We are a nation that is distracted by the blue light of TV sets with the supernatural
aura of our artists who recreate our imagery and smoothen our tomorrow, and it is
a current phenomenon that they collaborate with their actions for a new kind of
transgression, that of the imagery. The celebrities of yesterday join those of today
to recreate a new myth, that of magic exit for social adjustment that happens not
by republican, political and institutional means but through good actions practised
in small groups through the show business, fashion shows, arts and culture.
Never before has there been in Brazil so much talk about social projects promoting
by artistic means children from the big suburbs to the hall of fame of the
entertainment industry. Not bad considering that talent and determination are not a
privilege of an elite, they are not a distinctive brand neither by social nor ethnic or
religious means. However, it is surprising to evaluate the way society, especially
opinion leaders, perceives its potentialities and results. The favela, reinforced in the
elite’s eyes with initiatives of that kind, remains aside from concrete social
progress. Subject to fear imposed by traffic, by the alienation caused by the lack of
job opportunities, education, leisure understood as a right and not a privilege, they
remain territories that enter the «reduced circle of the imperfect republic» through
the rear door: with talents such as music, dance or a ball. Never through orderly
political action of a society that struggles for a democracy that offers everyone the
right to education, health, justice and, of course, culture.
We thus need to ask what is the fate of the young inhabitants of favelas and
suburbs who would like to be doctors, engineers or good professionals in any less
glamorous area.
In the eyes of the lucky, the narrow gaps opened to the most talented and
competitive towards this little world of opulence is the very social redemption of
others who are unwilling or unable or maybe simply do not manage to become
integrated into these new circles of power. We are still the country that reproduces
unceasingly the rationale of winners: the democracy we established is not that one
ensuring universal rights but that one offering concessions.
Like the myth of Plato’s cavern, Brazil also perceives and recreates itself through
shadows and not naked reality. There are clear examples: our capacity of providing
creative solutions to everyday wrongs seems to hide our difficulty in extending
them to everyone.
This trend of operating through magic solutions is repeated in almost any area,
from public security to education. And both daily life and statistics still challenge
myths. Do we want to combat drug traffic, with all the political and social
complexity this requires, or compete with traffic for the hearts and minds of poor
youngsters abandoned to their fate, with the same stimulation methods of those we
mean to fight, like offering alternatives to consuming fashionable trainers and
clothes? Do we want to ensure the quality of public services or create isles of
excellency—in health, in some schools all over Brazil, in the cultural centres at
Avenida Paulista supported with public subsidies—within the chaos and loneliness of
those who do not know how to react anymore?
No isolated project, no matter how good it is, overcomes or replaces the necessary
progress in all-embracing policies, the political discussion on how our institutions
need to behave and what the limit of the society we want for our children and
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grandchildren is. If inequality is a problem, with all its aspects apart from
economics, we need to fight it in an efficient manner. If our youth dies in the
ignorance of a lost bullet or in a criminal act we need to rethink our social and
symbolic models, the education we offer, the criminal and legal system that
challenges all human rights and endures in the dark of police stations and
massacres without solution.
Paying attention to the limits of possible results that can be obtained through
geographically and socially restricted actions is crucial in order not to commit the
error, like the prisoners of Plato’s caverns, of perceiving the reality challenging us
through projections. Projections that are today transmitted by the insistence of
media in supplying new actors for an already known circle of privileges.
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AbdouMaliq Simone
Lecturer at Goldsmith College, London. His research has focussed on conflicts
resulting from migration and globalisation, especially in African cities. He has
coordinated international research programmes on urbanism sponsored by the
Gorée Institute in Dakar. He was advisor on development strategies for different
African governmental departments and NGOs within the context of the Urban
Management Programme for the African Region, and coordinator of poverty
reduction programmes with the collaboration of institutions such as the African
Poverty Reduction Network, the World Bank and the Council for the Development of
Scientific and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He is a member of the editing
team of the magazine Geoforum and editor of the International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research
The following books published by the author are outstanding:

Citizenship and Urban Development in Africa: Popular Cities for their
Inhabitants Dakar : ENDA Tiers Monde and the African NGO Habitat II
Caucus. 1996 177p.

Urban Processes and Change in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA, 1998. 122 p.

Principles and Realities of Urban Governance in Africa. Nairobi: United
Nations-Habitat, 2002. 67 p.

For the City Yet to Come: Changing Urban Life in Africa in four Cities.
Durham : Duke University Press, 2004. 336 p.
He has published numerous articles in magazines such as Psych Critique, Traverses,
ZG, Semiotext(e), Cultural Anthropology, Lusitania, African Insight , Social Text,
African Sociological Review , Space and Culture , African Studies Review ,
Geoforum , Urban Studies, etc.
Next we offer a fragment of the lecture For the City Yet to Come: Remarking
Urban Life in Africa presented at the seminar «Maps of Africa. Reconfiguring a
Continent» celebrated in 2003 and organized by the Barcelona Contemporary
Culture Centre. To find the full lecture, you can go to the following link:
http://www.cccb.org/transcrip/urbanitats/africa/pdf/AbdouMaliq.pdf
(…)
Urban Projects in Africa
Still, African cities enclose a multiplicity of projects. Putting bread on the table and
maintaining the social relationships that enable one to do so are key projects. There
are also projects informed by dreams and by consultations with spiritualists and
mystics. There are projects honed through the affiliations and discussions of those
who share the same age group or the same neighbourhood. There are projects
honed through memberships in various societies, associations, and religious
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movements. Individual urban histories are largely intersections among the plurality
of these stories and the sites in which they are embedded. Urban life in African
cities asks enormous things of individuals. From the beginning, residents have to
juggle, duck, weave, bend, and assault the larger narratives in which their lives are
ensconced.
