Knowledge bases and regional development: collaborations between higher education and cultural creative industries

This paper builds on the assumption that cooperation between higher education institutions (HEIs) and creative and cultural industries (CCIs) stimulates innovation and economic growth at the regional level. It further assumes that HEIs and CCIs hold different perspectives on their intention to cooperate with external actors and, thus, there is a need for joint arenas to develop and integrate knowledge and practices among stakeholders across academia and industry. With this rationale in mind, the paper’s main objective is to discuss how universities’ roles in the establishment and development of locally embedded CCIs change or evolve over time. Taking a process economics perspective and building on a case study from the South of Norway, two questions are addressed: (1) What are the barriers – structural and cognitive-cultural – hindering cooperation between HEIs and CCIs in Southern Norway? and (2) How can long-term win-win cooperative arrangements between HEIs and CCIs be enhanced? Different knowledge bases, combined with lack of knowledge and understanding of the other sector’s expertise or knowledge content, and thus the lack of common language, were found to be the biggest barriers that must be overcome to stimulate strategic cooperation between HEIs and CCIs in Southern Norway. The findings support the need for a diverse and flexible policy where target initiatives are adjusted to CCIs’ needs and academic departments’ fields of knowledge to decrease barriers to cooperation, with the ultimate aim of moving from a situation of ‘lock-in’ towards the creation of new innovative and valuable relationships.     

The autonomous world reversed: comparing liberal policy and autonomy in the performing arts

Comparative studies of cultural policy commonly emphasize the way in which states treat the autonomy of the arts. Such studies often claim that liberal states promote autonomy, while social democratic states promote more external, instrumental values, such as solidarity, universalism and equality. This article challenges this conception by claiming that in actual cultural policy-making it is in fact the other way around. Based on a comparative study of theater policy in England, Norway and the Netherlands, I find that the focus on artistic autonomy is surprisingly absent in the liberal state of England, compared to what it is in the social democratic state of Norway. Conversely, English theaters are more obliged to work for, and with, the citizens and the community than theaters in Norway are. In the Netherlands, where recent development in general policy has headed in a liberal direction, artistic autonomy actually appears to be increasingly challenged.     

Film distribution as policy: current standards and alternatives

Much recent scholarship has identified an urgent need to address distribution opportunities for Australian cinema in a digital age. In trying to understand why Australian film policy has been beleaguered by complacency for distribution, this paper looks abroad to see what precedents and attitudes exist in distribution-related cultural policy. Why hasn’t support for distribution and exhibition been the touchstone of cultural policy for national cinemas? Why has policy support for the production sector prevailed, when distribution is the film industry’s key zone for profit? This paper surveys international policy examples of what governments are doing beyond the production realm. It examines legal interventions into the distribution realm, including direct state measures such as subsidies, levies, quotas and import restrictions, indirect state aid, and cultural initiatives by film funding bodies that stimulate audience engagement in the distribution and exhibition sectors. The paper combines these primary sources of film policy information with film historians’ accounts to provide a comparative analysis of national film distribution policies. It then examines the politics underlying the various policy frameworks, before mapping out an alternative strategy for the future of policy in Australia that is equipped to deal with the huge changes in digitalisation.     

Culture-led urban regeneration policies in the Ibero-American space

ABSTRACT

This article examines cultural policy strategies supporting urban regeneration, focusing on its particular characteristics in the Ibero-American context. We start by developing a systematic contrast between the different circumstances that have led to the emergence of these strategies in the Ibero-American sphere and in other parts of the world. Our examination of the Ibero-American regenerative experience also includes a consideration of the paradigmatic cases that arose initially in the Iberian Peninsula and the typological analysis of subsequent Latin American experiences. The consideration of all these different elements ends up providing a global vision of the specificity of the phenomenon in its Ibero-American context.     

Seductive Alienation: The American Way of Life Rearticulated in Occupied Japan

This article explores how the notion of American domesticity promoted by US occupation forces in postwar Japan was decoded and rearticulated by non-elite Japanese women, a social group that has been largely overlooked in studies of the global promotion of the American way of life during the early Cold War years. Specifically examined here is the case of Takehisa Chieko, an actress and the wife of an American officer, who enjoyed high visibility in popular women’s magazines as the embodiment of the idealised postwar American lifestyle. A reading of Takehisa’s magazine writings, interviews, and photographs suggests, however, that she was far from a passive recipient and transmitter of this cultural message. As such, a close unpacking of her rearticulation of the idea of American domesticity toward the particular socio-cultural fabric of postwar Japan reveals the particular nature of this supposedly universal American model. In demonstrating the various dilemmas that stemmed from confronting both the seductive and alienating features of the American way as promoted in occupied Japan, this study illuminates a point of rupture in the larger US global promotion of American domesticity as a means toward cultural hegemony and political containment in the early Cold War period.     

