The new patron state in South Korea: cultural policy,democracy and the market economy

ABSTRACT

This article explores conceptual frameworks for understanding Korea’s contemporary cultural policy by looking into the historical transformation of the culture-state-market relations in the country. It argues that Korea has become ‘a new kind of patron state’, which emulates the existing patron states in the West firmly within the statist framework and ambitiously renders government-led growth of cultural industries (and the Korean Wave) as a new responsibility of the state. The formation of Korea’s new patron state has been driven by a ‘parallel movement’ consisting of democracy and the market economy, which has defined the political and socio-economic trajectory of Korean society itself since the 1990s. Democracy has been articulated in cultural policy as cultural freedom, cultural enjoyment and the arm’s length principle; meanwhile, the market economy of culture has been facilitated by a ‘dynamic push’ of the state. After discussing the parallel movement, the article points out the tension, ambiguity and contradiction entailed in cultural policy of the new patron state.     

The neo-developmental cultural industries policy of Korea: rationales and implications of an eclectic policy

ABSTRACT

This article undertakes an explanatory case study of the South Korean cultural industries policy shift instituted under the Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun governments (1998–2008). This shift can be well positioned within the broader context of the creative turn in national cultural policy around the world, which was initiated by the British New Labour governments (1997–2010). Despite the similarities in the driving discourses and policy methods, the Korean policy shift was significantly distinguished from its British counterpart because of the differing pace and trajectories of industrialisation in the two countries. Adopting the concept of the East Asian developmental state as an entry point, this article explores how and why South Korea went through a cultural industries policy shift in the period following the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and, additionally, examines what kinds of changes the policy shift brought about. Understanding the rationales and implications of this neo-developmental transformation can provide a unique opportunity to re-think the fashionable creative industries policies among various nations.     

The policy of non-discrimination and the protection of minority cultural heritage in Albania

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the effectiveness of the policy of non-discrimination towards minorities in the preservation of minority cultural heritage, constructing a case study within Albania. After defining the key terms used, this paper examines the legal framework of non-discrimination towards minorities in its historical development and looks into the state of preservation of minority cultural heritage on the ground throughout the 2010s combining extensive field-work with interviews with key representatives of ethnic minorities in Albania. The poor state of preservation of minority cultural heritage is mostly attributed to under-financing and the insufficient policy of non-discrimination. As I demonstrate, in the case of minorities with a kin-state in the region, most notably Greece, as well as the heritage claimed by neighbouring states, primarily Turkey, the policy of non-discrimination and the practice of under-financing paves the way for external involvement in the protection of cultural heritage, in pursuit of international political agendas. The paper concludes that more needs to be done for the protection of minority cultural heritage in Albania.     

Making creative industries policy in the real world: differing configurations of the culture-market-state nexus in the UK and South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper compares creative (content) industries policies in the UK and South Korea, highlighting the coevality in their development. Seeing them as ‘industrial policies’, it focuses on how state intervention is justified and why a certain set of policy options have been chosen. The UK policy-makers prefer passive and decentralised roles of the state that addresses market failures via generic and horizontal policies. Meanwhile, Koreans have consistently believed in the strong, resourceful and ambitious state in developing centralised, sector-specific policies for cultural industries. While demonstrating two contrasting approaches to the nation state’s management of cultural turn in the economy, both cases seem to present a ‘paradox’. Despite its neoliberal undertone, the horizontal and fused approach taken by the UK’s creative industries policy engenders some space for ‘cultural’ policy. On the contrary, the non-liberal and state-driven content industries policy in Korea has shown a stronger tendency of cultural commodification.     