These narratives include the tensions between colonial and postcolonial, as well as
exogenous and local histories that constitute the city as a particular site of power.
Here, identities and practices are put together which are tailored to continuously
mark and straddle divides rather than integrate them. Places and practices of
compliance also become those of escape. Assimilation to external norms becomes
an instrument through which local distinctions are elaborated and ratified.
The negotiation of projects – their mediation and balancing – requires an adeptness
at intersecting things that would not appear to belong together, that seemingly do
not coincide. So a coincidence of the unexpected – very much at the heart of the
entire building of African cities from the beginning – persists. This continuity takes
place through the intersection of local understandings about what it means to be
urban and the precarious economic status these cities occupy in the global
marketplace.
Across Africa, a new urban infrastructure is being built with the very bodies and life
stories of city residents, but what kind of city is being put together is not clear. This
ambiguity is not only a reality that urban residents must face but also one that they
seem to author. In many cities, this process of making urban life opaque is
reflected in the architectures of movement and dwelling. There, the layout of many
neighbourhoods is meant to always confound those who try to make any clear
statements about what is going on or clear plans for how these neighbourhoods
should operate.
This infrastructure is also temporal. What looks to be stasis, when nothing appears
to have been accomplished, may actually be the highly intricate engineering of
interactions among different events, actors and situations. In such occurrences,
events, actors, and situations may «pass through» each other and take notice of
each other without discernible conditions actually changing. It is just these
possibilities – of different actors and situations dealing with each other without
apparent ramification – which make African cities, appear dynamic and static at the
same time. On the other hand, things can happen very fast, and where seemingly
nothing has been brought to bear on a particular setting. In other words,
sometimes conditions change with remarkable speed – e.g., the structures of
authority, the alignments of loyalty and collaboration, the mobilization of money
and resources – where it is not apparent just what is going on and who is
contributing what to these changes.
Despite these capacities, we still must recognize that larger numbers of urban
Africans are disconnected from both the post-independence narratives of national
development and the collective social memories that had established an
interweaving of the present with the past. Much of everyday life in cities has been
reduced to an endless process of trickery. All in all, the conditions that have been
relied upon to sustain dynamic and stable urban neighbourhoods – fraught though
most have been with major problems concerning urban services and ineffective
management – are becoming increasingly strained. These strains are sometimes
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political as neighbourhoods are given more official responsibility to manage
different urban services. This responsibility generates new modalities of
collaboration, but also intensifies competition. In some instances, communities have
become polarized along lines of social stratification that were more open-ended and
interconnected in the past.
The strains are also economic in that employment of any kind – formal and informal
– is increasingly difficult to access. As a result, formerly highly-elaborated extended
family and residential support systems find themselves overburdened. It is
estimated that roughly 75% of basic needs are provided informally in the majority
of African cities, and that processes of informalisation are expanding across discrete
viii
sectors and domains of urban life. Whereas unemployment has long been a
persistent reality for African cities, available compensations now require more
drastic action. Floods of cheap imports made possible through trade liberalization
are shrinking local production systems. At the same time, various components of
economic rationalization have opened up possibilities for the appropriation of
formerly public assets – land, enterprises, and services – by private interests,
particularly for the emerging elite, well-positioned in the apparatuses managing
structural adjustment.
There has been an enormous range of studies on African urban informal economic
sectors, land markets, and livelihoods. But most of this work has focused on
informalities as a compensation for the lack of successful urbanization, particularly
in terms of deferring heightened levels of spatial, economic, and social integration
within the city. Other studies have looked at informal or «real» economies as
instruments through which sustainable and viable processes of a «normative»
urbanization might be consolidated. For the most part, they have not examined the
ways in which such economies and activities themselves might act as a platform for
the creation of a very different kind of sustainable urban configuration than we
have yet to generally know.
We know that families are undergoing significant change; that social solidarity is
fragmenting; and that most African cities are in trouble. However, we don’t know so
much about how changing cities are changing urban users – their behaviours,
associations, logic, ways of doing things, understandings, imaginations, and even
their ways of life. Despite all the things that are going wrong, the city remains a
dynamic place to make things happen. What are those things, and how are they
made to happen? – i.e., through what practices and social forms?
The process of furthering our understanding of these issues is complicated because
it is difficult to carry out sustained and systematic social research in many
neighbourhoods of those cities where the changes seem most pronounced. Because
the conventional categories for understanding such changes are themselves
opened-up, «twisted out of shape» and re-arranged, it is difficult to have the
confidence that one is working with stable and consistent entities over time.
