Cultural Policy Research Articles

Navigating through policy and process inflation by establishing cultural value in cultural sites: The case of the Philippine-Korea friendship center

The protection and development of cultural sites pose ongoing economic and social challenges for the state, necessitating a symbiotic relationship between cultural advancement and societal progress, yet facing a shortfall in support and funding. This paper aims to delineate the value of cultural sites and assess how evolving cultural policies influence their management. Despite legislative mandates requiring government backing, cultural site management often shoulders the responsibility amid policy and procedural complexities, resulting in what is termed as "policy and process inflation." The absence of consistent support due to shifting cultural policies aggravates this burden, compelling cultural sites to integrate economic imperatives alongside social objectives. Utilizing Cultural Value Theory (intrinsic, instrumental, institutional), this study examines the Philippine-Korea Friendship Center to elucidate its cultural value amidst policy dynamics. It underscores the necessity for cultural sites to not only embody intrinsic value but also cultivate instrumental and institutional values. This analysis sheds light on the interplay between cultural policies and the state of cultural sites, highlighting the imperative for holistic support and strategic management frameworks.

Preservation and Development of Russian Language: challenges and prospects for development

The paper is based on an analysis of media and is devoted to the problem of preserving the purity of the Russian language in connection with the preservation of identity and the cultivation of patriotism. The authors identify the connection between the formation and development of language as a factor in the consolidation of the country’s multinational population with cultural and political processes, educational and cultural policies, as well as processes of ensuring internal and external security. The authors draw attention to the low efficiency of mechanisms and tools for implementing state language policy, and formulate proposals for the preservation and development of the Russian language as a factor. The used methods include participant and non-participant observation, document analysis and content analysis. The publication is of interest to cultural, political scientists and to all readers involved into Russian language, history and culture.

Blind to culture. How classed cognition prevents cultural policy initiatives from increasing cultural participation for children

ABSTRACT Since its first formulation in the post war years, Nordic cultural policy has had a stated aim to democratize culture, but with limited success. A growing literature argues that understanding policy failure is needed for a better functioning cultural policy. The present study uses two waves of panel data on cultural participation for parents and children in Bergen, Norway (N = 4754) to analyze the impact of three locally implemented cultural policy interventions designed in part to democratize culture for children. Using work with cultural policy failure, and tools from Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture, this study finds that policies fail in systematic ways related to classed cognition. This leads to a ‘Matthew effect’ for cultural goods, as policies enable easier access to culture for those already invested in cultural participation, while the policies fail to even out social inequalities. There are both scientific and policy implications of the findings. First, data show that a cultural reproduction model seems a better fit than a cultural mobility model of cultural participation. Second, policy planners rarely factor in implications of the former in implementation of cultural policies designed to equalize distributions of culture. As a consequence, cultural policy initiatives to reduce inequalities in access to culture may lead to an exacerbation of cultural inequalities.

China's National Public Cultural Security Construction under the Cultural Differences Between East and West

Since Hu Huilin's concept of China's national cultural security was proposed, it has inspired many qualitative studies, and then Han Yuan's team introduced quantitative research methods in 2021. On this basis, this study uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore the current situation, challenges, and coping strategies of China's national cultural security, especially the impact of cultural differences between Chinese and Western cultures on China's cultural security in the context of globalisation. It also conducts a data-driven comparative study using Hofstede's National Culture Model and existing national cultural security assessment indicator systems. The analysis focuses on six cultural dimensions, including power distance, individualism masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence. The findings suggest that China differs significantly from the West in terms of individualism and long-term orientation, which has important implications for China's cultural policies and social structures. China's power distance and relatively low uncertainty avoidance index provide opportunities for the development of cultural innovation and diversity. Moreover, the balance between indulgence and restraint is equally important in preserving cultural diversity and promoting social harmony.

