UNESCO Conventions and Culture as a Resource

Neoliberal Nationalism With regard to nationalism, privatization influences the direction of nationalist ideology and sentiment as the state-in its capacity as the cooperative, legislative arm of neoliberalism-intervenes to produce narratives of personal responsibility and conduct within the framework of national duty and traditional culture. [...]the state simultaneously supports a private industry and the public culture upon which that industry is founded. If privatization is, as I have said, the redirection of formerly public assets into the private sector, then the privatization of nationalism is the redirection of the performance of national cultural identity into activities now allied with and directly benefiting a neoliberal political economy. [...]it is the economic orientation of the state that to a great degree determines the contours of national identity. [...]the privatization-of-nationalism process (which must be accompanied by commodification) for any specific cultural form necessarily implies the exercise of biopolitics in the form of censure and sanction related to those performances.2 Theoretically, the censure and sanction activity of the state should strike one as antithetical to neoliberal ideology. The tension between change and relevance on the one hand, and stasis and commodification on the other, leads to a continual blurring of the boundaries between public and private spheres of social and civic life.3 If the privatization of national culture involves the transfer of traditional, public activity into private hands (festive behaviors, public performances, etc.), it may also have the effect of rendering formerly private activities public in the sense that certain practices may fall under the regulatory scrutiny of the state as they become part of a general economy of culture.