Innovation for Inclusion and Reflection

“Social and Cultural Innovation” is a syntagma that has been receiving increased usage since 2016, when it was chosen by the European Strategy Forum Research Infrastructures for the name of the working group that deals with research infrastructures primarily connected with the Social Sciences and the Humanities.1 Innovation refers to the creation of new products and services by bringing a new idea to the market. Economic growth turns on infrastructures, which provide access to services and knowledge, e.g. by overcoming the digital divide. Globalization has made it clear that a most urgent objective is to work out policies of social and cultural innovation to the advantage of citizens—policies that aim at achieving changes in the regulatory environment that make societies both inclusive and reflective.2 The Faro Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society of UNESCO encourages reflection on the role of citizens in the process of defining, creating, and managing a cultural environment in which communities evolve.3 The notions of inclusion and reflection are inspired by philosophical ideas referring to the role of deliberative communication of citizens in a modern public sphere aiming at mutual understanding. Jürgen Habermas has applied to society4 what G. W. F. Hegel had elaborated as the passage from the surface of being to the ground of essence, a passage that takes place, literally, by “reflecting into the thing”5 – like reflected light that illuminates something previously invisible, or creates a pattern not previously existing. It is now time to examine the implications of innovation for redefining the ways in which the culture has been envisioned, particularly to visualize the various ways in which users engage with cultural processes in the past, present, and future.