Cultural fingerprints – the legacy of cultural values in the current cultural policy agenda in Germany

This paper explores the historical roots of cultural values as a prerequisite for German cultural policy. With reference to current investigations of the social impact of the arts, the analysis is based within the framework of the history of ideas and focuses on three concepts: the common base of culture, nation of culture and culture as a state aim. The author argues that the transformative positive powers of culture are linked in a complex system of historically grown intellectual alliances while directing current policy thinking. As a consequence the positive impact of culture in society is strengthened over time and remains unquestioned by actors in the cultural sector.     

On the legitimacy of cultural policies: analysing Québec’s cultural policy with the Economies of Worth

This paper explores the question of the legitimation of cultural policies by examining the case of the Canadian French-speaking province, Québec, where the consensus over the legitimacy and the purpose of a cultural policy was not easily reached. To understand the evolution of the justifications for state intervention in this field, we have analysed three major policy statements issued by the government of Québec as well as the criticisms levelled at the moment of their publication using the analytic framework the Economies of Worth. Developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist Laurent Thévenot, this framework conceptualises different regimes of justification that can be retraced in cultural policy statements. We explore more particularly the concept of ‘compromise’ which enables us to understand why cultural policies have difficulty achieving consensus. This paper thus aims at assessing the heuristic value of this interpretative device for cultural policy analysis.     

Media literacy: the UK’s undead cultural policy

This article examines media literacy in the UK: a policy that emerged within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the late 1990s, was adopted by the New Labour administration, and enshrined in the Communications Act 2003. That legislation gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to ‘promote’ media literacy, although it left the term undefined. The article describes how Ofcom managed this regulatory duty. It argues that over time, media literacy was progressively reduced in scope, focusing on two policy priorities related to the growth of the internet. In the process, media literacy’s broader educative purpose, so clearly articulated in much of the early policy rhetoric, was effectively marginalized. From the Coalition government onwards, the promotion of media literacy was reduced further to a matter of market research. Today, if not altogether dead, the policy is governed by entirely different priorities to those imagined at its birth.     

Tourism and cultural encounters in ‘the last frontiers’

Host-guest encounters often play a key role within tourist experiences of culture and heritage. However, these encounters have increasingly been seen to shape and negatively influence local culture. In his report from early 2011, Shackel presents an example of the cultural encounter between local residents and one-day tourists arriving to the Eastern Greenlandic village of Kulusuk. While much of his account revolves around the covert resistance of locals, he also critically addresses the validity of authentic tourist experiences. This brief note attempts to elaborate on the concept of authenticity, and suggests some issues to consider when discussing tourist experiences, local resistance and future tourism developments in a place like Kulusuk.     

Cultural retaliation: the cultural policies of the ‘new’ Front National

This study examines the conception of culture and the cultural policies of the French Front National. Tracing the developments of the party’s cultural agenda before and after Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from her father, I show how the Front National has adapted its discourse on cultural policy to its wider programmatic profile. In the context of a strategy of de-radicalisation promoted by Marine Le Pen, recent years have witnessed focussed efforts by the party leadership to professionalise and modernise the party’s cultural policy programme. However, the analysis of the party’s current cultural policy agenda reveals a remarkable continuity in the way the party leadership conceives of national culture and of what cultural policy should promote. This programmatic continuity becomes apparent in the analysis of the local cultural policies of municipalities won by the Front National in 2014. Exploring the cultural agendas of ten local governments with a Front National majority, I argue that the cultural policies of the Front National remain deeply rooted in a nativist understanding of culture and a dirigiste approach that wilfully excludes postcolonial minorities.     

