Autonomy, Culture, Action: On Culture's Spheres of Political Action in the Neoliberal Welfare State
The project studies the possible domains of political action for culture and the arts today, by critically investigating histories of progressive cultural policy initiatives in the Northern European welfare states during the period between the crisis years of the 1930s and the present. The project will ground this study in a theoretical revision of the concept of autonomy, understood both as an aesthetic term, denoting the specific social logic of aesthetic experience, and as an ethical and political term, denoting an ideal of individual and collective self-determination. The project asks two overall questions:
1) can we recover a critical concept of the progressive value of culture and the arts with respect to the conditions of individual and collective self-determination in contemporary society? This is a question regarding the status of autonomy under today’s social conditions.
2) what models for policy and organization exist that could serve to realize that concept at the broadest possible social scale? This is a question regarding the historical definition and contemporary status of culture’s spheres of political action in the political economy of the modern welfare state.
Final report
The aim of the project has been to study culture’s actual and potential “spheres of political action” in Western European countries that, like Sweden, can be called “neoliberal welfare states”. In what ways has the social, political, economic, and technical development of recent decades affected the social status of cultural practices? Do cultural practices still enjoy a specific social status and role, on account of which they may contribute to democratization and extended equality in society, ideals which have often been evoked in discourses of cultural policy? If so, what political reach do such practices have and how should their relation to other forms of political action be understood, at the levels of municipal, regional, state, and supra-state cultural policy, as well as of the networks of civil society initiatives, organizations, and institutions?
A theoretical working hypothesis for the project has been that the concept of “autonomy”, understood both in its aesthetic and its political sense, remains essential for any understanding of culture’s particular social logic, but that this concept must at the same time be re-examined in relation to contemporary political, economic, and technical conditions. One part of the research project has therefore aimed to critically revise this concept, with reference to the modern aesthetic and art-philosophical tradition within which it has been developed, and to test the concept’s relevance in relation to contemporary aesthetic, cultural, and cultural policy development. This work has resulted – and results – in a number of books, edited volumes, and articles, written by the project researchers, and published by Swedish and international academic journals and publishing houses.
A practical working hypothesis for the project has been that modern cultural policies within these societies have been an area where culture’s “spheres of political action” can be studied in a comprehensive sense. A second part of the research project has therefore consisted of critical studies into how the idea of art’s autonomy in different ways has been invoked as a condition for, and put into practice by, modern cultural policy, in the forms of various measures to secure “the freedom of art”, and various projects for cultural democratization. This part of the research project has consisted of studies into both historical and contemporary projects, processes, and concepts, such as Swedish cultural policy’s relation to the infrastructure of popular education, the development of different administrative measures (such as the “arm’s length” principle), or the history of experimental cultural policy initiatives (such as the organization The Swedish Exhibition Agency). This part of the project has also resulted and results in a number of books, edited volumes, and articles.
The development of the project has confirmed the strong validity and the relevance of the working hypotheses. We, the three project researchers – Kim West, Gustav Strandberg, and Josefine Wikström – have not found it necessary to revise our theoretical framework or our research problems in any substantial way, nor to shift the project’s direction in any significant sense. It is rather the opposite that has been the case: during the project period it has become increasingly evident to us to what extent the concept of autonomy, in both its aesthetic and its political sense, remains an often unthought or repressed condition of many contemporary discussions of the social and political role of culture, in academic as well as in cultural policy and public debates, and regardless of specific political orientation.
On the one hand, the idea that cultural and artistic practices have a particular social logic, irreducible to the logic of other practices – that they are to some extent autonomous – is a necessary condition of many of the arguments used to defend or to promote the institutional infrastructure of modern cultural policy, such that it has been developed since the mid-twentieth century, in France, the UK, Sweden, and other European countries. But on the other hand, a related idea of the particular status of cultural practices is fundamental to the arguments according to which such practices can be understood as a particular type of “creative” activities, with a special ability to be “innovative” or contribute to “attractiveness”, arguments often invoked to justify structural reform and increasing privatization of cultural policy infrastructure.
In this respect, our project has bridged a disciplinary gap that has in many ways limited research as well as public debate: the gap between a critical, aesthetic, and art-philosophical tradition of reflections concerning art’s autonomy, and the discourse of cultural policy studies, such that it is expressed in both academic research and in policy and departmental reports, inquiries, and internal documents. That our research has contributed with a perspective that has been lacking within this wide, multidisciplinary field has been evidenced by the strong interest our publications have met, both in Sweden and internationally.
