ABSTRACT Although the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) promotes community-centred and dynamic approaches to heritage, its governance remains structurally shaped by nation-state logics. Recognition continues to rely on territorialised frameworks that struggle to accommodate mobile, hybrid, and historically entangled cultural practices. This article advances a transcultural framework for rethinking ICH governance by examining how relational cultural processes are translated into territorially legible forms of policy recognition. Drawing on Wolfgang Welsch’s theory of transculturality, it reconceptualises ICH not as a bounded cultural possession but as a relational formation constituted through uneven histories of movement, exchange, and mediation. This article identifies four analytical contexts – diaspora and displacement, trade and exchange, colonial entanglement, and digital circulation – through which transcultural heritage practices are generated, negotiated, and contested. In doing so, it highlights moments at which existing governance frameworks translate relational cultural processes into territorially legible forms of authority, and identifies where these translations may be reoriented. The article thus contributes a historically grounded and policy-relevant framework for recognising intangible heritage beyond exclusive nation-state ownership.

ABSTRACT Enhancing the presence of European audiovisual works in international markets holds potential for the EU in terms of economic benefits and promoting cultural diversity. This article examines how the EU has handled such potential in its external relations with third countries with advanced economies. It explores how audiovisual issues have been addressed in EU trade, economic and other agreements negotiated with Australia, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the UK in line with the seminal ‘audiovisual exception’, which is firmly embedded in the Union’s trade policy. It also investigates the treatment of audiovisual issues through cooperation provisions and dedicated cultural cooperation protocols. Such provisions can support the internationalization of the European audiovisual sector particularly through exchanges, co-productions, policy dialogue, and collaboration within the framework of UNESCO. However, the EU still lacks a comprehensive EU strategy to enhance the promotion and visibility of European audiovisual works in the developed economies concerned.

ABSTRACT Recent technological developments like blockchain, metaverse, or artificial intelligence raise questions on applicability of copyright provisions in the digital sphere. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are important international fora for copyright policies debates. Drawing on the literature on international organizations governance and stakeholder lobbying, we asked: What types of actors are involved in discussions on digital copyright in WIPO and WTO? What are the differences regarding the gatekeeping rules and the agenda of both organizations? What are the main topics in the agenda, and do they relate to challenges triggered by emerging technologies? To trace participation and debates we applied qualitative content analysis of four policy fora-related documents in 2019-2023. The research revealed a shift of debate on copyright and emerging technologies in WIPO from a traditional to a new discussion forum, and prevalence of other topics in WTO. While WIPO was open to a range of non-state stakeholders, WTO was closed to national delegations, which confirms differences regarding institutional access and relevance of gatekeeping rules. We argue that new policy topics and actors are more likely to emerge in a venue which offers new lobbying opportunities to better frame policy debate.

ABSTRACT This article considers how content fragmentation in online video-on-demand (VOD) markets shapes public access to, and affordability of, screen content. We offer a case study of Australia, a jurisdiction in which media and broadcast policy have traditionally prioritised some considerations of access and reach over commercial interests in exclusivity and market segmentation. To capture the affordability of screen content, we use a shopping basket approach and an automated data scraper to measure the price and availability of award-winning film and television titles across different streaming providers. We find that, while most titles are readily available across one or more free, subscription and transactional VOD services, premium titles are largely concentrated behind paywalls. Our analysis assesses the implications of this market structure for the social stratification of video consumption. We conclude that fragmentation and price increases in subscription video are contributing to a narrowing of public access to premium film and television.

ABSTRACT Artists’ presence in an urban setting is generally thought to increase the value of land, so much so that a range of policies have emerged encouraging artist activities in neighbourhoods as urban renewal strategy, i.e. creative cities, creative economies and cultural industries. But increased land values often results in increased cost of access to studio and living space, forcing artists out of the very same neighbourhoods. In this paper, we examine the creative assemblage of Acme Artist Studios, founded in 1972, and now one of the largest providers of artist studio spaces in the city of London, UK. Acme operates within complex economic and political forces that produce ever increasing land use values, exacerbated by what Henry George described as ‘land rent’, value attracted by location, i.e. through the activities of public investment and community labour. ACME undermines these forces in order to provide studio access for artists well below market rates. In this paper, we argue that Acme’s assemblage nomadically encounters, negotiates with and navigates within the frameworks of increasing land use values while also creating a new socio-economic territory through its unconventional practices and outcomes. Our findings suggest that the Acme model transverses relations of power with tactics that in effect redistribute ‘land rent’ value into the hands of artists through long-term affordable studio lease rates in a way that allows for the legitimacy of artistic practice independent of ‘highest and best use’ of land in conventional market terms.

