What does culture mean to Europeans?
The new report of INVENT aims to answer this question by gathering data and analysis to trace the multiplicity of understandings of culture within and across Europe.
The report consists of 3 main parts.
It begins with a brief discussion on the different conceptions of culture, the current “cultural abundance” and on how the manifold societal megatrends in Europe and the western world since the latter part of the 20th century have affected both the cultural environment in which we live, and the conceptual “baggage” associated with the term culture.
Then, two empirical parts follows based on wide-ranging and nationally representative survey datasets collected by INVENT in 2021 in its nine countries: Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.
The results show that the classical distinction between the notions of narrow (“culture as arts”) and broad (“culture as ways of life”) culture continues to persist in a relevant way, but, at the same time, they show that the distinction does not fully capturehow people in Europe today understand the concept.
The report can be downloaded at https://inventculture.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/INVENT-REPORT-WhatdoesculturemeantoEuropeans.pdf
More information about INVENT, sister project of UNCHARTED, selected and funded under the same call TR-08-2019 “The social value of culture and the impact of cultural policies in Europe” of Horizon 2020, are available at https://inventculture.eu/.