We need to know more about what kinds of everyday practices are being used that
are potentially capable of revitalizing a desire for social interchange and
cooperation that might contain the seeds of social economies that extend
themselves through scale, time and reach. But, this is not about civil society
organizations and NGOS, micro-credit associations or people’s associations. Rather,
attention must be paid to diffuse but no less concrete ways in which diverse urban
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actors are assembled and act. What are some of the ways in which urban residents
are building a particular emotional field in the city, trying to restore a very physical
sense of connection to one another? This is not the work of detailed ethnographic
examinations of new social movements, new living arrangements, or new forms of
urban productivity. It is a practice of being attuned to faint signals, flashes of
important creativity in otherwise desperate manoeuvres, little eruptions in the
social fabric that provide new texture, small but important platforms from which to
access new views. (…)
Conclusion
In most African cities, policy and programmatic interventions have focused on the
need for the enhanced integration of cities. This is often pursued without coming to
grips with the ways in which fragmented urban space – i.e., highly divergent
characteristics of neighbourhoods and their relationships with each other – offers
possibilities for the elaboration of livelihoods and social relationships that don't
easily correspond to imposed normative frameworks. There is often the assumption
that urban neighbourhoods – of varying histories and capacities – are primarily
interested in consolidating local social fields into representational structures that
can act as a platform for accessing and influencing power arrangements at larger
scales. There is often the assumption that this consolidation inevitably takes the
form of at least the semblance of well-cohered organizations and roles.
But popular investments in time and energy are often elsewhere i.e., focused on
piecing together larger spaces of action – larger both in terms of territory and social
interdependencies across status, class, ethnicity, generation, social position, and so
forth. In other words, residents are pursuing a new urban infrastructure, based on
ways of collaborating with people often very different from themselves, operating in
different parts of the city, and with whom they work out highly particularized
relationships and ways of dealing with each other. These networks are not
constructed in terms of conventional organizations or grassroots associations, but
often involve large numbers of people who implicitly coordinate their behaviour in
the pursuit of objectives that have both individual definition and mutual coherence
among participants.
Sometimes they coalesce in organizations that have names, but where it is unclear
to almost everyone what precisely the organization is and what it does. At other
times, an event may trigger an entire neighbourhood into apparently unfamiliar
courses of action, but with a synchronicity that makes it appear as if some deepseated logic of social mobilization is being unleashed. Still at other times, the
arduous interplay of local social change and resistance, planned development and
arbitrary decisions construct tentative platforms to collaborate in «silent», but
powerful ways which have the potential of substantially altering the position of the
locality within the larger urban system.
An important research agenda, therefore, is a greater understanding of the
mechanisms that facilitate such lateral movement, affiliation, and transactions
across fragmented urban spaces – i.e., that permit navigation and mobility without
subsuming a wide range of urban practices into a dominant notion of integrated
uses or values. In other words, a way of operating that accomplishes integrated
actions without overarching rules or narratives that dictate what integration is,
what it looks like, and how it is to be accomplished. These mechanisms are usually
provisional and incessantly improvised and revised. They concern ways in which
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various urban actors, ensconced in various hierarchies, locations, and networks
interact with each other in different, out-of-the-ordinary ways, without having to
make irrevocable commitments to those changes. It is a means of getting
accustomed to both expected and unforeseen implications.
Urban planning thus needs imagination, discourses, and methodological tools that
enable us to better grasp and interact with the ways in which different kinds of
urban actors are connected to each other, as well as the ways in which African
cities can grow closer to each other, even as they may grow farther apart.
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Alain Touraine
Director of the Superior School of High Studies in Paris, Alain Touraine
(Hermanville, France, 1925) is one of the most reputed French intellectuals. His
intellectual evolution and scientific production have made a noticeable impact on
the social sciences in Europe, United States and Latin America. He made studies in
different disciplines in the universities of Columbia, Chicago and Harvard. He
worked as investigator in the Consejo Nacional de Investigación of the University of
Chile, country where in 1956 he started several investigations in the sociology field
and where he also founded the Centro de Investigaciones en Sociología del Trabajo.
Later he moved to Paris to create the Laboratory of Industrial sociology of France,
which, in 1979 became the Centre of Social Movement Studies. From 1960 he is
Studies Director at the School of High Studies on Social Sciences in Paris, and in
1981 he founded the Sociological Analysis and Intervention Centre, in which he was
Director until 1993.
Among his numerous publications, it is worth mentioning:

Crítica de la modernidad. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995. 391 p

¿Podremos vivir juntos? : iguales y diferentes. Madrid : PPC, 1997. 445 p.

Igualdad y diversidad : las nuevas tareas de la democracia. México : Fondo
de Cultura Económica, 2000. 95 p.

A la búsqueda de sí mismo : diálogo sobre el sujeto, con Farhad
Khosrokhavar. Barcelona : Paidós, 2002. 270 p

Un Nuevo paradigma para comprender el mundo de hoy. Barcelona : Paidós,
2005. 271 p.

Le monde des femmes. Paris: Fayard, 2006. 245 p.
Below there is a fragment of the interview that Jean Blairon and Christine
Renouprez from the magazine Intermag made to Touraine in April 2005 about his
work A New Paradigm to Understand todays World. To find the complete interview,
you can go to the following link:
http://www.rta.be/intermag/magazine/200506b/200506b0.htm
Original language:french
We change categories
J. B.: “Alain Touraine, in your last work Un nouveau paradigme pour comprendre le
monde d'aujourd'hui, you start from the idea that society has changed a lot and
that in order to appreciate such changes, globalisation and relocation constitute an
approach that would allow us to understand these transformations…”
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A. T.: “I would say that yes, in fact the world has changed a lot. But since the time
we’ve been saying that technologies change, economy changes, etc. We all feel, I
believe, the need to address these changes in a more global way. This means that
not only things change, but the look we have upon them changes as well. We
change categories. I will explain this indeed giving a brief historic reminder… For
many years, in modern times, we have thought in political terms. State,
sovereignty, absolute monarchy, and this has lead to the idea of revolution. All
these are not political categories. Then, we discovered industrial revolution. We
started then talking about social classes, social struggles, investment, capital, etc.
