Jean Hurstel CULTURE AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION Turin 16 19 June 2005 UdiexAlep

1
Jean Hurstel CULTURE AND SOCIAL
INTEGRATIONTurin 16 19 June 2005Udiex-Alep
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Thesis no. 1To clarify concepts, is to
discover the hidden complexity of the words
used.
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• Example - Abdesselem, a migrant of Algerian
  origin from a Parisian inner city, does not
  possess classic cultural attributes.
• He does not go to the theatre, does not go to a
  library, does not visit contemporary art
  exhibitions, and does not have any
  qualifications. However, he practices Arab
  calligraphy, sings French songs of the eighties,
  and has the history of Franco-Algerian relations
  at the tip of his fingertips.

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One would say of Abdesselem that he is not
cultivated, he has no culture, but that he is
affected by multiple cultures that he has
himself collected, developed, integrated.
These are the cultural and linguistic
contributions of his origins, and those that he
has adopted in his adoptive country.
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The first meaning of culture is the whole of
the patrimony and contemporary artistic creation.
Cultures are complex combinations of
representations, values, and words transmitted in
a specific historical epoch and to a given
country or territory. In general, the first
meaning of the word culture excludes the other.
The thesis formulated here is that the two sense
of culture are interactive, and that it is this
interaction, reciprocal fertilisation, which is
at the heart of the process of integration.
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The word integration is also ambiguous. At
first sight, this term signifies the
co-ordination of several elements which together
create harmonious social functioning. What is
harmonious social functioning? Integrated into
what? How? The antonym exclusion is no
help. Excluded by a lack of financial resources
as compared to the average income of the
inhabitants of a country? Exclusion because of
ethnic origin?
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Does not society require assimilation rather than
integration, converting heterogeneous elements
into its own substance? In this thesis, does
not the word integration refer to the original
meaning of the Latin integrare, which signifies
re-create? In this sense, integration
signifies that everyone re-creates the society of
which he or she is a part, and that society
creates and re-creates the individual person at
each moment.
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In taking again the example of Abdesselem, who is
jobless, he adapts, re-creates his social
environment, and the imaginary and symbolic world
in which he lives by adopting and integrating
diverse contributions, and thus testifies to a
very human faculty of adaptation, of transaction,
with values and representations, norms, and
diverse social codes. It is this capacity for
adaptation, transaction and re-creation that one
can call integration.
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Thesis no. 2
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Here, cultures are not soul food, marks of
distinction, but essential motors of social
integration. If integration is an imaginary and
symbolic process of re-creation, permanent
re-elaboration, values and representations, then
it is necessary for every citizen, especially if
he or she does not have financial or cultural
capital that would ensure easy access to this
process.
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Only the exercise of the imagination allows
people to detach themselves from their immediate
environment and to project themselves into other
horizons, to change their view of their world,
and of the world in general. This detachment is
not disconnected from critical reflection, from
re-arrangement of inherited values and
representations, or those transmitted by the mass
media.
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The objective of each cultural action is to get
that which seems fixed and unchanging moving,
whether it is our personal destiny of that of the
society in which we evolve. Abdesselem, even if
he is jobless, even if he practices the
traditional art of calligraphy, even if he looks
at television every evening, is also a person who
asks questions of his son about the graffiti he
practices on the walls of the town - present-day
urban calligraphy.
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He plays an active role in the process of
permanent re-arrangement of his values and
representations.
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Thesis no. 3
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In this process of re-creation, the role of the
artist is fundamental. Not as a sacred figure
of a Creator, or as a merchandising figure of a
cultural industry producer, but simply as a
worker in the imaginary, as someone who passes
on values, images, meanings, representations.
As a principal actor, involved in imaginary
transactions between an individual person and
society.
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To denounce the romantic figure of the Artist, as
a demiurge, or marginal, or bohemian, is also to
denounce the conception of the inherited Art of
the 19th century. It is to situate the artist at
the social or cultural frontier, by recognising
in him or her the capacity for production, the
re-creation of meanings, words, images, and
forms, and the organisation and integration of
these imaginary productions in the most coherent
ensemble possible.
