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The Changing Role of the Cultural State: Art Worlds and New Markets—A Comparison of France and Switzerland

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Art and the Challenge of Markets Volume 1

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Arts ((SOA))

Abstract

This contribution wants to shed light on the changes the international market- and technology-based turn in society has brought about in the French and Swiss art worlds, with a special focus on public cultural policies. More than a mere frame setter, public administration in Europe plays a central role in the art worlds (Becker 1982) as a guarantor of the “relative autonomy” of art (Bourdieu 1996 [1992]). The State is a central element of the “chain of cooperation” in which the production, distribution, and consumption of artworks take place. This is true for France, of course, with its well-known, but changing, tradition of a cultural Etat mécène. But it is also the case for federal Switzerland, where public institutions at different levels play a less visible, yet important and growing role.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The history of political and cultural institutions has become an area particularly well studied in France (see References).

  2. 2.

    According to Philippe Poirrier (2010, 70), in the middle of the 2000s, the financial burden of local authorities, with € 7 billion, is more than twice the budget of the Ministry of Culture.

  3. 3.

    Given the difficulties of competing with the United States in film but also music, and, thus, facing the risk of homogenization of culture, successive governments since the mobilization for the “cultural exception” in the negotiations with the World Trade Organization in 1993 used the concept of “cultural diversity”.

  4. 4.

    France has rallied many European countries around the defense of cultural diversity in the face of domination of North American culture industries and took the initiative in 2001 to build a Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which was extended with the Convention on “Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” of October 20, 2005 (available on the website of the UNESCO, www.unesco.org).

  5. 5.

    This competition is manifested through the mobilization of institutional players of local government policies to achieve certain labels such as “European Capital of Culture” or “UNESCO World Heritage.”

  6. 6.

    Although multiple and complex, cultural policies in Switzerland have seldom been the subject of major research work, or only at controversial standpoints (see Haselbach et al. 2012 ), also indicating its fragile base. Systematic analysis of the structure and strategies of cultural policy players is in its beginnings (cf. Bijl-Schwab 2014; Marx 2015; Moeschler 2011).

  7. 7.

    For a total amount of about €2.8 billion of public spending on culture (2014). See the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) website: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/fr/home/statistiques/culture-medias-societe-information-sport/culture/financement.html

  8. 8.

    Some years ago, a study (FSO 2003) amounted private support to culture in Switzerland to be about €300 million per year. The Pour-cent Culturel—the “cultural percentage,” from the Migros, a large supermarkets cooperative, pay each year around €100 million (between 0.5% and 1% of its turnover) to culture, recreation, and education, somewhere between patronage and sponsorship (Moeschler 2009 ). Semi-private lotteries, whose aid is directly attached to those of the public authorities in German-speaking Switzerland, play an important role, with up to approximately €200 million paid annually for arts and culture.

  9. 9.

    Swiss Expert Committee for the study of issues concerning Swiss cultural policy (1975, 323). A vast mapping illustrating the hope of increased cultural commitment of the Confederation, the “Clottu Report” is still a (now somewhat dusty) reference. A smaller replica became advocate, conversely, for an increased involvement of the private sector in the arts (Schindler and Reichenau 1999).

  10. 10.

    See Journal de Genève and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), May 31 to June 1, 1997.

  11. 11.

    Located in Zurich, founded in the aftermath of the Second World War and the “National Spiritual Defense” to counter the propaganda of fascist regimes, funded by the federal government but autonomous, Pro Helvetia supports the performing arts, while the State rather deals with archives and museums, but only when there is exchange between Swiss linguistic regions or with foreign countries (see Hauser et al. 2010 ).

  12. 12.

    For the text of the law, see http://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/official-compilation/2011/6127.pdf.

  13. 13.

    See the website of the Federal Cultural Office: http://www.bak.admin.ch/themen/04118/04119/index.html?lang=fr.

  14. 14.

    This hackneyed image of the Kulturvogt (“cultural bailiff”), supposed to refer to a powerful Swiss imagery, since it goes back to the killing of the Austrian bailiff by William Tell in the national founding mythology, was mobilized by conservatives in the face of the federal reinforcement described here (see NZZ, October 29, 2014).

  15. 15.

    Considering that the widely noticed installation of Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn “Swiss-Swiss Democracy”, which contained an acerbic critique of the right-wing populist and then Minister Christoph Blocher (Swiss Peoples Party), at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris had gone too far, a majority of the Parliament decided to reduce €1 million from the annual budget of Pro Helvetia, which administers the Centre (Dubey 2009).

  16. 16.

    The reverse movement of the spatial scale of reduction is only mentioned by the French report , which speaks of the “development (…) of territorial institutions” (2020 [2012], 6). It is not by chance that the Swiss text, aiming to found a national action, evaded this regional aspect, which is precisely to be overtaken.

  17. 17.

    The words “digital,” “scan,” “digitization,” and so on appear no less than 97 times in the French document (64 pages; average 1.5 times per page) and 101 times in the Swiss text (143 pages, which is an average of 0.7 per page), while “World” and its derivatives appear 15 resp. 26 times, “individual” and so on 5 resp. 17 times, and “demography” and so on. 3 resp. 5 times.

  18. 18.

    Revealing potential tensions surrounding this approach, the first version of the Message, the one that was the basis of a consultation process, spoke (p. 25) more directly of an “ideal vehicle to determine the contours and content of a national cultural policy,” an element that was reformulated after the consultation.

  19. 19.

    Culture was then designated as “an effective instrument of social integration and cohesion” (Point 1.1.1.1). For an analysis of the emergence of this “greatness” in the national cultural policy discourse, see Moeschler (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New Sorbonne University, Paris, France

    Olivier Thévenin

  2. Lausanne University, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Olivier Moeschler

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  1. Olivier Thévenin
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  2. Olivier Moeschler
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Creative and Cultural, Entrepreneurship Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK

    Victoria D. Alexander

  2. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Samuli Hägg

  3. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Simo Häyrynen

  4. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Erkki Sevänen

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Thévenin, O., Moeschler, O. (2018). The Changing Role of the Cultural State: Art Worlds and New Markets—A Comparison of France and Switzerland. In: Alexander, V., Hägg, S., Häyrynen, S., Sevänen, E. (eds) Art and the Challenge of Markets Volume 1. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64586-5_5

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