We lived like that for 150 years. Then, I feel that – and here I am not talking about
the future but about the very present – since 50 years ago, we have fallen – not
completely, never completely – into another way of perceiving things, using other
lens somehow of a cultural nature.”
An overturn into the cultural model
A. T.: “Why did we shift towards a cultural model? I am not pretending to give a
complete analysis of the question, but there are two points that I believe are
essential. The first one, which is the strongest, is what we call globalisation.
Economists are interested in globalisation for many reasons that I do not care much
about. What I am interested in is that what we call globalisation is really an
extreme form of what we used to call before, much more simply, “capitalism”, in
the most objective sense of the term. This means economic freedom from all kinds
of control. In other words, and all economic History is made like this, we liberate
the economy, it jumps forward but producing inequalities, then we go back to social
concerns. It is the social democracy of the last 100 or the last 50 years. For the
moment, as this is happening at a world level, as there is no world political power –
besides maybe the Pope’s moral power! – as there is no movement, what’s
happening? What is happening is essential: absolute capitalism! Which means that
economy is up on top and all social aspects, all institutions are being dismantled,
there is some truth in all this. It can lead to disastrous consequences for us. So the
first thing I insist on is that what we have nowadays is not anymore a clash
between classes or stakeholders. It is the impersonal world on one side (markets,
wars, violence bursts, technologies) and on the other side what do we have? The
individuals.”
We can only talk in terms of individuals
A. T.: ”The second reason that explains this shift towards the cultural model is that
during the last 150 years, until last century’s sixties, the main concern was still
mass production, employment, industrialisation, the workers’ movement, Charlie
Chaplin and everything else. In fact, today all this exists, even if it is less prevalent,
but at the same time you are, let’s say, under the lights of mass production, you
are also under those of mass consumption. In a few words, you are being caught
from all sides and all aspects, so your whole personality is being questioned.
Before, there used to be work, but when you were out, you went back to your
family, your real people, etc. Now, you are immersed in it, you lack protection. And
at this very moment then, you only can talk in terms of personality, individuality,
and I will use a word that is a dangerous one; in terms of identity.”
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A unique, non universal definition
A. T.: “It is here where I want to insist on something that is not very much
developed in my book and that I would have liked to develop more. This
individualism can be of little importance. I am the consumer, I go to the
supermarket, I can buy whatever I want. This has never stopped anybody from
going to sleep at night, because marketing is a serious issue and everybody knows
very well what you will be buying. But at the contrary there are two very serious
things… The first consists in saying, as in all times of great historic changes: the
priority should be given to a unique, specific, non universal definition. The same as
during the French Revolution “the nation was a priority”. During the workers’
movement, the majority of people said “what we need is a working class, a class
government, a dictatorship of proletariat”, which in fact has become a dictatorship
over the proletariat, with Leninism and Maoism becoming the century’s most
important totalitarian regimes. When cultural rights become essential there are
people who will say that “priority should me given to uniqueness, to particularity”,
and collective rights, community, community-ism or clannishness, is the greatest
threat of the century! In the workers’ movement, there were very few people, good
old little intellectual Englishmen, union members, and they started to invent
industrial democracy, then social democracy. It was marvellous. Nowadays, we
don’t know very well but we try to think about it. I was particularly interested in
this: what is this world of cultural rights?”
The world of cultural rights
A. T.: ”From a political point of view, very concretely, what I am interested the
most in is the frontiers between defending cultural rights, and multiculturalism or
community-ism. I say very clearly that we have to be extremely explicit on this
point: I defend the idea of human rights extended to the social sector but
nevertheless, these cultural rights, as it happened during social democracy, have to
be linked to a universal factor that we will call “human rights”. In other words, to
be more concrete: I believe it is positive to proclaim that each person must have
the right to practice his own religion. It is a collective right. But, I agree to this,
under the condition that it is seen as a part of individual rights. This means that
each person can practice a religion, switch to another one, or opt out of it without
being jailed in a community. I am horrified when I hear that all those coming from
a certain part of the world are called “Muslims”, when many are not. It is as if we
said that France had 60 million Catholics. No!”
The paths towards modernity
A. T.: “On a level, not of pure theory, but of political thinking, there is a frontier
here that must be maintained. Based on this, I try to build up my argumentation,
reaching the centre of it with this combination that constitutes the great deal: how
to combine unity and universality? For instance, we often use the expression “the
right to be different”. I answer to this: not alone, yes if the right to be different is
linked to other things. Three points in this line: the right to difference, especially
cultural difference, the right to participate in this globalised economy (to have a
job, etc.), but also the acceptance of universalism principles that I call modernity.
Principles that are classic to me, that I have learned in my childhood: to believe in
reason and to believe in the universalism of individual rights. If you achieve all
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three it is fine, but if you don’t, there is a problem. Western people often wrongly
say: my own way of modernisation is modernity itself. It is an absolute nonsense
because we both know that there wasn’t a European modernisation way. The
English and the Dutch were modernised through their bourgeoisie. And in fact the
Belgians, or what we called Belgians before the creation of Belgium, were also one
of the main economic centres. Then, there were peoples, like the Germans, who
evolved in the name of a “culturally defined” state. We can find this also in Turkey,
Brazil, and many other places. There are in fact many ways of modernisation. And I
don’t see why we don’t have Chinese, Indian, Japanese or other models. So, there
are many ways leading to modernity but this modernity is one. Without this, we
don’t know what we are talking about.”
