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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

'change the culture' « Previous | |Next »
April 14, 2010

In the opening paragraphs in their Introduction to Australian Cultural Studies: a Reader John Frow and Meaghan Morris’ say:

During the past few years the word ‘culture’ has come to be used by Australians in a sense that seems far removed from anything to do with artistic and literary texts. When Australian Labor Party Senator Stephen Loosley declares that ‘resetting industrial policy is really a matter of reshaping cultural attitudes’, he is not defining culture as a domain of aesthetic pleasure, as a set of masterpieces, or even as an expression of national identity. Nor is he speaking in economic terms of culture as a major industry which (the Sydney Daily Telegraph Mirror assure us) ‘fills Aussie tills’. He is referring to a complex of social customs, values and expectations which affect our ways of working. So, too, was Rupert Murdoch in an interview screened on ABC-TV in 1990. Just as the worst company crash in Australian history ended an era of financial mismanagement and entrepreneurial crime, the Melbourne host of the ABC current affairs program 7.30 Report asked Mr Murdoch what ‘we’ should do to save our economy. Mr Murdoch replied perfunctorily, ‘Oh, you know: change the culture’.

Unlike Senator Loosley, Murdoch expected us to ‘know’ that he was quoting a formula of the neo-liberal rhetoric now broadly shared in Australia (as elsewhere) by bureaucrats, politicians, economists, journalists and financiers as well as union and corporate leaders, namely: economic problems have cultural solutions. Culture in this sense is not just a topic for specialized debate by an esoteric caste of interpreters (‘critics’). On the contrary: ’changing the culture’ is a shorthand but expansive way of challenging the conduct of others people’s everyday working lives – whether within the framework of a single company (’changing the culture is not a quick process in something as old and as large as ARC’, says a chief executive of Australia’s main producer of concrete reinforcing steel); of an industry (a marketing expert offers a paper on ‘changing culture for service: how to effect a change to the service culture ion shopping centres’); or an entire national economy (‘Professor Hughes said Australians had relied on the “lucky country” attitude for too long [. . .] ”We have got to cultivate an export culture”’). (pp. vii-viii)

On this account culture is a plastic medium which powerful elites can mould and shape at their will. This capitalist or neo-liberal account basically means fewer workers must work more efficiently to produce more for less. This involves overthrowing the social democratic tradition and the habits and conventions of everyday life.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:53 AM |