How should cultural diversity be measured? An application using the French publishing industry

Despite the lack of a clear definition of the concept, “cultural diversity” has remained a core issue for more than a decade (WTO, UNESCO, etc.). The aim of this paper is to begin to fill this gap. We argue that cultural diversity is a multi-dimensional concept and that accurate metrics must rely on three criteria: variety, balance and disparity. We also stress that supplied and consumed diversity have to be distinguished. We apply this set of multiple measures of diversity to publishing data for France over the period 1990–2003. Our main result is that the situation of the publishing industry in terms of cultural diversity is highly dependent on the dimension considered. Hence, diversity increases when variety is the sole consideration, whereas taking balance or disparity into account leads to the opposite conclusion. This issue raises a series of questions about the use of diversity measures in a policy debate concerned with furthering cultural diversity.

商丘古城文化旅游战略研究

文化遗产是一个地区历史和文化的见证,是对历史的记录,对现代人而言是具有重要价值的历史文化资源。历史文化名城商丘,在国家相关政策引导下,积极进行有机更新。通过调研的方法,依托文化资源与旅游业相融合发展的政策背景,结合商丘的文化遗产状况分析商丘古城文化旅游建设过程的自身优势以及在发展文化旅游时存在的问题,提出发展文化旅游建设需要管理者积极转变思路,以游客需求为中心提供相关服务;进行部门合作,规范管理;政府给与产业政策倾斜,多产业融合的措施和建议,以期为商丘古城旅游建设添砖加瓦。     

Determinants of historic and cultural landmark designation: why we preserve what we preserve

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This article builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow us to explain why some properties were designated landmarks (or landmark districts) and others were not. The results identify the influence of property characteristics, local socio-economic factors, and measures of historic and cultural quality. The results emphasize the political economy of implementing preservation policies.     

Between business and morality: cultural politics in independent bookshops in China

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how cultural businesses may facilitate contentious political activity in authoritarian contexts. Existing research in Western liberal democracies has shown the widespread political activism of actors in the cultural and creative industries. Whether such activism exists in authoritarian society, how it may differ in character and form, and what implications this will have for our understanding of relations between business, politics, and culture in authoritarian countries remain to be addressed. Drawing on data collected from 55 ‘independent bookshops’ in China, I illustrate how these organisations perform ‘cultural politics,’ a type of political participation in which actors employ mainly symbolic means to express social and political concerns. The organisations’ economic relations and conditions facilitate their efforts to create spaces in which contentious questions can be raised, sensitive topics explored, and alternative ideas expressed, despite the Chinese state’s political regulation of the cultural sphere. The finding of the economic embeddedness of cultural politics sheds new light on our understanding of the political economy of cultural businesses in contemporary China.     

The Subsidized Muse: Government and the Arts in Western Europe and the United States

Using the neo-classical justifications for government support of the arts that Dick Netzer discussed in The Subsidized Muse as a starting point, the article contends that market failure is not an useful concept to understand and explain cultural policies and the degree of government involvement, particularly when viewed from a comparative perspective. The basic fault is that historical- institutional arrangements and the role of non-state actors in the formation of cultural policies are not taken into account. Discussing some aspects of the institutional framework in the development of French, Swedish and U.S. cultural policies, the article concludes with a call for the use of neo-institutionalist perspectives in analyzing government intervention in the arts field.     

Integrity in UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A comparative study for rural landscapes

Since 2005, Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) is the standard by which United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) evaluates world cultural heritage site suitability. The sites worthy of UNESCO preservation as well as the parameters used to demonstrate OUV are diverse. Our study focused on the uniquely distinguished rural landscape sites and the OUV parameter of integrity. Integrity however, is an elusive concept for which UNESCO provides no definitional protocol, and for which the scientific community objects to a static or pure historical interpretation. Given this, our work aims to analyse the concept of integrity and how it can be used to preserve the heritage of rural landscapes. After reviewing the UNESCO approach, we focused on the international scientific debate on the meaning and application of integrity. We designed and conducted a comparative study of UNESCO rural landscapes selected from the 2011 World Heritage List. Documents describing the historical, rural, and agro-ecological features of each of the fourteen rural sites were analysed. From this, several historical and ecological parameters were chosen as “values to have” and several socio-economic and management parameters were chosen as “values to maintain” to assess the integrity of each landscape. Our results found integrity to be a value of both cultural and natural landscapes and that it is key to site identity. We demonstrated that UNESCO assigns a high value to the following parameters: historical features, traditional crops and local products, land-use and agricultural practice permanence, and the presence of architecture related to agricultural activity. Finally, we found the relationship between culture and nature to characterize best the integrity of a rural landscape, rather than nature or culture alone.     