Cultural censorship in defective democracy: the South Korean blacklist case

ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to understand the cultural censorship practiced in contemporary South Korea, a liberal democracy, where cultural quangos were established after political democratization, following the arm’s length model. I will focus on the analysis of cases from the film industry which has been central to the censorship debate historically in Korea because of its popular appeal. The establishment of arm’s length cultural organizations laid the foundation for freedom of cultural expression which had been seriously curtailed under military rule. However, recent revelations of cultural blacklist cases under the two previous administrations are baffling to understand since rampant political censorship was practiced through ostensibly autonomous cultural organizations. The paper examines the ways in which the state constructed a ‘system of ideological censorship’ by using not only cultural quangos but non-cultural state apparatuses. In so doing, the paper emphasizes the role of non-cultural policy state institutions in the operation of cultural policy and the effect of state systems on cultural organizations. I draw upon the concept of defective democracy to understand the socio-political condition where these cultural organizations exist.     

Greening cultural policy

Abstract

This article focuses on greening cultural policy within a sustainable development context. We examine shortcomings of major public-policy responses to the ecological crisis, linking this to the ambivalent philosophical heritage of anthropocentric worldviews that underpin ideas about the relation of culture to non-human nature. This ambivalence is reflected by weak environmentalism in the cultural policy arena, exemplified by surprisingly non-green cultural platforms espoused by green political parties. Green thinking is further hampered by the widespread adoption of digitisation within cultural organizations, which we contextualise in the broader political economy of digital capitalism and the attendant myth that high-tech culture is a low emissions business. Green cultural policy necessitates intensive self-examination of cultural institutions’ environmental impact, at the same time these institutions deploy art, education, entertainment, sports, and news to raise awareness of ecological crisis and alternative models of economic activity. We cite the efforts of activist artists’ resistance against fossil fuel corporations’ sponsorship of arts and cultural organizations as a welcome provocation for greening cultural policy within cultural organizations and green political parties alike.     

Who governs culture? Actors,federalism and expertise in Swiss regional cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a novel approach to cultural policies and cultural policy change, drawing on public policy and institutional analysis to study how decision-making power is distributed between actors in the public and private sectors and at different state levels, as well as the precise roles of public administrations, elected officials and cultural actors. Indeed, rather than directly defining cultural policy, laws on culture mostly designate actors in charge of policy implementation. Based on an empirical application of this analytical framework to the case of Swiss cantons and focusing specifically on the positions of cultural actors, findings show that cultural policies are transformed in different ways, affording more or less power to actors from the cultural sector in implementation arrangements generally dominated by administrative actors.     

Combating coloniality: the cultural policy of post-colonialism

The distinguishing characteristic of cultural policy in countries characterized by a legacy of coloniality is the importance of the identity formation and the politics that are involved in formulating its definition. At root, coloniality is an experience involving dominating influence by a stronger power over a subject state. However, this is not just a matter of external governance or economic dependency, but of a cultural dominance that creates an asymmetrical relationship between the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery,’ between the ruling ‘hegemon’ and the marginalized ‘other.’ In these circumstances, what constitutes an “authentic” culture, and how this informs national identity, is a central political and social concern.     

Democratization and museum policy in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This article examines the two distinct historical policy paths taken by the South Korean government in the late twentieth century towards the democratization of museums. One was based on the creation of a museological public sphere as an extension of the political democratization movement of the 1980s. This demonstrated the potential to become a valuable component of the wider incipient national public sphere within which civic subjects could discuss their individual and collective historical memories. However, despite this potential, a museological public sphere failed to influence the general trajectory of national policy regarding the democratization of museums that had been in development since the early 1980s. This other policy path towards cultural democratization was triggered by the award of the Seoul Olympics in 1981. It was based on public participation and entitled the ‘cultural Olympics’. An important strategy of the cultural Olympics was the construction of a new institutional infrastructure to expand the public right to enjoy culture. This path facilitated an increasing entanglement with neoliberalism in 1990s. Finally, the 1997 IMF crisis furthered the association between a superficial idea of democratization through institutional expansion and the practices of neoliberalism, a trend which continues within South Korean museum policy today.     

From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?     

