The market and the cultural heritage : Argumentation analysis of the Swedish moderate party’s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233

The cultural policy area has a tendency to be seen as a consensus area, where there are no big conflicts between the parties. The aim of this master’s thesis is to study the moderate party’s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233 with the party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt as first author. If consensus rules, the party’s ideology should not be visible in the motion, but the assumption in the thesis is that it is visible. The main issue is to find out which obvious ideological features the motion contain, in which of Jenny Johannisson’s three discourses the moderate party’s cultural policy best fits into and what consequences there could be with the party’s cultural policy. A short cultural policy background as a consensus area is presented along with the moderate party’s history and ideologies, neo-liberalism and conservatism. The method used is argumentation analysis. The theoretical starting point is Jenny Johannisson’s three discourses of cultural policy, which is partly based upon the researcher Dorte Skot-Hansen’s theories of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. The analysis shows that both neo-liberalism and conservatism are clearly visible in the motion. Conservatism is strong regarding the argumentation concerning cultural heritage and the traditional cultural arts. Neo-liberal concepts like market, competition, supply and demand, the individual and the individual’s freedom of action and choice are strong throughout the motion. The neo-liberal features of the moderate party’s motion best fits in Johannisson’s alliance discourse, which is marketing oriented. The consequences of a moderate party’s cultural policy are probably an even more marketing oriented cultural policy than they have today.Uppsatsnivå: