Cosmopolitan Art and Cultural
Citizenship
David Chaney
Cosmopolitan Culture
I
T HAS commonly been observed that in postmodernism the cultural dis-
tinctions that characterized the era of modernism have been under-
mined. In practice this means that it appears that social and cultural
divides between high culture and popular culture are disappearing, with
practitioners of the former losing much of their authority and prestige and
simultaneously adopting many of the themes, idioms and marketing of their
more commercial peers. The consequence is usually felt to be that a space
for a distinctive type of cultural opposition to the rationalization of social
order in the interests of global capital has been removed (Adorno, 1991;
Clark, 1999). In other words, the provocative challenge to bourgeois con-
sciousness that an avant-garde posed in the continual developments of
modernism is effectively no longer tenable. When the challenge was effec-
tive it was often presented (or condemned) as cosmopolitanism and I will
therefore use changing meanings and status of the cosmopolitan as a focus
for my discussion.
I do not want to disagree with the initial premise of this account in
that in this article I too will argue that there has been a fragmentation of
the cultural order.1 I will, however, suggest that a more complex situation
than a straightforward loss of prestige for high culture has arisen. A cosmo-
politan avant-garde has not only survived but also prospered in the sense
of enjoying the privileges of celebrity status and concomitant financial
reward. The prestige of cosmopolitan art has been won, however, in a
process in which cosmopolitan culture in the visual arts has become a
spectacular attraction. We might take it for granted that there is an inter-
national language for a global avant-garde; but more importantly, and almost
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Vol. 19(1­2): 157­174
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paradoxically, this language has been popularized so that it has become a
significant element in the repertoire of international tourism. In the process,
cosmopolitanism has had to effect a curious accommodation with the insti-
tutions of national culture ­ an accommodation or conciliation that has been
apparent in the discourses governing the provision of public art by those
institutions. The more general context for these changes in the status and
significance of cosmopolitan culture has been the strength of a populist
current in which the cultural dimensions of citizenship have become more
significant. Some of the implications of this approach for belief in the
cultural challenge of avant-garde art will also be discussed.
In this article I will develop these ideas beginning by clarifying some
of the terms used so far. The cosmopolis offers a principled challenge to the
conventional idea of culture. The cosmopolis is a place or political space
that encompasses the variety of human culture. It promises the potential to
meet and become acquainted with all the strands of cultural diversity. The
cosmopolitan is therefore someone who can cope with unpredictability.
Cosmopolitans know what is expected in different cultural settings and can
move between them with confidence and assurance. In its lack of order, the
cosmopolis undermines the premise of culture. Although culture has been
used in a variety of ways, not least to refer to `artistic heritage', `civilization'
or `communal way of life', primarily the concept has been significant as
fundamental to the organization of social life ­ an organization which has
been perceived to be more important than the arrangements and contracts
of voluntary agreement. Culture tells us that there is a distinctive way of
doing things ­ painting a picture, making and eating a meal, and what is
expected of children ­ which will be characteristic of a social group. These
distinctive forms of life are usually imbued with moral force, often as tra-
ditions, and they constitute a central element in group identity. These ways
of doing things will therefore persist through generations; they will gener-
ally hold without discussion or question, and they display a level of group
life that precedes individual experience (changing conceptions of culture
are further discussed in Chaney, 2000).
The heterogeneity of cosmopolitan taste suggests either that it is
possible to transcend one's native culture, or that this culture has been in
some significant sense diluted, or possibly both. The dilution implication is
important because it alerts us to one of the ways in which a charge of being
cosmopolitan has been used, particularly in nationalist rhetoric, to stigma-
tize minorities.2 And yet, because a culture is not a uniform terrain but
structured by inequalities of power and prestige, it has always been open,
at least in European modernity, for individuals to use the differences of
cosmopolitan style as a display of privilege. This opportunity has most typi-
cally been taken by intellectual groups eager to show both their learning
and indifference to local expectations; however, the use of cosmopolitan
style has also been able to function as a criterion of being cultured in the
sense of familiarity with a variety of cultural vocabularies.
The point being made here is that the ability, and by implication the
158 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
willingness, to look outside national cultural traditions has been available
to fractions in elite formations as a source of prestige. Reflexively, it has
functioned as a way of influencing the substance of cultural discourse, so
that their prestige and power are reinforced and legitimated. In the terms
of Bourdieu's metaphor of cultural capital, it is as though being able to draw
upon a wider range of currencies than the national has enabled certain sorts
of transactions to be reserved for the privileged (Bourdieu, 1984). We should
also recognize that my writing as though the option of cosmopolitanism is a
choice, is to adopt a metropolitan stance. In smaller and/or colonized coun-
tries lacking cultural autonomy, national cultural traditions may well be
forced into a client relationship with forms of imperialism. Such a cultural
as well as economic dependence will ensure that elite groups use cosmo-
politanism as a way of bridging divides between an indigenous popular
culture and the prestigious influences of colonizing powers (Bhabha, 1990).
