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Cultural dominance—the power to shape reality, define the nation, and represent ‘the other’— is a subtle yet powerful form of influence. The cultural field, where cultural products such as literature, visual art, and performance art are created, is a key arena for exercising this power, highlighting the need for diversity among cultural producers. However, Western cultural fields have historically been dominated by a white cultural upper class, often resulting in artistic works that create and reinforce specific understandings of racialised and classed inequalities. Consequently, those outside this elite have typically had less power to shape dominant cultural representations of the world, others, and themselves. In this sense, the cultural field not only reflects but also reproduces broader societal inequalities, making the study of power dynamics in cultural production a critical sociological endeavour. As limited scholarly focus has been directed towards these intersecting power dynamics in culture, this thesis explores the (un)making of racialised and classed inequalities in the Norwegian cultural field by analysing the experiences of 41 cultural producers, the majority of whom are racialised minorities.
This study on power relations in cultural production has been conducted against the backdrop of recent political developments in the West, where conflicts over worldviews and imagined communities have intensified. A growing transnational push to diversify the cultural field has emerged, while strong counterforces actively resist such progress. This broader struggle over cultural power unfolds through two parallel trends within Western cultural fields: one highlighting persistent class and racialised inequalities, and the other signalling change. In this context, Norway presents a compelling case due to two dominant narratives of exceptional egalitarianism that can be seen as central to the country’s self-perception: the tale of a classless society and the tale of a noncolonial society. While these narratives are contested, this egalitarian ethos extends to cultural policies that seek to democratise culture while safeguarding the field’s autonomy, and though some racialised minority artists have gained prominent positions, racialised minorities and the working class remain underrepresented.
To engage with these contextual layers, this thesis employs a theoretical framework that captures both stability and change, integrating class and ‘race’ in the study of cultural production. I build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, which situates the field and its actors within broader power struggles. As this perspective neglects racial inequalities, I engage with British cultural studies and cultural industry studies on ‘race’. The latter perspective is fruitful as it foregrounds the ambivalence inherent in the cultural production of ‘race’ and the complex effects of diversity initiatives. However, it has a limited focus on class and whiteness, as well as a restricted theorisation of changing field dynamics. To refine this framework, I incorporate scholarship on temporality, highlighting the need to examine power dimensions like social generations to deepen our understanding of field disruptions. While often framed in opposition, I argue that these perspectives complement each other. Integrating them enables a more comprehensive analysis of how power dynamics shape the cultural field and cultural producers, ultimately influencing how society depicts, describes, and understands itself.
In accordance with the relational view on power dynamics embedded in the theoretical framework, this thesis is grounded in feminist standpoint theory, which informs the analysis of the in-depth interviews and small-scale fieldwork. The fieldwork included observations of cultural events and participant observation in a diversity-related course at a major cultural institution. The primary data consists of 41 interviews with cultural producers, including 32 Norwegian racialised minority artists and nine diversity workers, four of whom were racialised minorities. Eight artists were interviewed twice, in 2018 and 2022, totalling 49 interviews. All the artists are non-white, actively practice art, and are affiliated with cultural institutions. They engage in art forms such as visual, performing, and literary arts. The diversity workers hold administrative roles dedicated to developing diversity strategies. The analysis examines the participants’ experiences with institutional constraints, the potential for change, and how relations between racialised minority artists are shaped by perceived generational differences.
The findings are presented in three journal articles. The first shows how a ‘white cultural upperclass gaze’ can reinforce dominant representations of ‘race’, leading to the conclusion that the cultural field is characterised by institutional whiteness. The second article explores possibilities for change by investigating how Norwegian cultural producers have experienced the growing focus on diversity. The findings show that this shift has fostered various forms of racial commodification but also enabled artists to contest dominant representations of ‘race’ and notions of legitimate culture, with artists navigating the field in different ways. Continuing the last point, the final article examines how racialised minority artists’ perspectives on representation influence collective identity formation. The findings reveal that while these artists see themselves as ‘outsiders’ in relation to the majority, their sense of ‘community’ is shaped by generational struggles over representation, which influence how they navigate the field. In sum, this thesis develops a novel theoretical framework and provides new empirical insight into how the cultural field sustains and challenges racialised and classed inequalities.