Using contingent valuation and cost-benefit analysis to design a policy for restoring cultural heritage

Historical heritage is proving an ideal field to apply contingent valuation for estimating individual as well as collective preferences as goods tend to be non-market and publicly owned. Yet despite this, findings are seldom used to draw up cultural policies or assess cultural heritage related projects. The current paper thus posits an approach which merges contingent valuation and cost-benefit analysis to design a cultural policy aimed at restoring the urban cultural heritage of the city of Valdivia (Chile). Contingent valuation is used to estimate the expected benefits from heritage for both local residents and tourists visiting Valdivia. We then apply cost-benefit analysis to the findings to evaluate a project to restore the historical ensemble through a non-profit foundation. The originality of the proposal lies in its merging the two approaches and may prove appealing to developing countries in which much of the heritage has been neglected and left to deteriorate, and where few or no resources have been devoted and a lack of effective institutional schemes to address the situation is evident.     

Culture and Commerce

The cost aspects of supplying cultural goods and services have raised many basic questions concerning the economic activity of cultural institutions. There is more or less a consensus that the same criteria that apply to the cost aspects of any business also apply to cultural institutions. The nature of the products supplied and the stress on revenues earned are different. A key question to be asked by each society is how to balance the product mix offered by its cultural institutions taking into consideration both the societal valuation of the public goods provided and the earning potential of the institution. This essay examines some of the questions that occur at this intersection of culture and commerce.     

Determining the Value of Cultural Goods: How Much (or How Little) Does Contingent Valuation Tell Us?

Contingent valuation methods (CVM) are now well established as a means of measuring the nonmarket demand for cultural goods and services. When combined with valuations provided through market processes (where relevant), an overall assessment of the economic value of cultural commodities can be obtained. Within a neoclassical framework, such assessments are thought to provide a complete picture of the value of cultural goods. But are there aspects of the value of cultural goods which are not fully captured, or not captured at all, within such a model? This paper argues that CVM provides an incomplete view of the nonmarket value of cultural goods, and that alternative measures need to be developed to provide a fuller account.     

Visitors’ preferences for preserving the attributes of a world heritage site

UNESCO world cultural heritage sites, in particular landscapes, impose several land use restrictions and consequently impact the welfare of various stakeholders. As the preservation of the denomination implies costs, it is of utmost importance to identify and value stakeholders’ preferences. This paper applies discrete choice experiments to the Alto Douro Wine Region, classified by UNESCO as world heritage site. The results suggest a clear hierarchy of attributes. In addition, the introduction of both socioeconomic variables and interaction terms provides useful insights on systematic heterogeneity of preferences with interesting directions for heritage safeguarding.     

Cultural participation in Europe: Can we identify common determinants?

This article examines the extent to which demographic and socioeconomic characteristics influence the decision to visit and the number of visits to museums, art galleries, historical monuments, and archaeological sites. Using ordered probit models based on data for 350,000 adults in 24 EU countries, we find that the likelihood and number of such visits depend mainly on per capita household income, education, labor market status, and country of birth. Attained characteristics such as education and income have remarkably similar positive effects on cultural participation across the countries in our sample, while the effects of age and gender are both weaker and less consistent across countries. We conclude that cultural distinctions along the lines of socioeconomic attainment are stable even in very different country contexts with varying cultural policies and economic conditions. We discuss the way these results inform three research topics: identification of the characteristics of visitors to museums and historical sites in order to attract new audiences; the effect of public spending on culture on accessibility to cultural sites; and cross-national variation in cultural stratification.     

中国历史文化名城保护公益诉讼研究 ——以北京市为例

保护以北京为代表的国家历史文化名城需要与时俱进,如何以法治思维和法治方式对历史文化名城的保护工作固本强基,是当下面临的一项重要使命与重大课题.近年来全国多地的实践结果显示,公益诉讼为将历史文化名城保护纳入法治轨道提供了有效抓手,其不仅有利于激发社会公众的参与热情,而且也有助于发挥司法机关的监督力量.然而,将公益诉讼机制...     

