ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects the ways in which issues of culture can be unendingly politicized. The small-scale government subsidies which popular musics have received from the French state since the early 1980s have carried with them an implicit criticism of previous cultural policies and their restrictive conceptions of 'culture'. Cultural democracy was only marginal within cultural policies overall. Initiatives in favour of contemporary musics demonstrate a new age of cultural policies henceforth focused around towns and cities. The standpoints of cultural key players and the work produced by researchers represent material just as likely to contribute towards a greater understanding of these policies and bring changes in them, as they are to fuel controversy. The report established by J. Hurstel on youth relations with cultural and sociocultural infrastructures encouraged central government to support cultural spaces favoured by young people independently of their geographic and administrative location.