The creation of cultural policy in the media: a field research of cultural discourses in Germany

In Germany, cultural policy is formally made on the level of municipalities, the Länder (federal states) and the federal government. With approximately eight billion Euros per year, they finance a large percentage of cultural and arts activities: music, theater, dance, museums, libraries, film and the preservation of sites of historic interest. The federal government sets the legal framework in which art can be produced and distributed, and finances it indirectly through tax reductions (VAT reduction), copy right laws, and special health insurance and retirement arrangements for artists (Künstlersozialkasse). Within this institutionalized legal and governmental setting, the discursive dimension of politics is often forgotten, particularly when policy creation is being discussed. This article focuses on the discursive dimensions of politics within the field of classical and contemporary music and offers a discourse analysis of mass media coverage to investigate policy‐making.     

Tracing British cultural policy domains: contexts,collaborations and constituencies

This paper draws on a larger research project that investigates the networks and institutions shaping cultural policy across national, international and supranational contexts. Taking Britain as its touchstone, it identifies and maps some of the operational relations between culture, governance and nation shaping the development and orientation of contemporary cultural policy. It thus highlights key formal and informal domestic relationships and contexts within which Britain's local, regional and national cultural policy initiatives are situated. The British context – in which England figures strongly for historical, political and demographic reasons, and so draws a corresponding resistance across other constituents of nation – is shown to be both internally differentiated along various lines, and also embedded in the larger sphere of the European Union that redraws the boundaries of cultural policy and governance. In tracing the contours and interrogating the constitutive elements of Britain's domains of cultural policy, we seek to provide a foundation for understanding the intersections and influences that exist between fields of cultural governance, and their interdependence and fluidity.     

Austrian foreign cultural policy: Europeanization through the prism of national interests

ABSTRACT

In the second half of 2018, Austria for the third time has taken over the EU Council Presidency and is therefore particularly interested in promoting an image of itself as a reliable partner and a European country which accepts and protects European values. Foreign cultural policy is one of the suitable instruments for achieving this goal. The present paper analyses Austrian foreign cultural policy with the aim of finding out how European integration affects it. The paper uses qualitative research methods such as desk research, document research and expert interviews. The results of the analyses show that Austrian stakeholders traditionally consider Europeanization primarily as a tool to promote Austrian national interests on the international stage.     

Sub-national cultural policy--where the action is: Mapping state cultural policy in the United States

Abstract

This paper argues that cultural policy analysts should turn their analytical attention towards the cultural policies of sub-national levels of government. State level cultural policy has become an increasingly important locus of interest for those who are concerned with the health and stability of the arts, culture, and humanities in American life, and the same is undoubtedly true elsewhere. This rise in the importance of cultural policy at the state level has not been accompanied by a similarly evolving understanding of the cultural policy system that has developed at this sub-national level. Cultural policy at the level of an American state has been the sum total of the more or less independent, uncoordinated activities of a variety of state agencies and allied organizations and institutions. This paper lays out a number of hypotheses concerning what we might be likely to find in such an inquiry and reports some preliminary findings from a cultural policy mapping project in the State of Washington.     

Cultural policy archetypes: the bathwater and the baby

ABSTRACT

Cultural policy archetypes have been fundamental to comparative cultural policy study and continue to be influential in both everyday and scholarly characterizations of national cultural policy systems. This paper explores the proposition that cultural policy archetypes reflect what people believe to be true about culture – their cultural ideologies. Cultural ideologies are integral to the formation of cultural policy and, thus, must be considered in any theory that hopes to measure the extent to which and explain why cultural policies differ. Cultural ideologies embody ideas about why culture is important and how it should be governed. Those ideologies spotlight certain administrative mechanisms, overemphasizing their role in systems that actually are deeply administratively hybrid. This makes archetypes poor tools for analyzing the mechanisms of cultural policy; however, because archetypes tell us about cultural ideologies in straightforward and powerful ways, it is essential that they continue to be a part of comparative cultural policy study.     

