Developing cultural development policy research programmes

This article condenses the theoretical discussion carried out by the authors for a framing paper on cultural policy. In it, they begin from the position that most discourse about the term 'culture' makes it difficult to define an exact constituency which, for policy purposes, can propose and benefit from implementation. In the South African context within which they work, they point out that taking into account the dynamics and special needs of transition from apartheid to democracy makes this a doubly taxing problem. The authors accept that the present circumstances favour a more radical appreciation of the concept of culture and need than enshrined in existing cultural policy, for example, in Australia. Therefore, they draw on the radical post-marxist approach of philosopher Agnes Heller to relocate cultural discourse within the pragmatic category of "raising endowments into talents". On this basis, they proceed to identify, in terms of a politics of equitable transformation, the constituency most deprived in terms of raising endowments into talents under apartheid. These, the authors argue, are the women in single-parent or all-female households who have accomplished the business of seeing their children into higher education. As principal actors in the ongoing business of raising endowments into talents, the authors argue, such women constitute the basic constituency in contemporary South Africa towards whom cultural policy research should initially be directed. As cultural actors, they do not as such exist in a vacuum, however. Thus the actual pragmatic relations between this constituency and others involved in cultural practice are what policy implementation should strive to strengthen, empower and protect until generations with other, more elaborated, needs mature.