Thinking with Bruno Latour

To examine the culturally embedded nature of religious practices, we conducted a mixed-methods study in which Muslim American adolescents described how and why their religious practices had changed in recent years (see Etengoff & Daiute, 2013, J. Adolesc. Res., 28, 690). Participants included 201 Muslim adolescents (ages 13-19) from predominantly immigrant families; all were contestants in a Muslim Inter-Scholastic Tournament regional competition. Participants completed surveys including an item regarding whether their religious practices had changed, and for those who answered affirmatively, open-ended questions about the change. Additional measures assessed ethnic identity and perceived discrimination. As hypothesized, the 60% of participants who reported a change in religious practices described this shift as a response to new contexts, people, and religious knowledge. Those who reported a change also reported higher levels of ethnic identity exploration and perceived discrimination. Overall, Muslim American adolescents' descriptions portrayed religious practices as developing through reciprocal interactions with culture. More generally, participants' descriptions point to the viability of a model in which religious practices change and in turn are changed by cultural contexts. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Religious development is viewed as taking place in relational systems with reciprocity between individuals and surrounding contexts. Variations in contexts predict variations in religious development, but mechanisms of development are not well understood. Muslim Americans, including adolescents, show high levels of religious involvement and experience unique cultural and religious contexts. Muslim American emerging adults describe their religious practices as responsive to sociocultural contexts. What does the study add? This study focuses on Muslim American adolescents, a group that has received little research attention, especially in regard to religious development. Participants reported a wide array of changes in religious practices, and they described these changes as responses to social and cultural influences. Participants' descriptions of changing practices can be understood through a Vygotskian framework in which religious practices are cultural tools that both respond to and shape surrounding cultural contexts.

The Sociology of Religion in England

The article examines the sociology of religion as one of the spheres of sociological cognition, as well as those approaches to the definition of religion that predetermined the specifics of the development and self-identification of the sociology of religion in the system of scientific knowledge. The author compares various ideas about religion that exist in everyday consciousness, definitions of religion in the system of theology and its scientific interpretations. At the same time, it is emphasized that recently the efforts of scientists have begun to focus on finding a new, more balanced and universal approach to the definition of religion, although any attempt to give a final definition of religion is doomed to be limited and debatable.The heterogeneity of the tools and approaches used by the sociology of religion has created a serious problem of its place in the structure of sociological knowledge. The sociology of religion is most often identified either with religious sociology or with an autonomous branch in the horizontal structure of sociology. These two scientific identities of the sociology of religion appear both blurred and limited. Without denying the value of generally accepted directions for the sociological analysis of religion, the author reveals a lot of diverse and heterogeneous directions, within which both classics of sociological science who studied religion and modern sociologists worked. As a result, the sociology of religion is simply an arbitrary set of topics, including the analysis of fundamental works of a predominantly socio-philosophical nature, replete with religious terms that are incomprehensible to a reader unfamiliar with at least the basics of religious studies, especially to a student, seriously complicates the understanding of the essence and methodology of the sociological analysis of religion. For this purpose, the article differentiates and structures the subject Jeld of sociological analysis of religion, highlights its most promising fields of research.The author argues that it is appropriate to talk about the sociological analysis of religion, which has developed and continues to develop within the framework of two major, but equivalent directions. The first focuses on the sociological knowledge of religion in line with the general modern sociological theory, in a broad social context, as one of the subsystems of the general, societal system, organically interconnected with its other subsystems — cultural, social, political, etc. A special place within this direction is occupied by the analysis of religion as a social phenomenon and social institution, social functions and dysfunctions of the latter, including the intensive process of politicization of religion. The second is based on an internal analysis of religion and various religious doctrines, primarily from the point of view of those social relations that are formed within their framework. The perspective focus of the second direction is the social functions of various religions, their influence on the moral values and worldview of individuals and social groups, the peculiarities of manifestation in people’s daily lives, the peculiarities of the formation and functioning of new religious movements, including totalitarian religious cults and sects.

This chapter illustrates how such an examination of the internal formal properties of a text may be a useful tool in the study of religious discourse, by the in-depth analysis of the narratives used in a fundamentalist Christian sermon. Sociologists of religion are criticizing meaning-centered approaches to culture and thick description as overly subjective and are calling for more systematic methods for analyzing religious practices, doctrines, and discourse. Sociologists of religion are criticizing meaning-centered approaches to culture and thick description as overly subjective and are calling for more systematic methods for analyzing religious practices, doctrines, and discourse. “The Meaning of Life” will serve as a useful case for identifying centripetal devices operating through the structure of the text. The text analyzed was transcribed from a tape of the worship service at a small fundamentalist church in a New Jersey town on February 6, 1986.