Conceptualizing Greek cultural policy: the non‐democratization of public culture

This paper concentrates on several of the most significant moments of Greek cultural policy since World War II, together with its key concepts. It traces the cultural policy of the country, its main changes and its relationship with politics through a socio‐cultural analysis and a look at the political and cultural events which occurred. The concepts of national identity, hegemony, civilizing mission, democratization, and cultural democracy are applicable in this framework. Despite various attempts at reforms, the country's cultural policy could be characterized as ‘path dependent’; it connected unwaveringly to its two main objectives: heritage and the arts.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

Intangible cultural heritage and the better angels of folklore’s nature

Abstract

Folklore research in the United States typically is completed either through academic departments or in organisations designed to create public presentations of traditional expressive culture. These two approaches are termed ‘academic folklore’ and ‘public folklore’. The intellectual history of both approaches has recently been critiqued. One result of this deconstruction is an ambivalence over the historical legacy of key concepts in the study of folklore. Assessing elements of the critical study of folklore’s history – in both academe and the public sector – suggests opportunities for reconstituting the study of traditional culture to establish a more socially responsive approach that is relevant to ways that heritage professionals assess folklore as intangible culture heritage.     

Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A cultural history

This article examines Ernest Belfort Bax's interpretation of the French Revolution and traces the impact that his idea of the Revolution had on his philosophy and his political thought. The first section considers Bax's understanding of the Revolution in the context of his theory of history and analyses his conception of the Revolution's legacy, drawing particularly on his portraits of Robespierre, Marat and Babeuf. The second section shows how the lessons Bax drew from this history shaped his socialist republicanism and discusses his support for Jacobin methods of revolutionary change. The third section of the article looks at the ways in which Bax's reading of revolutionary history affected his internationalism and shows how his ‘anti-patriotism’ led him to support the Anglo-French campaign in 1914. I argue that the Bax's understanding of the French Revolution gave body to his philosophy and greatly influenced his understanding of the socialist struggle. Bax believed that socialists had history on their side, but was so emboldened by the idea of the Revolution that he was led to advance a view of socialist change that undermined the historic values that socialism was supposed to enshrine.     

The reshaping of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in the beginning of the XXI century: the declining of the Spanish historical hegemony?

ABSTRACT

Francoist cultural policy in Latin America – itself based on Hispanist philosophy – and the Spanish activity in the Organization of Ibero-American States (1949) promoted the emergence of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy. The return of democracy to Spain in 1978 turned these projects into more horizontal instruments of cultural cooperation. After a process of institutionalization that led to the creation of SEGIB and the establishment of the Ibero-American Cultural Letter in 2006, this multilateral diplomatic system was called into question due to its economic asymmetries and its ideological basis. However, the relative influence of this process in reformulating the system and in creating a shared identitarian discourse within Ibero-America has never been properly weighted, nor has the importance of each actor within this process. This article analyses the multilateral Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in order to understand its recent transformations in terms of the importance of both national power and symbolic hegemony.     

Heather moorland in the Scottish Highlands: the history of a cultural landscape, 1600–1880

The heather moorland of the Scottish Highlands represents a highly symbolic habitat for the region. Significantly, recent work by ecologists and palaeobotanists has stressed the strong anthropogenic role in its development. Indeed, so vital is the role played by human interference, heather moorland is now seen as a cultural landscape. Yet despite being seen as a cultural landscape, there has hitherto been no attempt to use available documentary evidence to understand how this human interference may have affected its development over recent centuries. This paper examines such evidence, paying particular attention to how human activity contributed to its expansion over the early modern period and to its decline from ca. 1800 onwards, exploring such themes as moor burning, the harvesting of young tree growth, and grazing levels and practices, both before and after the clearances. Particular attention is paid to how the spread of sheep after the clearances contributed to the decline of heather moor and the role that heavy sheep grazing may have played in the deterioration in the quality of Highlands pastures during the mid-nineteenth century.     

Why does cultural policy change? Policy discourse and policy subsystem: a case study of the evolution of cultural policy in Catalonia

Culture has come to play a fundamental strategic role in the territorial development that seeks to integrate knowledge economy with social cohesion, governance and sustainability. However, cultural policies have been unable to respond to the dilemmas and expectations that this new order presents. In order to appreciate the consequences of this process, it is essential to gain a better understanding of cultural policy change dynamics. This article develops a framework for analysing cultural policy stability and change and applies it to the evolution of cultural policy in Catalonia. Both policy continuity and change are conditioned by the evolution of policy discourse on culture and the characteristics of the cultural policy subsystem. Within this framework, this article also takes into account the role of factors that are exogenous to the cultural domain. Lastly, this article addresses particular characteristics of cultural policy change in regions or stateless nations.     

