STRATEGIC DILEMMAS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL POLICY IN SERBIA / HOW FAR ARE WE FROM A BALANCING ACTION
Text topic: Culture in Transition
Text author: Весна Ђукић
This paper deals with strategic dilemmas of social development that have a great potential to affect the quality of civil life as well as the conceptualization of Serbian cultural policies, but have remained out of public space and public debates during the transition period: interior-exterior culture, endogenous-exogenous resources, rural-urban communities and many more. The aim of this research is to look at the complexities of contemporary cultural policy and analyze its capacities for the democratization of the cultural system and the inclusion of rural population into cultural life. The empirical research has been based on a case study of the villages Starčevo and Omoljica, located on the territory of the administrative, industrial and cultural centre of South Banat – the City of Pančevo. It can be perceived as a representative example of a balancing action of the economic, educational and cultural policies that have crucial influence on the quality of life of its citizens. The study of theoretical and empirical sources demonstrates results of public policies led since the early phase of industrialization at the beginning of the 18th century up to this date, and by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses, it intends to indicate the course of action of cultural policy in the future. The crisis of our contemporary urban-industrial civilization provides an opportunity for better understanding of repressed concepts on the other pole of the dichotomy (interior culture, endogenous development, rural communities). This involves discovering values with the concepts that are worth reviving and incorporating them into contemporary development strategies. Village schools and libraries have a particularly significant role in this area and so far they have not showed awareness of the value of rural cultural heritage, or its role in its protection, preservation, conveyance and usage. In the communities in which those two types of institutions of culture and education are organizationally separate, schools and libraries represent a complementary institutional framework of potential partnership for sustainable development.