It is also relevant that for those generating cosmopolitan innovation within
metropolitan culture, as in the era of high modernism, both the popular
culture of the indigenous proletariat as well as the experience of colonial-
ism have provided new repertoires of primitivism and authenticity as con-
trasts to the conventions of national styles (see for example Hiller, 1991;
Varnedoe and Gopnik, 1990).
National Culture and Popular Culture
These preliminary remarks are intended only to make the simple point that
there is inevitably a politics to the practice of the cosmopolitan. Simple in
the sense that the dynamics of cultural differentiation and elaboration are
inevitably grounded in wider socio-political structures, but also complex in
the sense that the meaning of cosmopolitanism does not have a general
history but an infinite number of specific and overlapping histories in the
formation of national cultures and cultural discourses. There is clearly
scope here for a sociology of the politics of cosmopolitanism ­ how cultural
institutions have negotiated tensions between the indigenous and the global
in the process of cultural change. The specific angle that I will develop in
the rest of this article concerns the conciliation of national with cosmo-
politan culture in the institutions of public art in British modernity. I will
initially briefly discuss this in relation to the era of urban popular culture,
as I said initially that a strong distinction between cultural levels was a
defining feature of the modern era. I shall then turn to more contemporary
developments that I shall describe as a fragmentation of cultural order.
Notions of public art ­ that is cultural sites, buildings, objects, mem-
orials and practices such as parades oriented to the anonymous masses of
civil society ­ have had to be developed and articulated in the context of a
fracture within a national culture between the popular cultures of the middle
class and urban working class. It is unsurprising, then, that some of the
early initiatives in public culture were explicitly directed at civilizing the
urban proletariat. For example, the provision of public parks, reading rooms
for working men, support for adult education classes, provision of sporting
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 159
facilities and the encouragement of sporting ideals through class mixing,
and subsidizing municipal art galleries and museums were undertaken in
19th- and early 20th-century Britain in order to lessen class hostility and
imbue working men, and through them their families, with the cultural
capital of rationality (Cunningham, 1980; Meller, 1976). If we add to these
sorts of initiatives associated developments in the provision of statuary of
national heroes, local war memorials (particularly after 1919), parks, stadia
and other public buildings dedicated to glorious moments in national
history, then we can see a determined attempt to create what Horne has
called a public culture for a modern nation (1986; see also Horne, 1984;
Usherwood et al., 2000).
What I have described so far has been a number of attempts at creating
a national culture, but we should also recognize that these were comple-
mented by a discursive discovery of an already existing culture (neatly
captured in Hobsbawm and Ranger's [1983] oxymoronic phrase of the
invention of tradition). I am thinking here of projects as disparate as the
folk song movement and the founding of the National Trust. Inspired in part
by the feeling that the all-too evident urbanizing of Britain meant that a tra-
ditional culture was disappearing, there was also a desire to capture or for-
mulate the distinctiveness of a national culture, partly as a source of
integrative inspiration and partly to resist encroaching cosmopolitanism
(Colls and Dodd, 1986; Samuel, 1989; Shiach, 1989). When we turn to
national cultural institutions such as museums, galleries, academies and
scientific societies, however, cosmopolitan cultural values become more
explicit.
In large part this was because those founding the National Gallery, the
British Museum, the Royal Academy and the Royal Society, etc., were con-
cerned with the glory of the British state, the British ruling class and its
attendant intellectuals (Barlow and Trodd, 2000; Haskell, 1993; Smith,
1993). The cosmopolitan could thus be identified with the metropolitan
sophistication of imperial powers and, although it might occasionally be
seen to degenerate into aestheticism and decadence, generally it was
accepted as enhancing national culture. My point is that cosmopolitanism
could be incorporated in the illusions, the imagination, of a national culture
as long as an indigenous urban popular culture remained localized and frac-
tured between the politics of imperial and class consciousness. In practice,
though, the accommodation between different class levels began almost
immediately to be undermined by a new culture of entertainment for the
masses.
