The term was apparently coined in a report cowritten by an official in the Finnish Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, and published by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies:
Fair culture means the realisation of cultural rights and the inclusion of everyone in cultural signification, irrespective of their age, gender, ability, or ethnic, religious and cultural background.
And, yes, "fair culture" does seem to refer to cultural production -- "Participation in cultural supply" and "Opportunities for, inclusion in and capability for cultural self-expression and signification" -- as well as cultural consumption. And here I thought that participation in cultural supply ought not be irrespective of ability.
Incidentally, I found this report because I saw it quoted favorably in a draft of what promises to be a prominent book; so it can't, I think, be lightly dismissed as some sort of outlier.
"Not an outlier" != not(stupid)
Tell that to Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton.
Please?
*:or, I suppose, mentally, at least for certain varieties of mental disability and certain forms of culture.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron
So children who are clumsy shouldn't take dance classes? Children who aren't musical shouldn't take piano lessons? Angst-ridden teenagers shouldn't write bad poetry?
Don't get me wrong, unless I know the people I won't be in the audience, but I don't see what's so strange about the idea that even non-talented people should have "[o]pportunities for ... cultural self-expression".
Mike Keenan: I didn't see any indication in the report that they were using "ability" in that sense; and of course unfortunately mental and physical disability may often inevitably affect people's ability to participate in cultural supply.
From the talk about "self-expression" and "ability" I assumed the report was talking about all production of culture, and not just that which was intended for a large audience.
I agree that if that is what the report is concerned with then whatever advantages there may be in democratizing cultural supply would be outweighed by the likely disappearance of cultural consumption.
The only American I see in the respondents is Doug Blandy. On his website (www.uoregon.edu/~dblandy/), I see the following: "Working in segregated institutions for people with mental retardation in the 1970's convinced me of the importance of promoting non-segregated inclusive arts educational environments."
Obviously, that is only evidence of what one of the respondents believes.
I think this one paragraph explains the problem with the problem with the concept of "fair culture" as it being used here, reconciliation of individual rights with the creation of collective rights based upon individual rights. One cannot have an individual culture, the closest one person can come is having an individual cultural identity, which collective group of persons one identifies with. I wonder if this is a translation problem, was this report originally in Suomi and someone chose the closest match to be "culture" for a word with no direct English equivalence(any Finns care to help?).
It is an interesting attempt to deal with a difficult ethical issue, the rights of groups which do not constitute the whole of the polity based upon the rights granted by the polity (without addressing the nature of that grant) to the individuals which make up those groups. I don't find it convincing but that may because it is poorly structured as an argument.
A more informative document is Fair Culture? Ethical dimension of cultural policy and cultural rights (available in both English and Finnish). A look at Chapter 9 on the disabled, will, I think, prove helpful in determining what is meant.
Agreed. Even the clumsy students benefits from some ballet, and the non musical students benefit from music lessons. "Talent" is greatly overrated. Any real musician or artist will tell you that talent only gets you so far -- what is far more important is hard work. The person with a little talent and works hard will beat out the highlly talented who hardly works any day.
And how do you teach a student to work hard? By giving them something difficult for them to do, like ballet or piano lessons.
So, the implication here is that the requirement is on the culture (that is, the people which comprise it) to be an audience for the bad guitarist. Nothing like working against human nature, eh?
No, no, and for the love of God no.
That's the whole argument against tracking kids too young. Different talents become apparent at different ages, and beginners should always be allowed to make mistakes as they learn.
Didn't we have this discussion about baseball? In any activity there's room for a beginner class AND a world-class competitive level, and everything in between.