What is democratic culture?

This is the first in a series of three posts sketching my preliminary understanding of democratic, sacred, and profane culture. Understanding a culture in a particular period involves identifying not only the elements of that culture, but their interrelationships too. Are there patterns among the cultural elements? Which of the elements are causes and which are the effects?[1] This post is a sketch of one pattern among many in the overall culture of America today. ORIGIN. The democratic movement is the movement of individuals who are striving to establish and expand a democratic society.[2] The term "democracy," for these individuals, names a concept that covers far more than only a particular form of government. One democratic activist, Yale University professor of constitutional law Jack M. Balkin, explains his view of democracy and identifies the root of the democratic movement: The ultimate goal of our constitutional order is not merely to produce democratic procedures but a democratic culture: a culture in which all citizens can participate and feel that they have a stake, a culture in which unjust social privileges and status hierarchies have been disestablished. . . . Democracy inheres not only in procedural mechanisms like universal suffrage but in cultural modes like dress, language, manners, and behavior. Political egalitarianism must be nourished by cultural egalitarianism.[3] Democratic advocate Randy Fullerton Sardis, an admirer of Balkin, elaborates: Democratic culture is about individual liberty as well as collective self-governance; it concerns each individual's ability to participate in the production and distribution of culture. Removing the political, economical, and cultural elitists from their thrones and allowing everyone a chance to participate in the production of culture, sounds like a wonderful idea in my opinion.[4] Culture, in its broadest meaning, refers to all those artifacts which can be produced by individuals in one generation and bequeathed to later generations. Democratic culture is the set of cultural elements produced by members of the democratic movement as part of their effort to create democracy. EXAMPLES. Examples of democratic culture include: magazine articles calling for "net neutrality"; rap music lyrics berating the "elite"; Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls's book Theory of Justice (1971); a progressive income tax used to fund redistribution of income from the most productive to the least productive; "stakeholder" organizations who try, in corporate stockholders' meetings, to influence business policies and products to benefit "the people"; tax-funded "public" libraries that give everyone equal access to information; and support for folk art or the "everyday art" of "the people." PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS. Certain institutions are also examples of democratic culture. An institution is an organization designed to continue operating even after the resignation, retirement, or death of the founding members. For instance, consider one particular institution, The Center for Democratic Culture, which is housed in the Sociology Department of the University of Nevada. Its CDC Mission Statement reveals the institution's underlying philosophy: The Center for Democratic Culture ... derives its philosophy from American pragmatism, which regards democracy as an ongoing experiment in collective living and institution building.

Democracy, according to [philosopher of Pragmatism] John Dewey [1859-1952], begins at home in a neighborly community, and is first and foremost a quality of experience.[5] "Quality of experience" is a euphemism for life in an all-encompassing culture and society of egalitarian collectivism. And that is what democratic culture is: the culture of egalitarian collectivism. What is a Democratic Culture? "If art which is now sick is to live and not die, it must in the future be of the people, for the people, by the people; it must understand all and be understood by all" - William Morris

John Holden is an associate of the U.K. based think tank Demos. Holden's expertise is culture, and he has a new report out on the web I found interesting. If is offered freely as a PDF, and it's entitled Democratic Culture. As I began reading, I realized something important...I already knew and used this word in discussions and short pieces of writing, but I had failed to grasp exactly what the word "culture" meant to me...or how I would define the term. Even the Wikipedia article onculture begins with this sentence: Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate") is difficult to define. So perhaps I'm not alone in my confusion and my inability to nail down a meaning of one of the most important ingredients of humanity? Holden mentions three interrelated spheres of culture which I would like to touch on and try to define each one as I currently understand them.

