Engagement with Culture in Transformative Times

At the heart of this volume are the questions: What does culture mean to European citizens in the face of globalisation, digitalisation, diversity, and social inequality? How do Europeans engage with culture in its various forms, and what societal values are tied to this cultural engagement? These questions are explored in depth across the 15 chapters of this book. By delving into the understandings, practices, perceptions, affordances, and impacts of culture, this book advances the study of the societal values of culture in contemporary European societies, offering insights beneficial to both research and cultural policy work.

The book stands out with its five unique features. It embraces an inclusive conception of culture, spanning the arts, popular culture, and everyday cultural practices, both offline and online. It takes a grassroots approach, starting from the cultural understandings and experiences of European citizens. It employs a comparative method involving people from diverse socio-economic groups in nine European countries – with different cultural policy models, social-structural features, socio-cultural value orientations, and media systems. It builds on a multi- and mixed-methods approach, including a large-scale survey, a smartphone study with experimental stimuli, several phases of online content data collection and analysis, qualitative interviews, and focus groups. Finally, it delves into how wide-ranging and interconnected sociocultural transformations such as migration, digitalisation, and social inequality impact people’s understanding of and engagement with culture as well as the meanings and values they attribute to culture. These unique features promise to offer a fresh and comprehensive perspective on cultural engagement in contemporary European societies.

The collection showcases the multiple, often contradictory concepts and understandings of culture and its societal values among social groups within and across European societies. The findings call for a “social turn” in cultural policy that extends beyond traditional arts and culture to support diverse cultural expressions that may enhance social values, address complex social issues, and shift the focus from economic objectives to promoting civic solidarity, equity, inclusivity, tolerance, and shared community values.