From the Bottom Up: HAK Once Again Says Culture is For, By the People

Do cultural values, cultural establishments, as well as cultural trends or types, exist in a broader sense? During the regular meeting of the Armenian National Congress’ (HAK) cultural committee yesterday, the definition of understanding of “cultural value” was discussed.

A number of issues tied to the topic were discussed in the context of the conceptual elaboration of the document “Provisions of Cultural Policy.” The committee came to the view that since, according to the new concept, the citizen and not the government is the main subject and the one who implements cultural functions, then the government’s role is to support citizens and to create an appropriate legal framework in the cultural activities of free associations of citizens and by making public resources, directly or indirectly, accessible. Consequently, government doesn’t define cultural values (except those which are part of historical heritage) and supports only such establishments and cultural trends which are initiated by citizens, and not, as in the centralized Soviet and current systems, the “preferred” trends and establishments created with the government’s concept for which then salespeople are hired. “No initiative, no establishment” — this is the resolution of decentralized cultural policy, from which stems also the following provision: “Every living initiative and voluntary association will receive state support.”

During yesterday’s meeting, it was also noted that the same fundamental principal is noted in the developed or developing concepts of all HAK committees (education and science, healthcare, economic issues): supported by the government are not areas as such, with their hard structures poorly suited for modernity, but rather, the areas’ main operating and initiating subject-citizens. That is, the scientist and the educated and educator (the student, the teacher) receive support, and not the scientific or educational establishments as such; the one who needs medical assistance or the one who develops medical science and practice, and not medical institutions as such; the one who carries out economic activity and not the institutions and individuals that control the economic arena. 

Viewing culture as a universal phenomenon (which also includes the political, economic, state culture), the radical cultural change brought forth and implemented by HAK’s cultural committee lies in the fact that the centralized government, the concept of dictatorship, where all decisions are made and fundamental values are defined by a ruling elite group is replaced by a civil society concept, where all values, all establishment, also including the government, are defined and created by the citizens’ free decision, not top-down, but bottom-up, in that way and in that extent which sovereign citizens find necessary to anticipate.  

According to participants in the discussion, this approach destroys the patterns accumulated in the state and in culture and puts an end to citizens’ alienation from government, economy, culture, and politics, as well as fundamental activities in other sectors, and secures the involvement of living public forces in the process of establishing the state.