3 The Digitalization Imperative: Sacralization of Technology in LAM Policies

Abstract

In most Western countries, cultural policy is at base a matter of public funding of the culture sector, and hence a question of money. At the same time, this is a domain of policy that is heavily invested with ideas that explain and justify the need for public expenditure on the culture sector. European cultural policies have for several decades been legitimized with reference to specific overarching ideas, being activated by policy actors and managers in cultural organizations. These ideas have guided the development of policies, as well as functioned as the normative grounds on which policies have been based. Some of the ideas are normative principles (e.g. universal access to culture, the right to participation, freedom of expression), while others are concerned with emergent trends of social, cultural, and technological development (e.g. globalization, cultural diversity). Since the mid-twentieth century onwards, notions of democratization of culture, cultural dissemination, and cultural participation has guided the formulation of cultural policies in Western Europe. In the 1990s as well as the 2000s globalization and cultural diversity became important overriding concepts in cultural policy discourses. Since the turn of the century, digitalizationhas emerged as another guiding concept in the formulation of cultural policies, or as what we will refer to as a “policy imperative”. In accordance with dictionary definitions, “imperative” is an authoritative commandor call for action. Here, onemay think also of Kant’s “categorical imperative”, which refers to an ultimate and universally applicable moral principle or rule of action.Whenwe talk of policy imperatives in this chapter it denotes the fact that ideasmay take on the commanding force of an imperative, regardless of their objective or normative validity. This imperative force may be shortor long lived and restricted to certain groups or domains of social action. More specifically, we use the concept of policy imperatives in reference to ideas that take on the character of self-explanatory and universally binding calls for actionwithin a given field of policy. These are ideas actors within the policy field can openly reject or protest only at the risk of being perceived as irresponsible, foolish or morally corrupted. By virtue of this, the ideas become obligatory reference points in the formulation of policies and organizing concepts in policy discourses. Today, digitalization is