Regional cultural policy measures events, not states. This study applies the conceptual apparatus of Haken's synergetics to a cultural ecosystem — order parameters, control parameters and hysteresis — and formulates seven questions we consider empirically testable and decisive for cultural policy.
Preprint · working version for expert discussion. Full text as PDF (in Slovak): Filozofické a funkčné aspekty kultúry (5 pp., PDF). Comments and objections are welcome at office@ioas.pro.
Abstract
This paper proposes describing the cultural life of a region as a self-organising system and applies to it the conceptual apparatus of synergetics as formulated by Haken for systems far from equilibrium: order parameters, the slaving principle, circular causality, control parameters and phase transitions including hysteresis. The starting point is the philosophical thesis that culture is not an attraction but a form in which a society thinks about itself; from it follows the functional distinction between spectator and participant, and hence between a one-off experience and an acquired competence. We identify four candidate order parameters of a cultural ecosystem — the habit of participation, interpretive competence, production capacity and the density of the network of relations — and six control parameters genuinely available to a programme’s organiser. We separately examine five specifics of critical thinking in a cultural setting. The closing section postulates seven questions for the expert public.
Keywords: synergetics · order parameter · self-organisation · cultural participation · media and information literacy · regional cultural policy · hysteresis · evaluation
1. Introduction and statement of the problem
Regional cultural policy works predominantly with output indicators: the number of events, the number of visitors, seat occupancy. These quantities are available and auditable, but they share one weakness — they measure events, not states. A programme that stages thirty concerts and leaves behind neither an audience nor operating capacity is, under such measurement, indistinguishable from a programme that leaves both. The difference between them does not lie in the number of events, but in whether the state of the system in which they took place changed while they were running.
This work is motivated by the preparation of a three-year programme in a polycentric region of 580,000 inhabitants and nine districts — a settlement structure without a dominant metropolitan centre, where cultural supply is concentrated into a few seasonal peaks and is practically absent outside the regional capital. The question we had to answer when designing it is a practical one, yet its solution is not trivial: which quantities must be changed so that the state of the system changes, and not merely its immediate output?
We argue that synergetics offers a usable framework for this question. This is not a metaphorical borrowing of the vocabulary of the natural sciences. It is a precisely delimited claim: the cultural life of a region has the properties Haken described for systems capable of self-organisation — it is open, it is maintained far from equilibrium by an inflow of resources, its macroscopic behaviour is carried by a small number of slow quantities, and these in turn slave the behaviour of the individual elements.
2. The synergetic framework
2.1 Concepts transferred from the theory of self-organisation
Synergetics studies how macroscopic order arises in systems with many degrees of freedom without an external organiser. As a control parameter changes, the original state loses stability and a few slow modes — the order parameters — take over the system; the remaining, faster modes are subordinated to them (the slaving principle). The relation is not one-way: order parameters emerge from the collective dynamics of the elements and simultaneously determine it, which Haken describes as circular causality. The transition between regimes has the character of a phase transition and is typically accompanied by hysteresis: once the control parameter returns to its original value, the system need not return to its original state.
Transferring these concepts to social systems is not new in the literature; Haken and Portugali developed it systematically for cities and the information processes within them, and the broader context of the theory of dissipative structures is provided by Prigogine and Stengers. Our contribution is not a formal theory but the identification of the variables that play these roles in a region’s cultural ecosystem, and the consequences this has for programme design and evaluation.
2.2 The system that organises itself is not the programme
The first consequence is conceptual, and despite its simplicity it is the one most often violated in practice. The system is not the programme, and its organiser is not an external control element. The system consists of the population of inhabitants, musicians, teachers, venues and institutions in the territory; the programme is merely a set of control parameters acting upon that population. The organiser therefore cannot “manufacture” cultural life — they can set the conditions under which the system reorganises itself into a different regime. The claim has a direct methodological consequence: what must be evaluated is the state of the population, not the volume of the organiser’s activity.
2.3 Candidate order parameters
We treat as an order parameter of a cultural ecosystem any quantity that (i) changes slowly relative to individual events, (ii) is collective in character, i.e. is not a property of a single participant, and (iii) slaves faster processes — programming decisions, attendance choices, artistic strategies. In our view four quantities satisfy these criteria.
| Order parameter | Observable manifestation |
|---|---|
| Habit of participation | share of inhabitants attending repeatedly within a year; audience return rate between events |
| Interpretive competence | the participant’s ability to decode the form and intent of a work; transfer of this ability to other content |
| Production capacity | number of people and pieces of equipment in the territory able to stage an event of professional quality independently |
| Density of the network of relations | number and durability of ties between actors, including international ones, that outlive the project |
Circular causality is demonstrable here: an audience with a stable habit of participation makes possible programming that would otherwise be unviable, and such programming further shapes the audience’s competence. Likewise, production capacity and the network of relations reinforce each other — a trained production team sustains international cooperation, which in turn trains the team further.
