From the modernist canon to de anthropological conception of culture: The concept of “culture” in the cultural policies of Lula administration (2003-2011)

Abstract

This article analyses the conception of “culture” prevailing in the cultural policies of Lula Administration, in the light of more general transformations in the Brazilian cultural field, and specifically those brought forth by the consolidation of the cultural industry in the 1960s and 1970s decades and by the weakening of the modernist canon as exclusive criterion for the evaluation of works and cultural manifestation. Thus, the general lines of the cultural policy in Lula’s government will be presented, the main moments of the institutionalization and consecration of the modernist canon in Brazil will be described, and a reflection will be given about the meaning and the deadlocks of the adoption of an anthropological concept of culture in Lula’s period. The article discussed how changes in cultural policies were related to the weakening of a more specialized view of culture as avant-garde artistic and intellectual production, towards the strengthening of a notion of culture as a way of life (WILLIAMS, 1992), expanding the range of activities legitimized by the state in more diverse and inclusive cultural policies.