The Role of Street Art in Urban Aesthetics and Identity: Analyzing a Case Study of Yelahanka, Bengaluru as a City Gallery

This research study explores the multifaceted role of street art in shaping urban aesthetics and identity, with an emphasis on Yelahanka, Bengaluru. Street art, often viewed as an act of rebellion or vandalism, has evolved into a significant cultural and artistic expression that influences the visual landscape and social dynamics of urban areas. Through an interdisciplinary approach drawing from urban studies and sociology, this essay investigates how street art contributes to the aesthetic appeal, cultural richness, and collective identity of cities. Yelahanka, a Bengaluru neighborhood renowned for its developing art scene, provides an engaging case study to explore the potential for street art to improve urban landscapes. By analyzing the motivations behind street art creation and how it interacts with programs for urban development, this study aims to provide insights into the complex interplay between street art and the urban fabric, offering implications for urban planning and cultural policy.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Class Inequalities within the British Documentary Film Industry

While there is a considerable amount of scholarship and grey literature about social exclusions within the UK cultural industries, the sociology of cultural labour has paid little attention to documentary film-making as a relatively elitist occupation that is maintained by systemic inequalities. Based on semi-structured interviews with several independent documentary film-makers about their own labouring subjectivities, and qualitative analysis of relevant academic literature and cultural policies, this article critically explores how class inequalities are understood, reproduced, negotiated or resisted within contemporary British documentary film-making. The research findings demonstrate that documentarians from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to face significant obstacles in the film-making sector than their privileged counterparts. While the majority of respondents are aware of structural disadvantages, champion more inclusive forms of creativity and are committed to improving discriminatory working conditions, a small number of participants believe that the social relations of documentary film production are meritocratic, can be characterised by their celebration of neoliberal values and a willingness to defend the industry's employment practices. The article concludes with a series of recommendations for creative organisations, government and policymakers.

The cultural sector in Polish economy in the regional approach

Motivation: In recent years, the impact of cultural factors on the economic development has been analysed. This research concerns the impact of culture on the labour market, the growth of innovation and creativity, participation in creating added value of GDP, stimulating exports, although the cultural sector also affects the development of tourism, entertainment and improvement in the quality of life of residents. Currently, the cultural sector is treated as a long-term economic investment affecting the development of the country.Aim: The goal of the article is to evaluate the functioning of the cultural sector in Poland. This assessment has been made on a regional basis.Results: To achieve the purpose, data of the GUS (Central Statistical Office in Poland) were analysed. The data concerned expenses allocated to culture and national heritage — they included individual types of cultural institutions and number of cultural sector entities in 2018–2021. The results of the analysis of the cultural sector have been presented in tables and diagrams. Using an agglomeration method, the Polish provinces were grouped according to values of the analysed categories of expenses allocated to culture and national heritage in the provinces in year 2021. It was noticed that the development of the cultural sector in Poland is uneven, concentrated in the country’s capital, which is typical for less developed countries. Therefore, main barriers to the development of the cultural sector in Poland were identified. The most important obstacles were: underfunding, lack of systemic solutions to support the demand for cultural goods, unfavourable legal and financial conditions for creators of culture, lack of support for cooperation between public and private cultural sector, dependence of the development of the cultural sector on politics, as well as lack of social acceptance of the cultural policy. Culture is also negatively affected by the processes of globalization, commercialization and recently the Covid 19 pandemic.

Cultural policy and the politics of display. The establishment of the opera house in Oslo

ABSTRACT How can we understand governments’ willingness to make large investments in iconic cultural buildings? What does this trend tell us about governments’ cultural policy interests and priorities? In this article we illuminate these questions based on a study of the framing of the political decision-making processes associated with the establishment of the Opera House in Oslo, Norway. Theoretically, we draw on Hans Abbing’s reflections on the ‘politics of display’. As developed in this article, the concept of politics of display draw attention to the representative role accorded to art and culture in cultural policy and the role of cultural policy in the legitimation of government power. The political debate on the Opera House, we show, was framed from the outset as a matter of politics of display, as politicians highlighted the goal of creating identification with national institutions among Norwegians and a desire to increase Norway’s international prestige. One conclusion we draw from the study is that the trend for investments in iconic cultural buildings should make researchers attentive to the politics of display as an important driving force in cultural policy. Another conclusion is a call for researchers to be attentive to the national dimension of cultural policy.

