Fad,fetish or fixture: contingent valuation of performing and visual arts festivals in Singapore

This paper analyses how much culture is valued in a newly-developed economy with a distinct dichotomy of an arts-appreciating population segment and a less-culturally aware mass. An analytical framework weaving together the intrinsic, business and societal benefits of arts and culture is applied to explore whether arts festivals – a popular tourism event in many countries – are a temporary fad, an expensive governmental fetish or a naturally-evolving fixture. This has implications for government funding and cultural policy. Empirical evidence supports the notion that the long-running performing arts festival is a not a fad but a fixture with some fetish elements while the visual arts festival appears to be a fad but has the potential to be a fixture. Of particular concern, however, is the evidence from both festivals that the perceptions of community benefit, business benefits as well as bequest value from the arts are not significant determinants of willingness to pay for these events.     

世界农业起源地的地理基础与中国的贡献

本文以世界三大农作物起源地为核心,提出粟、黍、水稻等农作物的驯化是中国为世界文明进程作出的最大贡献。还重点讨论了农作物起源地的环境属性,并指出农业最初产生之地并非自然环境最优之处。自然环境的不利是迫使人们放弃采集渔猎、选择通过生产获得食物的原因;而自然条件良好的欧洲平原地带,正是由于动植物资源的充裕而长期处于野蛮状态,滞缓了文明发展的进程。因此,从地理的视角,审度人类的文明进程,起步之处却是环境脆弱地带。     

The Parkes Elvis Revival Festival: Economic Development and Contested Place Identities in Rural Australia

This paper discusses the annual Elvis Revival Festival in the small town of Parkes, 350 km to the west of Sydney, in rural Australia. It explores the way in which a remote place with few economic prospects has created a tourism product, and subsequently captured national publicity, through a festival based around commemoration of the birthday of Elvis Presley, a performer who had never visited Australia, and certainly not Parkes. The Festival began in the early 1990s, when a keen Elvis fan rallied promoters (and other fans) around the idea of bringing Elvis impersonators to the town for an annual celebration. Since then, the Festival has grown in size, with notable economic impact. The town now partly trades on its association with Elvis, constituting an ‘invented’ tradition and place identity. Yet the festival is not without tensions. The images of Elvis and the traditions generated by the festival challenge those who wish to promote Parkes through more austere, staid notions of place and identity. For some, Elvis is a means for the town to generate income and national notoriety, while others prefer less ‘kitsch’ tourism attractions such as a nearby (and nationally famous) radio telescope. Results from interviews with key players and surveys of visitors demonstrate how ‘tradition’ is constructed in places (rather than being innate), and how small places, even in remote areas, can develop economic activities through festivals, and create new identities – albeit contested ones.     

Valuing the Arts: Theorising and Realising Cultural Capital in an Australian City

For those who make and admire artistic works, there is no question of their value. However, for others interested in economic development, the value of the arts is often more tangential, contested and questionable. While the post‐modern world of consumption and spectacle suggests to some academics and governments that the arts and cultural industries are the way of the future, others remain sceptical about their social and economic value. This is a theoretical as well as a practical issue this paper explores by offering a reconceptualisation of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital as a way of re‐assessing the value of the arts. The paper then applies this framework to quantify and qualify the value of the arts in one regional city in Australia – Geelong in Victoria – focusing on the work of two artists. The aim is to describe the interconnected processes by which the arts generate cultural capital in the form of confidence, image, individual well‐being, social cohesion and economic viability. The analysis also highlights the ongoing power relations which prescribe artistic production, circulation and valuation. The implications of such a rethinking and application go well beyond one city and region to other places grappling with the relationship between artistic production and urban well being. By focusing on the broad‐ranging process by which artistic value is created for individuals, groups, professionals, communities and governments, a model becomes available for other places to use in realising their cultural capital.     

Children as urbanites: mapping the affordances and behavior settings of urban environments for Finnish and Japanese children

Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for their main function, land use, openness, and communality. Significant differences were found between countries for all affordance categories. Although differences in behavior settings were observed between countries, a number of patterns emerged: outdoor settings and those with shared communality were the most prevalent behavior settings, traffic settings were predominantly evaluated negatively and commercial and indoor settings most positively. Findings suggest that although the context is important, independent mobility and the possibility to actualize environmental affordances seem to be fundamental in both contexts as the key criteria for environmental child-friendliness.     