The research has been conducted in accordance with the project plan. One part of the work has been collective. An important forum and organizational form for this has been a monthly, internal research seminar, where we, through readings and discussions, have developed and deepened our understanding of the concepts and the historical forms we have studied. To this seminar we have at a number of occasions also invited experts from different areas, to open new perspectives and help us navigate extensive research fields. As a part of the collective work, and in accordance with the project plan, we have organized two conferences: one smaller, one-day conference with mainly Swedish participants, around the concept of the autonomy of art; and one larger, two-day conference with Swedish and international participants, around the relation between a critical, theoretical understanding of art’s autonomy, and cultural policy practice. Both conferences result in anthologies, one of which was published in 2024, the other of which is in production.
At the same time, we have worked separately, with our individual projects. This work has resulted in conference participation and a number of publications, some of which are still in production. These individual publications are written as parts of larger, individual projects, and each of us are working on assembling them into monographs, ideally for publication during the present year. Some of us are also publishing separate, smaller monographs as parts of the research project.
In May 2022, the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University in London organized an open, one-day seminar about our research project, where we presented ongoing work. This work resulted in a book, written by us, titled Critique of the Freedom of Art, which was published in Swedish in December 2022 and in English in June 2023 (as a special issue of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics). The book was designed as a “counter-report”, in response to a report produced by the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis (Myndigheten för kulturanalys), This Is How Free Art Is (Så fri är konsten, 2021). Our counter-report showed that the ACPA report was based on an insufficient understanding of the concept which was at the center of its argument: the concept of art’s freedom, or autonomy. Our publication asked what a critical understanding of this concept could be today, and what the political implications would be of such an understanding.
Critique of the Freedom of Art received much attention. The book was reviewed and commented upon in most larger Swedish newspapers, in a number of more specialized cultural magazines and publications, as well as in Swedish and international academic press. We were invited to present our research project, to participate in discussions and debates, and to contribute to seminars and conferences at a large number of different institutions, departments, and organizations, both in academic contexts and in the policy field. We were for example invited to speak at The IFACCA 9th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Stockholm 2023, at the Swedish Arts Council’s annual conference in 2023, at the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2023, at The Center for Cultural Policy Research at Borås University in 2023, at REMESO at Linköping University in 2023, and at the research platform Art as Forum at Copenhagen University in 2023. Many of these invitations then led on to further collaborations and invitations to contribute to publications and conferences.
Another important result of the attention that our research project has received, is that it has set us in contact with a number of civil society cultural institutions and organizations, with which we have established a network for further cooperation. We were for example invited to present our work, give lectures, and participate in seminars and discussions at the annual meeting of the cultural policy cooperative Den kollektiva hjärnan in 2023, at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus in 2024, at Konstdygnet, arranged by The People’s Movement for Art’s Promotion in Västmanland in 2023, and at Kulturföreningen Ormen in Haninge in 2024. In several cases, these invitations have then been developed into long-term collaborations, with plans for the arrangement of public seminars, educational activities in collaboration with university departments and popular education organizations, as well as informative and opinion making activities.
The overall result and a preliminary conclusion of the research project – but a conclusion that points to continued work, rather than to the end of something – is therefore that the concept of the autonomy of art, and the ways in which this concept has been put into action in cultural policy practice, today constitute a problem complex of the highest relevance, around which many different competing political forces and theoretical paradigms converge, where some are more well founded than others. In this context there is a strong need for informed, critical research into this concept and its changing conditions and implications. Such research is what has been developed within this project, and in this regard it has made an essential contribution to contemporary idea development and debate, both in the academic and in the cultural policy field, as well as in public debate.
During the work with the project, several new research questions have been opened, both general and more specific in nature. One general problem that we, the project researchers, would like to study in a larger research project – at the scale of a research program or a research environment – is the question of the relation between cultural policy and “environmental policy”, where this latter concept should be understood in a wide sense, referring to both social and natural environment. The relation between cultural and environmental policy was a central theme when the Swedish state cultural policy was launched around the early 1970s. A fundamental idea then was that it was specifically within cultural policy that it could be possible to comprehensively address the question of what a good “social environment” could be. Our view is that this relation and this question deserve to be reopened in the condition of the current climate crisis, which will without doubt lead to major social transformations during the coming decades. This research project would therefore be based on a critical-theoretical tradition of reflections concerning society’s historical and material development, and would by necessity be multidisciplinary, with researchers from both the humanities and the natural sciences.