2.4 Control parameters available to the organiser
For programme design, what matters is which quantities can be manipulated. We list six we consider decisive: frequency and regularity of presentation (not annual volume, but the interval between events); spatial distribution (concentration in the centre versus a circuit through smaller towns); the threshold of entry for a newcomer (price, duration, venue, intelligibility of the invitation, physical and sensory accessibility); the share of participatory formats in which the participant is not in the position of a spectator; the level of remuneration, which determines whether the system can sustain professional operation; and the strength of the international tie, i.e. the intensity of contact with the programming practice of other environments.
2.5 Limits of the transfer
Transferring concepts from physics into the social sciences carries a well-known risk: the concepts retain the persuasiveness of the original formalism while losing its content. We therefore state what we do not claim here. We have no equations of motion for a cultural ecosystem, and we do not assert that order parameters are measurable in units permitting quantitative prediction; the adiabatic elimination of fast modes is, in our case, an assumption rather than a derived result. We thus use the framework as a heuristic with four concrete consequences — measuring state instead of output, looking for threshold effects, emphasising regularity over volume, and formulating sustainability as a question about the system’s inertia. It is precisely these consequences that are empirically refutable, which is why we regard the framework not as a metaphor but as a hypothesis.
3. The philosophical aspect: culture as a form of public thinking
The functional framework of the preceding section remains empty until the question is answered of which state of the system we consider better. This is where the philosophical starting point enters, which we formulate as a thesis: culture is not an attraction but the way a society thinks about itself. This is not a declaration of values but a distinction with operational consequences. An attraction is a performance consumed at the place and time of its presentation; a work carrying a thought continues in the recipient and therefore changes the state of the system even after the event has ended. In the vocabulary of the preceding section: an attraction acts on the fast modes, a work with a thought acts on the order parameters.
In this perspective, the distinction between spectator and participant has a precise content: it is the difference between a one-off experience and an acquired competence. Philosophically it follows Dewey’s conception of the work of art as an experience realised only in the recipient, not as an object with properties independent of its reception, and Rancière’s critique of the assumption of the passive spectator. Culture in this conception is not displayed to an audience but created with it — which is not participatory rhetoric but a claim about where in the system the effect is located.
The thesis also yields a criterion that is not identical with difficulty or with the degree of provocation. Even a minimal gesture may be a substantial work, and even a virtuoso performance may remain empty; the difference lies in whether the work refers to a reality outside its author and whether the chosen form carries the theme or merely wraps it.
4. Functional aspects
4.1 Critical thinking as a programming criterion
If the target order parameter is interpretive competence, critical thinking ceases to be a topic of the programme and becomes a criterion of its composition. What is decisive here is the difference between explaining manipulation and performing it. Sound material is an exceptionally vivid teaching medium in this respect: the same recording can be edited, framed and contextualised into two contradictory statements. The experience of manipulation carried out with one’s own hands converts the abstract appeal for resilience against disinformation into a practised skill — in the terminology of the Council of Europe report on information disorder, it is a shift from recognising content to understanding how content is made.
4.2 Specifics of critical thinking in a cultural setting
The term critical thinking is used in programme documents so loosely that it loses its discriminating power. We therefore start from the consensus definition of its cognitive core formulated by the Delphi study of the American Philosophical Association — interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation — with dispositions, i.e. the willingness to ask questions and to bear the uncertainty of the answer, as an equally essential component. In a cultural setting this general apparatus has five specifics that distinguish it from its scholastic form and that we take to be the core of the proposed approach.
First, the object of judgement is not the truth of a statement but the validity of a form. A work usually does not speak propositionally and cannot be verified; the question “is it true?” is wrongly posed for it. Critical thinking here is directed at the relation between intent, chosen material and achieved effect — that is, at whether the form carries the theme or merely wraps it. This distinguishes it from fact-checking, which is the centre of gravity of ordinary media literacy courses.
Second, being critical is not the same as being cynical. Rejection without a stated criterion is a gesture, not a judgement; thinking becomes critical only when the reason for rejection is stated in a way that can itself be challenged. This distinction carries practical weight in work with young people: distrust of media and institutions is now widespread and, without a criterion, turns into blanket scepticism that is as defenceless against manipulation as credulity is.