(…)
The institution matter
J. B.: “It seems to me that throughout all of your work, you use the term institution
in two different senses. First of all in a political sense, for instance the institutions
of the Republic that allow democratic participation through representation. In other
places, you use it the way Goffman does, as social bodies. So, for instance, we
could say that a school is an institution, a prison is an institution…”
A. T.: “I don’t say this much…”
J. B.: “You don’t say this much. It is right…”
A. T.: “No. To answer your question. In a case like this, I use the classic
sociological vocabulary, I call it organisation. And anyway, the institution is giving a
shape to legal norms. This means, what is instituted…”
J. B.: “But perhaps there is a third possible meaning that we much see through our
experience… It is what you call I think the associative efforts. So, these are people
that get together, and when they get together, you find all the characteristics that
you have in the subject. It is in the name of an encounter, a will for intervention or
creation, to be an actor, to go back to oneself, to build something for this world…”
A. T.: “God knows that I do agree with you in giving importance to this, but I would
not like to call this an organisation, not even an institution. I would prefer to talk
about a collective subjectivation, a collective creation of the subject, something like
that, because I do believe much in that.”
J. B.: “So can’t we say, for the beauty of the gesture, that we have stated in the
political paradigm, the institutions of rights; in the social paradigm, Goffman’s
social bodies; and in the cultural paradigm, the effort made by associations? Isn’t
this a way to go back to what is collective?”
A. T.: “Yes, I will say it like this. Because from this historic viewpoint, what is clear
is that collective actions, let’s say political issues in general, are firstly the political
forces, the parties, the power. In the industrial society, it is still the trade unions,
the representatives of an economic role etc. And nowadays, we talk every day
about the civil society. To me, civil society is an essential fact, but it is a level of the
political society. NGOs have replaced trade unions and parties. So it has also an
institutional side, and we all know that in half of the world, NGOs are super parties,
not to say super states. But what you insist on – and I find this to be very positive
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– is saying that in order to have a democracy, it has to start from the bottom up.
And for this to happen, don’t we have to see what is there down in the bottom?”
Represented social forces
A. T.: “Just take one of these slightly vague expressions that means something
anyway: participative democracy. It means that I don’t only deal with
representation. I had said a long time ago that we don’t only need representative
parties, we need social forces that can be represented. If we are in front of a mob,
a mass, in an absence of a national state for instance, we cannot have
representability, therefore no representativeness. But I totally agree with you here
to say again that – and I am talking about reality, not a wish! – the truth is that it
is developing very close to individuals and through exchanges that leave in fact a
much bigger part of autonomy than before. If I teach you trade unionism or a
political party, I will put you in frameworks. If I teach you, I don’t want to say
sociability but subjectivation, in fact I constitute, I try to constitute your own
personal autonomy. So these are – let’s use a more traditional language – antiauthoritarian organisations.”
J. B.: “Yes, but isn’t this one of the vitamins individuals need?”
A. T.: “Well of course! Absolutely, it is even the best perhaps, the most important.
But I think that this creation of new primary environments, and not necessarily the
family, the community or the peers, it could be groups of volunteers, associations.
Association is a good old word.”
J. B.: “Absolutely, because as you have said in your book, for a series of issues,
handicap, interculturality, etc. it is the associations that make the effort?”
A. T.: “Yes of course, I am very much pleased with the word.”
An alliance of struggles for equality and struggles for cultural rights
J. B.: “You are saying that workers’ social movements still exist, but that nowadays
we have the emergence of cultural problematics. Don’t we need, as you said
before, to rebuild, to imagine an alliance, a conjunction of struggles for equality and
struggles for cultural rights? Do you believe this is unimaginable?”
A. T.: “Not at all. You know, quite a long time ago, when I launched the expression
new social movements, after 1968, I had even thought that trade unionism could
lead this struggle. At that time, we were close to the Confédération française
démocratique du travail (CFDT), so we thought that the CFDT would foster these
small movements I used to care very much about, as I had defended Solidarnosc.
But no, this did not happen. You cannot fight for, as an example, an issue that
deals with women without fighting for women equality, do you understand? You can
defend women equality and not care about women themselves, this is what I am
criticising. Basically, if you insist on the subject aspect, you will still insist a lot on
the specificity aspect, on the difference, at the same time as on equality.”
Interventions that reduce inequality
A. T.: “You know, I will say here something that is just common. Finally, when you
try to simply state the meaning of what is most important in defining democracy, is
it justice or freedom? This is equality. This does not mean that all the rest doesn’t
count, but if you have to state the quintessence of it, it is equality. And today, we
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are in a world whose main definition is that of a world where inequality is
increasing. As a consequence of this, the priority is to carry out interventions that
reduce inequality. Wolff was less demanding. He used to say that freedom was ok
as long as it didn’t increase inequality. I believe that we have – and let’s only talk
about Europe – an immediate need to reduce inequality, because despite our social
security systems, and in particular mainly because of the school system, we have
systems where inequalities increase as well as exclusion. So you see, we should not
talk about such a subject in a social void.”
The struggle for cultural rights is a driving force
J. B.: “And how can we combine this? How can we combine this struggle for
equality and defending cultural rights?”
