Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 99
to help the contextualization of human existence within some space that
is a-territorial and embraces both virtual and value aspects of cultures.
Cultures interact with physical spaces through creativity and step outside
their own spaces through communication that provokes dynamic changes
to all cultural spaces and to the values they may contain.
The temporal/historical processes (Harvey ����) testify to the fact that cultural
spaces are continuously constructed and deconstructed. In contemporary
Europe these processes have been reflected in the structured national
cultures that have developed a set of standardized cultural values, languages,
arts, and types of behavior, which have contributed to the establishment of
general social settings. National cultures are normally subjected to certain
dynamics of inner development, which are reflected in changes to values
and to other cultural elements. Over time they develop and host various
types of cultural product, consumption, and exchange, which continuously
promote cultural change leading to the deconstruction of established
cultural structures and the values supporting these structures. In present-day
Europe, a prevailing type of national culture is being deconstructed in the
context of globalism through dynamic cultural transition. This is the result of
cultural industrialization and the emergence of new types of cultural values
and products which are developed through the usage of new technologies
and the general systemic social changes that are now particularly visible in
the post-communist countries.
The state of globalism offers new contextual surroundings for the continuity
of construction and deconstruction of cultural spaces, cultures, and cultural
policies. So far it has influenced and enabled the stratification of the
established national cultures and brought new challenges for contemporary
cultural policies, which have previously been institutionalized as national,
local, or city public policies. Such different types and aspects of cultural
stratification are interconnected or even integrated by a holistic view of
cultures as complex, innovative, and adaptive value systems, able to meet
various cultural sensitivities, tastes, and traditions.
Cultural Spaces and the Emerging Types of Stratified National Culture
The processes of cultural stratification within standardized national cultures
in Europe, and in Southeast Europe in particular , have led to the following
types of cultural entity (Švob-Đokić ����).
Institutional culture is based on state-supported cultural institutions (such
as museums, libraries, national theatres, orchestras, and others) that mostly
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