Third, critical thinking is content-bound. Willingham showed convincingly that it is not a general skill transferable independently of domain knowledge. Hence a methodological decision: we do not train it on abstract examples but on material the participant commands and has created — on their own sound recording. The extent to which competence acquired this way transfers to another medium remains an empirical question; we formulate it as Q6.
Fourth, emotion is not the opponent of critical judgement. Music works affectively, and it would be self-defeating to build a programme that excludes affect. The aim is to make affect visible as a device — to recognise the moment in which fast, intuitive processing decides, and to be able to submit it to slower control. This is precisely why sound material is a more suitable teaching medium than text: manipulation is felt on it before it is named.
Fifth, critical thinking is a public practice, not an individual ability. It takes place in a dispute that can be carried further — hence the emphasis on moderated discussion whose aim is not consensus but cultivated argument. Civility here is not a social convention but the condition for disagreement to continue instead of the conversation collapsing. Finally, self-regulation as part of the concept means that the programme must apply the same criteria to itself: the framework of five questions applies to programming choices just as it does to the works it assesses.
4.3 Interdisciplinarity as a requirement of requisite variety
Interdisciplinarity is usually justified on cultural grounds. We believe it also has a systemic justification, namely Ashby’s law of requisite variety: a regulator must command at least as much variety of states as the system regulated. A young recipient receives information, sound, image, emotion and manipulative intent simultaneously, in a single format and without division into school subjects. A programme meant to develop the ability to decode such a stimulus therefore cannot be single-disciplinary — it must be constructed analogously to the stimulus, that is, concurrently and interconnectedly. In practice this means that musicians, teachers, librarians and media professionals work within the same event, not in parallel programmes.
4.4 Form, format and presentation as control parameters
A format is not a matter of custom but a decision that determines which audience the programme will reach and which it will lose. A classical concert, a commented presentation, a workshop, a moderated discussion, a residency or a showcase before professional delegates each have a different function and a different audience; in terms of the model, these are different values of the threshold of entry and of the share of participation. The same class of parameters includes accessibility: a portable induction loop for the hard of hearing is not an ancillary service but an extension of the population on which the system can act at all. From this follows an evaluation rule — a format is assessed by whether it fulfilled its declared intent, not by the fact that it took place.
5. Operationalisation: the framework of five questions
So that the distinction between an attraction and a work with a thought does not remain a matter of one programmer’s taste, we propose a framework of five questions applied when composing the programme, when selecting for competitive formats and in subsequent evaluation — a framework whose use is also acquired by the workshop participants themselves. It does not assess taste but the presence of a thought and the functionality of its form:
- Does the work refer to a reality outside its author?
- Are the chosen material and format necessary for the statement, or interchangeable without loss of meaning?
- Does the work stand without the author’s commentary?
- Does it bear a second reading, i.e. does it allow several levels of perception?
- What does the addressee take away — a competence, a question, a motivation to create, or an experience consumed on the spot?
We regard the framework as a hypothesis about measurability, not as a finished instrument. Its value stands or falls on whether two independent assessors arrive at comparable results for the same work; that question is open and we return to it in section 9.
6. Objections and possible refutations
The first objection is one of elitism: who decides what is a thought and what is merely an effect? The framework of five questions does not evade it but changes its addressee. The questions do not assess the quality of taste or the recipient’s level of education and require no canon; they ask about the relation between intent, material and effect — properties accessible to an informed layperson as well. What is decisive is that the same questions are used by workshop participants on their own work. If the framework functioned only in the hands of an expert, the objection would be justified; if it can be learned and applied to one’s own work, it is a transferable competence, not a privilege.
The second objection is the opposite one and concerns instrumentalisation: does art not become, in this conception, an instrument of educational policy? The answer requires a distinction. The programme does not make the presentation of a work conditional on its educational benefit and does not select programming according to learning objectives; it claims only that among works defensible on artistic grounds it is legitimate to prefer those that bear a second reading. Art here is not a means of attaining competence — competence is a by-product of a relation to the work that has value in its own right. We do acknowledge the risk, however: the line between a criterion and expedient selection is thin, and monitoring it is one of the tasks of evaluation.