A more specific, new research question concerns the idea of art’s autonomy and how it is understood and administered within contemporary “artistic research”, in Sweden, but also in other countries where this disciplinary field is being established. We therefore plan a research project that will study the emergence of this field, in an aesthetic as well as in a sociological sense, on the basis of a critical concept of the autonomy of art. This project is intended to be a direct extension of our earlier research and has the working title Critique of Artistic Research. There is a very large need for an aesthetically and art-philosophically well grounded critique of this field today.
A theoretical working hypothesis for the project has been that the concept of “autonomy”, understood both in its aesthetic and its political sense, remains essential for any understanding of culture’s particular social logic, but that this concept must at the same time be re-examined in relation to contemporary political, economic, and technical conditions. One part of the research project has therefore aimed to critically revise this concept, with reference to the modern aesthetic and art-philosophical tradition within which it has been developed, and to test the concept’s relevance in relation to contemporary aesthetic, cultural, and cultural policy development. This work has resulted – and results – in a number of books, edited volumes, and articles, written by the project researchers, and published by Swedish and international academic journals and publishing houses.
A practical working hypothesis for the project has been that modern cultural policies within these societies have been an area where culture’s “spheres of political action” can be studied in a comprehensive sense. A second part of the research project has therefore consisted of critical studies into how the idea of art’s autonomy in different ways has been invoked as a condition for, and put into practice by, modern cultural policy, in the forms of various measures to secure “the freedom of art”, and various projects for cultural democratization. This part of the research project has consisted of studies into both historical and contemporary projects, processes, and concepts, such as Swedish cultural policy’s relation to the infrastructure of popular education, the development of different administrative measures (such as the “arm’s length” principle), or the history of experimental cultural policy initiatives (such as the organization The Swedish Exhibition Agency). This part of the project has also resulted and results in a number of books, edited volumes, and articles.
The development of the project has confirmed the strong validity and the relevance of the working hypotheses. We, the three project researchers – Kim West, Gustav Strandberg, and Josefine Wikström – have not found it necessary to revise our theoretical framework or our research problems in any substantial way, nor to shift the project’s direction in any significant sense. It is rather the opposite that has been the case: during the project period it has become increasingly evident to us to what extent the concept of autonomy, in both its aesthetic and its political sense, remains an often unthought or repressed condition of many contemporary discussions of the social and political role of culture, in academic as well as in cultural policy and public debates, and regardless of specific political orientation.
On the one hand, the idea that cultural and artistic practices have a particular social logic, irreducible to the logic of other practices – that they are to some extent autonomous – is a necessary condition of many of the arguments used to defend or to promote the institutional infrastructure of modern cultural policy, such that it has been developed since the mid-twentieth century, in France, the UK, Sweden, and other European countries. But on the other hand, a related idea of the particular status of cultural practices is fundamental to the arguments according to which such practices can be understood as a particular type of “creative” activities, with a special ability to be “innovative” or contribute to “attractiveness”, arguments often invoked to justify structural reform and increasing privatization of cultural policy infrastructure.
In this respect, our project has bridged a disciplinary gap that has in many ways limited research as well as public debate: the gap between a critical, aesthetic, and art-philosophical tradition of reflections concerning art’s autonomy, and the discourse of cultural policy studies, such that it is expressed in both academic research and in policy and departmental reports, inquiries, and internal documents. That our research has contributed with a perspective that has been lacking within this wide, multidisciplinary field has been evidenced by the strong interest our publications have met, both in Sweden and internationally.
The research has been conducted in accordance with the project plan. One part of the work has been collective. An important forum and organizational form for this has been a monthly, internal research seminar, where we, through readings and discussions, have developed and deepened our understanding of the concepts and the historical forms we have studied. To this seminar we have at a number of occasions also invited experts from different areas, to open new perspectives and help us navigate extensive research fields. As a part of the collective work, and in accordance with the project plan, we have organized two conferences: one smaller, one-day conference with mainly Swedish participants, around the concept of the autonomy of art; and one larger, two-day conference with Swedish and international participants, around the relation between a critical, theoretical understanding of art’s autonomy, and cultural policy practice. Both conferences result in anthologies, one of which was published in 2024, the other of which is in production.