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The integration of forms and the integration of
people in this process is a mirror. Abdesselem
does not only trace the most beautiful letters
possible, he runs a graphic creation workshop.
He shares his art with his compatriots. He
exchanges words, he exchanges signs. With
people, not with abstractions. Not with social
cases, not with communities designated
according to their origin or social class, or
their handicap.
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With particular subjects, written into a
society, endowed with this essential human
faculty, imagination and creation, and
re-creation.
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Thesis no. 4
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The movement of re-elaboration, of
re-arrangement, of re-adaptation, is a collective
process of work that results in a product.
Passages from one world to another tend to
evolve collectively into more or less large
groups. What defines these groups is their
ability to participate effectively in shared,
real work. A setting-up of mutual pedagogy,
where everyone learns from everyone.
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This collective work, carried out over a limited
period of time and in limited space, results in a
model of society in which the equal members,
through their differences, and their
singularities, produce forms and meanings. A
citizens mutual exchange co-operative, more of
an agora than a forum, a space for transactions,
representations and values, resulting in a
collective work.
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This co-operative lives through and settles
conflicts and removes obstacles along the way,
because it realises time is limited and it must
finally deliver a public production, a
confrontation with a section of a larger public,
with part of society. In short, prove its
integration by its production.
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Abdesselem and his son bring their different
approaches to a group who exhibit their work in
the centre of town, hoping that the centre of
towns attitude to their suburban/inner city area
will be radically transformed. This collective
worksite of creativity and creation is a
miniature model society, an agora, where
transactions of words and signs result in public
work. It is the frontier region between an
individual person and a more global society.
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Thesis no. 5
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The building sites of re-arrangement, of
re-elaboration, through art and culture, multiply
in Europe. They constitute the newest and most
fertile part of urban renewal. They are divided
not into artistic disciplines, but according to
major objectives. For example
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the natural environment the development of a
public park in Glasgow with the help of local
inhabitants
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The human environment the creation of a
convivial venue in a neighbourhood where all the
shops were closed
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The prevention of religious conflict a Carnival
in Belfast with the participation of Protestants
and Catholics
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the integration of Rom minorities through circus
arts and music in Bucharest and Setubal
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New forms of literacy training with artistic
means Banana Workshops in Brussels
Lalphabet dans la ville atelier photo
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the integration of refugees and asylum-seekers
through writing workshops in Belgium
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New forms of urban culture bringing people
together in divided and dissociated towns
The Parade in Lyon
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(No Transcript)
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the Zinneke Parade in Brussels
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the safeguarding of a symbolic patrimony of a
neighbourhood (Royston Road, Glasgow)
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The re-appropriation of a town by its fellow
citizens (Unobstructed Views, Naples, Marseille)
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The valorisation of the cultures of a
neighbourhood as an instrument of the struggle
against xenophobia (numerous theatrical projects)
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The multiple projects of urban culture, ranging
from hip hop to graffiti
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• These projects, amongst dozens of others, are at
  the crossroads between social integration
  objectives, the valorisation of the theme of
  cultural diversity, and the diversity of cultures
  in Europe.

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These projects have diverse partners towns,
regions, etc., but also associations and the
social/cultural services of a community, working
together for a common purpose. The larger
cultural institutions also participate museums
(Setubal, Newcastle, etc.) or large theatres (The
Royal Monnaie Theatre, Brussels, the Schaubühne,
Berlin).
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Thesis no. 6
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• The social dimension of culture is at the centre
  of town integration policies. Classic cultural
  policies of the democratisation of culture have
  demonstrated their social limits. They concern
  only 10 or 15 of the population who have
  university degrees.
• Cultural democracy policies, depending on a
  network of social or socio-cultural centres, have
  also failed to adapt to major crises of
  contemporary towns.

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Without rejecting the achievements of these
policies, it seems necessary once again to
question cultural diversity in action in towns -
perhaps in a more supple and more pragmatic
manner. A policy of aid to projects that
allows political demands to intersect those from
the field will have more chances of success, and
give hope and strength to marginalized or
excluded communities.