Heritage destruction and cultural rights: insights from Bagan in Myanmar

Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights has stated that the intentional destruction of cultural heritage is a violation of cultural rights. The Rapporteur examines a timely issue but bases her statement on narrow understandings ‘heritage’ as irreplaceable and ‘destruction’ as ideologically motivated and aggressive. This reinforces hegemonic ideas about heritage and what constitutes its destruction. In this article, I discuss the case of Bagan in Myanmar to illustrate the limitations of the Rapporteur’s statement. In Bagan, whether and how ‘heritage’ should be protected has been the topic of controversy. By implication what is – or is not – considered intentional destruction is contested. Ambiguity about the meaning of cultural rights, the dissonant nature of heritage, the subjectivity of destruction, and complex multi-layered motivations behind ‘destructive’ practices make overarching statement about the destruction of cultural heritage and cultural rights violations too bold and call for more nuance and contextualised research.     

Talking to others: analysing tourists’ communications on cultural heritage experiences

In the area of cultural heritage, tourists’ experiences emphasise not only the moment and its personal nature but also socio-cultural traits. These experiences when expressed (social communications) are an important gateway to knowledge about tourists’ sense-making processes. This paper reports on the mediation between tourists and heritage sites via comments on a digital platform (TripAdvisor) about two Spanish tourist destinations with opposing characteristics and four heritage sites, which are analysed. The methodology used seeks to transcend the individual and anecdotal aspects of tourists’ comments. Indeed, the results obtained show the relevance of the humanisation and the discursive weight of heritage contexts in emotional/personal stories. Tendencies observed in non-regulated contexts confirm the role of a complex negotiation at cultural heritage sites and highlight the need to explore possible exchanges of sense in tourists’ encounters with such sites.     

Establishing a ‘Cultural Base’? The Creation of the Fulbright Program in Portugal

This paper deals with the cultural and educational relations between the United States and Portugal during the Cold War. It is built upon the premise that cultural policies and cultural relations between states are a fundamental part of international relations. History of International Relations, therefore, should overcome an analysis based only upon political and diplomatic dimensions to address what can also be referred to as ‘cultural diplomacy’. The Cold War period, because of its historical features, is particularly relevant to the study of processes of cultural diplomacy and some authors even consider it as the ‘golden age’ of cultural diplomacy.¹1. William Glade, ‘Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History’ in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (Winter 2010), vol. 39, issue 4, 242. For cultural diplomacy during the Cold War see Jessica Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture and the Cold War in Europe’ in Leffler, Melvyn & Westad, Odd Arne, The Cambridge History of the Cold War Vol. i, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 398–419; Akira Iriye, ‘Culture and International History’ in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (ed), Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort Of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy In The Twentieth Century (Virgínia: Potomac Books, 2005).View all notes     

从“良渚全考古”到“良博全展示”——以良渚博物院2018年改陈策展为例

良渚考古工作历经八十余年,考古内涵不断丰富,考古价值不断提升,已进入到"良渚全考古"时代,是边发现、边研究、边保护、边利用、边传承的模式。2018年良渚博物院改陈,进入"良博全展示"阶段。现有的展览全面展示良渚考古成果,全面呈现良渚文化内涵,全面阐释良渚文明价值,全面解读良渚遗存信息。良渚的展示除了依靠文物本身或图文所呈现和传递的信息,还采用过程性展示、功能性展示、复原性展示、对比性展示、演变性展示、场景性展示等多种手段,多角度、全方位地解读和展示遗物,力图将良渚文物的故事讲清楚、讲明白。     

基于GIS的沈阳旧城区叙事空间研究

20世纪60年代,叙事学作为一门学科始于西方历史学、文学领域。直至20世纪末,叙事学开始转向空间领域研究形成空间叙事学,并被逐步应用到城乡规划中,尤其是城乡空间结构等领域。空间叙事学不仅关注城市发展中的物化要素,更加注重物化要素所代表的城市文化和城市记忆等非物化要素的深入挖掘,是探究场所本体与场所精神的重要研究思路。本文从空间叙事学出发,基于GIS平台运用核密度及K函数对古代、近代、现代三个时期沈阳旧城区人工叙事要素和人文事件叙事要素进行点模式量化分析,得出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的总体结构,以及叙事点核、叙事廊道、叙事簇群等叙事空间结构单元,指出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的动态发展性、功能多样性和历史传承性特点,探讨了叙事空间的经济驱动、自然要素、城市定位和交通发展四大演变机制。从人文地理学的视角出发,结合叙事空间理论对沈阳旧城区叙事空间进行分析,结果具有文化地理和城市地理双重属性,丰富了城市研究在该视角下的研究成果。