“Popular culture” is a term that usually refers to those commercially produced items specifically associated with leisure, media, and lifestyle choices. To study religion in popular culture, then, is to explore religion’s appearance in the commercially produced artifacts and texts of a culture. The study of popular culture has been a catalyst of sorts in the context of studying religion. Some have speculated that with the increasing presence of religion in commercially produced products and specifically in the entertainment media, religion may be reduced to entertainment. Others, however, have argued that religion has always been expressed and experienced through contemporary forms of culture, and thus its manifestation in popular culture can be interpreted as a sign of the vitality rather than the demise or superficiality of contemporary religions. Popular culture is worthy of study given its role in cultural reproduction. The study of popular culture and religion encourages scholars to consider the extent to which popular cultural representations limit broader critical considerations of religion by depicting and reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions of what religion is, who practices it and where, and how it endures as a powerful societal institution. Alternately, popular culture has been explored as a site for public imaginings of how religious practices and identities might be different and more inclusive than they have been in the past, pointing toward the artistic and playful ways in which popular religious expression can comment upon dominant religion, dominant culture, and the power relations between them. With the rise of an ubiquitous media culture in which people are increasingly creators and distributors as well as consumers and modifiers of popular culture, the term has come to encompass a wide variety of products and artifacts, including those both commercially produced and generated outside of traditional commercial and religious contexts. Studies might include explorations of religion in such popular television programs as Orange Is the New Black or in novels such as The Secret Life of Bees, but might also include considerations of how religion and popular culture intersect in practices of Buddhism in the virtual gaming site Second Life, in the critical expressions of Chicana art, in the commercial experiments of Islamic punk rock groups, and in hashtag justice movements. The study of religion and popular culture can be divided into two major strands, both of which are rooted in what is known as the “culture and civilization tradition.” The first strand focuses on popular culture, myth, and cultural cohesion or continuity, while the second explores popular culture in relation to religion, power, and cultural tensions.

Modern Dictatorships and Their Art Worlds

During the last 2 decades there has been a dramatic resurgence in literary and cultural productions by Americans who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer (LGBTQ). Comprehensive in scope and accessible to students and general readers, this encyclopedia explores contemporary American LGBTQ literature and its social, political, cultural, and historical contexts. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries written by expert contributors. Each entry cites works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students of literature and popular culture will appreciate the encyclopedia's insightful survey and discussion of LGBTQ authors and their works, while students of history and social issues will value the encyclopedia's use of literature to explore LGBTQ American society. During the last 2 decades, there has been a dramatic resurgence in the literary and cultural productions of Americans who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer (LGBTQ). The works of these authors have gained popular attention and are increasingly important to the curriculum. They also reflect many of the issues central to contemporary American society. Comprehensive in scope and accessible to students and general readers, this encyclopedia surveys contemporary LGBTQ American literature and its social, political, historical, and cultural contexts. Included are hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries on such topics as: ; African American Gay Literature; Dorothy Allison; Bisexuality; Christopher Bram; Augusten Burroughs; Peter Cameron; Patricia Cornwell; Michael Cunningham; Christopher Durang; Leslie Feinberg; Harvey Fierstein; Gay Graphic Novel; Gay Jewish American Literature; Gay Rights Movement; Jewelle Gomez; Homosociality; Gary Indiana; Larry Kramer; David Leavitt; Leslie Larson; Ursula LeGuin; Lesbian Graphic Novel; Audre Lorde; Armistead Maupin; Terrence McNally; Lenelle Moise; Dale Peck; Puerto Rican Gay Literature; Queer Pedagogy; Sapphire; Sarah Schulman; Reginald Shepherd; Michelangelo Signorile; Transgender Young Adult Literature; Carla Trujillo; Edmund White; Emanuel Xavier; And many more. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and lists additional sources of information, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected general bibliography of print and electronic resources for student research. Students of American history and society will welcome the encyclopedia's use of literature to explore LGBTQ social issues, while students of literature and popular culture will appreciate the extensive exploration of authors and their works. FEATURES AND BENEFITS: ; Hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries discuss authors, literary works, movements, genres, and social issues.; An alphabetical list of entries offers a quick survey of the encyclopedia's contents.; A guide to related topics quickly and conveniently directs readers to entries likely to interest them.; Entry bibliographies help students find sources of additional information on specialized topics.; A selected, general bibliography directs students to the most helpful print and electronic resources on contemporary LGBTQ American literature.

