Multiculturalism in taiwan

This study explores the contradictions and challenges in the development of multiculturalism in cultural policy in Taiwan. The approach used involves an exposition and critique of the two dominant models of multiculturalism in Western theory – namely, liberal multiculturalism and postmodern multiculturalism. From the perspective of liberal multiculturalism, I argue that ignorance of multicultural citizenship limits the scope and impact of multicultural policy. I then go on to suggest that postmodern multiculturalism addresses problems related to the visibility of cultural differences and shifting identities. Through analysing the various contradictions and challenges inherent in these two approaches, this study hopes to identify appropriate forms of multiculturalism capable of taking into account both multicultural citizenship and the dynamics of cultural diversity.     

THE AMBIVALENCE OF POSTCOLONIAL MAURITIUS

At the independence of Mauritius, multiculturalism policy, as part of the decolonisation agenda of “Mauritianisation”, was instituted in education. The official English language, through the curriculum, was buttressed to police the population according to the moral standards of multiculturalism. In this article, popular culture as manifested through ethnographic research into students’ negotiations of official multiculturalism implemented through school textbooks, will be shown to flout policy. It will be demonstrated that resistive cultural practices of Mauritian students, embodied by vernacular Creole, contest the cultural essentialism promoted by the government. Creole language, in particular, and various in‐between cultural experiences articulate the hybrid, diasporic and global dimensions of the lives of ordinary postcolonial Mauritians.     

Why a resale royalty was rejected in Australia

In 2004 the Australian Opposition party introduced to Parliament a private member’s bill proposing the amendment of Australian copyright law to include an artist’s resale royalty. In response to the bill the Government released the Proposed Resale Royalty Arrangement Discussion Paper, which successfully provided a tangible foundation for discussions and stimulated the first strong academic debate regarding a resale royalty within Australia. Despite overwhelming support from respondents, in May 2006 the Government announced it would not support the adoption of a resale royalty right and the Resale Royalty Bill 2004 failed to pass through Parliament. The rejection of a resale royalty by the Australian Government illustrates the ongoing difficulty of incorporating civil law notions of creative rights, and moral rights in particular, into common law – particularly as the Australian Government’s approach to policy making is increasingly underpinned by economic rationalism.     

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.     

SOVEREIGNTY AND SOFTWARE

This article will critically appraise two approaches to cultural policy. The first focuses upon the need for a national cultural policy in order to establish a national “common culture” among its citizens, through measures to promote the arts and popular media sectors, and set limits to the flow of imported materials into the nation. This is what has been termed the “sovereignty” model, and has historically been the driver of cultural policy debates. The second approach, which is called the “software” approach, aims to create cultural infrastructure and other environmental factors to promote a creative economy, whether at local, regional, national or supra‐national levels. It questions the historical divides between “culture” and “industry”, and between “creativity” and “innovation”, and is focused upon the development of future ideas and creative concepts. It draws upon the very different conditions associated with the development of software to those of established arts and media sectors, and aims to extend the “software” model more widely into cultural and creative industries policy.     

Independent creative subcultures and why they matter

Independent creative subcultures, in their various hybrids of music, theatre, art, and new and old media, are the primordial soup of cultural evolution. They have the capacity for a highly definitive influence on their participants – catalysing the transition from consumer to producer for instance – often conferring much broader cultural and social benefit. Creative subcultures make continuing, well-documented, contributions to established city cultures for relatively low outlay. Indie creative activities in particular do not make much money and they do not cost much to set-up. They tend to cluster in areas characterised by low rents and non-residential uses such as retail and industrial areas, but as third wave gentrification reaches into the dark pockets of many cities, cheap rental properties are becoming scarce. This article uses time-series maps of inner Melbourne to show a pattern of tighter and tighter clustering of indie cultural activities as alternative spaces disappear. It looks at where they are going and why, considers the implications of this pattern for the ‘creative city’, and suggests some policy initiatives to help maintain and nurture independent creative scenes. As Melbourne’s live music scene is particularly vulnerable to displacement from increasingly dense and contested inner-urban space, the article focuses on interventions relating to music venues.     

“WE ARE NOT A GOVERNMENT POODLE” 1

Cultural policy research has so far paid little attention to the field of external cultural policy. The multiple interactions between internal and external cultural politics, however, as well as the growing significance of external cultural policy in the contemporary global arena of cultural and linguistic antagonisms, necessitate its inclusion in the cultural policy research agenda. Focusing on the specific instrument of Cultural Institutes abroad, this paper traces their historical development from the time of their original deployment by the European great powers, to their recent adoption by a host of lesser and greater countries. The different phases of this policy instrument development demonstrate its unique versatility and adaptability to a variety of contexts and functions and, more generally, its strategic role in the workings and processes of external cultural policy. The current state of Cultural Institutes challenges the widespread belief in the declining cultural role of the nation state and affirms the persistence of the ideology of cultural nationalism.     

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?     

ADMINISTRATIVE DEFINITIONS OF ARTISTS IN THE NORDIC MODEL OF STATE SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS

This article considers the role of public arts policy in producing societal definitions for “art” and “artists”. It examines administrative definitions generated and used by the Nordic system of state support for artists and reflected in its administrative categories and structures of decision‐making. Using the concepts of “artistic field” and “artistic classification system” as starting points, the article focuses on the regulated and institutionalized interaction of the state and artistic fields in decision making, and on the administrative categories emerging from this interaction. Through this interaction, professional and administrative definitions of “art” and “artist” are closely intertwined in the four countries discussed. The administrative categories examined show considerable variation between the countries related to differences in the nature of this interaction. The definition power involved in state support for artists is related to the nature of this interaction, as well as to such factors as the legitimating arguments, objectives and criteria for the support.     

BOOK REVIEW

This article examines the transition from cultural industries to creative industries policies in the English regions between 1980 and 2010. It argues that audio-visual policy in this period is best understood as a trajectory: the gradual, differentiated, contested, but overall coherent development of a policy discourse and corresponding institutional structure. This trajectory can be mapped onto the wider political economy of the period: the transition from social-democratic reformism to neo-liberalism at the end of the 1970s and up to the present. This process has resulted in audio-visual policy being determined to a large degree by the perceived needs of commercial interests, up to the point where regional cultural policy is virtually indistinguishable from economic policy. The transition from cultural to creative industries reflects the development of the neo-liberal state in which cultural policy has been instrumentalised within the larger project of the privatisation of public assets and the shift of relative power from labour to capital.