An economic analysis of a National Theatre: The case of the ‘Abbey’

Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.     

Putting the “art” back into arts policy making: how arts policy has been “captured” by the economists and the marketers

Abstract: This paper explores the current discourse about arts policy and funding and its placement within an economic paradigm. The models of “cultural industry” and “creative industry” are explored and how they affect arts funding discourse. Similarly the impact of the introduction of the language of industry and business to the arts sector is considered. If bottom-line arguments are used by funders, governments and critics to argue the merits or otherwise of arts activity, how does this affect arts practice? In recent times arts funding agencies have been restructured to reflect a market-driven agenda rather than an arts-driven agenda. The impact of all these issues is considered in the context of Australian arts' models in particular, but with reference to examples in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The paper concludes with suggestions for a reassertion of core cultural values in future discourse.     

Forms without Substance or Synchronism? Attempts to Define Culture and Civilisation in Early Twentieth-Century Romania

This article discusses attempts to define culture and civilisation in early twentieth-century Romania on the basis of two fundamental Romanian models of development: the theory of forms without substance and the theory of synchronism. The former is studied here primarily in relation to the views of Titu Maiorescu (1840–1917) and Constantin Radulescu-Motru (1868–1957) and the latter in relation to the views of Eugen Lovinescu (1881–1943). While the theory of forms without substance asserts a would-be ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ development of Romanian culture and civilisation, the theory of synchronism proposes a development according to the ‘spirit of the age’ and the ‘law of simulation-stimulation’. In the present study, these opposed models of development are observed in relation to the general tendencies towards a pronounced critical spirit and towards discussing cultural vs. structural changes or culture vs. power in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe. The Romanian models of development are also studied on the background of wider European discussions on Enlightenment and modernism, historicism, conservatism and liberalism, German vs. French influence and nationalist vs. cosmopolitan attitudes.