The relationship between religion and civil society at the macro-level has attracted the attention of sociologists of religion but empirical detail of how religion is connected to the social relations and practices that constitute local civil society is relatively lacking. This article explores the contemporary social and communal significance of the religious dimension in local civil society using the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork and biographical interviews in a post-industrial village in North East Wales. Data on social change and participation in the locality include evidence of decline in religious affiliation and practice alongside the persistence of religion in the built environment, family ties, memory, and sense of belonging. The evidence can be used to inform a number of recent debates in both the sociology of religion and studies of civil society, including (post)secularity, religiously motivated social action, networks and associations, beliefs and belonging.

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

This paper examines the complex relationships between humans and invasive species through an ethnographic study of the Common Myna ( Acridotheres tristis ) in Israel. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at the Israel Center for Citizen Science, interviews with birdwatchers, and analysis of public discourse, I explore how the myna has become embedded in Israeli society through three distinct but interrelated representations: as an invasive threat, as a socio-cultural Other, and as a reflection of Israeli identity itself. The study reveals how invasion narratives emerge through complex interactions between scientific classification, cultural context, and the species’ own agency, demonstrating that the binary between ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ species operates on a spectrum shaped by multiple factors including temporality, behavior, and cultural reception. While scholarship has often positioned invasion biology either as objective science or colonial discourse, this study argues for approaches that can hold both the material reality of ecological threats and their social construction in view simultaneously. Through examining how different social actors engage with and make sense of the myna's presence, this study contributes to our understanding of how societies grapple with environmental change and the increasingly complex relationships between human and non-human actors in the Anthropocene era.

The chapter addresses the position of advertising agencies in integrated marketing communications (IMC) within a multistakeholder knowledge environment. Advertising agencies coordinate and integrate diverse knowledge from clients, consumers, media outlets, and internal teams to create cohesive marketing communication strategies. This involves navigating complex stakeholder expectations and market conditions. Through a historical overview and analysis of the evolution of relationship models, the essence of the problem in the agency-client relationship is pinpointed. The core issue lies in the lack of consensus and clear methodology for assessing the contribution of an agency's work to its client's business results. This topic holds theoretical importance for researchers and practical significance for both clients and agencies involved in the IMC process. Understanding these business landscape, is essential for advertising agencies achieve sustained success within a multistakeholder knowledge environment.Keywords: advertising agencies; integrated marketing communication; knowledge environment; agency theory.JEL Classification: D22; L23; M11; M21.Cite this chapter: Lozović, N., Perić, N. & Mamula Nikolić, T. (2024). Understanding Advertising Agencies in a Multistakeholder Knowledge Environment: Challenges and Importance. In: Knowledge Management in Economy, Technology and Education, N., Perić, and O. Arsenijević, (Eds.). (pp. 111-139). Book Series Socio-Economics, Research, Innovation and Technologies. RITHA Publishing. https://doi.org/10.57017/SERITHA.2024.KM-ETE.ch5 Chapter’s history: Received 3rd of November, 2023; Revised 7th of February, 2024; Accepted for publication 28th of May, 2024; Published 30th of July, 2024. About the Author(s):Nenad Lozovic is currently pursuing a doctoral dissertation in the field of business relations between agencies and advertisers at Metropolitan University in Belgrade. A Master's degree in Psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. Lecturer at New Bulgarian University in Sofia. Leveraging over three decades of experience, Nenad has held senior managerial positions in prominent advertising agencies within the region: Saatchi & Saatchi, Bates, Zenith Media, Starcom MediaVest, Young and Rubicam, and Wunderman. Long-standing involvement with the Bulgarian Association of Communication Agencies, having served as President, Vice President, and Board Member.Nenad Peric is Full Professor of Social Sciences (Marketing, Communications) and Full professor of Arts (Production of Arts, Media and Advertising, Theory of Arts). Holds BA, specialization and MA degree in the field of arts (production of culture and arts), MSc in production of arts and media and PhD in Communications. During 26 years of professional carrier, he was engaged as: coordinator, producer, marketing and PR manager, marketing and media researcher, chief of department, dean of faculty, etc. Nenad is member of several editorial boards, reviewer of national and international scientific WoS & Scopus journals.Associate Professor at Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Management. She has over 25 years of professional experience in marketing, research and management working as a consultant, researcher, professional coach (PCC ICF) working for large and SMEs clients. Member of editorial board, reviewer in several national and international journals. She has published 3 monographs and more that 60 scientific papers covering topics such as consumer behaviour, leadership, brand management, the behaviour of the new generation Y and Z, ecology, circular economy, business reinvention and others. Tatjana is a member of numerous professional associations: ESOMAR, International Coaching Federation, Association of Business Women, Serbian Association of Employers and others.

The UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) defines the creative industries as being comprised of: Advertising Architecture Art and Antiques Crafts Design Fashion Film Interactive Leisure Software Music Performing Arts Publishing Software Design TV and Radio Visual Arts This relatively new re-designation of artistic and creative activity as the 'creative industries' is a term that seems to have growing contemporary currency. This is, to a large extent, born of a particular focus on the role that artistic and cultural production and consumption plays within the capitalist economy. Consequently, many current discussions of the creative industries display a rather 'one dimensional' (Marcuse, 1964) analysis of cultural life, understanding it from a position firmly located within the locus of market mechanisms. The DCMS'S approach to the creative industries is similar to orthodox approaches to other industrial sectors within the national economy, and its attention is routinely devoted to auditing earnings, turnover, exports and jobs within the creative industries. Wu (2002) has charted the shift towards the commercially-oriented focus on cultural production that has underwritten this new designation of the creative industries since the Thatcherite 1980s. Wu particularly highlights the encouragement of increased interfaces between artistic production and private business sponsorship; between cultural events and corporate advertising; between culture and the 'value added' to corporations; as well as the advent of privately-owned artistic collections as economic investments during this period. This shift towards a commercial agenda was accompanied by policy changes in public organisations such as the Arts Council of England, from policies that emphasised the support of the arts as a public good to those concerned with 'value for money' and the cutting of public funding for the arts. The acceptance of an essentially commercial framework for the understanding and development of arts and cultural production has continued within the UK public sector. After the Labour Party's 1997 election victory, Chris Smith, the incoming minister for Culture at the DCMS, signalled a celebration of the role that culture and creativity could play for a national resurgence, after years of Thatcherite cultural philistinism. However, his focus on the creative industries is still very much a commercial one, located within the context of national economic growth (Smith, 1998) and seen through the lens that attendant assumptions about capitalism and markets provide. In the UK, cultural economists, government officials and cultural policy-makers at regional and local levels have taken this agenda on board, and limit themselves to the role that creativity plays in terms of regional economic growth and inward investment; job creation, business growth and start-ups; and to the development of new consumer markets such as local cultural tourism. Some aspects of this cultural policy agenda, such as urban regeneration and improved 'quality of life', social inclusion, cultural diversity and heritage protection, are to the public good; it would be crass to suggest otherwise. However, the nature of creativity, cultural production and the cultural values that inform it suggest something much wider than the current, commercially-oriented 'universe of discourse' (Marcuse, 1964) allows for, including issues about the economic and social significance of new forms of interaction and exchange within cultural production, and the politics that are expressed through acts of creativity. This is not to say, of course, that discussion of the relationship between art, culture and politics is a new endeavour. Indeed, some of the contributors to this special issue of Capital & Class survey aspects of this long and rich history. But the changed nature of work and production, and the DIY cultural interaction and political expression that are often found in certain aspects of contemporary cultural life, are throwing up new issues and have implications for how we understand these changes within the disciplines of economics, sociology and politics. …

In this paper the author firstly underlines why is necessary to have a number of organizations whose primary goal is public education and achieving the highest standards of cultural and artistic production. The services offered by these organizations contribute to the development of multiple business processes. They are achieving this by creating favorable business environment and reaffirming the creation and respect of real values which consequently leads to new investments and creating of new job positions. These business processes support the employment of young professionals, educated at higher education institutions where they can obtain the latest comparative knowledge in the fields important for offering top quality services to domestic and foreign citizens, predominantly the tourists and other consumers of artistic and cultural products. Continuous development of business processes and opening of new job positions foster social capital and enhance safety and security of local population. At the end of this paper, the author emphasizes the importance that in offering the services in the field of arts and culture at all levels, from the local, up to the state level, the organizations need to have an equal valuation of the major fields of social life. This is the only way to avoid the conflicts and disagreements resulting from different treatment of the same services by various authorities or those making decisions on financing or subsiding the services in certain fields.

