[Commlist] Engagement with Culture in Transformative Times – New book

Susanne Janssen, Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, and Marc Verboord are pleased 
to announce the publication of their book Engagement with Culture in 
Transformative Times (Routledge, 2025).

This timely volume explores urgent questions about the role of culture 
in contemporary European societies: What does culture mean to citizens 
today? How do people engage with culture in its many forms? And what 
societal values are connected to these cultural understandings and 
practices, particularly in an age marked by globalisation, 
digitalisation, rising diversity, and growing social inequality?

The authors adopt an inclusive view of culture that encompasses the 
arts, popular culture, and everyday practices, both online and offline. 
It centres on the lived cultural experiences of individuals across 
Europe and draws on comparative data and insights from the EU-funded 
INVENT project, conducted in Denmark, Finland, France, Croatia, the 
Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. 
Methodologically, the book combines large-scale surveys, 
smartphone-based experience sampling, content analysis, interviews, and 
focus groups to offer a multidimensional perspective.

Structured around three central themes, the book's fifteen chapters (see 
below) offer timely and critical insights into how individuals 
understand and engage with culture in everyday life; how globalisation, 
migration, digitalisation, increasing diversity, and social inequalities 
shape people’s cultural opportunities and experiences; and how cultural 
participation contributes to both personal enrichment and broader 
societal values such as well-being, openness, tolerance, and solidarity.

The findings reveal a complex and diverse cultural landscape, far from 
uniform. Cultural perceptions, practices, opportunities for 
participation, and the related benefits vary greatly across different 
social groups and contexts. This underscores the limits of 
one-size-fits-all cultural policy and calls for a  ‘social turn’ that 
embraces cultural diversity, confronts inequality, and prioritises 
inclusion, social connection, and shared public values.

The book is open access and can be downloaded for free here: 
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003460497

This publication is a key output of the H2020 project INVENT (European 
Inventory of Societal Values of Culture as a Basis for Inclusive 
Cultural Policies in the Globalising World): https://inventculture.eu/news/


CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I: Practices and understandings
1. Understandings of culture in nine European countries: advancing the 
study of cultural stratification
2. Mapping cultural practices in Europe: social inequalities and 
cross-national differences
3. How inequality affects cultural participation in Europe: comparing 
before and after the financial crisis
4 Understandings of culture in digital space: mapping Twitter discourses 
on culture
5. Capturing cultural practices in everyday life: employing experience 
sampling methodology

PART II: Perceptions and experiences
6. Europeans’ perspectives on the cultural impacts of globalisation and 
migration
7. Cultural integration and difference from migrants’ perspective: 
cultural comparisons between country of residence and country of origin
8. The impact of digitalisation in everyday life: citizens’ perspectives 
on the rise of digital media
9. Migrants’ engagement with digital culture: active two-way use, 
Internet enthusiasm, digital dislike, and social media sociability
10. Campaigning for culture online: An analysis of trending 
culture-related petitions on Facebook

PART III: Outcomes, affordances, and values
11. What drives people to engage in cultural activities? Europeans’ 
motivations for cultural participation
12. The importance of culture for well-being: perspectives of locals and 
migrants on how culture makes life better
13. Different modes of openness and tolerance in Europeans’ cultural 
participation
14. Religiosity, social solidarity, and cultural participation
15. The limits of cultural democracy? Challenges and paradoxes in 
advancing cultural inclusion and participation in Denmark, the 
Netherlands, Serbia, and Spain


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