The third objection is methodological and we consider it the most serious. If order parameters are measurable only indirectly and the threshold is unknown, the framework cannot be refuted by a single observation — and a theory that cannot be refuted is not a theory. We therefore bind the framework to claims with definite empirical content: that regularity influences the habit of participation more than annual volume does; that competence acquired on sound material transfers to another medium; and that the share of participation after support ends does not fall back to its initial value. If these claims are not confirmed, the framework is wrong — and that is the condition we hold to be the right one when a hypothesis is put forward.
7. Sustainability as hysteresis, not as a closing chapter
The usual question of sustainability is whether an activity continues after funding ends. Within the synergetic framework it can be posed more precisely: funding is a control parameter, its reduction is the return of that parameter to its original value, and the question is whether the system returns to its original state. If the order parameters did not cross the threshold during the period of support, the system relaxes into the initial attractor — which is precisely the well-documented decline in activity after titles such as European Capital of Culture, when temporary teams disband and the audience built up is lost. If they did cross it, hysteresis sets in: the new state is maintained with a lower energy input than was needed to reach it.
From this stem decisions that would otherwise look like accounting details. Equipment is purchased rather than rented, because ownership lowers the energy required per presentation. Know-how is passed on to workers in the territory, not to external suppliers who leave once the project ends, taking the acquired experience with them. The programme is built as an extension of an existing core, because a system without a core has no state to relax into once support is withdrawn. The object of the project is then not an event but a capacity.
8. Methodological consequences for measurement
If the state of the population becomes the objective, the shape of evaluation changes too. The proposed indicators share one property: they are measured repeatedly on the same sample, not in aggregate at an event.
| Quantity tracked | Proposed indicator and method of collection |
|---|---|
| Habit of participation | share of visitors with three or more visits per year; tracking a cohort of first-time visitors at a twelve-month interval |
| Interpretive competence | performance on a task with unfamiliar material before and after the workshop, with delayed measurement after six months and a control group |
| Production capacity | number of events staged without the involvement of the project holder; number of people in the territory able to handle production independently |
| Density of the network of relations | number of collaborations continuing without project funding twelve months after support ends |
These indicators are more demanding than the number of tickets sold, and in a one-year project cycle they are unmeasurable — which is a substantive argument in favour of longer support periods. They also raise the question that is critical for the framework: where exactly does the threshold lie beyond which the new state sustains itself.
9. Questions postulated for the expert public
We consider the following questions empirically testable and decisive for regional cultural policy. We formulate them as open — we do not have answers to them, and we believe current practice does not either.
Q1 (identification). Which quantities of a cultural ecosystem satisfy the criteria of an order parameter — slow dynamics, collective character and the slaving of fast modes? Are the four proposed quantities independent, or are they manifestations of a single latent variable?
Q2 (threshold of regularity). Is there a critical frequency of presentation below which the habit of participation fails to form regardless of the quality of individual events? If so, how does it depend on settlement size and on the distance to the nearest alternative offer?
Q3 (hysteresis). Is hysteresis of cultural participation empirically demonstrable? What share of participation, capacity and ties persists three and five years after external funding ends, and which components of the programme correlate most strongly with that residue?
Q4 (reliability of assessment). Can “the presence of a thought” be assessed with acceptable agreement between independent assessors? What is the inter-rater reliability of the framework of five questions, and is it higher than that of a conventional expert review?
Q5 (international tie). How does local programming diversity depend on the strength of ties to foreign scenes? Is there a value beyond which the tie ceases to enrich and begins to homogenise domestic production?
Q6 (transfer of competence). Is competence acquired on musical and sound material transferable to digital content in another medium? How durable is this transfer and how does it differ from the effect of ordinary media literacy courses?
Q7 (creation versus displacement). How can the creation of a new audience be distinguished in evaluation from the displacement of an existing audience between events? What minimal observation allows these two scenarios to be told apart without a population-wide survey?
10. Conclusion
We have set out a framework in which the philosophical thesis of culture as a form of public thinking is not an ornament of a project proposal but a source of measurable decisions. If the system is the population and not the programme, if the objective is order parameters and not outputs, and if sustainability is a question of hysteresis and not of a closing chapter in an application, then what is worth tracking and reporting changes as well. We do not regard the framework as verified; we regard it as definite enough to be refuted. The questions in section 9 are an invitation for that to happen.
References
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The empirical context of this work is the preparation of the three-year Sound of Dialogue programme in the Trenčín Region, Slovakia. Author: Branislav Anwarzai, Institute of Advanced Studies, Trenčín.
© 2026 Branislav Anwarzai. All rights reserved. The text may be quoted with attribution of author and source; any further distribution or modification requires the author’s written consent.