Publicly funded culture

Commercial culture

Home-made culture

In my small acreage of the world, publicly funded culturewould dismiss the roots culture excluding an occasional journey into our past as a way to share the historical arts...our heritage. Public funding sounds great at first, but at least in the southern part of the states, what it means is a select few in a hierarchical system choose what stays and what gets culled. With this type of culture, even the arts become a top-down structural enterprise which is well known for it's ability to turn the majority of the people into the powerless and the minority of the people into the elitist. Commercial culture again falls into the top-down structure where marketing and mass media dictate the terms of culture, of which we are all expected to adhere. Mass production and mass consumption is a false culture in my opinion, and robs the people of the real culture of the people. Our artists suffer in this form of culture, and I agree with Holden that success or failure is completely market driven and access into the popular culture is controlled by a mandarin class. So many great artists and artisans never get an opportunity and the people, as well as our artists, suffer from this cultural desert. Then finally there is what Holden calls home-grown culture. We all are familiar with folk culture, but I think Holden's idea of home-grown takes this much farther and relates how changes in awareness and connectedness come into play in a web driven society. Home-grown better describes the collaborative culture in my opinion, by expanding the spectrum of historical folk arts with the new independent arts of the here and now and the what will be. Creativity has exploded due to the available venues given us through the web. With the growth of independent artistry on the web, we see the decision of what is quality art is being placed more and more into the hands of those who actively collaborate and support these independent artists within the participatory communities that are growing and redefining value. Now exactly how do we define "democratic culture"? UNLV operates a research and public service organization called Center for Democratic Culture According to their mission statement: Civil society thrives in the culture which encourages trust, tolerance, prudence, compassion, humor, and withers away when overexposed to suspicion, hatred, vanity, cruelty, and sarcasm.

According to Jack Balkin, a democratic culture is a culture in which individuals have a fair opportunity to participate in the forms of meaning-making that constitute them as individuals. Democratic culture is about individual liberty as well as collective self-governance; it concerns each individual's ability to participate in the production and distribution of culture. Removing the political, economical, and cultural elitists from their thrones and allowing everyone a chance to participate in the production of culture, sounds like a wonderful idea in my opinion. Holden goes on to say that arts are indeed "special", but they are also simultaneously, inextricably and healthily part of the everyday. As a supporter of Whole Wheat Radio and also ofFolkstreams, I definitely believe art can be found readily in the everyday of our existences here on earth. Our people and their home-grown cultures add so much richness to our world, and they create an unparalleled source of art which should be given a rightful place among what I would consider a democratic culture. As Holden mentions however, defining art can be just as problematic as defining culture. Holden mentions three gatekeepers who work towards keeping the public out of the creation of culture through their respective practices of exclusivism. The first gatekeeper is professionalism. Holden notes that at it's worst, professionalism could become malign or antagonistic professionalism. Just a personal note...I had a lifetime in the work force installing fire protection piping...and I always viewed my work as an example of personal art. An art that could only be appreciated by the few other professionals in the fire protection trade...but regardless, the completed system's symmetry and functionality could still be considered an art form within this small niche. Perhaps creating a culture of and by the people will be more about these niches and their cross collaboration between other niches...perhaps? No? The next gatekeeper listed is the snob culture, which is elitist in nature but a group which can be diluted as more people acquire access to these arts. Arts such as opera, ballet, and drama are more readily accesible with the Internet and I would think this has the possibility of diluting the power within any elitist group. Although there is nothing which can be compared to attending a live performance, appreciation for the art can be spread via the web quite easily which tends

shift all of the people into the horizontal world of cultural decisions. The third gate-keeper mentioned is the avant-garde opposition to democratic culture. According to Holden, the avant-garde must either alienate or completely withdraw from the public in order to maintain it's own self-worth and status. Holden holds that there is a way out of the opposition between authority and anarchy, between cultural exlusivism and a debased, diluted popular culture. In culture, we will have to stop thinking of a dispute between high and popular culture, and enter into public debate about cultural quality wherever it is manifested across all three spheres of publicly funded, commercial and home-made culture...in opera, crime writing, ballet, salsa, art galleries, TV, MySpace and so on. I see we have the opportunity to initiate needed change and build our own culture...one that we decide is best for all inhabitants and one which we decide has value. However, having the opportunity and actually utilizing that opportunity are still worlds apart in my humble opinion. As was pointed out yesterday by fellow collaborators, Google's resources are so highly under utilized, it is almost embarrassing to be a member of the human race. I see a need for all of the people to work toward the development of more participation and better cooperation. I see a place where the educators are likely to become the student, and the student will likely take on the role of educator. We have drawn too many lines and hailed democracy as a true gift of humanity. I think it's time, now that we have the opportunity, we actually tried to collaborate and see if it truly is a gift! If it is a gift, I think it's time we unwrapped it and used it for the people! "Cultural Democracy"? The concept of cultural democracy comprises a set of related commitments:

protecting and promoting cultural diversity, and the right to culture for everyone in our society and around the world; encouraging active participation in community cultural life; enabling people to participate in policy decisions that affect the quality of our cultural lives; and assuring fair and equitable access to cultural resources and support.