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The public recognition of a cultural act
transforms the image of a neighbourhood more
effectively than simply painting a few walls.
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Thesis no. 6 bis
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It is democracy, well and truly, that is being
questioned in these integration
policies. Democracy is a creation, a permanent
re-creation, an auto-institution of a society
that can no longer refer to the Only Tradition of
the Only Religion, to the words of ancestors, or
even to the financial virtue of marketing.
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Democracy develops a single requirement not to
be content with what is institutionalised, but to
call upon forces that are capable of
institutionalising to question that which should
be questioned, and to re-invent at each moment of
history. By calling upon forms of imagination,
creativity and creation, culture enables every
citizen to re-create the world thus, to
integrate.
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Thesis no. 7 
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Europe is not only a market but also an attempt
at the social and cultural integration of
European citizens. The adoption of cultural
competence into the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993,
the inclusion of cultural diversity into the
European Constitutional Treaty, and the inclusion
of cultural rights into the European Chart of
Fundamental Rights, all indicate the public
desire for cultural integration.
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But this political will is difficult to
concretise. If the specific cultural budget of
the European Union is limited to 0.12 of the
general budget, artistic and cultural projects
are more likely to be financed today by
non-cultural European programmes.
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Culture has crept into all European programmes,
which proves that the EU has avoided being a
cultural authority, sending back to each nation
the responsibility for this essential dimension
of cultural development. Now, how can Europe
be constructed without this constant concern for
integration above and beyond national frontiers ?
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The rejection of the European Constitution by
France and the Netherlands clearly shows the
immense deficit in this field, when the desire
for exchange, interaction, and confrontation has
never been so strong in this continent. How can
we get out of this impasse? Three major themes
can be identified from debates on this subject
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The theme of cultural diversity advocated by
UNESCO, on 2 November 2001 Affirming the
fundamental right of all individuals and of all
societies to participate in the benefits of
diversity and dialogue as major elements of
culture, an essential characteristic of
humanity.
54
This proves that the setting up of cultural
diversity depends not only on the artistic or
audiovisual sector, covered by cultural
exception, but by all the diversity of demarches
from civil society, which ensure freedom of
expression, creativity, and creation for each
citizen. And this is at local cultural policy
level, as well as at European level.
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The theme of sustainable development concerning
not only nature but also culture as the imaginary
and symbolic environment of every human being. A
city neighbourhood is not only a built-up
environment, but also a collection of
representations of memories, stories, exchanges,
and very specific ways of living together.
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Property speculation and the gradual
privatisation of the public space destroy these
human, ecological niches more rapidly than
Nature, which itself is more and more protected.
(For an Agenda 21 on culture).
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The theme of cultural rights. Article 5 of the
UNESCO Declaration - Everyone should be able to
participate in the cultural life of his or her
choice and exercise his or her own cultural
practices subject to respect for human rights.
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In a certain way, this means affirming that
cultural rights are an integral part of human
rights, which are universal, indissociable and
interdependent. This clearly indicates the need
to negotiate a social contract on cultures and
the Arts at political level, a new social
contract on culture for everyone.
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Certain Members of the European Parliament have
suggested a figure of 0,70 per citizen. Others
have written the social dimension of culture into
the European Social Charter, and the Council of
Europe Conference of Local Authorities has
elaborated a Recommendation on this subject.
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It is clear that there is a general movement of
recognition of the diversity of citizens
cultural rights in Europe. However, the
available financial resources strictly limit
these new political demarches.
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Thesis no. 8
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Faced with economic and financial globalisation
that throws 18 million people in Europe into
exclusion and precarity, industrial
de-localisations, general social insecurity, fear
of immigration, and xenophobia, what can culture
do?
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It can modestly contribute to the recognition of
everything that valorises individual and
collective life, the immense wealth of particular
cultures, the enormous power of the imagination,
creativity, creation, and the conquest of the
equal dignity of the men and women who create
Europe.
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Above and beyond the Market and economic values,
let us work for a new social and political
utopia that of diversity, sustainable
development, social and cultural integration, as
a creation, a permanent re-creation, of our
societies and our towns.
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