Implications For Cultural Policy Research Articles

How Commercialized Festivals Affect the Transmission of Traditional Religious Rituals: A Case Study of the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto

The Gion Matsuri, a historic and culturally significant festival held annually in Kyoto, Japan, has undergone substantial commercialization in recent decades. This paper explores the impact of commercialization on the transmission of traditional religious rituals within the festival. Through a detailed case study approach, this research examines the historical evolution of the Gion Matsuri, the factors driving its commercialization, and the resultant changes in ritual practices. The study draws on data collected through participant observation, interviews with stakeholders, and analysis of secondary sources. The findings reveal a complex interplay between the economic benefits of commercialization and the preservation of cultural integrity. While commercialization has ensured the financial sustainability and global visibility of the festival, it has also introduced alterations that challenge the traditional and spiritual essence of its rituals. The paper discusses the perspectives of different stakeholders, including traditionalists, commercial entities, and tourists, and highlights the importance of balancing commercial interests with cultural preservation. The implications for cultural policy and festival management are considered, offering insights into best practices for maintaining the cultural authenticity of traditional festivals in a modern, globalized context.

Cultural diversity and cultural trade: theory and an application to the motion picture industry

ABSTRACT The relationship between trade liberalisation and cultural diversity is a long-standing and controversial issue in many countries that strive to promote free flow of cultural trade as well as to sustain local cultural production. The controversy is partly attributable to multiple meanings attached to the notion of cultural diversity. In this paper we propose three operational definitions of cultural diversity relevant in the context of international cultural trade: national, inter-national and global cultural diversity. We suggest measures of these three types of cultural diversity and apply them to data for the global motion picture industry covering 37 countries/regions for years 2009–2019. We argue that the three types of cultural diversity may operate in opposite directions as a result of lower trade barriers. The paper concludes by considering the implications for cultural policy arising from our analysis.

Contingent availability: a case-based approach to understanding availability in streaming services and cultural policy implications

ABSTRACT Streaming services have emerged as increasingly important access points for cultural content, often promising, as Netflix does, ‘unlimited entertainment’. However, the actual conditions of availability remain under-examined. While streaming services typically contain a vast selection of objects, they certainly do not hold the total amount of all possible items. Streaming services thus pose new challenges for policymakers who wish to ensure access to, and availability of culture. In this paper, we build on previous research to develop the term ‘contingent availability’ and discuss how cultural items are made available in streaming contexts. Departing from a pyramid model of availability, we investigate these levels empirically through a case-based approach. Nine Norwegian award-winning or critically acclaimed books, movies and TV series were strategically selected to highlight how availability in streaming services is contingent upon multiple conditions. For each case, we assess the ways in which Norwegian cultural policy influences production, distribution and availability of culture. We discuss how cultural policy measures do secure availability for most of the cases, but is unable to effectively combat fragmentation of availability.

콘텐츠산업의 문화정책적 의미와 지평의 탐색

이 연구는 콘텐츠산업에 대한 그동안의 산업정책적 접근을 넘어서서 앞으로 다가올 미래에 콘텐츠산업의 지속적인 성장을 담보하기 위해 필요한 문화정책적 접근의 필요성을 강조하고 있다. 이를 위해 첫째, 콘텐츠의 공적 재화와 사적 재화, 그리고 혼합재적 특징을 논의함으로써 콘텐츠의 본질적인 특성을 규명하고, 콘텐츠의 공공성 차원에도 주목한다. 둘째, 콘텐츠의 사회문화적 가치에 대한 재인식을 위해 콘텐츠의 생산, 유통, 소비 전 과정에서 나타나는 사회적 관계성을 강조하고, 이와 더불어 콘텐츠산업이 문화예술의 영역과는 어떤 접점을 이루고 있는지에 대해 논의한다. 마지막으로 콘텐츠의 미래발전을 위한 새로운 콘텐츠 문화정책을 위해 어떤 정책적인 지향점과 시각을 견지해야 할 것인지에 대해 검토해보기로 한다. 콘텐츠산업을 발전시키기 위한 정책적인 노력은 궁극적으로 콘텐츠 향유를 통한 삶의 질 제고를 위한 미래지향적 접근으로 이어져야 할 것이다. 결론에서는 콘텐츠의 사회문화적 가치 재인식, 문화예술과의 관계 재정립, 문화매개자에 대한 관심, 한류의 패러다임 전환 등에 대한 논의를 통해 콘텐츠 문화정책의 새로운 가치지향을 모색한다.

