Counter-Globalization and Socialism in the 21st Century

9 Cultural policy and 21st century socialism

Hazel Marsh

 

Introduction

What role does culture play in struggles to acquire, maintain or resist power? How does culture reproduce or contest social divisions? Whose cultures come to be deemed to be representative of the nation, and whose are subordinated? Whose history is remembered and represented, by whom, and how? This chapter is concerned with these questions and with what their answers can tell us about cultural politics in contemporary Venezuela.

After a brief discussion of the contested concept of culture, I first outline the reasons why revolutionary leftist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have tended to seek legitimacy through association with the symbols, practices and images ...