Arts and culture in an era of austerity: key stakeholder views on the current and future Australian context

The arts and culture sector in many countries faces major challenges, as a consequence of ongoing austerity measures and changes in the ways in which the arts are experienced. In major nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom and in several European countries, there is considerable pressure to look for new ways of surviving in an age of consumerism, accountability and rapidly changing technologies. On the other hand, many Asian countries have invested heavily in building their arts and culture sector as part of the new twenty-first-century economy. The arts and culture sector in Australia faces serious challenges at present, including ongoing fiscal pressures, an absence of any national cultural policy and disruption as a consequence of changing governments. In order to explore these issues, interviews were held with 22 key leaders from a range of Australian organisations associated with arts representation, funding, policy and advocacy. The findings highlight both the challenges and opportunities facing Australia towards what may be considered the next wave of innovation and change.     

The political subjectivization of Korean creative workers: working and living as urban precariat in creative city Seoul

This study aims to reconsider and re-evaluate the rapid circulation of global creative city policy from the viewpoint of its creative workforce by focusing on the case of Seoul, South Korea. By locating creative workers’ experiences in Korea within the growing scholarship on the precariat, this research not only attempts to fully understand the complexity of labor subjectivities of creative workers but further explores how creative workers can actually become political subjects who can resist their given precarious working and living conditions. By using Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘political subjectivation’, it attempts to show how creative workers can empower themselves as ‘political subjects’ who strategically disavow their given self-identities as ‘individualized creators’, and through this language they are able to recall the often neglected subjectivity of ‘solidified labor’. In doing so, this research contributes to theoretical insights so that we can better understand what leads to political formation of creative workers.     

Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

Science,industry and the colonial state: a shift from a German- to a Dutch-controlled cinchona and quinine cartel (1880–1920)

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.     

Archaeology of Guano: Preliminary Results of the Survey Conducted in Caleta Robles (Mejillones,Chile), 1862–83

The exploitation of guano was one of the first important economic activities in Chile and Bolivia during the 19th century. Although its development was brief and less successful than the guano industry in neighbouring Peru, it laid the foundation of a state business system based on the granting of franchises to private companies, regulation of the maritime trade and modernisation of the extractive process to improve the exploitation of mineral resources.

Caleta Robles, a guano production centre between 1862 and 1883, succeeded the exploitation of other guano deposits on the Mejillones peninsula coast from the 1840s. It represents a highly relevant coastal archaeological site illustrating the early development of the mining industry in the north of Chile.

The preliminary results of the investigations conducted on this site have created an understanding of the spatial distribution of the different functional areas relating to the different phases of the production process and their adaptation to suit the peculiar topographical conditions of the site.     

The origins of the entertainment industry: the operetta in late nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

How does a new successful musical genre impose itself, define its audiences and repertoires and eventually replace older genres? The essay examines the case of operetta from its French origins to the specific diffusion in the Italian entertainment system. Here the popularity of the ‘little opera’ coming from France and later from Vienna grew along with a new system of theaters, politeama and café chantants. They were run by a new generation of entrepreneurs and publishers such as Sonzogno, interested in diffuse new forms of musical leisure. The rising of the Italian operetta found strong resistance from the traditional opera world at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the distinction between artistic music and music as entertainment was being consolidated and we can find a sort of passing of the baton between opera and operetta as the major popular musical genre.     

上海创意产业园区的空间分异研究

创意产业园区是一种新的生产空间组织,90年代末以来在一些国际著名大都市中发展迅速。本文试图通过分析上海创意产业集聚园区的空间分布特点和形成机理,研究上海创意产业集聚的时空变化规律。研究表明,上海创意产业园区的分布具有以下两个特点:由黄浦江和内环线围合而成的半环状地带和苏州河沿岸地带,因传统的老工业区,老仓库、老厂房分布集中,伴随传统工业逐步迁出市区,这些旧城建筑为创意产业的发展提供了理想的地理空间;东北、西南地区是大学集中分布地带,是知识溢出的空间,知识型创意产业园区相对比较集中。上海创意产业集聚空间的规律,折射出上海创意产业发展的道路。     

我国发展会展旅游业的前景及策略初探

本文对世界(包括我国)会展旅游业的发展情况作了简要的概括和总结,认为会展旅游是一个蕴涵巨大价值的高产出的旅游项目,但目前在我国还没有真正引起足够的重视。但会展旅游业在我国有着光明的发展前景,应当予以大力发展。并揭示了我国会展旅游业发展中所存在的一些最突出的问题,同时指出我国发展会展旅游业应采取的策略。     

福建海洋经济可持续发展研究

文章运用综合观点全面分析福建发展海洋经济的优势条件与制约因素,着重评价了海洋经济可持续发展的资源潜力;通过对发展现状的分析,揭示了福建海洋经济发展过程面临的海洋开发与产业结构层次较低、海洋资源开发利用不尽合理,海洋污染较严重,海洋科技发展与海洋综合管理相对滞后等问题;在此基础上,从可持续发展角度上提出了福建海洋经济发展对策,并探讨了海洋经济重点产业的发展思路。     

我国服务业发展的基本特征与空间差异研究

改革开放以来,我国服务业发展迅速。服务业在经济增长方式转变、产业结构优化升级和吸纳就业人口等方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。本文从服务业的演进阶段、增长行为、内部结构、地区发展不平衡等方面对我国服务业发展的基本特征进行了分析。在此基础上探讨三大地带间、三大地带内和31个省(市)间服务业发展的区域差异,从空间上将我国服务业发展水平划分成发达、次发达、较发达、欠发达和不发达五个基本类型,旨在对未来我国服务业的发展,尤其是不同类型区服务业的差异化发展提供理论依据。