The Arts-based Social Prescription for Tackling Loneliness and Its Implications for Cultural Policy: the English Case

The Arts-based Social Prescription for Tackling Loneliness and Its Implications for Cultural Policy: the English Case

Culture as commons: theoretical challenges and empirical evidence from occupied cultural spaces in Italy

ABSTRACTWhat happens when we try to understand art as a commons? Elinor Ostrom [(1990/2012). Governing the commons. Cambridge University Press] challenged Hardin’s “The tragedy of the commons” [(1968). Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248] demonstrating that the governance of common pool resources is not always destined to failure. Ostrom’s analysis was initially applied to the management of shared natural resources; however, over time the term “commons” has also been used to describe non-tangible resources, specifically knowledge. Can Ostrom’s theory of the commons inform artistic practice? This article investigates some challenges presented by these research questions and their implications for cultural policy. In order to provide an empirical ground for the discussion of this topic, this paper will analyse the case studies of two cultural spaces in Italy, Teatro Valle (Rome) and Asilo Filangieri (Naples), which were occupied by groups of cultural professionals and managed as commons between 2011 and 2016; the outcomes of these occupations indicate possible ways to develop a commons-oriented approach to culture.

Cultural Rights and Cultural Policy: identifying the cultural policy implications of culture as a human right

This article explores the parameters of ‘culture’ as a Human Right – Cultural Rights – and culture in the Human Rights system of international law and its now globally-pervasive set of axioms. The article attends to definitional issues on the use of culture to determine critical loci of human identity formation and fundamental ethics, and the use of culture to conceptualise the scope and scale of human freedom. Its aim is to define Cultural Rights in direct relation to the interests of cultural policy making and more importantly in relation to the scholarly field of cultural policy research. This will involve defining the legal-institutional sphere of Human Rights and range of applications but only insofar as to focus on issues central to current cultural policy research and its contingent questions of interpretation (such as the meaning of a ‘cultural right’ in particular social contexts). The secondary aim of this article is to define how cultural policy research (historically invested in particular historical evolution of national arts traditions and heritage management) could be central to the study of ‘rights-based’ global development.

Peer-to-peer file sharing and cultural trade protectionism

We examine the Internet’s impact on the cross-border distribution of cultural goods and assess its implications for cultural policy and cultural diversity. We present a stylized model of a two-country economy where governments are endowed with political preferences over the consumption of domestic content and enact import barriers and subsidies to protect it. We introduce peer-to-peer file sharing as a distinct distribution channel enabled by the Internet that provides access to all media products at a low cost. We report two main findings. First, the Internet renders legacy cultural policy inefficient, and the elimination of import barriers and the reduction of subsidized production can be desirable even when governments exhibit paternalistic preferences favoring the consumption of domestic content. And second, even though the Internet increases cultural diversity within countries, it can also reduce diversity across them.

Hyperinstrumentalism and cultural policy: means to an end or an end to meaning?

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the implications for cultural policy of the logic of the instrumental view of culture taken to its conclusion. Policy developments that establish sets of justifications and rationales that have nothing to do with the cultural content of the policy concerned, but which arise from a deliberate realignment of policy frameworks, establish a form of hyperinstrumentalism. With hyperinstrumentalism the focus on outcomes and the ends of policy means that cultural policy is only as important as the ends to which it is directed. As such, hyperinstrumentalisation demonstrates the consequences for the sector of conditions where claims about the value of culture are irrelevant to political actors. The paper questions whether sense can be made of this shift as a coherent and strategic political choice, rather than as a simple assault on culture. The case of Northern Ireland’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure is used to illustrate this. The authors question whether hyperinstrumentalism undermines the justification for an autonomous domain of cultural policy.

