Cultural Economy

Abstract

The cultural economy has become an increasingly important slice of local and regional economies as actors and organizations at a variety of levels turn to culture hoping to solve some of society’s most pressing social problems. Municipalities, states, and federal governments see culture—the goods, ideas, traditions, activities, and practices that we produce and consume—as revitalizing communities, attracting human capital and consumers, providing jobs, and boosting quality of life. While artists, support personnel, manufacturers, and patrons continue to anchor the field, because of culture’s entrée into the economic arena there has been an influx of diverse actors and institutions with various stakes and logics. These new actors with a vested interest in the field include local elected officials, small-business owners, and the creative class, as well as national nonprofits, state agencies, and commercial institutions. With the emergence of creativity as an economic growth strategy, there has been a great deal of analysis on the cultural economy in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, economics, public policy, city and regional planning, and urban studies. Scholarship has had a wide range in terms of the methodologies used and the scale of analysis. Scholars and policymakers debate over culture as an economic and policy lever, particularly around whom local cultural economies aim to serve and how the benefits of the cultural economy should be distributed.