Young islanders,the meteorological imagination,and the art of geopolitical engagement

There is scant literature analysing how young islanders regard climate change, particularly in terms of resilience, agency and a geopolitical aesthetic. To address that gap, this paper offers a theoretical framework and empirical example responding to such issues. The work's theoretical foci are upon the role of the artist as interlocutor; the importance of arts practices in encouraging children to participate in climate change debates and actions; and the potential of what anthropologist Tim Ingold has called the meteorological imagination. These three matters inform a two-year praxis project – A Map of a Dream of the Future – involving methods from the geohumanities and engagement with young islanders, academics, artists and writers, community cultural development workers, and educators. Together, we worked on various activities to draw out our individual and collective ideas about islands, arts, climate change, and geopolitics. In the process were created an education kit, children's workshops and exhibitions, and a professional art installation at a major national arts festival. At the same time, new insights have been gained about how the meteorological imagination may be a significant resource by which to work with children as they come to terms with a future whose climate has changed.     

节庆事件对区域旅游流空间网络的影响效应和机制研究

以洛阳牡丹花节为例,通过多源数据的融合,运用社会网络、因子分析方法,探究节庆事件对区域旅游流空间网络的影响效应及机制。结果表明：节庆事件对区域旅游流空间网络影响表现为协同、弱化及蜂聚三种效应,不同效应影响机制不同。其中,节点的等级和知名度优势非常明显的态势下,产生显著的协同效应;节庆游憩区内的低等级节点出现轻微的节庆弱化效应,区域外节点主要受到空间交通距离限制产生了显著的节庆弱化效应;旅游等级很强且旅游承载量优势非常明显的非节庆旅游节点,以及等级、知名度或地理区位较强的节庆旅游节点呈现出强蜂聚效应,以上条件均不强的节庆旅游节点仅发生弱集聚效应。     

Pilgrimage as costly signal: Religiously motivated cooperation in Chaco and Nasca

Religiously motivated cooperation in the form of pilgrimage is a neglected element in discussions of the dynamics of cooperative behavior among humans. In this paper, we invoke costly signaling theory to propose how pilgrimage centers emerge in some contexts. On one hand, as has been suggested by other scholars, monumental centers are costly signals of the authority and influence of competing centers’ leadership, which can include the leaders’ influence over supernatural forces. We argue that equally important is the pilgrimage itself, which serves as a costly signal of the pilgrims’ commitment to the religious system and the beliefs and values associated with it; this in turn facilitates cooperation and other prosocial behaviors among pilgrims who otherwise might be strangers. To explore the utility of this approach to pilgrimage, we compare Chaco Canyon in the US Southwest and Cahuachi in the Nasca region of Peru, two prestate sociocultural settings in which pilgrimage was an important component in maintaining cooperation, group cohesion, and identity. While specific patterns are distinct in each society, we argue that pilgrimage had a significant impact in the development of both prosocial behavior and religious leadership in Chaco and Nasca.     

异托邦：音乐节事活动的空间实践——以迷笛音乐节为例

文章使用异托邦理论为概念框架,以迷笛音乐节为案例,通过参与式观察与深度访谈法,试图揭示音乐节空间实践中构建的另类特征。研究发现,迷笛音乐节所承载的功能逐渐由叛逆的“出口”转变为“好玩”的生活方式;音乐节事空间实践中呈现出多元的功能并置,矛盾与流动的融合;音乐节事空间的文化实践也呈现出日常结构的超越与反抗,以及作为理想的补偿空间。周期性节事时空实践中文化的稳定性则使其成为对称而不可分割的系统性时空。该研究为节事空间提供了新的认知途径,也从节事的角度丰富了异托邦理论的微观案例。     

南宋临安节日活动的时空结构研究

在城市地理学研究中,由于缺乏有关历史城市物理空间的基础性研究工作及受研究资料所限等原因,关于历史时期的城市居民生活空间方面的研究较少开展。本文选择南宋时期的临安作为城市空间研究对象,在全面梳理相关历史文献记载的基础上,尝试结合目前应用最广泛的功能分区法和时间地理学两种方法,对南宋临安节日活动空间进行剖析,揭示其城市节日活动的时空间结构特征。同时,文章还探讨了城市社会空间的形成机制,提出物理空间奠定了临安节日活动空间的基本格局、都城地位是临安节日活动空间形成的控制因素、城市经济主导了临安节日活动的空间分异过程等结论。     

Deep hanging out in the arts: an anthropological approach to capturing cultural value

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project carried out from September 2013 to March 2014 by five researchers at the University of Leeds (UK), who paired off with five audience-participants and engaged in a process of ‘deep hanging out’ at events curated as part of Leeds’ annual LoveArts festival. As part of AHRC’s Cultural Value project, the overarching aim of the research was to produce a rich, polyvocal, evocative and complex account of cultural value by co-investigating arts engagement with audience–participants. Findings suggested that both the methods and purpose of knowing about cultural value impact significantly on any exploration of cultural experience. Fieldwork culminated in the apparent paradox that we know, and yet still don’t seem to know, the value and impact of the arts. Protracted discussions with the participants suggested that this paradox stemmed from a misplaced focus on knowledge; that instead of striving to understand and rationalize the value of the arts, we should instead aim to feel and experience it. During a process of deep hanging out, our participants revealed the limitations of language in capturing the value of the arts, yet confirmed perceptions of the arts as a vehicle for developing self-identity and -expression and for living a better life. These findings suggest that the Cultural Value debate needs to be reframed from what is currently an interminable epistemological obsession (that seeks to prove and evidence the value of culture) into a more complex phenomenological question, which asks how people experience the arts and culture and why people want to understand its value. This in turn implies a re-conceptualization of the relationships between artists or arts organisations and their publics, based on a more relational form of engagement and on a more anthropological approach to capturing and co-creating cultural value.     

Making heritage at the Cannes Film Festival

This paper is a discussion of how and why film should be considered heritage, by analysing the role of the Cannes Film Festival (CFF) in turning films into a form of heritage, through a number of different initiatives focused on the preservation and promotion of films as heritage. In doing so, the present article charts the evolution of the CFF against the background of cultural diplomacy and heritage. Studying the CFF from a heritage perspective will contribute to theoretical debates that situate film festivals as places where memories and identities are contested and negotiated. The paper will show that these heritage-making initiatives are a result of the ability of the CFF to respond to changes taking place in an age of international contact, to accommodate new trends, new films and emerging national film industries. Within this context, this paper also addresses a gap in film festival scholarship by engaging in heritage theory to further expand cultural and heritage insights.     

‘The problem with permanence is that you’re stuck with it’: the public arts centre building in the twenty-first century

Dedicated arts centres were a common outcome of the great expansion of the public sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the early twenty-first century, however, many of our arts centres present a challenge to cultural policy-making. Expensive to maintain and operate, they are often ill-equipped to host the increasingly diverse range of communities and arts practices that have emerged with each generation. The article outlines the difficulties that the presence of such arts centres present to cultural policy-makers, using case studies of four Australian centres. It argues that the ‘mobilities turn’ in sociology provides a useful framework for considering the challenges posed by a static building and its array of highly mobile stakeholders. The study focuses on the perceptions of arts centre managers as cultural intermediaries – giving voice to the opportunities and constraints for the arts centre building and to the needs and interests of public policy-makers, artists and audiences, and juggling the tensions between the ideological, political, demographic and cultural forces that define the field in which they routinely operate. The managers negotiate distinctive challenges that arts centres face within the context of decentralised and fluid understandings of creative spaces for contemporary leisure practices.     

Order and organisation

Abstract

In this paper we re-examine the relationship and possibilities for discourse between the academic disciplines called ‘sciences’ and those known as ‘arts’. Do they represent one culture or two? An apparent diversity of views emerges in two contemporary writers, George Steiner and Nicholas Lash, the former differentiating the two, the latter insisting that the ‘two cultures’ debate itself is misconstrued. We follow the principal threads of both arguments in the light of an intimate involvement with the practice of science and its communication in public and academic contexts. Visiting aspects of both arts and sciences that distinguish them from other disciplines, the role of theory, and the twin purposes of function and contemplation, we find that much of the pain of discourse between them arises from a failure to recognise common structures and functions. As a result, either function or contemplation may be overemphasised at the expense of the other. We suggest directions in which the tensions might be resolved in both public and academic arenas.     

PUBLIC‐PRIVATE SUPPORT OF THE ARTS AND GERMAN CULTURAL POLICY

This paper provides a historical context for thinking about Germany’s recent embrace of sponsorship and private donations as a means of supporting education and the arts. The paper notes that the chief architect of a new national cultural policy, Michael Naumann, has justified a turn to public‐private collaborative arts funding with the argument that a market‐driven model of private responsibility for the arts stimulates greater citizen involvement in civic life and thus greater democracy. Yet Naumann has not reconciled this argument with Germany’s own history, in particular the fact that Germany’s Golden Age of private support of the arts coincided with the authoritarian German Empire (1871–1918). My analysis of this historical constellation, presented as a case study of one of Germany’s most important museum directors, Wilhelm Bode (1845–1929), argues that private support of the arts formed part of a larger strategy designed to wrest control of arts institutions away from traditional elites. My essay seeks to show that the rise of more responsive public forums was intended to make the fruits of German imperialism and economic domination available to more Germans, particularly middle class Germans. On this basis, the essay suggests two things. First, German imperialist society was less hierarchical and more broadly participatory than is often assumed, complicating its ability to figure as a negative foil today. Second, the harnessing of market forces to German culture was expected to deepen popular appreciation for chauvinistic conceptions of German nationalism that today seem to conflict with what German democracy might ideally be. With these points in mind, I contend not that sponsorship and private donations are incapable of promoting greater public involvement in the arts. Rather, the private sector might yield more democratic outcomes when publicly funded democratic institutions retain a strong voice in the direction of culture.     

西宁市元宵灯会改革之我见

元宵灯会作为一种传统的民族民间文化艺术形式,在一定程度上反映并展示了当地社会经济、文化发展的面貌。西宁市传统灯会的举办比较守旧封闭,缺乏现代意识和创新精神,只有进行从内容到形式的全面改革,才能让传统的西宁灯会焕发出新的生机与活力。     

Classical Central Places as Protected Thresholds

Previous research efforts demonstrate the use of location covering in the spatial structuring of central places within a single-good context. In a multilevel context, this paper similarly develops a mathematical programming approach to the siting of central places based on the “protection” of inner (or threshold) markets. The objective function maximizes both market coverage of demand and market overlap, subject to an upper bound on market overlap; this allows the formation of different market structures consistent with the various K-valued central place systems of Christaller and Lösch. Siting examples serve to illustrate the working of the protected threshold model in isotropic settings. Furthermore, ways in which the present model might be extended for other situations are examined.     

Second Laws,Two Cultures,and the Emergence of an Ecosystem Aesthetics

Abstract

The appropriation of scientific concepts by the humanities and the visual arts exemplifies what many feel are both the pitfalls and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement. The principle of entropy, which C. P. Snow claimed could serve as a litmus test of the ‘two cultures’ divide, provides an excellent starting point for exploring how artists have employed scientific concepts far beyond their original contexts. As a case study in interdisciplinarity, the use of entropy in the visual arts is also a lens to consider the evolution of an artistic proposal from the 1960s known as ‘system aesthetics’. As an early challenge to the clean demarcation of art and science, system aesthetics was a precedent for what might be described as the emergence of an ecosystem aesthetics within contemporary art and design today.     

THE CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORY OF MOUNT TAYLOR PERIOD (CA. 7400–4600 CAL B.P.) SHELL SITES ON THE MIDDLE ST. JOHNS RIVER,FLORIDA

Abstract

Mount Taylor period (ca. 7400–4600 cal. B.P.) shell mounds on the St. Johns River in northeast Florida were some of the first Archaic freshwater shell sites to be documented in the Southeast. However, there is much that remains unknown about their chronology, history, and changing significance through time. This paper presents a regional chronology ofMount Taylor shell sites based on radiocarbon assays from well-documented contexts. Three major changes in the distribution, arrangement, and use of shell sites are identified which correspond with significant shifts in social interaction and environmental change. An examination of the contexts of shell deposition demonstrates that shell sites were frequently established as places to dwell and were subsequently transformed into places of commemorative ceremony or mortuary ritual. The history of Mount Taylor shell sites has implications for the broader debate on whether shell sites were middens or monuments.     

Counting eyeballs,soundbites and ‘plings’: arts participation,strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissonance between arts and sports within Olympics programmes and claims of the deleterious impact on arts funding, particular within the regions, London 2012 has engendered creative programming which strategically deploys the Cultural Olympiad to satisfy local cultural policy objectives as well as meeting broader interests in ‘legacy’ from the Games. Such ambitions require the development of appropriate methodologies for understanding arts participation and engagement for the purpose of evaluation and evidence-based policy making, a particular challenge for such a complex range of activities, sites and settings for arts participation.