The moral economy of the cultural sector

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to deepen our understanding of the moral outlook that characterizes cultural organizations as political actors. Through a review of contributions to a public consultation on cultural policy in Norway, we seek to elucidate the moral economy these actors bring to bear on their relations to the state. More specifically, we focus on the actors’ understandings of the state’s moral obligations towards the cultural sector and how these notions relate to the experiences and concerns of cultural organizations. One such experience that surfaces in the public consultation is the strong engagement of members of cultural organizations, while another is a sense of vulnerability and perceived threats to art and culture posed by various forces in society. Against this background, we explore different understandings of the roles and responsibilities of the state in cultural policy that cultural organizations give voice to, noting the dominance of a conception of cultural policy as state patronage. In accordance with this understanding, the obligations of the state are to recognize the unique value and importance of cultural organizations, to provide them with the necessary resources, and to protect them from external threats.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• cultural organizations
• moral economy
• patronage
• politics
• political actors

Introduction

To speak of cultural policy is in many instances tantamount to speaking of public finance for theatres, orchestras, museums, libraries, festivals, and other organizations that are referred to collectively as the ‘cultural sector’ (Katz-Gerro 2015; Vestheim 1995; Røyseng 2007). The fact that these organizations play an important role in cultural policy is acknowledged as a matter of course in cultural policy research (Vestheim 2012). Much of what is referred to as cultural policy consists of financial support for activities that are carried out by theatres, orchestras, museums, etc., and in this sense, cultural policy research can be said to document the role of cultural organizations as implementers of cultural policy. Numerous studies within this research tradition document and analyze how cultural organizations are affected positively or negatively by changes in cultural policy (Belfiore 2004; Chiaravalloti 2014; Hodsoll 1998). There are also numerous studies that are concerned with discourses on cultural organizations’ actual or potential effects on society (Belfiore 2002; Gray 2008, 2007; Ratiu 2009; Røyseng, De Paoli, and Wennes 2020). However, when it comes to the matter of how cultural organizations seek to influence cultural policy and their characteristics as political actors, cultural policy research has less to say. While there are notable exceptions (cf. Eling 1999; Engelstad 2017), the tendency in cultural policy research has been to view cultural organizations as receivers – or victims – of policies that originate from the top executive level of government or from global political-ideological programs such as New Public Management or neoliberalism, rather than as actors involved in the making of cultural policy.

Cultural policy is a small domain of public policy that attracts relatively little attention from voters and the media. It is well known that cultural organizations are a principal source of feedback for government officials responsible for cultural policy, through both public debate and through corporatist and lobbying relations. When there is public praise or criticism of cultural policy, this usually originates from actors working in the cultural sector. When governments seek to carry out reforms of cultural policy, it is essential that they gain support from actors in the sector in order to succeed in these endeavors. Given that cultural organizations play an important role in the making of cultural policy, cultural policy research should profit from a better understanding of how these organizations operate as political actors. The aim of this article is to contribute to deepening our understanding of cultural organizations’ characteristics as political actors. More specifically, we will zoom in on notions about the moral obligations and responsibilities of the government that are prevalent among cultural sector actors in Norway, and how these define the parameters of what they consider acceptable or unacceptable forms of cultural policy.

Analytically, we will frame this exercise as an exploration of moral economy, drawing on classical (Scott 1977; Thompson 1971) as well as more recent (Fassin 2009; Honneth 1995; Palomera and Vetta 2016; Sayer 2000) theoretical elaborations of this analytical program. As a concept, moral economy is complementary to the concept of political economy. In our understanding, it is a call for a culture-sensitive approach to the study of political-economic relations, which is premised on the assumption that moral sentiments, values, and norms have important bearings on political processes, whether these are characterized by stability or by conflict and upheaval. In order to understand political processes, it is not therefore sufficient to consider material causes; we must also consider informal notions of mutual entitlements and obligations – the assumed ‘social contracts’ (Fassin 2009) or ‘moral consensuses’ (Honneth 1995) – actors bring to bear on political relations. A further assumption on which this analytical program rests is that such notions of mutual entitlements and obligations reflect and are shaped by the social experiences, livelihood concerns, and cultural beliefs of involved actors. Moral economy analysis is not therefore content with merely recording an actor’s moral stance or position on various issues, but also seeks to relate these to the actor's socially, economically, and culturally situated experience.