Much more can and will be said throughout Webster's World about the idea of cultural democracy and how it plays out in practice; but these principles are its essence. If you'd like more information about the origins of the idea of cultural democracy, check out the essays in the core resources section. Culture as a Realm of Action Since culture is our human creation, it is always subject to change. The powers-that-be would like us to think of culture as a given -- that whether we like it or not, we ordinary people can't change it in any significant way. We are awash in information about the enormity of the world's problems, and this can be disabling. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of racism, poverty, violence and other oppressive forces, we tend to go passive -- or to strike out in usually futile individual acts of rage. Thus the tyranny of those who benefit from the status quo is maintained. Cultural democracy is therefore a deeply radical idea. It is the ultimate extension of the idea of democracy: that each one of us, each community, each cultural minority has rights that deserve respect, and that each must have a voice in the vital decisions that affect the quality of our lives. No one who commands a disproportionate share of power in the world is happy to hear this idea put forward, for it demands that they share this power with those who are locked out by the current order: better to keep us confused and divided. Cultural democracy is also a beautiful idea. It inspires a vision of humanity which embraces us all. Each of us is as complex and fascinating as the multiple factors and influences which have shaped our own identities. Each of us is creative, gifted and potentially powerful. Our communities are creative organisms that dynamically change in response to the appearance of new people, ideas and circumstances. Cultural democracy calls forth our most loving selves, illuminates places where healing is needed, and challenges us to develop the best in ourselves, to be respectful of the harmonious interrelations of all life on the planet. Webster's World of Cultural Democracy is not just about ideas, though. It's also about action. Despite the depressing news brought to us by the mainstream media, people all over the world are acting on their hopeful visions for themselves and their communities. We want Webster's World to grow to incorporate them all. You will find many practical suggestions here -- community projects, organizing campaigns, theoretical explorations grounded in activist politics -- which reveal promising ways of remaking the world according to the values of cultural democracy. A Democratic Culture Introduction By the 1830s, the United States was developing its own distinct culture as illustrated by movements in literature, the arts, and education. Romanticism, a literary movement that rose in reaction to the Age of Reason, valued emotion and intuition, and stressed optimism, patriotism, ingenuousness, and, in particular, the individual as part of nature and therefore divine. America's main proponents of this thinking were the Transcendentalists, the most famous of whom were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both objected to society's restrictions on individuals, but whereas Emerson was apolitical, Thoreau was something of an activist, as his poll-tax protest and essay "Civil Disobedience" show. Edgar Allan Poe was not a Transcendentalist but a romantic all the same; he was America's prototype tortured genius. Other writers, such as Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, had a romantic focus on the

