In defence of instrumentality (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dilemmas in Policy Support for the Arts and Cultural Sector
Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2005
This article questions the specific challenges that the management of culture poses for government. 2 Unlike some 'public good' policy domains, such as prisons, defence or infrastructure, or benefit provisions such as unemployment, disability or health measures, the complex area of cultural policy cannot be justified in instrumental terms as an essential-or unavoidablepolicy of government. Nonetheless, the cultural lobby is an effective and indefatigable pressure on government. The area of culture is just one small component of the public agenda that governments are obliged to support. Given other pressing portfolios, why do governments continue to take an interest in culture? Moreover, recent government policies seem to be setting up problems for the future such that governments will find it hard if not impossible to extricate themselves from a problematic relationship. So, what is the hold that culture has over governments? Traditionally, the answer seemed to be a combination of boosterism and cultural capital. Governments liked to bask in the reflected glory of cultural success believing that it contributed to their legitimacy and cultural competence. The glow of elite culture was seen to rub off onto political incumbents and their regimes. But in an age of pressures on government to justify public expenditure and meet accountability regimes, cultural support continues to appear on the funding agenda and governments continue to become embroiled in debates about competing support formulae. This relates to both the nature of 'culture' and broader definitions under the banner of 'cultural policy' as well as the nature of the sector which is, at once, elitist, institutionalized, commercial, highly specialist, niche and industry-all premised on intangible nature of 'creativity'. Paradoxically, contrary to other trends in public policy, arts and cultural funding has reverted to forms of patronage as the centrepiece of broadly defined policies of access, equity and self-sufficiency. How has this policy portfolio managed to buck the trends of other domains of government attention? This article attempts to open some new ways of examining the question. 3
John Holden'sCapturing Cultural Value: How Culture has Become a Tool of Government Policy
Cultural Trends, 2005
There is growing opinion within the cultural sectors on both sides of the Atlantic that new and convincing methods must be found to reaffirm its importance. In the US this was the subject of a recent Rand report, Gifts of the Muse, Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts (McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras, & Brooks, 2005), which evaluated arguments in favour of the instrumental approach to the benefits of the arts in arguing for support of the arts. It proposed a new approach based on a more comprehensive view of how the arts create private and public value which underscore the importance of the arts' intrinsic benefits. Its publication was followed by a week-long discussion on the Internet run by the daily e-newsletter, Arts Journal. com, 'Is there a Better Case for the Arts'. 1 John Holden's Capturing Cultural Value: How Culture has Become a Tool of Government Policy (2004), published by the think-tank, DEMOS, takes the debate forward in the UK. It too proposes ways of valuing culture other than the instrumental, drawing on disciplines as diverse as brand valuation by accountants and the language of sustainability used by environmentalists. This Introduction and the seven commentaries that follow explore various issues raised by Holden's pamphlet. In England, the issues of identifying and creating cultural value have been at the centre of a debate about justifying subsidy to the cultural sector. New Labour's rhetoric has typically focused on the instrumental educational, economic and social benefits of cultural activities and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's five-year plan, Living Life to the Full (DCMS, 2005) complies with that tradition. However, despite its emphasis on the 'real difference' that the department can make, it has generally failed to provide robust evidence of what difference its funding has been making up to now, and has ignored what is sometimes described as the 'intrinsic' qualities of the arts and culture. Estelle Morris had taken stock of this within a few months after becoming Minister for the Arts: I know that Arts and Culture make a contribution to health, to education, to crime reduction, to strong communities, to the economy and to the nation's well-being, but I don't always know how to evaluate or describe it. (Morris, 2003)
The case of intangible cultural heritage throws two particular issues into stark relief: first, questions about the boundaries of cultural policy, or what it is possible to administer; and second, heated contemporary debates over the desirability of academics engaging with the administration of culture. In this chapter I want to consider how we might perhaps be able to understand more about intangible cultural heritage, and what might be possible to do with it, by bringing it into contact with a number of debates in cultural studies, cultural policy and cultural theory. In 2006, in an article in the international journal Cultural Studies, the British philosopher Peter Osborne critiqued the turn in cultural studies toward a greater engagement with cultural policy: with the new definition of culture as 'a political-administrative resource'.