Classic studies of moral economy focus on political rebellion and resistance among subordinate groups situated at the intersection between traditional embedded economies and capitalist markets (Scott 1977; Thompson 1971). More recent contributions are premised rather on the recognition that ‘all economies are moral economies’ (Palomera and Vetta 2016) and that moral economy is a feature not only of the poor and subjugated but of actors at all stations of the social ladder. Thus, according to Fassin (2009), a moral economy analysis should be attentive to the articulations and confrontations of different moral economies in social space. This recommendation is clearly relevant to the present study. The cultural sector consists of a multitude of actors and subfields (Mulcahy 2017) and within these subfields, it is possible to identify many forms of moral economies, as indicated by several recent studies (Banks 2006; Belfiore 2022; Umney 2017; Røyseng, Henningsen, and Vinge 2022). To mention one example, Umney (2017) describes the moral economy that regulates the distribution of opportunities for work assignments among freelance musicians in London. In this article, we are less concerned with moral economies associated with the lateral workings of subfields of the cultural sector. What interests us is rather moral economies that accrue to relationships between the public authorities responsible for the planning and execution of cultural policy and the many organized actors found in the sector.

While individuals representing these organizations may rank above government officials in terms of cultural capital and class, they enter into a relation of subordination here in one important respect. It is a relation between government actors who control the distribution of public support to the sector and actors who strive to attain, uphold, or increase access to these resources, and that to varying degrees depend on the resources for their continued existence. Our use of the concept of moral economy in this context is with reference to moral sentiments, values, and norms that sector actors project onto this relationship. What notions of mutual entitlements and obligations do cultural sector actors bring to bear on their relations with public authorities? What are the roles and responsibilities of the state in the eyes of cultural organizations?

Case study and methodology

One place to look for articulations of moral economies that cultural sector actors subscribe to is in public consultations on cultural policy. The empirical case material we consider in this article consists of contributions to a public consultation the Norwegian Ministry of Culture conducted in 2018, in connection with the white paper The Power of Culture (Kulturdepartementet 2018), commonly referred to as ‘the culture report’. Every decade from the 1970s onwards, the Norwegian Government has issued one or more whitepapers that makes broad assessments of the country’s cultural policy, revises goals and objectives, and sets the terms for policymaking in the years that follow (Kyrkje- og undervisningsdepartementet 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981; Kultur- og vitskapsdepartementet 1983; Kulturdepartementet 1992, 2003). The publication of such ‘culture reports’ is widely perceived as an important occurrence within the cultural sector and generates extensive public debate. This can be seen as a reflection of the Norwegian and Nordic cultural policy model, characterized by a high degree of public funding of cultural organizations (Duelund et al. 2003) and by political authorities’ active public engagement with and responsiveness to actors in the cultural sector (Blomgren 2012).

Public consultations relating to culture reports provide actors from throughout the cultural sector with an opportunity to voice their opinions on cultural policy directly to the Ministry of Culture. As part of the preparation of The Power of Culture, the Ministry held a series of consultative meetings with cultural sector actors and issued an open call for written contributions to the culture report. The Ministry is not formally obliged to adhere to arguments and demands put forward in the contributions to the public consultation but is expected to take them into consideration. Judging from the number of contributions to the public consultation, many cultural organizations must have found it worthwhile responding to this opportunity to address their concerns directly to the state.

A total of 303 written contributions to the public consultation were published on the Ministry of Culture’s website, and many of these are signed by more than one organization.¹ About half of the contributions are signed by organizations whose principal functions are as producers, distributers, or disseminators of art and culture, and in most cases, these are beneficiaries of public support. Another nearly as large group of contributions are signed by special interest organizations in the cultural sector, such as artists’ associations, associations for cultural institutions, and associations for voluntary art and culture organizations. Other contributors are sector-independent special interest organizations, local and regional governments, state agencies such as Arts Council Norway and Music Norway, and a handful of private individuals. The invitation to the public consultation made clear that the culture report should cover broad sections of the Ministry’s fields of responsibility, including the various art fields (performing arts, music, visual art, literature), libraries, museums, archives, film, computer games, and voluntary organizations. Organizations from all these fields are represented in the public consultation. More specifically, the contributors can be seen to represent most segments of the country’s publicly financed cultural sector, with respect to the nature and historical longevity of their relations to the government and the scope of funding they receive from public authorities.

Norwegian cultural policy at the national (state) level of government has long been geared towards financial support for cultural institutions. Among the contributors to the public consultation, there are numerous state-financed cultural institutions and organizations that represent the interests of these institutions. Some of these belong to the numerically small segment of fine arts (theatre, opera, classic music, dance) institutions and cultural heritage (museum, library, archive) institutions that are fully financed by the Ministry of Culture and that account for a relatively large share of its budget. Other contributors belong rather to a numerically much larger segment of regional fine arts institutions and cultural heritage institutions that are mainly financed by the state and that receive additional funding from regional and local governments.

