Functionality

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the second out of three discourses found in the data. Within this ‘functionality discourse’, there is mainly popular and everyday participation. This discourse emphasises the practical usefulness of cultural practices: it is an area of personal ‘feelgood’. The functionality discourse is marked by a link between cultural participation and the structuring factors of life. At the same time, cultural participation is rarely conceived of as culturally distinctive. There is an emphasis on modesty, but the boundaries drawn are aesthetical and directed upwards towards impractical cultural practices. In other words, in the functionality discourse, there are delicate traces of anti-elitism. This indifferent and self-assured attitude towards cultural participation that characterises the functionality discourse could be considered a version of egalitarianism.