Chamada de trabalhos – primeira e segunda edições de 2024

Políticas Culturais em Revista, an electronic publication of the Cultural Policies Studies Network, publishes the call for papers for the first and second editions of 2024 (v. 17, n. 1 and n. 2) which, in addition to scientific articles and reviews on Cultural Policy and related topics, will feature the following thematic dossiers:

Dossier cultural policies and utopias

Responsible editors: Lia Calabre, Renata Rocha and Emiliano Fuentes Firmani

With regard to the praxis of cultural policies, the first decade of the 21st century in Latin America is marked by the construction of new political agendas, in addition to the efforts of some countries to elaborate cultural legislation and implement cultural plans. This context is certainly influenced by the elections of progressive rulers committed to establishing alternative socioeconomic and political models to the neoliberal policies of recent decades.

In the midst of this process, the production of knowledge about cultural policies and management also experiences a period of great development and interlocution between the countries of the region, driven by international organizations, public entities, academic institutions and also by collectives and cultural groups. In those years, facing the adoption of a formalist perspective in cultural management, Eduardo Nivón Bolán (2006) asserted the need to escape the lethargy of the administration, reorienting the look on the values and contents necessary to build democratic cultural policies. The purpose of transforming cultural policies should, therefore, be added to the still unfinished process of democratization of society, in which culture can play a central role in building agreements that seek shared goals.

The brief moment of prosperity is interrupted in the first half of the 2010s. The political, economic and institutional crisis imposes multiple and complex challenges for action and reflection in the field of culture. The worsening of the economic crisis, the rise of the extreme right, the cultural wars give rise to thematic influences and new meanings for culture that go beyond the cultural sector and spread throughout society on a global scale.

In a conjuncture that had many similarities with the current moment, interwar Italy faced, according to Antonio Gramsci, a “crisis of authority”. According to this author, "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old die and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, the most varied pathological phenomena are verified" (GRAMSCI, 2007, p. 184). For various reasons, the dissociation and discredit, by the great masses, of the consensus that sustained political domination in recent decades by parties and established political classes is also evident (FRASER, 2020), making it possible to envision “the possibility and necessity of the formation of a new culture” (GRAMSCI, 2007, p. 185).

This is an opportune moment to reflect on the meanings of cultural policies. When discussing the also critical conjuncture of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Milton Santos (2001, p. 160) suggested overcoming the repetitive view of the world that “(...) confuses what has already been accomplished with realization prospects. To exorcize this risk, we must consider that the world is formed not only by what already exists (here, there, everywhere), but by what can effectively exist (here, there, everywhere). The dated world of today must be seen as what it actually brings us, that is, a present set of real, concrete possibilities, all feasible under certain conditions”.

Thus, the pertinence of utopia is claimed, as Celso Furtado (1984, p. 30) defended, this "avant-garde action (which) constitutes one of the noblest actions to be carried out by intellectuals in times of crisis". Utopia, not as the non-place of Thomas More in its genesis (CHAUÍ, 2008), but the one that, as in Santos (2001), opposes this tendency to repetition. The Utopia that “(..) introduces the category of the possible and therefore fractures history (...), both in small movements that can redirect a life from a small attitude and within the spectrum of social movements” (SOUSA, 2008, p. 2).

Several approaches and biases can be highlighted in this dossier. Whether assuming cultural policy (or cultural politics) as “[...] the process put into action when sets of social actors shaped by and embodying different meanings and cultural practices come into conflict with each other” (ALVAREZ; DAGNINO; ESCOBAR, 2000, p. 24-25), either through case studies or from theoretical proposals of “symbolic strategies to take to the streets” (VICH, 2021). Among the themes of theoretical-conceptual reflections or experimental studies on ways to “build a counter-hegemonic bloc capable of taking us beyond the current crisis, towards a better world” (FRASER, 2020) in the field of cultural policies, it is worth highlighting:

• Cultural policies that combine equal distribution perspectives and inclusive recognition policies and intercultural dialogues;
• The crossing between cultural policies and new political cultures that contribute to the strengthening of subjects, citizenships, territories and the environment;
• Intersections and interfaces between aspects of gender, sex, race, age group and class and cultural policies;
• Cultural policies in contexts, spaces and insurgent cultural movements;
• Challenges and perspectives of datafication, platformization and artificial intelligence in cultural policies;
• Politicization of the cultural field and strategies for building democratic cultural policies.

We invite, therefore, interested people to go in search of nuances, questions and approaches that instigate and do justice to our (invented?) Latin American tradition of the necessary exercise of utopia in cultural policies.

Receipt of articles until November 30, 2023. Publication forecast in the first half of 2024.

 

 

Dossier Culture is Labour

 

The materialist conception of culture brings us with the need to understand cultural phenomena not only as artistic expressions, but also as ways of life. For Marx and Engels (2007) such ways of life are directly linked to the conditions of production and reproduction of life in certain historical contexts.

In the light of this perspective, investigating the production of culture in the context of the radicalization of capitalism and its neoliberalization process implies facing the material conditions of existence of culture producers. Obliteration of labor rights, impossibility of enjoying a continuous training process, intermittent performance of activities, exhausting hours and pluriactivity are some examples of the way in which the reproduction of the lives of workers and culture workers is conditioned in contemporary times. Added to the precarious working conditions indicated above, the contradiction between Capital and Labour, when analyzed from the point of view of culture, also highlights the new possibilities of organizing material life based on other logics that are not limited to accumulation.

That said, this dossier seeks to bring together discussions on the polysemy proposed in its title. We understand here that culture is labour in the Marxian sense of the term, since the sociometabolic relationship between human beings and the material world produces different ways of life. And culture is labour also because in contemporary times, a large part of culture producers belongs to the working class and therefore faces problems unfolding from the aforementioned structural contradiction.

 

The general lines suggested for this dossier are:

1. Cultural policies and working with culture;
2. Aspects of class, gender, race and generation in cultural production;
3. Impacts of precarious work on the health of workers in the field of culture;
4. State, public funds and the right to work in culture;
5. Social movements and cultural policy demands;
6. Culture, labour and the capitalist production of urban space;
7. Copyright, property rights, circulation and democratization of cultural production;
8. Working conditions in the culture economy

 

References

GAGO, Verónica. A Razão Neoliberal: economias barrocas e pragmática popular. São Paulo: Elefante, 2018.

KATZ, Cindi. Capitalismo Vagabundo e a Necessidade da Reprodução Social. Trad. Gilberto Cunha Franca e Valeria Fontes. In: Geousp – Espaço e Tempo (Online), v. 23, n. 2, p. 435- 452, ago. 2019. ISSN 21z79-0892.

MARX, Karl; ENGELS Friedrich. A ideologia alemã: crítica da mais recente filosofia alemã em seus representantes Feuerbach, B. Bauere Stirner, e do socialismo alemão em seus diferentes profetas (1845-1846). São Paulo: Boitempo, 2007.

MARX, Karl. O Capital: crítica da economia política. São Paulo: Boitempo, Livro I, 2013.

WILLIAMS, Raymond. Cultura e Materialismo. São Paulo: UNESP, 2011.

 

Receipt of articles until February 29, 2024. Publication forecast in the second half of 2024.