Dissecting authorised participation in cultural heritage
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2023
Participatory processes are a democratic tool in the field of cultural heritage, but what happens when the whole process revolves around a set of expert premises? How symbolic and authoritative would such participation be? This article will reflect on the dynamics of citizen participation and the power of institutional narratives focused on urban cultural heritage. Thus, this work proposes a methodological review and discussion through a case study where citizen participation is addressed as a process within the service of citizens: the refurbishment and design of new spaces within La Model prison complex in Barcelona. The aim is to explore whether institutionalised participation continues to be a symbolic tool that supports the authorised heritage discourses or if, conversely, it is enabling the embodiment of the multivocality of the stakeholders involved in the heritage management process in an effective way. This study concludes with a discussion that invites cultural heritage researchers to reflect on the difficulties involved in organising less-authorised proposals in the field of cultural heritage management.
Participation and provision in arts & culture – bridging the divide
Cultural Trends, 2016
Successive policies and efforts to increase participation in a range of arts and cultural activities have tended to focus on the profile and attitude of individuals and target groups in order justify publicand therefore achieve more equitablefunding. Rationales for such intervention generally reflect the policy and political regime operating in different eras, but widening participation, increasing access and making the subsidised arts more inclusive have been perennial concerns. On the other hand, culture has also been the subject of a supply-led approach to facility provision, whether local amenity-based ("Every Town Should Have One"-Lane, 1979. Arts centresevery town should have one. London: Paul Elek), civic centre or flagship, and this has also mirrored periodic growth in investment through various capital for the arts, municipal expansion, urban regeneration, European regional development and lottery programmes. Research into participation has consequently taken a macro, sociological, "class distinction" approach, including longitudinal national surveys such as Taking Part, Target Group Index, Active People and Time Use Surveys, whilst actual provision is dealt with at the micro, amenity level in terms of its impact and catchment. This article therefore considers how this situation has evolved and the implications for cultural policy, planning and research by critiquing successive surveys of arts attendance and participation and associated arts policy initiatives, including the importance of local facilities such as arts centres, cinemas and libraries. A focus on cultural mapping approaches to accessible cultural amenities reveals important evidence for bridging the divide between cultural participation and provision.
The aim of this article is to examine the adoption and use of the term public value in both broadcasting and the wider cultural arena. It examines the ideas, tensions and contradictions that exist in such a notion, asking whether it is simply empty rhetoric, or whether it tells us something more.. It argues that the term stands as an example of a failed approach to policy making, being neither successfully technocratic, offering a clear methodology for assessing value; nor successfully rhetorical in the way that ‗the public good,' or' public service broadcasting' can be deemed to have been. It also explores the means by which certain policy ideas are transmitted, briefly flourish, and then dissipate; arguing that this may beat the cost to a longer-term more sustainable mode of cultural policy-making.
2015
New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical research which enriches and develops the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in any of the following: national and international cultural policies, arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the 'traditional' arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning and cultural citizenship.
This article is about the politics of cultural value. It focusses on the representations of value that exist in the epistemologies and methodologies of cultural impact evaluation and the discrepancies between these official discourses and the discourses that correspond to cultural practitioners themselves. First the article outlines the critique of dominant forms of cultural impact evaluation, particularly the instrumentalisation of culture. In the second half of the article we draw upon qualitative research conducted with arts practitioners in the East Midlands region of England during 2013 and 2014. In so doing we introduce the concept of the ‘infrapolitics’ of cultural value that draws on the work of radical anthropologist Scott [(1992) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, London]. The central argument is that representations of cultural value are discursive constructions constituted through the epistemologies and methodologies of cultural evaluation, and that there are key differences between these dominant discourses and the discourses of value of cultural practitioners themselves. One important although overlooked element of the significance of cultural value is therefore as a record of the performance of power within the cultural sector, an ‘official transcript’ that represents dominant discourse of cultural value in opposition to the ‘hidden transcripts’ that correspond to cultural practitioners. We argue for a research agenda that represents cultural value from practitioners’ point of view.
The ethical dimensions of cultural policy
Originally presented at the 12th Conference on European Culture, Barcelona, October 2013. Governments and public institutions express cultural policy through language and initiatives reflecting the ideas, trends and arguments with which they wish to be associated. However, this paper investigates the premise that core establishment principles are revealed in longer term patterns of resource allocation, which may diverge from political declarations of intent. With specific reference to Great Britain, the paper examines the ethical bases of the relationship between art, the state and the public. Tracing the philosophical background to the foundation of the Arts Councils and the establishment of state patronage, it considers the social, cultural and aesthetic assumptions underpinning these developments. The continuing influence of older moral frameworks is explored through discrepancies between rhetoric and action in policy implementation. It is suggested that the principles and purposes of art in public life must be reconsidered by artists and policy makers alike if coherent future policy directions are to be generated.