The new institutions of mass communication and entertainment ­
initially a national popular press, followed by the cinema, radio and tele-
vision, in conjunction with a mass publishing and a recording industry and
a national advertising industry ­ substantially modified the situation in a
number of ways. First, the class character of different strands of popular
culture was diminished although it did not disappear. A second form of
modification derived from the fact that the mass media were national
160 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
institutions. Much of the regionalism of popular culture has gradually been
washed away, although of course particular aspects, as in styles of local
humour, for example, survive. Third, mass media have shifted the interface
between, and consequentially altered the character of both public and
private spheres. As these media are primarily consumed in the home, the
public character of culture has changed towards a more personalized,
intimate, domestic form of dramaturgy. A mass popular culture can there-
fore be characterized as a variety of entertainments made available as a
broad social appeal, usually reinforced by strong advertising campaigns, to
anonymous audiences who consume performances as commodities (on
initial British accommodation to mass culture see LeMahieu, 1988). It is
also apparent that the connections between the emergence of mass popular
culture and the dominance of consumerism are not coincidental (Lury, 1996;
Slater, 1997).
The intrinsic reproducibility of the media means there are no techni-
cal barriers to the size of the audience and, as the history of the cinema
shows, national industries struggled in the face of foreign, particularly
American, competition. The struggle has not been so much to reject a global
culture of entertainment as to preserve a space for distinctive national
variants. It is interesting in this respect that in Britain, at least, in looking
to find a voice for a distinctive national cinema, the established themes of
an arcadian community, both urban and rural, which stands opposed to both
those who would exacerbate class tensions and those pursuing commercial
advantage over communal interest, have continually surfaced in successive
waves (Higson, 1995). It is as if sophistication is being equated with the
cosmopolitan here, as an essential contrast to national essence. Significantly
related to this trend was the development of a semi-autonomous BBC which,
under the direction of John Reith, coined a new language of public service.
Here again the commercialism of cosmopolitan (to be heard here as
American) culture was kept at bay as far as possible, while attempting to
raise the cultural and educational tastes of the national audience. The aim
was in part the established desire to transcend class divisions, but also to
promote a new model of suburban domesticity focused on the private family
and its home entertainments (on subsequent developments in public service
broadcasting see Tracey, 1998).
At the level of national cultural institutions there were changes. The
previous pattern of municipal initiatives allied with private philanthropy, in
conjunction with national cultural institutions, seeking to overcome the
divisiveness of a modernizing society, evolved towards a more national pro-
gramme of cultural paternalism. The most significant innovation in this
approach came in the years immediately after the Second World War.
Building on the social consciousness developed in that struggle, the Arts
Council was founded to foster a national culture through support of local
cultural initiatives, and to make the best of a global culture as widely avail-
able as possible. The inherent problems of reconciling national and cosmo-
politan agendas of such a body had, of course, been compounded by the
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 161
development of international modernism in the first half of the century,
which had been alienated from any sort of public credibility in part through
its representation in caricatures in the mass media (Taylor, 1999). Although
there was a popular consensus over the incomprehensibility of international
modernism as the terrain of cosmopolitan taste, it was apparent to some
policy-makers, at least, that America had gained considerable prestige
through New York being able to claim for itself the position of centre of
modern innovation (although this was not achieved through direct public
patronage of artists [see Crane, 1987; Tagg, 1976]). The Arts Council there-
fore struggled to keep Britain abreast of contemporary culture through
events such as the Festival of Britain.
A Fragmenting Culture?
I have suggested that British cultural institutions seeking to promote the
cultural life of the nation were forced, in an era of mass culture, to struggle
to reconcile what were perceived as national styles and themes with the
expectations of popular cosmopolitan taste. It is also important to note that
the developments I have sketched took place in an era of what Bennett et
al. call `welfare liberalism' (1999: ch. 9). This is a regime in which the state
and associated public bodies assume a responsibility to provide public
services in the cultural as in other spheres. In the last quarter of the 20th
century, the dominance of this outlook was heavily attacked, in particular
by right-wing thinkers and policy-makers who argued that cultural provision
should be as governed by market forces as any other form of public service.
One of the central tenets of this critique has been that, as consumption of
cultural goods is dominated by socially privileged groups, in particular the
better-educated, then public subsidies have shifted resources to the advan-
tage of the better-off. This critique has not been confined to the right; as
Bennett et al. put it, summarizing the views of Bourdieu: `Viewed in this
light, the public subsidy of such institutions, far from delivering a general
benefit to all, delivers a selective benefit of distinction to those who are
equipped, by their social and educational formation, to make use of them'
(1999: 230).