Cultural rights and their contribution to sustainable development: implications for cultural policy

This article aims to analyse the meaning and implications of cultural rights for cultural policies concerned with sustainable development. Although references to both cultural rights and sustainable development have become widespread within cultural policy documents in recent decades, the actual conceptual and operational implications often remain vague, as an ambitious discourse that may conceal a poverty of resources and capacities. As a result, the ideal horizon suggested by cultural rights and sustainable development may not always be achieved in practice, nor are the mechanisms to achieve it always well known. In this respect, the article aims to dissect the actual requirements posed by cultural rights and sustainable development, including their different notions and areas of synergy and intersections, in order to shed light on relevant cultural policy approaches. To this end, a range of examples taken from a variety of contexts will also be examined as areas of expressed needs or areas of possible solutions.

The political economy of ‘creative industries’

This article critically examines the fundamental premise of the creative industries discourse: human creativity as a distinctive input in the production process is the core source of economic value generation. It points out that this discourse emerged within the political-economic context of our time where creativity and knowledge are celebrated, while human labour itself as a factor of production and social force is increasingly de-legitimised and marginalised. The article argues that the radical potential in the discourse (the labour-value nexus) has failed to be recognised, and asks how it can be rediscovered and linked to contemporary socio-economic debates. Turning its attention to the creativity residing in the cultural sector, this article also argues that we should better understand its economic characteristics (productivity-low) and social consequences (diversity-high), and their implications for cultural policy.

Success without Design: Hallyu (Korean Wave) and Its Implications for Cultural Policy

The huge popularity of Korean pop culture overseas, labeled Hallyu, otherwise known as the Korean Wave, is an unprecedented event in the cultural history of Korea. Many foreign observers tend to see it as the result of the Korean government`s policy efforts. This paper claims that Hallyu in essence is an unintended ???success without design.??? No one, including the Korean government, intentionally planned it. There were five key factors that made it possible: the competitiveness of Korean culture industries, political economic changes in East Asian countries, entrepreneurs in show business, fragmentary governmental support, and global digital networks. Each of these factors has independently contributed in its own way to the success of Hallyu. The fact that Hallyu is not a product of any deliberate plan has some important implications for cultural policy and culture industries.

Behind the Veil: The Strategic Use of Religious Garb

There is anecdotal evidence that since the late 20th century young, educated, and urban Muslim women veil more frequently and strictly. Does this imply that the classical sociological theories of religion, which predict that modernization should cause a decrease in religious behaviours, do not apply to Islam? We investigate this question using structural equation modelling to analyse three datasets, one from Turkey, one covering 25 Muslim countries, and one from Belgium where Muslims are a minority. We find that averagely religious women conform to the classical theories’ predictions. But among highly religious women the modernizing forces—education, occupation and higher income, urban living, and contacts with non-Muslims—increase veiling. We conjecture that for highly religious women modernizing factors raise the risk and temptation in women's environments that imperil their reputation for modesty: veiling would then be a strategic response, a form either of commitment to prevent the breach of religious norms or of signalling women’s piety to their communities. Our findings have implications for cultural policy and Muslim integration in Europe.