Another longstanding (although financially smaller) cultural policy engagement of the Norwegian central government has been support for non-institutionalized or market-based art and culture. Much of this policy takes the forms of stipends, project grants, and forms of permanent funding from Art Council Norway, Government Grants for Artists, the Norwegian Film Institute, and other vessels of state funding. One long-established segment of beneficiaries from these policies is independent artists. These are represented in the public consultation in numerous contributions from associations for visual artists, authors, musicians, etc. Other long-established beneficiaries of these policies that are visible in the public consultation are independent artist groups in the fields of theatre, dance, and music, and actors from the literature industry. In recent decades, state cultural policy in Norway has been extended to include various forms of popular culture and actors from the commercial culture industries. This is reflected in contributions from a plethora of actors representing the popular or commercial music industry and in contributions from actors representing the film, television, and computer games industries.

The aggregate budgetary expenditure on culture by Norwegian local governments (municipalities) has for several decades been on a par with or exceeded that of the central government. While actors from the state-financed cultural sector generally tend to be oriented towards values of professionalism and artistic excellence, the local cultural sector is known to give more emphasis to values of participation, wellbeing, and community building (Mangset 1992). About one-third to one-half of the contributions to the public consultation can be said to belong to segments of the local cultural sector. Many of these contributions are signed by organizations representing municipalities and regional governments (counties). There are also many contributions from organizations representing public libraries, which are important institutions in the Norwegian local cultural sector. An even larger number of contributions are signed by national, regional, and local branches of voluntary culture organizations (devoted for instance to youth and amateur art activities or local history and cultural heritage), which is another highly important segment of the local cultural sector. In addition, a large number of cultural centers, concert venues, youth clubs, artist groups, and other local cultural actors contributed to the public consultation.

The contributions vary in length from a few sentences to more than twenty pages. Some appear to be manuscripts presented at consultative meetings with the Ministry of Culture, where actors were invited to respond to a list of questions regarding the future development of cultural policy. However, in most cases, the documents make no direct reference to these questions and appear to be freely formulated. If there is a single common denominator to these documents, it is that they are answers to the broad question of what should be the priorities of national cultural policy in the years to come, as seen from the vantage points of different cultural organizations. Featured in the many contributions to the public consultation are a veritable cacophony of policy demands, e.g. for increased funding of particular organizations or fields, for the preservation of existing policies or for the creation of new policies. In formulating these arguments and demands, the organizations that have signed the contributions explicitly or implicitly express their opinions on the responsibilities and obligations of the government in relation to the cultural sector. As such, the public consultation provides rich source material for a moral economy analysis.

In accordance with this methodological approach, our review and interpretations of the document material have proceeded along two lines. On the one hand, we have sought to identify notions of moral obligations and roles and responsibilities of the state as expressed by cultural organizations. On the other hand, we have sought to identify experiences and concerns on which these notions of state obligations are founded. As can be imagined, there is great variation and plenty of contradictions in the outlooks, interests, and opinions expressed in the public consultation. Space does not allow us to elaborate on such differences in much detail. However, when analyzing this document material, we have instead sought to identify broad tendencies in the outlook of cultural organizations that cut across fields and types of organizations, as well as their relative symbolic standing and the level of public support they receive.

There are two forms of experience in particular that are foregrounded in the public consultation: One is the strong engagement signaled by members of cultural organizations and the other is a sense of vulnerability and perceived threats to art and culture posed by various forces in society. In the sections that follow, we account for these experiences expressed by cultural organizations. In the last part of the article, we move on to show how these experiences tie in with specific conceptions of the state’s roles and responsibilities in relation to the cultural sector.

Affirmations of engagement

When cultural organizations are presented with the opportunity to speak directly to the state on matters of cultural policy (i.e. to make political statements), what do they say? One answer to this question that can be discerned from the public consultation on the culture report is that the organizations that responded to the invitation for contributions used the opportunity to inform the Ministry about who they are, what they do, and why this matters. A considerable part of the corpus of contributions is made up of accounts of this nature, and appears to be a conventional framing of this type of public statement.

To take one example, a joint contribution by two state-financed museums, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History and the Norwegian Maritime Museum, starts out by asserting the importance of knowledge about cultural expressions of the past as a means of gaining understanding of contemporary society and the society of the future. The document notes that cultural heritage institutions play an important role in this connection as preservers, interpreters, and disseminators of cultural expressions. It further states that among the many cultural institutions located in the City of Oslo, the museums in the Bygdøy peninsula (which includes the Museum of Cultural History and the Maritime Museum) ‘are important,’ with 1.5 million visitors annually, who come seeking knowledge about Norwegian national history and the history of Oslo. Having made these points, the three-page document proceeds with an account of the two museums’ ongoing and planned exhibition activities and research and preservation projects, pointing out their goals and aspirations, and their role as meeting places for the dissemination and animation of history (Norsk folkemuseum 2018).

