Mapping the arts: industry concentrations,distribution, and change in the US, 1980–2010

This paper studies arts industries in all 366 US metropolitan statistical areas between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis provides evidence that the arts are an important component of many regional economies, but also highlights their volatility. After radical growth and diffusion between 1980 and 2000, in the last decade, the arts industries are defined more by shrinkage and reconcentration in fewer metropolitan areas. Further, we find that the vast majority of metros have strengths in particular sets of arts industries. As we discuss in the conclusion, these conditions present challenges and opportunities for urban cultural policy that goes beyond the current focus on the arts as consumption amenities.     

The arts as an instrument? Notes on the controversy surrounding the value of art

In the last decade of the twentieth century a shift occurred in the way western governments defended their cultural policies. New, instrumental arguments were put forward. This collided with the way the arts had learned to see themselves in the twentieth century: autonomous, with a value of their own. This article elaborates this confrontation of the arts and policy in two ways. First, it is shown that the distinction between an instrumental and an intrinsic value of the arts originates in a misperception of recent history. It was the political constellation of the Cold War that made governments in the second half of the twentieth century support the arts to be free and independent. Next, an attempt is made to anchor the value of art in a unique kind of instrumentality. With the help of philosophers and historians of culture, it is argued that the arts should be considered instruments of experience.     

Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.     

WHAT IS CULTURAL POLICY RESEARCH?

Cultural policy research exists in many contexts, asks many different kinds of questions and adopts a wide repertoire of research methodologies from a raft of academic discourses. This article investigates the research questions and approaches being undertaken by those working in this field. In order to achieve this, the article draws upon readings of contemporary publications in the field and on the authors’ experiences of building a research capacity in the area of cultural policy in a British – and, more particularly, a post‐devolution Scottish – university. The article traces the emergence of an academic discipline in the field, and seeks to advance this by reviewing a tripartite research agenda investigating: the history and historiography of cultural policy; the principles and strategies of cultural policy; and, the relationships between cultural policy and cultural theory/cultural studies.     

太平洋上的航海者——南岛语族岩画中的“船”形研究

南岛语族是一个造船技术高超、航海知识丰富的海洋民族,船既是他们驰骋太平洋的重要交通工具,也是他们岩画中经常出现的一个重要文化元素。在南岛语族分布区中,多种风格的"船"形岩画,不仅反映了这个民族丰富的海洋文化内涵;同时,也显示了岩画创造者在几个世纪之前的民族迁徙与文化扩散。