A. T.: “Defending cultural rights is a driving force. It creates stakeholders. Whereas
on the other hand, we are talking about reformism. This means that everyone
agrees to reduce inequalities, it is a result. But if you don’t have a driving force you
don’t have an institutional reform. Therefore, it is very important to create subjects.
The most important thing is women reflecting about women as we would have said
years before, awareness, or you can call it whatever you want. What is essential, as
a matter of fact, is this. Experience shows that if you stick to issues dealing with
equality, you will talk about it but not act for it. There is no driving force there.”
To combine equality and difference
J. B.: “And do you think that in the cultural driving force, the issue of equality will
come back?”
A. T.: “I think that it will make a comeback as it will be driven by the issue of
specificity, not difference. This problem is an old anthropological one: how to
combine equality and difference? I have asked the question to renowned
anthropologists and they have always told me that I was really looking for the
impossible solution, the squareness in a circle. Yet, I believe that this is perfectly
possible. I mean that we have to act so difference is recognised institutionally,
having then a status, and then orientations of different contents will have an
equality status. There also, I repeat, the solution is the Kantian, Habermasian one,
which means the one belonging to what’s universal, to the reason, to what is
universal in the relationship between the stakeholders. At this moment, you can
include everybody.”
The sector that produces cultural capital
J. B.: “The last point. You have mentioned a minute ago women and their
comments on advertising “they are steeling my image”. And you said: this is the
equivalent to the workers’ movement “they are steeling my job”. But don’t you
think that there is a whole range of jobs whose contribution is ignored? These are
all those that make the cultural capital. It is teaching, the associations we talked
about. Isn’t this the equivalent of old times proletariat? Because in fact we cannot
be in a globalised society of information, media, image, if we are not educated
people, people that are interested in culture… Is there not a gigantic negation
there? In Belgium we say that it is the non business sector that does this often…”
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A. T.: “The non business sector is not an offence…”
J. B.: “No, it is not an offence but isn’t it an appellation that uses negation? As we
say NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations), when in fact we could say that the
contribution of this sector is more central…”
A. T.: “Why would it be positive to manufacture tyres and negative to carry out
scanners? I don’t understand. It is quite clear that as you say, the sectors that are
enjoying a fast growth, education, health, research, innovation, communication, are
sectors that sometimes are business sectors, sometimes not. I don’t like to draw a
frontier there. There could be business or not there, and I mistrust heavily the
French who want to put everything in the non business public sector, etc. There are
loads of things that should not be in the non business sector and loads of things
that are in the business sector when they should not be there. Anyway, what is
sure is that we are undergoing a period of great reshuffling of social protection
systems. The question about privatising social protection should not be asked in
Europe. I don’t see why shall we provoke, without any reason, social unrest and
semi-revolutions”.
The solution: Open political debates
J. B.: “But do you think there is not a sector there?”
A. T.: “No, I am not convinced myself. Because I am convinced that these are
sectors where things happen but where the most opposed positions appear. Exactly
as in the production world, there are managers and employees. The world of
education for instance, I see it often as a world of inequalities, minority exclusion,
etc. So, this is where everything is being at stake. But saying that people who work
in there are good people… There are good ones and bad ones and here, the only
solution are open political debates.”
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George Yúdice
He is Professor of American Studies Program and of Spanish and Portuguese at New
York University. He is Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean
Studies. He also directs the Privatization of Culture Project for Research on Cultural
Policy and the Inter-American Cultural Studies Network, whose purpose is to
engage scholars, intellectuals, activists and artists in North-South dialogue on the
role of cultural work in furthering citizen participation in aesthetic, political, social,
and economic matters.
His research interests include cultural policy; globalization and transnational
processes; the organization of civil society; the role of intellectuals, artists and
activists in national and transnational institutions; comparison of diverse national
constructions of race and ethnicity. For the past seven years he has been
conducting research on systems of support for art and culture in the US, in several
Latin American countries and in international institutions. He is a member of the
Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association, and has been on the
Executive Council of the Modern Language Association. He is affiliated with the
Center for Arts and Culture in Washington D.C., and is a consultant for the U.S.Mexico Fund for Culture; the Associação Internacional Arte Sem Fronteiras;
UNESCO; InCorpore: and several other organizations. He has been an editor of the
journal Social Text and is currently an advisory editor for Cultural Studies, Found
Object, and Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.
Among his numerous publications, it is worth mentioning:

El Recurso de la cultura : Usos de la cultura en la era global. Barcelona :
Gedisa, 2002. 475 p.

Política cultural / co-authored Toby Miller. Barcelona : Gedisa , 2004 . 332 p.

«¿Una o varias identidades? Cultura, globalización y migraciones» En :
Nueva sociedad, Num. 201, 2006
http://www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3314_1.pdf

«Public and violence». En : Artistic citizenship : a public voice for the arts /
edited by Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy Martin. New York : Routledge,
2006. p. 151-162
Next a fragment of the lecture «Cultural Systems and Networks: how and
what for?» is offered. Presented in the international symposium «Urban Cultural
Policies: European and American Experiences» celebrated from 5 to 9 in 2003 in
Bogotà. To get the full lecture the following link is given:
http://www.brasiluniaoeuropeia.ufrj.br/es/pdfs/sistemas_y_redes_culturales_como_y_para_
que.pdf
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Institutions and Networks
In this paper I try to see how networks, characterized as forms of open, flexible
and contingent organization, complement the most stable institutions of the state,
market and civil society. The premise is simple: although the institutional
framework characteristic of modern societies makes efficient administration of
public affairs and business possible, it often happens that the rules or
characteristics of the institutions make it difficult to incorporate new agendas
necessary for economic development itself or for greater democratization of society.