Typically, the contributions to the public consultation combine such accounts of the signatory organizations and fields of culture they belong to with policy recommendations or suggestions for topics that should be discussed in the culture report. However, in some cases, the documents consist solely of descriptive and evaluative characterizations of the signatory organizations and the fields they belong to. Thus, the contribution from the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History and the Norwegian Maritime Museum contains no explicit arguments concerning cultural policy; it merely points out the value and importance of the two museums, the cluster of museums in Bygdøy, and cultural institutions in general. As such, the document underscores that the value-affirming accounts featuring in the contributions to the public consultation are not merely ornamental devices. Clearly, these accounts are intended to carry a weight of their own as messages put forward to the Ministry of Culture.

The contribution from the two museums is also indicative of some of the various grounds on which the value and importance of cultural organizations and fields of culture are asserted in the public consultation. One line of value affirmation that comes to the fore in contributions from actors in all segments of the cultural sector takes the form of accounts of recent positive developments and successes of the organizations that are signatories of the statements or of the fields they represent. This could be the professionalism and quality of cultural production, the volume of cultural production, or audience figures. Another line of value affirmation that is clearly pronounced by state-funded cultural institutions and artist associations, as well as certain local cultural actors such as an association for youth clubs (Ungdom og fritid 2018), is to underscore the intrinsic value of art and culture. A third line of value affirmation is to highlight the importance of art and culture to civil society and democracy. Many contributions from all segments of the cultural sector invoke the ideal of an open and enlightened public sphere, which has been foregrounded in cultural policy discourses in Norway in recent years (NOU 2013, 4; Audunson et al. 2020). For example, one special interest organization for state-financed theatres and orchestras highlights the importance of cultural institutions as an infrastructure for the freedom of expression, as ‘indispensable arenas for reflection and formation of opinion,’ and how this ultimately serves as a foundation for democracy (Norsk teater- og orkesterforening 2018).

In line with what has been characterized as instrumental cultural policy (Gray 2007; Hadley and Gray 2017; Vestheim 2012), there are numerous contributions that underscore the beneficial effects of art and culture as sources of industry and commerce, communal identities, social inclusion, or health and wellbeing. These values are frequently pronounced by local cultural actors. To illustrate, a statement from a local history association declares that: ‘We create identity, pride and belonging. We make local history accessible to all’ (Troms historielag 2018). A public library states that libraries ‘are important to the individual and the local community,’ pointing to their roles as arenas for enlightenment, bildung, and language training, as meeting places, and as promotors of reading and digital competency (Ringsaker bibliotek 2018). While some organizations with a typical fine arts profile insist on a hierarchical ranking of the abovementioned values – pointing to the intrinsic value of art and culture as more fundamental than its various instrumental effects – it is more common for organizations from across the various art and culture fields to frame these values as complementary. For instance, contributors from the fields of film and computer games highlight the simultaneous roles these forms of cultural expression have as art and as sources of commerce and employment, or, as pointed out by a regional film center, ‘Film is art. Film is work [i.e. a source of employment]’ (Filmkraft Rogaland 2018).

The examples we have offered here of how cultural organizations assert their value and importance are a mere selection – such value-affirming statements are found throughout the public consultation. As such, these documents direct us to an experience that is characteristic of members of organizations from throughout the cultural sector, namely a strong personal engagement. The value-affirming statements are testimonies to an unreserved conviction about the goodness of art and culture (Røyseng 2007), and dedication to forms of cultural expression, organizations, and activities. This engagement is revealed not only in the declarative content of statements about the value and importance of art and culture, but also in the emphatic tone and vocabulary characterized by the frequent use of accentuating expressions (‘necessary,’ ‘irredeemable,’ ‘indispensable’) and by the use of tropes such as ‘treasure’ or ‘foundation’ to describe art and culture.

Most obviously, this display of engagement resonates with common conceptions of professional artists as actors driven by a vocational calling and a determination to dedicate their lives to the service of art. As has been established in much research, this notion of artists as actors characterized by an absolute commitment to their artistic cause is a part of the Romantic mythology and a reality of contemporary artists (Abbing 2002; Throsby 1994; Wesner 2018). However, the display of engagement in contributions to the public consultation is by no means confined to professional artists and art organizations. It is as pronounced – or even more so – when it comes to organizations representing other professions in the cultural sector (such as libraries, museums, architects’ associations, computer game producers’ organizations, etc.) or organizations representing various forms of amateur art or voluntary cultural activities (Finnegan 2007; Hennion 2005). Clearly, there are important differences in the experiences and concerns of, for example, professional musicians, librarians, and amateur artists, and these differences are reflected in the conceptual registers these actors rely on and the political statements they make in their contributions. However, what unifies the political statements of organizations from across the cultural sector is the display of a strong engagement on behalf of art and culture, adding a sense of urgency to the statements.