At the same time, we have worked separately, with our individual projects. This work has resulted in conference participation and a number of publications, some of which are still in production. These individual publications are written as parts of larger, individual projects, and each of us are working on assembling them into monographs, ideally for publication during the present year. Some of us are also publishing separate, smaller monographs as parts of the research project.
In May 2022, the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University in London organized an open, one-day seminar about our research project, where we presented ongoing work. This work resulted in a book, written by us, titled Critique of the Freedom of Art, which was published in Swedish in December 2022 and in English in June 2023 (as a special issue of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics). The book was designed as a “counter-report”, in response to a report produced by the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis (Myndigheten för kulturanalys), This Is How Free Art Is (Så fri är konsten, 2021). Our counter-report showed that the ACPA report was based on an insufficient understanding of the concept which was at the center of its argument: the concept of art’s freedom, or autonomy. Our publication asked what a critical understanding of this concept could be today, and what the political implications would be of such an understanding.
Critique of the Freedom of Art received much attention. The book was reviewed and commented upon in most larger Swedish newspapers, in a number of more specialized cultural magazines and publications, as well as in Swedish and international academic press. We were invited to present our research project, to participate in discussions and debates, and to contribute to seminars and conferences at a large number of different institutions, departments, and organizations, both in academic contexts and in the policy field. We were for example invited to speak at The IFACCA 9th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Stockholm 2023, at the Swedish Arts Council’s annual conference in 2023, at the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2023, at The Center for Cultural Policy Research at Borås University in 2023, at REMESO at Linköping University in 2023, and at the research platform Art as Forum at Copenhagen University in 2023. Many of these invitations then led on to further collaborations and invitations to contribute to publications and conferences.
Another important result of the attention that our research project has received, is that it has set us in contact with a number of civil society cultural institutions and organizations, with which we have established a network for further cooperation. We were for example invited to present our work, give lectures, and participate in seminars and discussions at the annual meeting of the cultural policy cooperative Den kollektiva hjärnan in 2023, at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus in 2024, at Konstdygnet, arranged by The People’s Movement for Art’s Promotion in Västmanland in 2023, and at Kulturföreningen Ormen in Haninge in 2024. In several cases, these invitations have then been developed into long-term collaborations, with plans for the arrangement of public seminars, educational activities in collaboration with university departments and popular education organizations, as well as informative and opinion making activities.
The overall result and a preliminary conclusion of the research project – but a conclusion that points to continued work, rather than to the end of something – is therefore that the concept of the autonomy of art, and the ways in which this concept has been put into action in cultural policy practice, today constitute a problem complex of the highest relevance, around which many different competing political forces and theoretical paradigms converge, where some are more well founded than others. In this context there is a strong need for informed, critical research into this concept and its changing conditions and implications. Such research is what has been developed within this project, and in this regard it has made an essential contribution to contemporary idea development and debate, both in the academic and in the cultural policy field, as well as in public debate.
During the work with the project, several new research questions have been opened, both general and more specific in nature. One general problem that we, the project researchers, would like to study in a larger research project – at the scale of a research program or a research environment – is the question of the relation between cultural policy and “environmental policy”, where this latter concept should be understood in a wide sense, referring to both social and natural environment. The relation between cultural and environmental policy was a central theme when the Swedish state cultural policy was launched around the early 1970s. A fundamental idea then was that it was specifically within cultural policy that it could be possible to comprehensively address the question of what a good “social environment” could be. Our view is that this relation and this question deserve to be reopened in the condition of the current climate crisis, which will without doubt lead to major social transformations during the coming decades. This research project would therefore be based on a critical-theoretical tradition of reflections concerning society’s historical and material development, and would by necessity be multidisciplinary, with researchers from both the humanities and the natural sciences.
A more specific, new research question concerns the idea of art’s autonomy and how it is understood and administered within contemporary “artistic research”, in Sweden, but also in other countries where this disciplinary field is being established. We therefore plan a research project that will study the emergence of this field, in an aesthetic as well as in a sociological sense, on the basis of a critical concept of the autonomy of art. This project is intended to be a direct extension of our earlier research and has the working title Critique of Artistic Research. There is a very large need for an aesthetically and art-philosophically well grounded critique of this field today.