These rules are: impersonal operability criteria, hierarchical authority of civil
servants, technical competence of civil servants, legal operationality, meritocracy,
calculability and predictability of procedures incorporated into rational plans,
accountability, etc. All these mechanisms, which correspond to the rationalization of
the practical application of knowledge, according to Max Weber (1947), are, of
course, desirable as they enable control of the physical and social environment.
But although these are characteristics necessary for the good operation of any
organization, they are also inertial insofar as they reproduce the authority of the
managerial groups and more generally of the dominant classes. The positioning of
class, prestige and political power supports formulations of authority or of technical
competence that make very distinct competencies, related to different cognitive
systems, invisible. The more complex the society, owing to the process itself of
development or of subjection to the effects of modernization, the less
administratively efficient this rationalization model is. Of course, a solution to the
relative inertia and hierarchization of the institutions is the incorporation of actors
representative of these other competencies, to the extent that legitimacy is
established for its inclusion in the decision processes. Think of actors «other» as the
hackers, who sabotage the administrative systems of the military-industrialmanagerial complex. This same complex has created spaces for these hackers to
design more flexible systems, capable of resisting the saboteurs.
But there are diverse types of actors «other», such as the undereducated and
poorly westernized migrants, who do not always find space in the bureaucracies or
on the boards of management, thus contrasting their situation with that of the
aforementioned hackers, as they do not participate in the transformation of the
protocols according to which decisions are made. It is not typical, for example, for a
decision-making session to follow the cognitive protocols inherent in an indigenous
ritual or a rumba or candomblé. It is supposed that the operability of the
institutions is neutral and publicly monitored (in the Western sense of public), so
that the traditions that the actors who administer them subscribe to do not affect
their operation. Therefore, there are very few public companies, to say nothing of
ministries or secretariats of culture, which include on their boards of managers
representatives of indigenous groups, or of actives members of candomblé or of
youths who cultivate consumerism. However, in recent years the modern
institutions have been going through a reform that to a great extent opens them to
new agendas, considered necessary for their efficient operation in more complex,
fluid, diverse and contradictory contexts. This opening is not always within the
institutions but comes from outside, because of pressure or fear of the irrelevance
in our time of recognition of diversity. (…)
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(…) cultural policies must not only be in the hands of the state, but of all the
producers and social movements. (…) This idea suggests that cultural policies must
emerge from joint action. Given that a kind of town meeting which includes
everyone is impossible, (…) it would be necessary to attend to what the diverse
networks present, as this is about complex processes of negotiation in the
management of cultural processes. Let us look at an example from Brazil or, rather,
Rio de Janeiro: Afro Reggae.
The Grupo Cultural AFRO REGGAE is a cultural group that operates in a network
and presents a good number of the features attributed to this procedural form of
organization. Although it has at its base a group of youths who put on
performances of their music to attract other poor youths and give them a way out
of narcotrafficking, the best source of work but also of death among the carioca
youths from the favelas, the action of Afro Reggae is made possible by the
members that join a broad and fluid network of actors that includes community
organizers, social workers, local and national government politicians, trade
unionists, religious authorities, business people, press and television directors,
journalists and leaders of NGOs, international foundations, and personalities from
music, television and cinema. The importance of Afro Reggae does not only lie in
the fact that it provides an alternative to youths from the favelas, even if this is it
most important activity; rather it lies in the articulation throughout carioca,
Brazilian and international society. Its management, therefore, goes beyond the
benefits they achieve for their own community; they also bring a set of instruments
of effective democratization to the diverse actors that go through this network.
Before extracting what, according to me, are the lessons of the reticular activism of
Afro Reggae, it is worth saying a few words about the group and its coordinator.
The Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) was born out of a massacre in 1993, when
the police, in persecution of the local narcotrafficking commando, entered the
Vigário Geral favela and fired indiscriminately at anyone they found, killing twentyone innocent people. Tired of the harassment of the mainly black population of the
favela by the police, Afro Reggae used culture to inculcate self-esteem and
therefore seduce young people with an alternative to narcotrafficking and violence.
They then spread this sense of value throughout the city and many regions of the
Americas, Europe and Africa. Similar to the Chiapas Zapatistas, these articulations
were possible thanks to a dense network of connections with local and international
NGOs, human rights groups, politicians, journalists, writers, academics,
personalities from music, TV and cinema, and, of course, cultural managers.
The core of the initiative undertaken by José Júnior – the coordinator of the Group
– consisted of the idea that music, being the practice that better characterizes
fusion or sampling, would serve as a platform so that the youths in the favelas
could engage in a dialogue with their own community and the rest of society.
Although perhaps Júnior did not think at first that the musical practice of Afro
Reggae was going to become a polyglossia of the sociability that he taught these
young people.
The basic principle of his work is incarnated in the practice of batidania, a
neologism according to which citizenship resides in the batida and in the batucada
of the youths in favelas, blamed for a wave of robberies of tourists’ personal
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belongings on the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. The resistance and
survival of the community do not always take place «spontaneously», says Júnior,
but «it is necessary to plan concurrent specific initiatives to this end». (Zanetti
2000, p. 15). Afro Reggae has extended this activity, destined to raise awareness
of a specific civic action in the field of health, AIDS prevention, human rights and
education, especially training for a variety of jobs in the sectors of service and
entertainment (percussion, dance, capoeira) (Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae).