Ambition and temporal sovereignty in recent Scottish cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper is a study of the figure of ‘ambition’ in Scottish cultural policy since about 2010. The argument of the paper is established through the development of the concept of ‘temporal sovereignty’. Through ‘ambition’ cultural policy attempts to subject culture and cultural agents to the formation of the Scottish government’s temporal regime, and in particular the relation between creative industries and the effects of economic temporality. The study examines the temporal properties of ‘partnerships’ as a key strategic mechanism in that project. The focus of the study is an analysis of authoritative Scottish cultural policy texts which show that the subject of culture becomes the organisation of temporal sovereignty. The paper explains the conditions for the emergence of the problem of ‘temporal sovereignty’ and discusses its consequences for structures of rule and logics of cultural policy formation. It concludes by indicating the location of culture in a politics of temporalities.     

Mapping cultural policy in Portugal: From incentives to crisis

Abstract

Taking into account the course of cultural policy in democratic Portugal, and against the backdrop of the international crisis of 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis of 2011, this article seeks to interpret recent changes in the cultural sector in Portugal. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods it focuses on three main aspects: institutionalisation of democratic cultural policy; government funding; cultural organizations and facilities. The 2008 crisis put an end to a period in which investment tended to grow. We place Portugal in the broader European context, concluding that the Portuguese cultural scene may once again diverge from that of other European countries.     

Makarios cultural diplomacy legacy in the republic of Cyprus

ABSTRACT

The article explores the cultural diplomacy initiatives undertaken by the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) during Makarios presidency (1960–1977) in order to strengthen the state acknowledgement and visibility in the international scenery and promote a nation brand focused mainly on the Hellenocentric aspect of the Greek-Cypriots’ cultural identity. Cyprus, a recently independent state (1960), shaped its cultural diplomacy practices according to the political developments; on the escalation of bi-communal conflicts internally and the international insecurity provoked by the Cold War rhetoric. This paper aims to map certain state cultural initiatives in an attempt to make connections between the internal identity-building process and the external projection of cultural identity and gain a better understanding about how a small-sized state can pursue and project a nation brand abroad by practicing the diplomacy of culture.     

Designing cultural policy in a postcolonial colony: the case of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States in 1898 with the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1952, the island became a ‘Commonwealth’ through the development and approval of a local constitution. While this political status allows Puerto Rico some degree of autonomy, it nevertheless continues to subject the island to United States federal authority. For the last 60 years, discussions on whether Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth status is a permanent or transitional status has fuelled much of the political debate and public policy of the region, and has been highly influenced by political status ideologies: to become a state of the United States, to maintain the current status, or to become independendent. Budgetary, legal, and commercial dependence on the United States causes constant conflicts in the design and implementation of Puerto Rican public policy in areas such as education, law, and economic development. Likewise, culture has not been exempt from these debates. In fact, cultural differences have caused conflict at all levels – from the theoretical conceptions of culture, to cultural policy and arts management. Moreover, the implementation of cultural policies has also been subject to political ideologies and the concept of culture has variably been seen as an obstacle or strength for specific political purposes. In the midst of a sustained economic crisis, the current Puerto Rican government has proposed the development of a comprehensive cultural policy through a participatory process. The objective of this paper is to present this process as a means of analyzing Puerto Rico’s experience through the challenges in designing and implementing cultural policy within a ‘postcolonial colony’ scenario. This paper will place emphasis on the government’s role, cultural public institutions, and cultural production.     

From liberal to conservative: shifting cultural policy regimes in post-Soviet Russia

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Russian cultural policy from the end of the Soviet era through the current against the framework of welfare state regimes. The end of the Soviet Union 25 years ago ushered in a decade of liberalization marked by a withdrawal of the state from cultural responsibility and hopes that market demand and private support would emerge to fill in the void. With the latter hampered by the economic hardships of the transition and the loss of philanthropic traditions after more than 70 years of communism, a liberal policy regime did not take firmly hold and has gradually been replaced by a new cultural policy consensus more akin to a conservative welfare regime, marked by a return of the state to a more dominant role with the support of core cultural policy constituencies.