The vulnerability of art and culture

This sense of urgency is accentuated in contributions to the public consultation by a tone and vocabulary of concern, that is, of worry and fear regarding various threats to art and culture. In many cases, the contributions to the public consultation alternate between a tone of engagement and a tone of concern. This is illustrated by the contribution from the special interest organization for state-financed performing arts institutions as quoted above, which highlights the role of cultural institutions as an infrastructure for freedom of expression and as a foundation for democracy. Having made these assertions, the document goes on to argue that ‘the culture report must be written with great seriousness and responsibility, so that twenty years from now, we can look back and say that we were on the offensive to secure the fundamentally important role of art and culture in society’ (Norsk teater- og orkesterforening 2018).

There is a warning to this statement – a sense that if the state is not conscientious of its responsibility to protect cultural institutions, grave consequences might follow. In its urging that the state must accept this responsibility with great seriousness, the statement reveals a sense that this cannot be taken for granted. This concern becomes evident in particular in a section of the document that comments on a proposed devolution of responsibilities from the state to the regional governments in the cultural sector. Here, the organization points out that the existing nationwide infrastructure of cultural institutions in Norway is upheld and developed through cultural policies that ‘have been meticulously carved out,’ and makes it clear that the proposed reform could endanger this infrastructure. The statement is reverberated in about fifty other contributions from performative art institutions, museums, and other state-funded cultural organizations that clearly object to the reform proposal, mainly on the grounds of increased financial uncertainty.² More generally, contributors to the public consultation from all segments of the cultural sector (including public libraries, voluntary culture associations, and other actors of local cultural life) frequently testify to experiences of vulnerability – of being placed in a position of continuous exposure to risk and threats, and of being in need of protection.

On the one hand, such threats are attributed to powerful economic and cultural forces that are seen to confront the cultural sector from various fronts. One such threat that is foregrounded in the contributions is the global culture industry. An academy for folk music and dance, for example, speaks of how these and other forms of cultural expression with small audience bases are ‘under daily pressure’ from the entertainment industry and the new media landscape (Ole Bull Akademiet 2018). Another recurring topic in the contributions is digitalization and typically, this process is referred to simultaneously as a possibility for development and a threat to cultural life in Norway. Several contributions highlight the ubiquity of the English language on the internet and how this poses a threat to Norwegian languages and forms of cultural expression based on the use of these languages. Another recurring topic that is particularly prominent in contributions from visual artist associations is the proliferation of market forces and demands for commercial profitability in cultural life, the incompatibility of art and culture with the profit motive, and the need to shield art and culture from these demands. Yet another topic, which is invoked by several professional art actors, is a (perceived) general lack of appreciation of the value and importance of art and culture among Norwegians. A regional association for visual artists attributes this to the low level of education in the rural population (Bildende kunstnere Hedmark 2018), whereas others point instead to the provincialism of Norwegians and the country’s deficiencies as a cultural nation when compared to other European countries (Dolven 2018; Vestnorsk jazzsenter 2018).

In contrast, some contributions to the public consultation attribute the vulnerability of cultural organizations to their dependence on the state (at its various levels of government). It is notable that in this context, the state emerges both as a solution and as a problem to cultural organizations. Most obviously, the state is seen as a solution in that it is an agent entrusted with the power to provide cultural organizations with the resources needed for their development and protection, as well as with a formal mandate and moral obligation to do so. Furthermore, as most contributors to the public consultation make clear either explicitly or implicitly, the state is seen as the only agent that is entrusted with this responsibility and therefore as the agent on which the future of cultural organizations hinges. However, the dispositions of the state are contingent on the shifting priorities of politicians and politicians’ variable appreciation of the importance of art and culture, which means that it cannot be trusted to live up to its responsibility toward the cultural sector.

This is a concern invoked in the quotations above by the special interest organization for theatres and orchestras, as well as in numerous other contributions. Included among these are not only state-financed cultural institutions and artists associations, but also local culture actors, such as local governments, public libraries, choir and amateur music associations, and local history associations. Several organizations representing public libraries point to a longstanding financial neglect of public libraries in local government budgets and the dangers this poses. Another illustration is provided by the Norwegian branch of an international organization for youth musicians, which points out that, despite its size, Norway has achieved an important international voice in many forms of artistic expression. The organization notes further that this is a ‘vulnerable position’ that is upheld by ‘vulnerable professional communities,’ and that this must not be jeopardized through budget cuts or other changes to cultural policy (Jeunesses Musicales Norway 2018).