‘Diversity’ as multidisciplinary keyword for the politics of cultural recommender systems in global digital media platforms

‘Diversity’ is a heavily freighted and multivalent keyword in the global digital media environment. The recommender systems used by platforms are particularly acute sites of development and debate around the political, cultural and technical issues ‘diversity’ signifies. Drawing on a review of computer science publications on recommender systems in media and entertainment as well as a survey of recent advances in media and cultural policy scholarship, this short article performs a pragmatic close reading of diversity in these intersecting fields. We note that attention must be paid to the specific challenges and politics of diversity not only in particular cultural fields but also in local cultural contexts, drawing on examples from music and SVOD platforms to flesh out these questions and the practical possibilities that arise from them.

Cultural sustainability and Estonian community houses

This article explores the role of Estonian community houses in supporting sustainable cultural development and the vitality of communities in a turbulent era of global change. It poses the following questions: (1) How do the representatives of community houses perceive their roles and challenges? (2) How does organizational agency and cultural policy (at national and sub-national level) contribute to cultural sustainability in the context of such disruptions? To answer the first question, in 2022 an online questionnaire survey targeting representatives of Estonian community houses was conducted. The article is based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of 126 responses. The second question provides historical, political, and cultural context to address the first. Estonian community houses, numbering 376 in operation today, are a unique network to study. In the nineteenth century, these cultural hubs became the basis for the system of non-formal life-long education, arts and culture, and later regulated and developed within the subnational politics of culture and education in the Estonian nation-state (1918–40), in the Soviet Union (1940–91), and in today's Estonia (1991–2023) as part of the European Union. The COVID-19 pandemic added a new set of disruptions. In this light, the continuity of the functioning of community houses, alongside their ability to adapt, becomes particularly important for both local communities and sustainable cultural development.

Slow and steady? Capacity building for participatory governance in local arts development through practitioner-researcher collaboration

With a focus on local government's role in participatory cultural governance, this paper argues two points. First, self- and critical reflexivity of institutional brokers is important to community-wide capacity building for participatory cultural governance. Second, this reflexivity can be enabled through slow, inquiry-based collaboration between practitioners and researchers. The paper presents the experiences of a practitioner-researcher collaboration between a local authority arts officer and a cultural policy scholar in the development of a place-based local arts development programme taking place from 2017 to 2019 in Dublin, Ireland. The paper surfaces how efforts to promote greater participation in local decision-making require acts of reflexivity as core to the repertoire of capacity building for enabling participatory cultural governance practice in local public arts administration. Three interrelated factors are determined to have helped enable this reflexivity: (1) the arts officer's openness to engage in collaborative processes that (2) emphasised reflection and learning and were supported by (3) the presence of an embedded researcher with mutual interest, beliefs and experience or knowledge of the institutional context. Limitations in the study highlight areas for further research regarding the affective nature of practitioner-researcher collaborations and the potential of promoting reflexive practice in processes aimed at promoting participatory governance.

Creating careers in the kingdom of content. The platform-dependence and platform-ambivalence of digital cultural labour in Norway

Cultural production is to an increasing degree characterized by digitalization, mediatization, platformization and the use of social media. In this article, we investigate how digital cultural labour is experienced by platform-dependent cultural producers. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with more than twenty Norwegian content creators, we more specifically analyse how they describe and valuate their products and production, the online communication of their labour, and the careers and strategies of digital cultural labour. The production of content is experienced as a demanding and continuous endeavour, being relentlessly quantified through clicks and metrics. Furthermore, the content creators show the psychological toll of being the product or a more or less integrated part of the product. Partly because of the challenges of continuous content production and communication with a community, as well as because of the unpredictable power of algorithms, we see creators branching out, spreading risk, or combining platform-dependency with -independency. This tendency only partly explains why digital cultural labour in the Norwegian context does not tend to represent a career end in itself, but a means to reach other and/or more long-term career goals. In the Norwegian context, this tendency is also explained by other factors: the welfare-oriented and inclusive Nordic model of cultural policy, which includes a public broadcaster integrating social media actively in its portfolio, as well as a general risk- and precarity-reducing welfare society.