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, nightlife in İzmir, Turkey, has undergone a quiet yet profound transformation. Once characterized by accessible live music venues and an inclusive, student-oriented culture of leisure, the city’s nightlife has become increasingly fragmented, stratified, and commercialized. This shift has not primarily resulted from large-scale urban redevelopment or conventional neoliberal governance, but from the conservative and authoritarian cultural policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), particularly the moral regulation and stigmatization of alcohol. Steep and sustained increases in alcohol taxation have disproportionately raised the cost of nightlife participation, producing far-reaching social, spatial, and affective consequences. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in İzmir, this paper introduces the concept of fiscal gentrification to capture how economic pressures generated through taxation reshape who participates in nightlife, which venues survive, the types of music performed, and how leisure is experienced and embodied. Situating İzmir within global scholarship on nightlife gentrification, urban change in Turkey, and debates on the country’s authoritarian turn, the paper demonstrates how morally oriented fiscal policies can quietly yet decisively restructure urban cultural life. In doing so, it offers a novel theoretical framework for understanding atypical forms of gentrification in non-Western contexts.

ABSTRACT Although the term ‘populism’ has been used quite loosely, it is definitely one of the key political buzzwords of the twenty-first century. This research project aims to provide an analytical frame for assessing the impact of populism on the cultural policies of nation states and whether they counter or support long-standing traditions in the content and organisation of cultural policies, such as cultural democracy and the arm’s length principle. First, we review the existing literature from political sciences and analyses of when populists are in power. In the second step, we put the resulting categories of economic critiques, cultural critiques and political style, to the test in two European countries: Italy and the Netherlands. We analyse the existence of populist tropes in the electoral programmes of all political parties in both countries between 2006 and 2023. Our analysis confirms the usefulness of these three categories for further research.

ABSTRACT Why considering the protection of cultural heritage (CHP) an integral component of a security agenda? How, and for what purposes, do different states employ both ‘heritage in diplomacy’ and ‘heritage as diplomacy’? Building on the existing literature on the securitisation of cultural heritage and heritage diplomacy, this research offers a comparative and cross-disciplinary analysis of China’s and Russia’s CHP policies in international and regional organizations. Based on official documents and semi-structured qualitative interviews, its main argument seeks to demonstrate how China’s and Russia’s CHP strategies have been embedded into their security agendas. While a substantial body of literature has focused on Western countries, particularly in Europe, comparatively little attention has been paid to non-Western great powers, such as China and Russia. This study seeks to address this gap, by highlighting several key similarities and differences in their CHP agencies in international and regional organizations, while bridging the perspectives of heritage studies and security studies.

ABSTRACT This paper introduces chaos theory’s strange attractor as a framework for analyzing Soviet internationalism, conceptualizing it as a dynamic ideological system that balanced structured control with internal contradictions, resulting in bounded unpredictability. Soviet policies fostered national identities while subordinating them to socialist unity, creating a paradox of structured instability. Through case studies of composer Arno Babajanian, poet Robert Rozhdestvensky, and singer Muslim Magomayev, the paper illustrates how artists navigated ideological constraints to produce culturally hybrid works within the system’s bounded space, defined by the strange attractor. In contrast, filmmaker Sergei Parajanov’s persecution exemplifies the consequences of transgressing these limits. Post-Soviet reinterpretations of their legacies reveal how the collapse of this ideological attractor led to unbounded – no longer centrally directed – nationalist trajectories, geopolitical contestation, and fragmented cultural memory. The study also examines how Russia has selectively invoked Soviet nostalgia in its geopolitical strategies, highlighting the persistence and transformation of Soviet cultural legacies in contemporary identity politics.

ABSTRACT In the face of recent challenges to gender equality and diversity, most European countries feature such policies in their support schemes for film production and in regulation of public service television. Moreover, global streaming platforms such as Netflix have made inclusion policies part of their brand. In an effort to unpack how EU-policies are intertwined with inclusion efforts, this article investigates gender equality and diversity discourses in the implementation of the 2018 EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive in Lithuania, Spain, and Sweden. The article uses a discourse policy analysis to compare problem representations and to understand how the articulation of the implementation of the Directive have continued, challenged or been intertwined with different discourses. The article finds that in Spain the Directive continued a discourse on gender equality and diversity, while in Lithuania and Sweden, the implementation of the Directive was intertwined with discourses seeking to limit or roll back gender equality and diversity.