Insofar as this statement is a warning about the halted or reversed artistic development that might follow from a shift of political priority, it is echoed in the public consultation by several contributors, who similarly describe positive developments in cultural fields they belong to while underscoring the need for financial support in the future to continue these developments. This is evident in particular in contributions from organizations that represent the professional dance field, which has been a prioritized area in Norwegian cultural policy in recent years. Contributions from this field highlight the positive artistic and professional development this has resulted in and urge the state to uphold or increase its support in order to reap the rewards of the development processes that have been set in motion (Danseinformasjonen 2018).

Other organizations invoke more dramatic scenarios of marginalization that can result from a lack of state support. An organization for figure theatre, for example, points out how this genre has been neglected by the public authorities for decades and that there is an urgent need to include the genre in state cultural policy (UNIMA 2018). An association for Norwegian folk music asserts that the country’s folk music tradition represents an important national immaterial cultural heritage. It states further that unlike jazz, rock, and other music genres, the folk music field has been excluded from the prioritization of music in cultural policy in recent years and is left without any publicly financed cultural institutions. In order to preserve this immaterial cultural heritage, the organization argues that ‘the state should elevate its [i.e. Norwegian folk music’s] value to society by recognizing the field in the culture report and in annual state budgets’ (Norsk viseforum 2018).

Yet another type of concern regarding the state that surfaces in contributions to the public consultation is the state’s perceived tendency towards the instrumentalization of art and culture (Gray 2007; Hadley and Gray 2017). In the public consultation, this emerges as a tendency towards failure to respect the inherent value of art and culture and the professional freedom or autonomy that is necessary for art and culture to develop and prosper. Contributions to the public consultation, and in particular from organizations representing state-financed cultural institutions and professional art and culture, repeatedly invoke this possibility when heeding to the imperatives of the arm’s length principle and artistic or professional freedom. To take just one example, a professional dance institution concludes its contribution by stating that: ‘If the cultural policy of the future becomes instrumental, we lose as a democratic society. Then, the freedom of expression loses its most important watch dogs’ (Carte Blanche 2018). Thus, at the same time as cultural organizations declare their financial dependence on the state, they express concerns about state infringements on their autonomy. This is consistent with Engelstad’s (2017) observation regarding the neo-corporativist workings of cultural policy in Norway, which is premised on a ‘strong state’ that takes extensive financial responsibility for cultural life. In order to gain acceptance in cultural life, he notes, the strong state ‘must simultaneously be a liberal state’ (2017, 541).

As the examples we have listed here serve to show, the public consultation on the culture report is saturated with statements that directly or indirectly testify to experiences of vulnerability in cultural organizations. These statements, it should be noted, fall into place within a culture-diagnostic narrative that has been invoked by cultural organizations in Norway for as long as one may reasonably speak of a modern cultural sector. One famous historical illustration is an open letter to the Norwegian government from a group of authors, publishers, and other representatives of cultural life in 1945 entitled ‘The Future of Our Culture’. The letter warns of the dangers that threaten the spiritual values of culture, in the form of materialism, instrumentalization, and the proliferation of a superficial mass culture, and calls on the government to ‘protect the culture and its carriers’ (Borgen et al. 1953, 18). Another example is the establishment of the Norwegian Art Council in the 1960s, which was framed rhetorically as a rescue operation to salvage Norwegian literature and reading culture from the invasion of American popular literature (Dahl and Helseth 2006). More recently, Henningsen and Larsen (2020) argue that cultural policy discourse on digitalization is framed in a narrative that highlights the need for the state to counterweight the dangers of misinformation, information overload, and echo chambers.

To say that the vulnerability cultural organizations give voice to in the public consultation conforms to an established narrative is not to suggest that this is somehow illusory. On the contrary, there are good reasons to assume that this narrative is firmly anchored in and validated by personal and historical experiences of actors across the board in the cultural sector. In spite of the growth in public culture budgets in Norway since the turn of the century, there is ample documentation of the difficult economic situation most self-employed artists (e.g. musicians, visual artists) find themselves in – a situation that many experience as a lack of recognition by state and society (Røyseng, Henningsen, and Vinge 2022). In many cases, individual cultural workers and cultural organizations have a prolonged, and perhaps ongoing, history of struggle to eke out a position of economic survival.

In addition to such direct experiences, the sense of vulnerability can also be validated by common knowledge about the structural position of cultural policy in the wider political system. Cultural policy is the smallest sector of public policy in Norway in budgetary terms and is often referred to as the ‘icing on the cake’ when compared to other sectors, such as health or education. It is a sector where the government’s financial responsibilities are to a very limited degree legally ordained (NOU 2013, 4), which means that the fear of reduced public funding points to a genuine possibility. It is therefore of little surprise that when cultural organizations are given an opportunity to speak directly to the state, they choose to speak about their vulnerability and about the state’s moral obligation to function as their protector.

