Cultural policies against social inequalities in "disadvantaged" neighbourhoods: the French politique de la ville in Strasbourg

Abstract

"Politique de la ville is the French equivalent of the German programme: Soziale Stadt (Walther 2002). Recently, emphasis is put on the role of 'culture' in the empowerment process of social housing tenants in 'disadvantaged' suburban estates. Empirical evidence from case studies shows serious conflicts between two definitions of culture: 1. Central government officers from the Ministry of Culture tend to fund cultural projects coherent with their normative and elitist vision of 'la Culture', illustrating Bourdieu's concept of cultural domination. 2. Adversely, cultural activists from communities and neighbourhoods tend to have an anthropological vision of the diversity of cultures (les cultures). They want to implement cultural projects with a bottom up approach, but they find extremely difficult to raise funds as popular cultures have a weak legitimacy. The paper will focus on the transactional process allowing compromises between cultural universalism and cultural specificities." (author's abstract)