Changes in both policy and ideological climate have, then, been the
context for developments that I shall suggest are best characterized as a
fragmentation of the cultural order. I shall briefly describe what I mean by
this and present some reasons for why I detect the change. I have argued
that the era of mass culture was intimately intertwined with the develop-
ment of consumerism, and suggest now that the subsequent moves to frag-
mentation are based in the populism of mass consumerism. Another way of
putting this is to say that the democratic compromise of the earlier phase
between elite and popular tastes is being re-shaped towards a populist dis-
crediting of many of the institutions of the first wave of modernization. In
order to cope with the insecurity and reflexivity of de-structured social order,
there have been a number of moves towards more ostensibly radically demo-
cratic forms of public participation in education and entertainment as much
162 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
as in politics or social policies more generally (Beck, 1992). It is not yet
clear, however, whether these forms will effect real opportunities for partici-
pation in cosmopolitan culture other than as passive consumers.
I will briefly suggest three reasons for thinking there is a fundamental
change in the character of the culture of everyday life. In giving these
reasons I will say something about how I see fragmented culture differing
from mass culture. The first concerns what I called the `Fordist' rationaliz-
ation of mass cultural provision. Ritzer's studies of the fast food industry
and subsequent work on what he calls `new means of consumption' may be
taken as symbolizing this critique (1993, 1997). While the irrationalities of
McDonald's et al. are manifest and significant, I will argue that this is not
an appropriate model of cultural production (Barker, 1999; Featherstone,
1995). Rather, it seems that the Fordist rationalization of industrial capi-
talism is in a process of transition to what Lash and Urry have called an era
of `disorganised capitalism' (1994). In this era, the ubiquity of the various
elements of material culture symbolizing prosperity and quality of life, such
as cars, assorted domestic items, televisions and holidays, etc., is no longer
remarkable, and lifestyles are increasingly catered for through an `economy
of signs and spaces'. Of course one recognizes that there are significant
sectors of the population of post-industrial societies who are effectively
excluded from the fashions of lifestyle concerns, and that common enter-
tainments are still dominated by global corporations such as Disney, but it
remains true that the ways of life of more stable social formations are being
supplanted by the looser associations of lifestyle tastes (Chaney, 1996: pt
3). The relationship between culture and society is necessarily being re-
considered in the context of new social forms of lifestyles (Chaney, 2000).
This leads on neatly to the second reason for detecting a new era that
I am calling an era of fragmented culture. In a number of ways, it seems
that cultural objects or performances are shifting from functioning as
representations or depictions of social life to constituting the contexts or the
terms of everyday life. Traditionally, cultural representations have been pre-
sented in a framed environment that bracketed the perspective presented
and marked it off effectively as an alternative reality. This mode of perform-
ance is captured well by the proscenium arch of the theatrical stage, which
encloses a performance space within a building which further separates the
`show' from everyday life. The same sort of analysis holds for the conven-
tionally framed painting in an art gallery. Not only did this form of presen-
tation articulate clear distinctions between art and life or culture and
society, it also underlay an ideology of privileged authorship in which one
man (and it usually was a man) was attributed with the power to have created
this vision. It seems to me that the performances of fragmented culture are
increasingly difficult to contain within the boundaries of theatrical space,
so that they bleed into the texture of everyday life (Chaney, 1994).
What do I mean by performances escaping the boundaries of theatrical
space? The answer is partly given by the proliferation of performance inputs,
which has the effect that dramas are not sectored but are continually
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 163
available in every aspect of everyday life. One consequence has been that
there is an insatiable demand for new product, often filled by cheap dramas
that mimic everyday life in ways that blur distinctions between fiction and
reality (a process heightened by technological developments offering greater
interaction between audience and performance). But perhaps more import-
ant is a second consequence that performances, particularly but not exclus-
ively television performances, increasingly only seem to need intermittent
attention, largely because of a style of incoherent, overlapping narratives
that reflect the busy-ness of everyday life: `MTV is now almost shorthand
for a visual style comprising rapid alternation of clips or viewpoints with
computer graphics and a "hand-held" camera style that emphasises the arti-
ficiality of the medium and its incompleteness as a visual record' (Mirzoeff,
1999: 97­8).3
Turning then to my third reason for detecting a new cultural era, and
returning to my opening remarks about changing cultural order, art has
through the greater part of the 20th century retained its position as an essen-
tial element in the `capital' manipulated by elites. It seems to me, though,
that an important element in the distinctiveness of contemporary culture is
that the boundaries marking off and sustaining elite or high culture are
increasingly being undermined and de-stabilized (an interesting aspect to
this process is brought out in Whiting's [1999] study of the gendered ambi-
guities of Pop Art's embracing of the iconography of consumer culture).