Russian Federation Cultural Policy as a Counterweight to Posthumanism Influence

This article provides axiological foundations in response to the destructive influence of posthumanistic ideas. The author presents the key provisions of posthumanistic consciousness: freedom without foundations, man as part of a common ecosystem (the gap between the concepts of "man” and "humanity”) and the absence of the category of truth, leading to a "distributed identity” of a person (unstable and ambiguous). The paradigm of posthumanism refers to Western culture, in geopolitical realities, seeking to defend positions of governance (a reference to a unipolar world order). The study examines the foundations of the cultural policy of the Russian Federation to represent a different type of thinking: the attempt at unification is opposed by cultural diversity, and ambiguity is opposed by core spiritual and moral values.

The symbolic politics of cultural heritage: a view from Portugal

This paper highlights the centrality of the social representation of cultural heritage for the symbolic legitimization of a regime and the foundation of its social and cultural policies. The relevance attributed to history, its codification into heritage and the formation of a collective memory are indeed arenas of social practice, power and hegemony. The Portuguese example is a good one, because one can compare contrasting visions of the authoritarian regime of Salazar and those of the new and current democratic order. We examine how the Portuguese democracy has reconstructed a national consensus regarding the interpretation of national history and identity; we consider the role of the new interpretation in the redefining of the Portuguese placement in the world system; and some conclusions will be tentatively drawn from this case study.  

PRESERVING AND EXPANDING OLYMPIC SPORT HERITAGE: EXAMINING THE "PAGER" FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Objective. This review aims to investigate literature on the heritage of Olympic sport participation from 2000 to 2023 in order to assess the advancement of consistency and achievements from participation in Olympic sports.
 Methodology. The bibliosemantic method was used to clarify the state of the problem, study the analysis of the results of previous scientific research based on printed literature and electronic sources. This review study analysed broad sections including the demographic dimension, the social dimension and the intervention process. Five main research themes were summarised from these three broad sections using the PAGER system.
 Results. After the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Chinese officials declared that the goal of "attracting 300 million people to play sports on ice and snow" had been achieved. Historically, the London 2012 Olympic Games had a similar goal: to increase participation in sports for all through the hosting the Olympic Games. Given the goals highlighted, the impact of the Olympic Games on sport participation has certainly been significant. This impact can be called the heritage of Olympic sport, the intangible heritage of the Olympics. This has attracted the attention of many researchers in the academic field in recent years.
 Unlike previous reviews of sport heritage, this review applies the Patterns, Advances, Gaps, Evidence of Practice, and Research Recommendations (PAGER) framework in the stage of result analysis to enhance the quality of the findings. Numerous related studies have been studied in this review, and their scope ranges from the study of state sports policy to the impact of social, economic and cultural policies on the heritage of participation in Olympic sports.
 Conclusion. Current research, as reviewed here, tends to prioritize phenomenological descriptions and recommendations for future planning in Olympic sports. Notably, considerable progress has been made in this area. Several studies highlight the importance of collaboration and long-term planning between various government agencies and stakeholders for achieving success in Olympic sports and realizing their lasting social, cultural, and political impact.

Влияние Жака Ширака на культурную политику Франции

The article treats the influence of Jacques Chirac, President of the Fifth Republic, on the French cultural policy during his first and second presidencies. It also analyses the president’s cultural preferences and their reflec-tion in the country’s cultural policy. The main attention is paid to the largest projects for the creation of new cul-tural institutions (The Musée du Quai Branly, Louvre-Lens, Louvre Abu Dhabi), and Chirac’s contribution to the conception of these projects as well as their implementation. The issues of the development of Chirac’s ideas about cultural equality and the so-called “primitive” art and their formation from the time of his leadership as the mayor of Paris to his second presidential term are touched upon. The article analyzes the testimonies of the president’s associates that speak about Chirac’s role in shaping the cultural and political course of his era.