Obligations of the state

So far in this article, we have accounted for two types of cultural organizations’ experiences – engagement and vulnerability – that are foregrounded in the political statements they direct to the public authorities and that serve as a framing of the moral demands they place on the state. In this section, we want to push the elucidation of the moral economy of the cultural sector one step further by looking more closely at the explicit demands that appear in contributions to the public consultation and what these reveal about cultural organizations’ conceptions of the state’s roles and responsibilities in relation to the cultural sector, as well as the nature of these relationships.

It is instructive in this regard to look at demands that stand out as highly atypical in the contributions. One such example is found in a contribution from an art auction house. This differs markedly from most of the other documents in that the organization that has signed the document is not a beneficiary of public finance and that the document speaks consistently of art and culture in market terms. More specifically, the art auction house calls on the Ministry of Culture to take measures with regards to unregulated arenas for sale and purchase of art on the internet to prevent these commercial activities from avoiding art taxes. Also, while acknowledging the need for taxation of the art market in order to support artists and the production of art in Norway, the contribution calls for a harmonization of the Norwegian art tax regime with that of the European Union, to prevent a flight of commercial activities from formally legitimate market arenas in Norway (Blomquist Kunsthandel AS og Blomquist Nettauksjon 2018).

Implicit to these statements is an understanding of cultural organizations as actors that operate in and through the market. The role assigned to the state in relation to cultural organizations is that of a market regulator, which intervenes in the market to impose taxes and subsidies in order to realize cultural policy objectives, such as art production, financial support for artists, and the stimulation of a national art market. On this understanding, responsible and good government action in the cultural sector points toward interventions that are productive in terms of the realization of policy objectives and that are just and fair in the sense of providing actors in the market with a level playing field for competition and a predictable and well-functioning legal system. This way of envisaging cultural organizations and their relationship to the state is also reflected in contributions from some organizations involved in the film, television, and computer games industries, which foreground the business aspect of the activities taking place in these fields. However, it should be clear from the accounts we have presented in the previous sections that this is an understanding of the state’s role and responsibility in relation to the cultural sector that is far removed from the understanding espoused by most contributors to the public consultation.

As we have shown, the understanding of cultural life and cultural policy that typically comes to the fore in contributions to the public consultation is not market-centered but state-centered. It is an understanding that depicts market forces as a threat to cultural life and the state as an agent whose principal role is to protect cultural organizations from market forces, primarily through various forms of financial support. Most obviously, this is a taken-for-granted frame of understanding among organizations that predominately rely on public finance, such as theatres, museums, and other cultural institutions. However, it is a frame of understanding that is also pronounced among organizations from fields within the cultural sector that for a large part are sustained by market income, such as the literature field and the visual art field. Organizations representing these fields often highlight the importance of strengthening intellectual property rights for artists but generally tend to rely on a depiction of the cultural sector that foregrounds its dependence on state support rather than artists’ role as market actors.

Two other atypical demands in the contributions provide a key to specify the notions of state responsibilities and obligations towards the cultural sector that are prevalent among the many organizations that rely on a state-centered understanding of cultural policy. One of these is an organization for audience development that argues that the culture report should reflect on how publicly financed art and culture can engage more widely than the thirty per cent of the adult population that are regular users of such publicly financed art and culture. The contribution implores that the culture report should consider whether this situation is acceptable and whether ‘we want a society where art and culture is important in the lives of all kinds of people’ (Norsk publikumsutvikling 2018, italics in original). The other example is an art production organization that specializes in art from cultural minorities and the multicultural Norway, which notes that many people from minorities as well as the majority feel that ‘the [publicly financed] culture is not for them’ and that this is a deficiency of democracy. Against this background, the organization proposes a list of measures to improve cultural policy, one of which is that ‘we must finance results, not just institutions’ (Transcultural Arts Production 2018).

These statements stand out from the mass of contributions to the public consultation in that the audience and art production organizations clearly position themselves as spokespersons for the population, citizens, or actual and potential ‘users’ of publicly financed art and culture. Apart from these two organizations and contributions from a handful of minority rights organizations that call on the state to ensure access to culture for disabled people and cultural minorities, there are hardly any contributors that come forth in the public consultation principally as spokespersons for users of art and culture. As we have noted, the vast majority of contributors positions themselves rather as spokespersons for producers, distributers, or disseminators of art and culture. The statements from the audience development and art production organizations also stand out on account of the understanding of the role and responsibility of the state in relation to the cultural sector on which they are premised.