Prisons can be unexpected settings for art and cultural production, but they also offer unique opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Prisons are institutions designed to confine individuals convicted of crimes. They are considered places of pessimism and terrorism. Prisons can also be seen as places that hold cultural and historical heritage. They share different kinds of disciplines, cultures, values, and discourses. They form various cultures and subcultures. The prison holds its own set of religion, practices, community, educational practices, etc. The paper focuses on bringing the view that the prisons can also be a landscape or community that produces great art, values, practices, and cultures like other landscapes. Cultural and art production in prisons can offer valuable benefits for incarcerated individuals and society as a whole. It promotes humanization, rehabilitation, and a deeper understanding of the complexities of the justice system. Creative expressions in prisons can aid in self-discovery, communication skills, and also in addressing trauma. This paper investigates the diverse forms of artistic expression that emerge within correctional facilities, including painting, music, writing, and performance. It also challenges the conventional understanding of prisons as sole spaces of punishment by focusing on the vibrant cultural production within these institutions.

IntroductionAs a visual artist it seems to me that the ideal relationship between government and cultural producers is a coalitional one; an “alliance for combined action of distinct parties, persons or states without permanent incorporation into one body” (Oxford English Dictionary). The word “coalition”, however, is entirely absent from the document that forms the basis of the analysis of this paper, Creating Value: An Arts and Culture Sector Policy Framework 2010-2014, from the Government of Western Australia’s Department of Culture and the Arts. Released in March 2010, Creating Value has been introduced by the DCA’s Deputy Director General Jacqui Allen as the “first arts policy in Australia to adopt a public value approach” (DCA, New Policy Framework) whereby "the Department of Culture and the Arts is charged with delivering public value to the Western Australian community through our partnership with the culture and arts sector." As indicated in Allen’s press release, this document achieves its aim of providing “clarity in [the DCA’s] relationships with the culture and arts sector”. As an artist, cultural worker, or someone generally interested in the cultural wellbeing of Australian communities it would seem timely to consider just how this new and influential policy framework envisages the specific working relationships that make up the “partnerships across the culture and arts sector, government, the public and private sector” (DCA, Creating Value 2).In this brief paper it is my intention to interrogate the idea of “coalition” in relation to the evidence provided in the DCA’s Policy Framework, Creating Value, in order to examine the extent to which this State’s involvement in culture and arts may indeed be considered coalitional. In approaching the notion of the coalitional I take the position that there are two key elements to this idea, the first being the notion of an “alliance for combined action” and the second being that the distinct parties involved are not incorporated into one body. What is difficult, at this intersection between the strategic advances of governance and the more organic development of culture, is to distinguish between levels at which the interests of both parties in a coalition or partnership are served by the alliance. As I will argue later in this paper, there is an important distinction to be made between working under temporary contract to specifications (in which one party’s design is realised through a primarily economic exchange with those providing the requisite goods and services) and the kind of negotiated relationship between means and ends that is required to support the genuine development of culture. The question is whether the artist (or other cultural producer), receiving funding to produce cultural work according to “public value” criteria, is able to develop culture or merely able to reproduce an understanding of culture given by the funding brief and assessment panel? It seems to me that significant cultural development is only possible where the public value of the outcomes of cultural production is subject to continuous negotiation and debate – surely it is in the coalitional outcomes (the alliance of distinct parties for combined action) of such discussion that a meaningful identification with culture occurs?In the following discussion around Creating Value my approach is to focus upon some aspects of the policy framework that provide particular evidence of the kind of “combined action” of government and the culture and arts sector that the DCA is proposing in this document. When seen against a more cultural understanding of the “action” of making art and the dynamic processes of producing and identifying with culture, it becomes clear why it may be considered that the DCA and many Western Australian cultural producers may not be engaged in the same project at all, let alone be in effective partnership or coalition.