The expansion of Afro Reggae to other poor communities (Parada de Lucas,
Cantagalo, Cidade de Deus), its national and international campaigns to gather
funds and the plans to increase the number of performances of its diverse bands –
they began with one band and now have seven –, whose profits contribute to
paying for their civic projects, has taken them to give priority to the
Communications Programme. A programme that links them with an «almost infinite
network of people», who receive its publications, see its appearances on television,
interact with them through e-mail, the «Baticum» radio programme (in association
with the Educational Technology Centre of the State University in Rio de Janeiro
and transmitted by Radio Comunitaria Bicuda, in Vila da Penha), by AFRONET and
by internet. Just as with the anti-globalization movements, Internet increases the
capacity of Afro Reggae to establish networks and articulations that extend from
the neighbourhood to the most important NGOs and foundations of the United
States (e.g. Ford Foundation) and Europe (e.g., Médecins sans frontières). GCAR
also has links with state, national and transnational bodies (from the local tourism
commission to UNESCO). In Rio itself, Afro Reggae is linked with IBASE, the
savings bank Caixa Economica Federal, Viva Rio, CEAP (Centre for the Articulation
of Marginalized Populations) and to NGOs, companies and other grassroots
associations. At national level, it has alliances with organizations such as
Comunidade Solidária, a semi-governmental body devoted to attending to the
needs of the poor. And today the Afro-Reggae movement has, similarly to the
Zapatistas, representatives in various European, American, Latin American cities
and another fifteen Brazilian cities, in some of which it has been contracted to make
the police aware of citizen security in poor neighbourhoods.
Based on this example, then, let us look at some of the characteristics of the
cultural networks:
Complex networks have the capacity to obtain information that for the
official institutions it is otherwise difficult or impossible to get, as they have
connections between actors that often avoid contact with the state and that
the market ignores.
More than professionalized managers, their agents are actors involved in the
production, circulation, distribution and arts and culture audiences.
They have the merit of playing an important role in the provision of informal
education, where cultural education is flawed or insufficient. In fact, they try
to take their programme to schools.
Cultural networks can connect new processes with more traditional
processes. For example, neighbourhood cultural production with the
production of the cultural industries. A new collaborator of the GCAR
network is André Midani, ex-president of International Music at Time
Warner, who left his post in New York to help to articulate cultural activism
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with a wide range of workers in the music industry. Through this link, Midani
contacted the community radio stations of Rio de Janeiro and is now also
helping them set up as micro-businesses and also to broadcast cultural
programming not found on commercial stations dedicated to playing the top
40 or 100 hits.
Networks are useful for articulating creators of the cultured, traditional and
new media (digital, internet, etc.) sectors. GCAR, for example, has links with
the museum sector, with traditional neighbourhood music groups of samba
and pagode and invites the audience, managers, journalists, academics,
NGO agents, etc., through its listserv – Conexões Urbanas –, its virtual
newspaper and its website.
Cultural networks also bring dynamism to cultural tourism, as they exploit
their links with actors of multiple sectors to establish new kinds of offer.
GCAR, for example, has established agreements with cultural tourism
agencies in the favelas. In fact, its cultural centre has become a place to
visit. Often not only the GCAR musicians and performers are found there,
but also personalities like Caetano Veloso; the Artistic Director of his CD
Nova Cara; Gilberto Gil, the current Culture Minister; and other musicians
such as O Rappa, MV Bill, Fernanda Abreu, etc. who have taken on the
youths as apprentices to later return to GCAR professionalized.
To return to the analogy with ecology and bio-diversity, networks serve to
maintain the primitive forest alive – allowing contacts between actors,
communities and processes that are disarticulated and de-systemized.
Therefore, it allows the creation of micro-systems that link with bigger
systems, covering all that is modernized with an approach to what Sylvie
Durán calls the primary forest.
Following this last analogy, we could say that networks are ways of levering social
and cultural capital. This is the creation of cooperation systems to achieve specific
objectives that do not define the totality of activity of the reticular actors.
Therefore, an actor enters a network – let us say the Latin American Network for
Local Cultural Heritage Management of the InCorpore Cultural Association directed
by Sylvie Durán – in order to bring its expertise as an alternative tour operator and
seek contact with sites and services that can enter in its activity, while a mayor
tries to develop cultural tourism for the local economy, and an artistic association
tries to increase the number of visitors and members to exchange exhibitions with,
and an agent of international cooperation or of a multilateral development bank
seeks how and where to intervene in social development with or without the
generation of employment, etc. A parallel symbiosis is established with that of a
forest, where a bird eats a fruit and then defecates in another place where the tree
reproduces, which in its turn accommodates monkeys, which in their turn eat
insects which, if they proliferated, would cause damage, etc. More or less
ephemeral systems are produced that lead to a kind of cultural reforestation. This is
the sustainability developed by Sylvie Durán in her contribution to this symposium.
Networks, therefore, contribute a meticulous work of articulation of which the
modern institutions are incapable. They enter, moreover, in spaces that the
institutions do not reach. Cultural policies, therefore, must develop strategies to
encourage the creation of networks, without trying to control their work. More than
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being catalysers of networks, the secretariats and other cultural institutions could
give advice, support, etc. In this way, it would allow the lead in cultural action to
come from civil society itself.
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