The cultural policy of Central Asia countries in the sphere of museums

ABSTRACT The focus is the museum development in Central Asia from 1991–2022, with the intent to identify the current trends in the development of museums, and to explore issues of museum cooperation in these countries. The main research method was historical periodization. This article includes information on the development of museums in five countries since 1991, the change of cultural policy with independence, general problems of museums, differences in the cultural policy of Central Asian countries, statistics on the number of museums, and funding issues related to museums in the region. The central thesis asserts that museums play a central role in cultural and historical conversations in Central Asia, emphasising their significance as cultural archives and vibrant hubs for education, interaction, and the development of identity.

Saving China and admiring Japan: Cultural traitor Qian Daosun

Abstract Qian Daosun (1887–1966) was imprisoned for collaborating with the Provisional Government in North China under Japanese occupation, and to this day he is labelled as hanjian (traitor). Yet, Qian was first and foremost a cultural literatus, librarian, and an exceptional translator with an in-depth understanding of Japanese culture and languages. This article examines the crucial role that Japan and the Japanese language played for Chinese cultural literati in their quest to save China. It also brings to the forefront the dilemmas and agonizing choices Qian faced in his attempt to promote Sino-Japanese cultural exchange in the midst of war, in particular as a librarian. Wartime libraries are highly contested sites of selection, destruction, censorship, preservation, confiscation, and knowledge production. An added layer of complexity was Japan’s cultural policy in China that promoted Japanese-language collections and governed libraries such as the Beijing1 Modern Science Library where Qian worked. What exacerbated Qian’s dilemmas was his upbringing, which led him to form close personal connections with like-minded Japanese literati. Lastly, this article revisits the hanjian label by comparing Qian’s fate to that of other librarians and returned students of Japan, such as May Fourth writer Lu Xun and patriotic bibliophile Zheng Zhenduo. By deliberately examining May Fourth writers alongside hanjian and Japanese intermediaries, the intention is to dismount arbitrary labels and divisions that have set them apart and against each other in the resistance versus collaboration dichotomy.

The Brazilian Contemporary Dance Scene of the Periferia

The aim of this article is to discuss the recent changes in scenic dance in Brazil. Until the beginning of the 2000s, scenic dance was primarily practiced by middle class white dancers, whereas more recently there is a greater representation of Afro-Brazilians and socially less privileged people who come from the outskirts of cities (periferia). The author argues that this change of paradigm is happening due to cultural policies implemented by local governments, as they attempted to provide entertaining and creative activities to help diminish violence in large urban centers, starting in the 1990s. Since these cultural policies have been developing and increasing during the last twenty years, and taking into consideration the issues of decolonialization present in the broader panorama of Latin America, this article’s goal is to discuss the growing presence of artists and dance collectives addressing ethnic and social issues in their work in an attempt to challenge established hegemonic values. In order to accomplish this task, the author refers to social theories related to decolonialization and marginalized communities of the periphery as established by various theoreticians, including Frantz Fanon, Milton Santos, Stuart Hall, Boaventura de Souza Santos, Walter Mignolo, and Anibal Quijano.

Spiritual opium and the spiritual opium war: a cultural history of arcade games and console games in 1990s China

In the 1990s, in China, arcade and console games were called “spiritual opium.” Why were video games labeled spiritual drugs, specifically opium, as opposed to other types of drugs? How did the mainstream media gradually depict video games as spiritual opium? The term “spiritual opium” carries profound historical and political connotations and is skillfully employed by media entities to disparage video games, fostering adverse perceptions among the populace. This scholarly inquiry delves into the cultural history of arcade and console games during this era. Historical and cultural methods were used to meticulously trace the genesis and evolution of the “spiritual opium” metaphor in the 1990s, scrutinizing the process through which video games were ensnared by this pejorative label. In addition, the paper also elucidates the “spiritual opium war,” a series of government-led campaigns against arcade and console games, including investigations, crackdowns on arcades, and reminiscent of Mao-era mobilizations. By doing so, this research fills a critical gap in the historiography of Chinese gaming, thereby enriching studies of the regional game industry and contributing to a broader understanding of the global gaming landscape. This article also shows how postsocialist states such as China navigate the challenges posed by the influx of video games and their perceived political threats and provides a nuanced understanding of state–media dynamics and cultural policy in postsocialist contexts.