The social and the cultural in socio-cultural work: a sociohistorical analysis of four paradigms in Flanders

This article examines how the social and the cultural have been related within the history of socio-cultural work. It starts from the assumption that neither term refers to a self-evident reality. Both have been repeatedly redefined through changing pedagogical and governmental rationalities across different historical constellations. Four paradigms are reconstructed, with Bildung providing the overarching framework through which these changing articulations can be traced. In the Romantic–humanist paradigm, culture is primarily linked to the formation of the self. In the social–civilising paradigm, culture becomes a means of acting on and regulating the social. In the neoliberal paradigm, the social recedes into the background, while culture becomes increasingly tied to market logics and cultural expressivism. The final section explores whether a more critical and emancipatory paradigm remains possible once both the social and the cultural are treated as contingent constructions rather than stable foundations for socio-cultural work. The article uses Belgium as a case through which these four paradigms are illustrated.