Intellectual elites may well have felt themselves threatened by popular or
mass culture throughout the century but they did retain a sense of confi-
dence in their own distinctiveness and critical importance (more generally
on the significance of symbolic boundaries in maintaining cultural hierar-
chies see Lamont and Fournier, 1992). This confidence has been substan-
tially undermined in the modernization of modernization, to be replaced
with a series of accommodations to the populist demands of all-pervasive
media of mass communication and entertainment; as Eyerman has put it:
`Professionalisation, specialisation and fragmentation rather than politici-
sation seem to be the fate of intellectual labour in late modern society'
(1994: 195; see also Bauman, 1987).
In support of this assertion I can point to the ways in which status in
the various aspects of the art world is established through the same sorts of
media discourse as status in the spheres of, for example, politics or sport
or cooking. If to this is added the proliferation of modes of innovation, then
art is not restricted to particular social worlds or formal traditions but
becomes a general name for prestige, perceived creativity and minority
appeal. The effect has been that the established distinction between
classical and popular music, for example, is no longer clear-cut, and that
within each form there is a continuum between minority and more gener-
ally accessible styles. If one adds on to the initial binary distinction further
forms such as jazz, folk and world music (and many other possible con-
tenders), then innovation or seriousness is spread across the whole gamut
of music-making and is not restricted to a European tradition or type of
164 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
instrumentation. Another factor that one would want to introduce here is
technological innovations which have undermined the clarity of any dis-
tinction between performance and composition. This is too big an area to
go into in any detail here, but the effect has been to subvert the privileged
status of authorship.4
My argument that the authority and legitimacy of high culture have
been fatally undermined has a further major consequence. I began by noting
the belief that radical modernism articulated a distinctive and unique chal-
lenge to rationalizing authority, although we should acknowledge Bonnett's
thesis (1992) that avant-garde revolt during the last century continually
tried to resolve contradictory demands on the artistic role between radical-
ism and the privileges of high status. Now it seems that more generally those
working in art world settings (such as teaching institutes, critical commen-
tators and interpreters and public foundations of various sorts, etc.) have
had to consider their social role. In practice this means they have to con-
tinually confront why objects and performances purporting to be high
culture should be made and what their relationship with possible audiences
should be. It would not be appropriate to review all the various ways these
questions have been addressed in different cultural forms. I think, however,
the example of the shift to conceptual art ­ and thus the provision of
critiques of social knowledge and values ­ amongst visual artists is a good
example of a practical recognition of the futility of traditions of visual
representation in a world lacking an institutional rationale for those
traditions.
Public Cultural Institutions
Although I have been setting out some reasons for believing that the cultural
order of modernism has been fragmenting, this has not been a reiteration of
the de-differentiation of the cultural sphere thesis (Lash, 1990). For it
remains true that distinctively cultural activities, industries and practices
are the focus of most people's everyday lives. It also remains true, despite
the shift in ideological climate previously mentioned, that culture as a
source of prestige for corporations and national bodies seems an unques-
tioned (or unquestionable) good. What does seem to be happening, though,
is that cosmopolitanism has been naturalized and in the process robbed of
much of its controversial character. Or rather I should say manufactured
sensations, as in the Saatchi show of that name, or other provocations by
members of an international circus, many of whom are British, seem to be
little more than media stunts taken up to boost commodity values or flagging
political careers.5 In combination, these factors, plus the innovation of
deploying the subvention of lottery revenues and focusing resources on
audience-oriented cultural institutions, have enabled continued investment
in new or remodelled institutions of public culture such as galleries,
museums, theatres and production companies, etc., which have bolstered
the status of high culture as national and international resource as never
before.
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 165
I do not think I need to spend much time detailing the almost all-too-
well-known instances of international architecture, both cosmopolitan in
themselves and often acting as repositories for an international cosmopolitan
culture. I am thinking of examples such as the Sydney Opera House, the
Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Gaudi sites in Barcelona and, most recently, the
Tate Modern in London. These are obviously important in the constitution
of a global modernism and have been very effective in stimulating inter-
national tourism. To take but two examples, in terms of size and investment
the converted power station that has become Tate Modern has been far more
successful than the Millennium Dome; and Gehry's gallery, by itself, has
put a working Spanish port on the international tourist circuit.
I am more interested, though, in the ways in which this global cosmo-
politanism has been adapted to the re-energizing of a local identity, and in
raising fundamental questions about the participation of citizens in cultural
matters. In the British case, I am thinking of examples such as the Lowry
Centre in Salford, the Saltaire site focusing on David Hockney in Bradford
and Tate St Ives in Cornwall. These cases obviously use famous local con-
nections as a peg with which to bridge (to mix my metaphors) a distinctive
local identity with a global culture. I should note, almost as a digression,
that this localizing through personal association is not limited to attempts
to bridge local and global cosmopolitanism. Other examples are the creation
of new cultural spaces based on real historical figures such as Captain Cook
country in North Yorkshire, and completely fictional spaces such as Cather-
ine Cookson country in the Tyne-Wear conurbation. These sorts of con-
siderations could lead us off to a whole gamut of ways of dramatizing
heritage as a theme in local culture.
