Cultural conservatism
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Cultural conservatism is conservatism with respect to culture. This term is increasingly used in political debate, but is rather ill-defined. It is often confused with social conservatism, which is a school of thought that may overlap to a degree as far as its adherents but is nonetheless a quite distinct subset of the former.
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[edit] National reference
A national cultural conservatism is a strand of conservative thought that argues for the preservation of a nation's domestic culture, usually in the face of external forces for change. There are other strands of cultural conservatism, concerned with a shared cultural heritage not defined by national boundaries: for example, European or Chinese cultures, or the culture attached to a given language such as Arabic.
[edit] American context
In a usage that is only loosely related to those, the term cultural conservative has also increasingly in American politics replaced the term religious right, the latter term having developed some negative connotations and also being too narrow for convenience. An example of a cultural conservative in the broader sense would be Allan Bloom, arguing in The Closing of the American Mind against cultural relativism. Cultural conservative may now simply imply a conservative position in the culture wars.
[edit] Cultural criticism
The various ways in which the term cultural conservatism are used are potentially unified, if one assumes firstly that the scope is that of the cultural critic (not the easiest term to define itself), and secondly identifying the 'output' of cultural criticism as a polarised axis with the conservative position at one end.
This is problematic, as appears as soon as any case studies are examined. A cultural conservative may not necessarily be a conservative in other political matters.
[edit] Some cases
In Canada many cultural conservatives are on the political left. They argue that foreign cultural products undermine Canada's liberal values. Most Canadian cultural conservatives also support Canada's strict Canadian content regulations. These regulations restrict the amount of foreign content allowed on Canadian television, radio and magazines and give a required amount of airtime to established and new Canadian artists.
A cultural conservative in the Australian context may object to importing movies or TV shows from the United States, believing that such media would have a negative effect on native Australian values. He could argue that American society is fundamentally different from Australian society in many key ways, and that saturation in American culture causes emulation of American values, with negative results.
Cultural conservatives may thus promote the idea of intervention: culture ministries or other government-financed bodies to protect domestic culture through various means, including tariffs on imported "cultural products" or by giving grants to local artists, musicians, and other producers of cultural material.
Another strand of cultural conservatism of importance in non-anglophone countries is resistance to the spread of the English language. For example, in France this has long been considered a major issue. The Académie française is concerned, not only with the use of anglicisms, but the general maintenance of the French language, in an explicitly conservative way. In popular culture, films may be subsidised.