Participation and provision in arts & culture – bridging the divide

ABSTRACTSuccessive policies and efforts to increase participation in a range of arts and cultural activities have tended to focus on the profile and attitude of individuals and target groups in order justify public – and therefore achieve more equitable – funding. Rationales for such intervention generally reflect the policy and political regime operating in different eras, but widening participation, increasing access and making the subsidised arts more inclusive have been perennial concerns. On the other hand, culture has also been the subject of a supply-led approach to facility provision, whether local amenity-based (“Every Town Should Have One” – Lane, 1979. Arts centres – every town should have one. London: Paul Elek), civic centre or flagship, and this has also mirrored periodic growth in investment through various capital for the arts, municipal expansion, urban regeneration, European regional development and lottery programmes. Research into participation has consequently taken a macro, sociological, “class distinction” approach, including longitudinal national surveys such as Taking Part, Target Group Index, Active People and Time Use Surveys, whilst actual provision is dealt with at the micro, amenity level in terms of its impact and catchment. This article therefore considers how this situation has evolved and the implications for cultural policy, planning and research by critiquing successive surveys of arts attendance and participation and associated arts policy initiatives, including the importance of local facilities such as arts centres, cinemas and libraries. A focus on cultural mapping approaches to accessible cultural amenities reveals important evidence for bridging the divide between cultural participation and provision.

Expected job creation across the cultural industries: a sectoral division and its implications for cultural policy

The cultural industries have come to the forefront as the potential job creators of the future. However, building on the concentric circles model and production system view of the cultural industries, we pose that many young and small organizations in the industries lack the motivation, ability, and opportunity to become job creator. We reason that industry location crucially affects job creation expectations. Evidence from an international sample of early-stage entrepreneurs strongly supports this thesis. We identify a divide between entrepreneurs in the ‘core’ cultural industries vis-à-vis those in the ‘non-core’ cultural industries, where the latter group is indistinguishable from entrepreneurs in non-cultural industries in their job creation expectations. Simultaneously, those in the core cultural industries are distinct from others in their expectations to maintain the same number of jobs, rather than grow. These findings have important implications for cultural policy aimed at promoting employment growth in the cultural industries.

An Exploratory Study on the Local Indie Music Scene - Focus on Current Status, Challenges, and Cultural Policy Implications of Busan Indie Music Scene

An Exploratory Study on the Local Indie Music Scene - Focus on Current Status, Challenges, and Cultural Policy Implications of Busan Indie Music Scene

An Uncomfortable Encounter between Religion and the Secular : Cultural Policy Implications from the Xingjiaosi Case in China

An Uncomfortable Encounter between Religion and the Secular : Cultural Policy Implications from the Xingjiaosi Case in China

What is Cultural Science? (And what it is not.)

Abstract Hartley and Potts (2014) argue that cultural science represents a new theoretical and methodological approach to the study of cultural structure, dynamics and use. We explain how this differs from the extant analytic frameworks of cultural studies, both as a research program and as a policy platform. The central idea is to reconceptualize what culture is, through a reinterpretation of what culture does. We argue that the semiotic productivity of culture makes groups – which we call demes – and demes make knowledge (what we call the externalism hypothesis); and the interaction of demes makes newness – new knowledge. Cultural science, then, is a new model of the cultural processes involved in socio-economic evolution and innovation of knowledge-making demes. The paper is in three sections, the first on the exhaustion of cultural studies; the second on the emergence of cultural science; and the third on some implications for cultural policy – illustrated by reference to Matthew Arnold’s policy on language preservation.

The Northern Rivers media sector: making do in a high-profile rural location

In this paper, we discuss the screen media businesses and production milieu that has developed in the predominantly rural region of the Northern Rivers, Australia, over the past 20 years. Spread across a number of towns and small cities each at some distance from each other, this screen milieu would seem to go against the prevailing logic for screen media to concentrate in globally connected cities. Taking up Allen J. Scott’s suggestion that the new capitalism of the twenty-first century is producing restructuring effects in many of the interstitial spaces between large cities, this article examines the spatial assemblages of the screen media and related creative industries sectors in one such space. We demonstrate how screen media actors in this rural region are participating in the wider cultural economy and explore its cultural policy implications.

Arts as a Catalyst for Social Capital - Art-based Action Research and Implications for Cultural Policy -

Arts as a Catalyst for Social Capital - Art-based Action Research and Implications for Cultural Policy -