About this Research Topic

Background

This Research Topic examines the potential, challenges, and limitations of cultural policy in promoting sustainability in the face of climate emergency and other dimensions of multi-faceted change (such as pandemics).

Emerging on the international scene in the 1960s and 1970s, the specialisation of cultural policy focused primarily on the nationally differentiated processes through which public interventions in cultural matters were constructed and institutionalised. Over time, supranational and subnational cultural policy discourses and evolving dynamics have deepened and complexified this purview. In recent decades it has been increasingly evident that the prerequisites for supranational cultural politics - such as those centred around sustainability - rely on shared commitments and ideals, which, in turn, require renegotiating as they are integrated into often interest-driven national policies. In the current context, cultural policy also requires a re-conceptualization of its foundations and its intents to enable cultural policy to effectively address current and future conditions and issues.

In the context of supranational sustainability discourse, the concept of sustainability has long been interpreted as environmental policy integration, referring to the integration of environmental concerns into other sectoral policies - among others, cultural policy. In recent years, this angle has been most widely discussed in relation to climate change and the agency of cultural actors in the context of the increasingly evident state of climate emergency. However, this is only one dimension at play. More generally, the issues of sustainable development have become increasingly important in the field of cultural policy research, opening new approaches to addressing the question of what exactly we mean by sustainable development.

One of the central aims of cultural policy is to enhance cultural rights of all people and, in doing so, to promote cultural sustainability. This perspective focuses on the active agency and knowledge embedded in diverse cultural practices, including traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), that should be safeguarded and sustained within a broader sustainable future. It focuses on concerns with the continuity of cultures over time and the value inherent in global cultural diversity that national and international organisations have supported via the UNESCO Universal Declaration and Conventions (e.g., the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, UNESCO 2001; the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO 2003; and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, UNESCO 2005).

The transmission of traditional knowledge across generations is fundamental for protecting and promoting indigenous peoples' cultures and identities as well as the sustainability of livelihoods, resilience to human-made and natural disasters, and sustaining culturally appropriate economic development. The use of traditional ecological knowledge enhances the knowledge used for decision-making and builds relationships with Indigenous peoples around environmental topics of common interest.

Sustainable development depends not just on the motivations, skills, and knowledge of individual people but on action taken by groups or communities. The question of inclusive governance systems and collective action accompanies both these dimensions. Much depends on how much power a political system is willing to grant the people, with participatory governance requiring cultural and structural change and organisations that share institutional decision-making with a wider public. Moreover, there is a risk that participation will generate democratic ownership only for the “resourceful” participants while alienating the less-resourceful groups, such as immigrants, minorities, women, young people, older people, and people with low income and education.

Examining the part that cultural policy can play in sustainable development, this Research Topic seeks to address and enable critical contestations of the politics implicated in cultural policies for sustainable development. It also invites authors to discuss the different meanings of sustainable development in cultural policy and their conceptual, performative, and practical interconnectedness. Sustainable development in its present dispensation as a process and concept is no longer, if it ever was, a sufficiently robust or practical guide for the future. The main question, therefore, is whether development can be sustainable and how this might be possible.

This Research Topic locates the challenges and limitations of cultural sustainability in the realm of international cultural policies and politics. It examines how the occasionally straggly interplay of the national and the international can, on the one hand, facilitate the development of more sustainable cultural policies or, on the other hand, lead to the emergence, maintenance, and enhancement of highly unsustainable practices. It also considers the role of subnational authorities in enabling and propelling localised approaches that can provoke change and provide examples of cultural policy for more sustainable development trajectories.

In our publications, we welcome articles, reviews, and policy papers critically addressing, among others, the following questions:

• How does cultural policy at different governmental levels contribute to sustainable development strategies, procedures, practices, and resources in societies? How can sustainable development policy contribute to culture? How can we understand the relationship between sustainable development and the aim to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights and enhance the value of national cultural assets?
• What are the leading practices for participatory forms of cultural governance aiming for sustainable development in which citizens, and other non-state actors, are empowered to influence processes of public decision-making that affect their lives?
• What are the challenges and limitations of cultural sustainability in the realm of international cultural policies and politics? Where are the friction points in the interplay of the national and the international located? How are subnational players contributing to these discussions and demonstrating place-based actions and approaches?
• What are the challenges and discrepancies in relations between sustainability and cultural appropriation, restitution, and collective cultural rights in national cultural policies? What are the implications on the sustainability of the politics of representation of indigenous people in cultural and art institutions and creative industries?

Keywords: cultural policies, sustainable development, cultural rights, cultural sustainability

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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