Cultural consumption comes to be defined as "the set of processes of appropriation and uses of products in which symbolic value prevails over use and exchange values, or where at least the latter are configured subordinate to the symbolic dimension.

For Bourdieu, the term "cultural consumption" alludes to a specific logic of economic goods, where consumption is the form of appropriation of cultural goods by social agents.

The cultural factors that influence consumer behaviour refer to customs, traditions, lifestyles, and even the territory occupied by consumers, which in some way have an impact on the way they relate to brands, products and services.

The difficulty of reconciling the two terms/concepts

In any case, and despite the lack of definition of the concept of culture, it seems clear, at least in my opinion, that the fundamental difference is that culture is an open process, which means that it grows or diminishes with the passing of time, that its reception is always different and that it never ends, and this is the important thing, it is never finished, it is unlimited. Think of music, literature and art, every time we are confronted with them we acquire new sensations and knowledge.

How can such a wide-ranging process be enclosed in something as closed as consumption, this is the fundamental question to focus on. And associated with this other very important one, which I am convinced many institutions and companies are asking themselves: Can culture be economically profitable?

A work of fiction to try to explain it

I spent a long time thinking, reading and researching about all this, but I couldn't come up with clear guidelines as to how the process could be and, encouraged by some students, I resorted to breaking away from the rigid rules of the research paths and moving on to the liberated fiction where nothing tied me down. 

Although it may seem frivolous, I had applied this flight forward in other cases, discovering that the lack of impediments and the total freedom of movement generated ideas that I would never have foreseen in the most scientific ways, and which were perfectly applicable later on in the process.

Fiction, like utopia and the recent artificial intelligence (well understood), takes you away from the problem, makes you see it from above and gives you clues that you had not observed in the forest, moving through the trees (Oceans of salt).

Evidently these are partial ideas, which do not provide a global solution, but rather broaden the hypotheses of the research. I have spoken a lot in different universities about the relationship between fiction and research, as both can feed off each other, and I encourage young researchers not to be prejudiced in this respect, especially when they are standing on high walls that are difficult to jump over.

Travelling: the problem statement

It seems important to me to talk about the subject of travel, since they are the vanguard of cultural consumption, they are beginning to apply it and are showing us, still timidly, what consumption applied to all fields of culture could be like in a few years' time. This is how I stated the problem in my blog: TRAVEL

Undoubtedly, it is a great advance that more and more people can travel the length and breadth of the world and have the pleasure of getting to know other landscapes, other ways of life, in short, other cultures, with all that learning and tolerance entails.

Unfortunately, however, it is beginning to be seen that the result is quite different: deterioration of natural environments, closure of monuments due to the impossibility of maintaining their proper conservation and, what is more worrying, the trivialisation of culture in all its aspects, reduced to images for mobile phones and mere souvenirs for the living room bookshelf.  They say that there are people who have been to the bar downstairs and when they talk about it, it seems as if they have come from India, and others, when they come from India, it seems as if they have just arrived from the bar downstairs. Lately, I only come across the latter.

Part Two: Cultural consumption: spatial and technical issues

An unavoidable problem

Lately we have seen many articles and publications on the problems that mass tourism is bringing about, caused by many parameters: increased economic level, globalisation, ease of transport, etc., which, in principle, is a good sign of the elimination of elitism in this field, although, we must not deceive ourselves, it is still only the privileged classes and the upper middle classes who participate in this activity, except in the latest plans of Chinese society.

The problem has arisen as always: society has been caught unawares by something that has been predicted since the last third of the last century.

Curiously, the first interventions came from the world of philosophy and sociology, with two specific characteristics:

1. Always from the analysis of the causes, not the consequences.

2. The cultural sectors involved have so far hardly spoken out.

Part Three: Three Proposals Against Cultural Consumption

(LIME. Laboratory for Museographic Research and Experimentation)

1. Another way of visiting a museum: what are these institutions going to do (In search of a new typology)?

For five years, I had the enormous privilege of being able to lead a series of visits, with absolute freedom, as part of a research project. The aim was to show the building of a museum (Museo del Traje) from an architectural point of view. They were small groups as we moved around the whole building, including warehouses, restoration workshops and installations, and we had to comply with a series of rules for safety reasons. This was done outside working hours, to avoid interference. Attached is a PDF text of the lecture on this subject (Tardes de Arquitectura).

The idea was to investigate other ways of visiting a building, perhaps not directly transferable, but thought-provoking, to other fields.

Is it possible to choose, on the flexibility of the programme and time, on the limits of the public's autonomy. The possibilities of a punctual change in the visit in conjunction with specific programmes (age/knowledge).

2. On the possibilities of getting to know a city (from consuming to strolling, from photographing to observing).

I also include two lectures from our research at LIME, (Another city and Culture and art as a social tool), where we try to reflect, from different points of view, different proposals made by different teams of students from different universities and countries: the city as an object, as a support and as an exhibition container.

3. In front of a monument and a historic centre (The integration of the parts)

It is extremely interesting to see how the visitor accepts the integration of different periods in monuments and historic city centres without any fear, while paradoxically demanding that the monuments not be touched and, even less, that they be coordinated with contemporary architecture. What is the reason for this contradictory attitude? It is an issue of great concern to us in the research project.

Final thought: What can we do?

Regardless of their possible future suitability (only time will confirm this), these experiments aim to open up new ways to prevent tourism from falling into this drift of mere consumption, to which it seems inexorably doomed, and learning to travel from being reduced to a series of objects on the shelf.

It is a very complex problem to which all those involved should dedicate all our efforts, in order to try to recover the richness and breadth of CULTURE with a capital C, because without it we will become nothing, a simple image lost in the memory of a mobile phone.

Bibliography

• Research Project 1986-2022 https://jcr21office.blogspot.com/2019/01/proyecto-de-investigacion-museografica.html 

• Thematic bibliography. Books, articles and conferences 1986-2022 https://jcr21office.blogspot.com/2019/09/bibliografia-tematica-libros-articulos.html 

Author:

Juan Carlos Rico holds a PhD in Architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, is an Art Historian from the Faculty of History of the University of Salamanca, Sociologist and Philosopher from the UNED. He is currently studying social anthropology. Museum curator He coordinates a multidisciplinary team for the research of the exhibition event and its relationship with space, which has been reflected in various publications.

Research project 1986-2022

https://jcr21office.blogspot.com/2019/01/proyecto-de-investigacionmuseografica.html 

Thematic bibliography. Books, articles and conferences 1986-2022

https://jcr21office.blogspot.com/2019/09/bibliografia-tematica-librosarticulos.html 

In accordance with the programmes of the European Union, the ICOM (International Council of Museums) and the ILAM (Latin American Institute of Museums), he gives workshops in various European and American universities, where he is also a regular lecturer.

http://jcr21office.blogspot.com.es/j