Tourism development and cultural conflict: the case of ‘Nazareth 2000’

In areas that are characterized by political, national, cultural and religious conflicts, issues concerning conservation and development become particularly complex. One prominent example of this tension can be seen in events that have taken place over the last decade in the city of Nazareth, which hosts some of Christianity's holiest sites. Until the mid-twentieth century most of the city's residents were Christian. In the past several decades however, Muslims have come to form the majority of the population. Against this backdrop, Nazareth began to prepare for the millennium year, including the formulation of the ‘Nazareth 2000’ plan for tourism development in the city. Unfortunately, the city's numerous complexities rapidly surfaced, with one of the most prominent examples being the bitter struggle around the city's newly planned main square. This paper examines tourism development for the city in conditions of such cultural conflict.     

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.     

The Mesopotamian frontier of the Arabian Neolithic: A cultural borderland of the sixth–fifth millennia BC

The material culture of coastal Arabian Neolithic sites of the sixth–fifth millennia BC contains a range of small Mesopotamian-style objects, in addition to Ubaid pottery. There is a significant concentration of such objects at the Kuwaiti sites, H3 and Bahra 1, with lesser amounts in the Central Gulf region and virtually none in the Lower Gulf. The combination of material and symbolic culture at the Kuwaiti sites indicates that their inhabitants could communicate with both Ubaid and Neolithic peoples with equal facility, implying a key role in the region’s earliest experiments in maritime trade. Moreover, the presence in southern Iraq and at Susa of distinctive arrowheads, and possibly Arabian Coarse Ware ceramics, suggests that the range of eastern Arabian Neolithic peoples extended all along the ancient shoreline to the vicinity of the Mesopotamian Ubaid settlements, and even Susiana. The bifacial pressure-flaked arrowheads are of two different types that are well attested in eastern Arabia, though one type is more common in southern Iraq and Susiana, hinting at a local population related to the Arabian Neolithic. These finds are quantified and illustrated in this paper, and indicate a cultural borderland stretching for around 300 km north of Kuwait.     

Great expectations – the European Union and cultural policy: fact or fiction?

The European Union secured limited legal ‘competence’ to act in culture in 1992. This article examines the operational context and its complicated and countervailing tensions that make European cultural policy formulation and implementation difficult. Underlying problems originate in the failure properly to define what is meant by ‘culture’ in different contexts or to identify clear and pragmatic policy objectives, although legitimate ‘instrumental’ use of culture is common. The EU’s institutional structures (Council, Commission and Parliament) are often at cross‐purposes, while the national interests of member states can have a negative effect. The structure and internal politics of the Commission ensure that the Directorate responsible for ‘culture’ remains marginal, despite its growing ambition. An attempt to institute an ‘Agenda for Culture’ in 2007 has had some initial success, but given the definitional, legal, political and administrative problems, claims being made for significant progress seem somewhat premature.     

Olympic legacy and cultural tourism: exploring the facets of Athens’ Olympic heritage

This study examines the effects of the Olympic Games on Athens’ cultural tourism and the city’s potential to leverage the Olympic legacy in synergy with its rich heritage in order to enhance its tourism product during the post-Games period. In doing so, a qualitative and interpretive approach was employed. This includes a literature review on Athens’ 2004 Olympics to identify the sport facilities and regeneration projects, which constitute the Olympic legacy and heritage. Based on that, an empirical analysis was undertaken, by collecting official documents about the 2004 Olympics, and conducting five semi-structured interviews with tourism/administrative officials. The findings indicate that the Olympiad contributed significantly to Athens’ built and human heritage, revealing the dimensions of new venues/facilities, infrastructure, transportation and aesthetic image of the city, and human capital enhancement. Hence, the Games affected to the multifaceted representation and reconstruction of the city’s identity and cultural heritage. However, the potential afforded from the post-Olympic Athens remains unrealised due to lack of strategic planning/management. The study concludes that there is a need to develop cross-leveraging synergies between the Olympic legacy and cultural tourism for the host city. Finally, a strategic planning framework for leveraging post-Games Olympic tourism is suggested in order to maximise the benefits of Olympic legacy and heritage in a host city’s tourism development.