Underlying these two contributions is an understanding of the state as a welfare provider, whose principal obligation is towards the population of actual and potential users of publicly financed art and culture. This is an understanding of the state’s role and responsibility in cultural policy that is also clearly pronounced in contributions from local and regional governments and from local cultural actors such as public libraries and voluntary art and culture organizations. What the contributions from the audience development and art production organizations in effect are describing is a policy failure – a failure of the state to live up to its obligation of ensuring access to art and culture for the entire population. It is notable based on this understanding that cultural organizations are accorded an intermediary role between the state and the population/citizens, as instruments for the realization of policy objectives. Cultural organizations are moreover seen to have a relative value in the sense that public support for the organizations can be subjected to a calculus of costs and benefits with regards to policy objectives. Thus, in accordance with this understanding of cultural policy, if public support for, say, theatres or museums does not yield good results in terms of universal access to art and culture or other policy objectives, the state should consider diverting public support to other cultural institutions, such as festivals or libraries, which might produce better results.

As we have showed in the previous sections, this is a conception of the state’s role in cultural policy that is alien to most of the cultural organizations that express their opinions in the public consultation. The thrust of the message that most of these direct at the state is to underscore the moral goodness of cultural organizations and their vulnerability and need for protection. It is a message about the moral obligation of the state to recognize the absolute value and importance of these organizations and to function as their protector. This is not to say, of course, that cultural organizations do not invoke the goal of universal access to art and culture or other public good policy goals. On the contrary, as we have seen, the contributions to the public consultation are rife with such assertions. Numerous contributions highlight the role of cultural organizations as a foundation for freedom of expression and democracy, preservers of cultural heritage, and providers of access to art and culture. However, in doing so, the cultural organizations do not describe a set of criteria against which their value should or could be actively evaluated. Rather, they point to their role as a necessary infrastructure in society, that is, a sphere of institutions that must be in place and in a state of good development in order to provide their service to society.

In accordance with this understanding of cultural policy, which is prevalent among state-financed cultural institutions and professional art actors, but also invoked by actors from all segments of the cultural sector, this is a matter that is seen to be confined to relations between the state and cultural organizations. Cultural organizations are not seen as intermediaries or policy instruments but as the end points of state obligations. Therefore, policy failure in the cultural sector would be a failure of the state to address its obligations towards cultural organizations. It is a conception of the state’s role and obligations in cultural policy that is best described as state patronage. We use the term patronage here in the sense of Lowi (1964, 1988), as a form of particularistic public policy where the distribution of public resources is channeled through singular relations between the state and clients. It is this kind of ‘special’ relations to the state, premised on the unique value and importance of cultural organizations, that most contributors to the public consultation are, in effect, requesting. Thus, in the cultural sector, the state is confronted with a multitude of actors that seek to uphold or enter into relations of patronage – and, as we have seen, each one of these actors tends to present their case as a moral imperative and with a tone of strong sentiment.

Conclusion

In this article, we have described a moral economy that cultural organizations project onto their relations with the state. We have shown that this moral economy is anchored in historical and personal experiences of engagement and vulnerability, and that it is centered on the perceived moral obligation of the state to recognize the value and importance of cultural organizations, to protect them from threatening forces, and to provide them with the resources they need to develop. More specifically, we have shown that these moral demands take the form of demands for state patronage. Our analysis has been limited to public opinions of cultural organizations and does not allow us to consider whether and to what extent these moral demands find resonance among politicians and civil servants responsible for cultural policy. To what extent is the state bound by the moral economy of the cultural sector? To what extent is this moral economy reflected in the evolution and dynamics of change in cultural policy? In our opinion, these questions represent an interesting avenue for future cultural policy research and one that might yield important insights into the workings of the politics of the cultural sector.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to participants of the research project Political Dynamics of the Cultural Sector for comments on draft versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The Research Council of Norway, project [302199].

Notes on contributors

Erik Henningsen

Erik Henningsen is Head of Research at Department for Welfare, Democracy and Governance, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo Metropolitan University. He is trained as a social anthropologist, with a doctorate from the University of Oslo. He has published books and articles on cultural policy, the digital public sphere, work life and professions and social movements.

Sigrid Røyseng

Sigrid Røyseng is Professor of Cultural Sociology at Norwegian Academy of Music and Professor of Arts Management at BI Norwegian Business School. She is trained as a sociologist from the University of Oslo and took her doctorate in Organization and Administration Theory at the University of Bergen. She has published books and articles on the role of artists, cultural policy, cultural entrepreneurship and cultural leadership.

Notes

1. www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/kultur-idrett-og-frivillighet/innsiktsartikler/arbeidet-med-ny-kulturmelding/mottatte-innspill-til-kulturmeldingen/id2624451/. Last accessed 6 November 2020.

2. Less than ten contributors clearly support the reform proposal. With one exception, these are all local and regional governments.