In relation to the cultural institutions of public art, a link to a dis-
tinctive personality as famous local son/daughter is not essential, as the case
of Gateshead shows. A typical rust-belt site of crumbling riverside decrepi-
tude is being galvanized into life by the conversion of a derelict flour-mill
(the Baltic) into a centre for the production and performance of the visual
arts. This innovation is itself an outgrowth of earlier innovations through the
local government policy of commissioning and locating public art works
throughout the borough ­ most famously the Angel of the North ­ in the
teeth of public hostility. The Gateshead example illustrates a number of
interesting features of this new role for public art. First, success breeds
success so that as the borough ­ previously, as even its best friends would
acknowledge, a backwater in terms of contemporary art ­ has become known
as a patron, it has attracted increasingly large amounts of public finance to
support further ventures.
Second, a curious alliance between local pride and an international
cosmopolitanism has been forged which has affected every aspect of local
government and communal life, not least in stimulating new initiatives
across the gamut of economic activities ­ and this in an area of conspicu-
ous economic deprivation. It is worth noting in this respect that Gateshead
had previously tried other more conventional stimulants to local activity
166 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
such as sponsoring athletics at the sports stadium (linked to a period of
several international runners based locally) and a garden festival. These
undoubtedly attracted a lot of publicity but did not seize local identity in
the way that cosmopolitan culture has done. Which then links to the third
feature, which is that, although this culture has been initially at least as
derided here as in any part of mainstream Britain, now that it has in some
sense become identified with Gateshead, its status has been reversed and
it has become a source of local pride. This is particularly true of Gormley's
huge casting of an androgynous Angel, which although ­ in a way that is
characteristic of the style ­ it lacks any obvious rationale or function, or
indeed anything you can do with it, regularly attracts a considerable stream
of visitors (Usherwood, 2001). To the extent that, merely by existing, it acts
as a focus for a day out by the family.
The attractions to politicians, both local and national, of using culture
as the fuel of economic development are fairly obvious. The transformation
of established sites and creation of new buildings primarily in run-down
economically stagnant areas are a classic example of the Keynesian use of
public funds as a trigger of development (and, surprisingly, followed by the
Thatcher government in relation to inner-city regeneration). These public
works not only create employment but help to support new leisure industries
of associated cafes, bars and other aspects of the culture economy. There is
an intensification of this process with both new-build and conversion resi-
dential developments, which bring further stimulants of the leisure economy
into the region. Plus, of course, the re-evaluation of local status and prestige
helps to attract other forms of inward investment and migration, so that the
self-fulfilling cycle of economic decline can be at least modified, and
possibly reversed. And, overall, the main boost to the local economy comes
in the re-branding involved in the fairly startling accomplishment of being
able to turn districts like Gateshead into tourist attractions.
It seems, then, that far from high culture in general, or, more particu-
larly, cosmopolitan or avant-garde culture being discredited or discarded,
they have become more successful in terms of generating public interest,
or at least public legitimacy, than ever before. If it seems possible that the
voraciousness of tourism is able to accommodate or encompass any form of
spectacle as long as it is sufficiently remarkable, at least part of the reason
will lie in consideration of the nature of tourism and what exactly we travel
to find (Coleman and Crang, 2001; Gold and Gold, 2000; Rojek and Urry,
1997). In his amusing account of what he has called `fatal attractions', Rojek
(1993) has illustrated how the re-framing of places in terms of associations
and significance can take up the most unlikely happenings and connections
in order to make them reportable and attractive. Clearly in this process
cosmopolitan culture has largely lost its associations with subversion and
provocation. Whether or not the visitors understand or even like the build-
ings, objects and performances they come to visit cannot be established,
but the art functions as a focus for locality and identity in a way that is inde-
pendent of any functional role it might be expected to fulfil.
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 167
In its lack of any obvious meaning, lack of iconoclastic force and the
absence of any technical expertise in its construction, the new cosmopolitan
public culture might be characterized as the ultimate exemplification of
theory. For all those art students who have sat through classes on theories
of contemporary culture, the production of signifiers that lack any signifi-
cation or indeed significance might seem to be the ultimate self-fulfilling
prophecy. And yet we cling to more traditional notions. So that although the
role for public art of civilizing a barbaric nation and reconciling class
conflict has largely been superseded, culture retains a certain role as some-
thing good for you. This can be witnessed most clearly in the hordes of bored
teenagers one sees being shepherded in sullen groups around cultural insti-
tutions by increasingly frazzled and harassed teachers. There is also endless
scope in public discourse for further reflections by both practitioners and
commentators on the meaning and significance of trends, styles and particu-
lar productions; reflections that continually offer the promise, if rarely the
substance, of further enlightenment.
