Democratising the popular: the case of pop music in France and Britain

Abstract

The article represents the second phase of a comparative project on French and British cultural policy. The project's guiding hypothesis is that conceptualisations of the popular have been a crucial driver of policy change in France and Britain, raising complex issues about the nature of cultural democracy. The second phase, including this article, takes pop music as a case study for that hypothesis. The article explores three major issues. It asks how and why, in their attempts to rethink cultural democracy for the twenty-first century, French and British policy agencies have recognised pop music as a ‘democratic' form worthy of state support. It critically examines some of the theoretical issues this has raised, comparing and contrasting the ways in which the two national policy sets have variously represented pop as having symbolic, economic and social meanings. And it argues that what has been less adequately addressed is its aesthetic meaning.

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