Supervising Culture in Southeast Europe: Exploring Zones of Awkward Engagement

This paper discusses the engagement of the European Union in the production of European culture in accession states in Southeast Europe. Since 1989 the European Commission has funded several cultural programs in accession states as alternative to the more coercive or ‘hard’ strategies of EU integration. This is based on the belief that investments in the cultural sector stimulate transnational cooperation, economic growth, social cohesion and even identification with the EU. In these investments the societal as well as the functional value of culture is emphasized. That is, culture should allow for a diversity of European actors to participate in the co-creation of the so-called European cultural space, while simultaneously stimulate processes relevant for the region’s future accession. In order to achieve this the Commission ‘governs at a distance’ and asks local representatives to carry out structural reforms of their cultural sector. Through the principle of shared competences, adherence to funding criteria and insistence on European Partnerships, the Commission supervises the projects it supports. How do these attempts to supervise culture translate into practices in countries in which other approaches to culture prevail? How do these strategies of the Commission challenge the frontiers of sovereignty in a policy field generally perceived as confined by the state? Which infrastructures of cultural production emerge in a response to these interventions? This paper aims to provide answers to these questions. Several ‘zones of awkward engagement’ are exposed that emerge in response to the introduction of new forms of EU governmentality in Southeast Europe.