Cultural Citizenship
An educational role for cultural institutions is clearly part of a broader sense
that becoming a citizen includes the right to benefit from the appropriate
cultural heritage. One way of understanding cultural citizenship, then, is as
a complex of policy issues around both the provision of cultural facilities
and the regulation of cultural industries, including: `electronic and print
media, music culture, heritage parks, museums and public libraries, to
name just a few' (Stevenson, 1999: 74; see also Moore, 1995). This is an
important area of social policy and, as the shift from work to leisure as the
central focus of individual identities and community life continues, will
clearly become more important. It is not, however, just an issue of policy
concern in the more traditional sense of bringing culture to the masses.
There are at least three significant questions that need to be posed. First,
following my remark at the beginning of this paragraph ­ what is an appro-
priate cultural heritage? In increasingly multicultural environments who is
to decide? And what sorts of responsibility are appropriate for public
authorities? Second, going back to an issue I raised earlier ­ to what extent,
if at all, should provision attempt to meet redistributive goals? If cultural
appreciation is highly socially stratified, should general public resources be
used to support the tastes of privileged groups? And, if not, can those
resources be used to support tastes that may well enjoy strong commercial
endorsement?
Third, although we might conventionally think of cultural values as
timeless, have we accommodated, or can we accommodate the sort of
changes in the character of culture that I have briefly sketched? Although,
in practical terms, the idea that citizenship carries cultural rights has been
gaining ground over the past half-century, it has not equivalently been
recognized in public discourse that the character of culture has been
shifting from an established orthodoxy towards a more heterogeneous
168 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
populism. It is therefore unsurprising that the question of quite what is
involved in cultural citizenship has recently stimulated academic interest
in the extent to which cultural institutions can meet the needs of citizens
in a changing cultural terrain (Kaplan, 1994; Karp et al., 1992; Lumley,
1988; Stevenson, 2001; Walsh, 1992). Certainly it is not at all apparent that
the spectacular developments in public culture to which I have referred
answer any of the questions I have just raised. In shifting cosmopolitan
culture to the terrain of spectacular attraction, any issues about how cultural
vocabularies can be used in the making of social worlds are effectively dis-
regarded.
Stevenson points out that, conventionally, discussions of citizenship
begin from Marshall's distinctions between civil rights, political rights and
social rights (1999: 76­7). These rights of citizenship developed in the 18th
century in the context of the emerging public sphere. This abstract space
(constituted in new impersonal media of communication ­ at that time news-
papers and magazines ­ and associated cultural forms of the novel, melo-
dramatic theatre and the concert hall) provided a forum for the imagined
communities of new national identifications with citizen populations
(Anderson, 1983). To these traditions of rights a theme of cultural citizen-
ship adds a fourth dimension of cultural rights (and remembering that rights
are always complemented by obligations [Turner, 2001]). These new rights,
however, are being formulated in a problematic relationship with the
national context. This means that an idea of cultural rights has to begin from
a radical concern with heritage and how it is being dramatized. Rights
should mean more than expectations to be able to sample other cultures,
either as cuisines or tourist venues, or even a capacity to seek support,
advice or inspiration from outside local cultural traditions ­ although we
should recognize that these have become standard expectations of a global-
ized cultural environment.
The changes I have described have meant that the implicit equation
between nation and culture which informed so much of the national con-
sciousness of high modernity is no longer sustainable. Similarly, the power
of the nation state to enact cultural policies is being effectively curtailed
with the further consequence that the relationship between citizen and state,
at least in the cultural sphere, is shifting from the state encompassing
identifiable rights and obligations to acting more as a facilitator of diversity
and a mediator between its citizens and global trends and markets. One of
the points of talking about the provision of culture and its unexpected popu-
larity is to emphasize that being familiar with cultural vocabularies is
becoming increasingly commonplace in ordinary experience. Being able to
participate as a citizen will increasingly involve being able to appreciate
what is to count as culture (see Huyssen, 1995 for more on new cultural
roles for museums), and knowing how to `read' the semiotic constructions
of social reality available in different cultural forms. If the publics of the
post-cultural era are to be as adept at disentangling the entertainments of
cultural industries as they have needed to be in relation to the constraints
Chaney ­ Cosmopolitan Art 169
and foreclosures of public authorities, then an effective citizenship will need
ever more supple resources in coping with the complexities of cultural dis-
course. It is in this respect that Bourdieu's notion of the unequal distribution
of cultural capital, analogous to inequalities in property and financial
capital, is a centrally important aspect of mechanisms of social exclusion
(1984).