individual, but explored the darker side of people's struggles with guilt, sin, good and evil, and pride; Walt Whitman borrowed from the all of them to create his own most American voice by relying on his natural inclinations and using commonplace subjects and often coarse language. In architecture and the decorative arts, the Federal, Gothic, Greek, and Italian styles all gained popularity, while technology made mass production of items such as wallpaper, rugs, and furniture possible. Painters of the Hudson River school and the luminists decorated wealthy homes; the middle class embraced Currier and Ives. This mid-nineteenth-century era also saw the growth of public education throughout the country save for the South. Educators were driven not only by the beliefs that humans were "improvable" and that democracy required an educated citizenry, but also by a desire to "Americanize" immigrants and create good employees. And though exceedingly few Americans used them, colleges began to reform and create more practical curricula in the 1840s and some to educate women. In the general culture, magazine, newspaper, and book publishers flourished, as did civic cultures in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Lexington, and Pittsburgh. In the hard sciences, states sponsored geological and coastal surveys. An American sense of humor also emerged in this era. Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England David Zaret This innovative work of historical sociology locates the origins of modern democratic discourse in the emergent culture of printing in early modern England. For David Zaret, the key to the rise of a democratic public sphere was the impact of this culture of printing on the secrecy and privilege that shrouded political decisions in seventeenth-century England. Zaret explores the unanticipated liberating effects of printing and printed communication in transforming the world of political secrecy into a culture of open discourse and eventually a politics of public opinion. Contrary to those who locate the origins of the public sphere in the philosophical tracts of the French Enlightenment, Zaret claims that it originated as a practical accomplishment, propelled by economic and technical aspects of printing--in particular heightened commercialism and increased capacity to produce texts. Zaret writes that this accomplishment gained impetus when competing elites--Royalists and Parliamentarians, Presbyterians and Independents-used printed material to reach the masses, whose leaders in turn invoked the authority of public opinion to lobby those elites. Zaret further shows how the earlier traditions of communication in England, from ballads and broadsides to inn and alehouse conversation, merged with the new culture of print to upset prevailing norms of secrecy and privilege. He points as well to the paradox for today's critics, who attribute the impoverishment of the public sphere to the very technological and economic forces that brought about the means of democratic discourse in the first place. Reviews: "In this thoughtful and innovative work of historical sociology, Zaret challenges the prevailing view that democratic discourse and the politics of public opinion emerged from the culture of the Enlightenment."--Choice

"Zaret has provocative and challenging things to say, and even those who disagree with his conclusion will find this a powerful work. . . . This book itself is full of telling evidential details, cited without fanfare, that cumulatively show how an unusually perceptive author can use such nuances to fine-tune our larger stories about the past. Both sociologists and historians can read it with immense profit."--Adrian Johns, American Historical Review "Origins of Democratic Culture is an invigorating, well-researched and powerfully argued book."--Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement "David Zaret's Origins of Democratic Culture is an elegant, lucid, impeccably researched monograph that presents a cogent analysis of how a vibrant public sphere contributes to democratic practice. . . . [It] advances our understanding of how political cultures operate. It marks Zaret as one of the major cultural historical sociologists in contemporary American sociology and will be 'must' reading for scholars of democracy and culture from all social science disciplines as well as for graduate seminars in comparative historical social science."-Mabel Berezin, Social Forces "This is a compelling interdisciplinary study that synthesizes recent historical scholarship on early modern politics and news culture with detailed archival research, and places its findings in a broad sociological perspective that offers a powerful corrective to prevailing conceptions of the origins, nature, and social composition of the early modern public sphere."--Alastair Bellany, Journal of Interdisciplinary History What is democratic culture?

A democratic culture is one where everyone has the same rights, the same status. This may or may not be related to a democratic form of government. For instance, during and after the Gold Rush in California, California was very Democratic. The population swelled incredibly in just a couple of years, so almost everyone was a newcomer. In most places there are rich old families who are just in charge of everything, but in California they didn't have anyone like that. So everyone was just about the same as everyone else. ANYONE could run for office, or start a company, or whatever. To this day, California tends to be a more democratic culture. We still have a lot of newcomers and foreign-born people. We are very tolerant and diverse. We have an initiative process so citizens can pass laws, not just the state legislature. Etc.

The Democratic Culture of Unified Germany DOI:10.1093/0198295685.003.0006 Taking the example of unified Germany, this chapter examines how a democratic culture can develop among people who have lived for decades in an autocratic state. The first section outlines the theoretical framework, starting with the concept of political support, and going on to consider various normative models of democracy in order to understand what type of democracy people in West and East Germany ultimately prefer. Discusses the formation of democratic attitudes within statesocialist systems, comparing demonstration and socialization hypotheses on the influence of the social structure on political attitudes. On this

basis, expectations about attitudes towards democracy among the East German population are formulated. Develops the empirical analysis further by examining trends in democratic attitudes among West and East Germansincluding the commitment to democratic values and principles, support for democratic institutions, and satisfaction with democratic performance. The conclusion summarizes the most important findings and considers their consequences for the prospects of democracy in a unified Germany.