“Public Value” and the Specifications of Cultural ProductionEliseo Vivas observes that in the process of creatively applying symbolic order and understanding to the physical world, humanity acquires culture and an ability to better exploit the world. He also notes that in this process “of constituting the world, [human-kind’s] merely physiological needs are complicated by new needs” (129); new systems of cultural values that assume no less importance in human activity than our more basic bodily needs. Vivas pertinently states, however, that more often than not in human society within a complex and existing symbolic order these cultural needs simply become an aspect of our practical functioning (an extension of survival), and we tend to inhibit our capacity to constitute the world through creative and symbolic endeavours. This depiction of cultural production as an activity that is constitutive of the world is particularly significant in relation to the DCA’s Creating Value. Despite noting that “it is through creative people that we better understand our world” (DCA, Creating Value 8), which echoes with Vivas’s contention that “the poet is needed to give the practical man his stage” (Vivas 129) the policy framework seems rather to exemplify the inhibiting of culturally constitutive activities (production) in favour of “practical functioning” (reproduction).What can be observed particularly well in the DCA’s policy framework is how effectively ideas associated with creative and cultural production have been co-opted to the cause of “practical functioning”. Looking for instance at the notion of “creativity” within Creating Value we discover that “creativity is the driving force of the arts and culture sector” (DCA, Creating Value 5) and that “creativity” is one of the “priority public value principles” for the policy framework, along with “engagement”. Reading more closely one understands that creativity is seen as producing the “distinctive” and the “unique”, a brand that is recognised as Western Australian and which, through such “recognition” and “significance” and through its “enriching” and “transforming” capacities (7), is seen to “add to a sense of place and belonging” (11) for the WA community. This in turn makes WA a “better place to live, work and visit” and ultimately delivers “economic and social outcomes that encourage and support growth” (2). The DCA’s strategies appear to have little to do with a dynamic conception of culture in which new worlds and systems of values may be constituted, but is focussed upon the optimisation and rationalisation of economic outcomes under the guise of “public value”.My contention is that, as difficult as the notion may be to entertain, a department of culture and the arts ought to understand that creative and cultural production are part of a dynamic system that continually engages in a process of tentatively constituting the world. The arts and culture sector undeniably has an important role to play in the formation of and identification with a national cultural identity, which can manifest in international prestige, tourist dollars and other forms of economic growth (Abbing 246; Chaney 166-67). Western Australian culture is not, however, as the DCA seems to perceive, a static and monumental edifice that acts as a singular landmark for Western Australia in local, national and international contexts. The DCA’s arts and culture policy framework talks of its strategies “reflecting the DCA’s vision, values and strategic objectives” (DCA, Creating Value 13) and in a number of places suggests that it will “respond to changing needs” (2, 5, 8). Surely an approach that was interested in the specific value that creative and cultural production has to offer to the community would recognise that it is not in a singular vision but in the world creatively renegotiated and reconstituted by different people and groups of people that such a value and identification is to be found? Furthermore, if Vivas is right, then the support and promotion of culture ought to be as much about cultural needs not yet anticipated, for cultural products whose significance is not currently recognised, as it is about being responsive and catering to the demands of those whom the DCA identifies as the present consumers and stake-holders in WA arts and culture. What is missing from the partnership, as conceived by the DCA between itself and the culture and arts sector, is an adequate mechanism by which “public value” is recognised as a system of constantly changing values in which the culture and arts sector play an important role in developing, extending and negotiating through their creative and cultural production.As Jürgen Habermas suggests, to approach culture strategically in terms of outcomes and deployment is to compromise the internal development that actually provides arts and cultural work with its meaning and significance (Habermas 71). Culture becomes not a distinctive composite of differing and changing world views linked by the “living” process of their “nature-like” coexistence and development, but a monolithic identity or brand with representative products (no matter how diverse those products may be).This policy framework document would suggest not a coalitional “alliance for combined action” but more accurately a process of putting the various strategic goals and cultural aspirations (with “public value” specifications) of the DCA up for tender in much the same way that another Government department might seek tenders for the construction of a bridge or building. It is perhaps telling that Creating Value is described as a “road map to help the Department achieve its vision” (DCA, Creating Value 2).“Engagement” and the Use Value of FreedomCreating Value states that “there is a complex relationship between creativity and engagement, which are the principles driving the delivery of public value outcomes” (DCA, Creating Value 5). The policy framework goes on to suggest that the conception of “engagement” that inf