On another level I want to argue that skills of empowerment in cultural
citizenship concern the ways in which relations in public are constituted ­
that is, how the institutions of everyday life are framed by public discourse.
Cultural citizenship is in this sense an ability to use the reflexive potential
(or be able to cope with the reflexive demands) of the radical democracy of
fragmented culture. More generally, any account of cultural change needs
to be able to trace, as a corollary, some of the ways in which dramatizations
of authority and legitimacy have also been changing. These are quite clearly
one aspect of cultural change in late modernity, but they are also concerned
with membership of public life ­ being a citizen and how individual
membership is mediated into collective opinions and attitudes. And it is in
this latter sense that I want to make the more controversial claim that
cultural citizenship has become more important in the life-politics of radical
democracy than other more traditional types of citizenship.
Bennett et al.'s study of the consumption of public culture in Australia
is relevant at this point (1999: ch. 9). Their careful analysis enables them
to distinguish between four types of privileged taste. While it is true that
all types work to sustain the distinction of privilege, they do not work to
provide the advantages of inclusion in the same way. For example, those
who feel sufficiently confident to own art works that they display in their
private homes are the most privileged in terms of class and education. In
contrast, the consumption of public culture ­ art galleries, museums,
libraries ­ has a: `more democratic social profile . . . [as does] the admin-
istrative ethos of this sector which places much greater stress on access and
equity objectives' (Bennett et al., 1999: 242). It may therefore be that, while
the version of citizenship implied in the development of cosmopolitan
tourism discussed in this article is hardly empowering, it can still be prac-
tically effective in blurring the meanings of traditional cultural distinctions
and institutions.
Citizenship, as Turner (1993) has made clear, is meaningful in spheres
such as legal, political and social because it guarantees an identity. If
cultural policies are currently extremely confused about what sorts of rights
are trying to be met, it is at least in part because of uncertainty over who
citizens are and what they are members of (Roche, 2001). Perhaps, rather
than trying to decide what sort of culture should be made available, policies
for access, etc., policy-makers should be concentrating on ways in which
they can facilitate citizens deciding for themselves what is to count as culture
and how it is to help them decide who they are. It is quite likely that Turner
(2001) is right when he sees a positive role for new media in facilitating this
more creative sense of citizenship. For example, information that authorities
170 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)
have tried to suppress and opportunities for subversive gatherings are
proving very difficult to control on digital pathways. Even so, the most recent
British government thoughts on broadcasting policy express a lot of positive
encouragement for new community media in facilitating sustainability.6 The
real potential of cultural citizenship when faced with the spectacle of cosmo-
politan culture should be double-edged ­ both to sustain cultural diversity
and to be able to facilitate indigenous development.
Notes
1. This thesis is developed at greater length in my new book (Chaney, 2001);
Elizabeth Wilson has also recently written of the incoherence of contemporary
culture (2000).
2. The paradigmatic figure in this respect has been the Jew in European thought,
simultaneously admired and reviled for the same cosmopolitanism; and of course
immigrants have typically been resented because of a fear that they might carry
cosmopolitanism with them like a disease.
3. Most recently at the time of writing new digital technology has been used to
make a mass market film in which four narratives are told simultaneously (Time
Code directed by Mike Figgis), effectively of course fragmenting the narrative frame
of performance and creating new rhythms of diegesis.
4. An illustrative example is provided by a leaflet accompanying an exhibition on
Nordic Postmodernism held in Helsinki 2000, which used four themes to organize
contributions: high and low ­ the unholy couple of art; sexuality ­ genres; multiple
historical layers ­ fragmentation; and death of the artist ­ anonymous art (Museum
of Contemporary Art, 2000).
5. I am thinking here of Rudy Giuliani's simulated outrage at the presentation of
some of this work in Brooklyn.
6. See Wessels (2000) for an example of the introduction of such an innovation;
also Axford and Huggins (2000).
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David Chaney is Professor of Sociology at the University of Durham,
England. He has published extensively on aspects of cultural change in the
modern era. In particular, he has been interested in how the ways in which
we represent social identities and forms of collective life have changed as
part of the development of cultures of mass entertainment and consumerism.
Recent books include The Cultural Turn (London: Routledge, 1994) and
Lifestyles (London: Routledge, 1996).
174 Theory, Culture & Society 19(1­2)