The paradoxes of the professionalization of cultural organizations in Brazil

Abstract

The research considers that the financing structure of cultural policies in Brazil has shaped a cultural field, which aimed to the professionalization of their fundraising practices. This paper analyzes the professionalization of cultural organizations in Brazil, discussing how field configuration has shaped their structure, management, and practices to achieve legitimacy in a field. This work in progress is a result of a method triangulation (Garnelo, 2006) that comprehends three steps. First, reviewing the specialized bibliography, seeking to outline the building of public policies concerning cultural fundraising in Brazil and then deals with professionalization itself. Second, exploring data to map the cultural field, we gathered primary data on federal resources for cultural policies (1992 to 2017) from the Ministry of Culture (MinC) database (SalicNet, 2017) and on voluntary federal transfers (1992 to 2017) from the Transparency Portal (SICONV, 2017). We also collected primary data on undergraduate and specialization in cultural management or similar training in Brazil (e-Mec, 2016) and secondary data on cultural policies from the research "Private Foundations and Nonprofit Associations in Brazil (FASFIL), which allows profiling Brazilian nonprofit organizations (FASFIL, 2010). We decided to analyze data on field formation considering this process of formation as means for the professionalization of agents in the cultural field. As an example, we deeply analyze the specific case of organizations that have become “Pontos de Cultura” through the federal program “Cultura Viva”. The data lead to identifying a movement of professionalization in the field of culture that converges with the regions that historically receive more resources from public cultural policies. In other words, the more resourceful reinforce their incumbent position in the field.