Netflix: global hegemon or facilitator of frictionless digital trade?

Trade in cultural products has traditionally been constrained by a combination of law and technology. In Europe, digital sellers based in a given EU country are not always able to distribute across borders. In January 2016, US-based Netflix announced an expansion to 243 countries, accomplishing cross-border distribution through business strategy. Changes in law or technology that facilitate cross-national cultural trade have traditionally drawn the concern of observers worried about the cultural heritage—and products—of small markets. The expansion raises questions about what Netflix is doing. Is it a cultural hegemon, distributing US fare into 243 countries? Or it is a facilitator of free trade, making the products of even small countries more available outside their home markets (relative to traditional distribution)? And how does the curated model—which limits the number of movies the platform wants to distribute—affect Netflix’s function? To shed light on these questions, we develop a new measure of the global availability of a repertoire, the value-weighted geographic reach. Using this measure we find, first, that Netflix makes many of the works from a wide variety of countries available in many other countries. Second, we find that theatrical distribution strongly advantages US-origin fare. Third, the pattern of origin repertoire available through Netflix also favors the USA, although less overwhelmingly. Moreover, many countries are relatively advantaged by their Netflix availability patterns. Finally, we discuss some issues related to the Netflix platform, including horizontal competition with other platforms, vertical struggles with content providers (and its backward integration into production), and we speculate on possible challenges for regulators.     

A practical approach to making accurate 3D layouts of interesting cultural heritage sites through digital models

On many occasions, the graphic information handled by people working in the cultural heritage sector is still bidimensional. Layouts showing elevations and cross sections are the most widespread tools. However, there is an increased need for carefully detailing the complexity of valuable sites with an improved accuracy. This implies the measuring and handling of three-dimensional data, using both commercial and turn-key hardware and software solutions. Taking the usual traditional process as a reference, in the present paper a new effective methodology for carrying out computer assisted delineation of layouts from cultural heritage sites, using 3D digital models, is described. The proposed procedure has been tested in five intervention projects on representative churches within the “Merindad de Aguilar de Campoo” medieval area, in the north of Spain.¹ This area has the largest collection of Romanesque art in the world, and is currently under European Heritage Site and World Heritage Site declaration process by the UNESCO.     

How effective are international copyright conventions in the music industry?

The paper is concerned with the issue of whether international copyright legislation is effective in curbing audio software counterfeiting. The paper finds that copyright conventions have not been effective in reducing audio counterfeiting to comparatively low levels. This result holds even when allowances are made for the duration of copyright convention membership and the specificity of the articles of the convention. Economic development is found to be the main determinant of low counterfeit levels. This would tend to support anecdotal evidence which indicates that economic development is a necessary condition for the active recognition of audio property rights by the general public, judiciary and police. It is also consistent with a view that pirate audio software, being an inferior good, has a more buoyant market in less developed economies. From a policy perspective the research would seem to suggest that the extensive efforts and copious attention to detail by legal experts has made little impact on counterfeit activity and is secondary in importance to the socio-economic environment in which these laws are being applied.     

The Opposition between Two Models of Labour Market Adjustment: The Case of Audiovisual and Performing Arts Activities in France and Great Britain over a Ten Year Period

The growth of employment in audiovisual andperforming arts activities during a ten year period(1981–1992) in France and in Great Britain was theresult of a double tendency: An increasing number ofindividuals with cultural occupations working incultural industries and structural changes in thelabour market (more flexible workforce, increasingfragmentation of work opportunities). Qualitativedifferences emerged between both countries, leading totwo different forms of flexibility. Full timeemployment decreased in France, while it increased inGreat Britain with, during the same period, aconsiderable growth of self-employment.This paper explores different hypotheses forexplaining such a divergence. It concedes that thestrategies of organisations, and especially the risingnumber of adhocracies (according to Mintzberg'stypology) rather the choices of workers trying tooptimise their earnings were responsible. Publicpolicies played also a central role. In Great Britainthe Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and in France, thespecific Social Security benefit for artistscontributed to the increase in self employment in thefirst case, and in temporary employment in the othercase.     

Introducing a cultural approach to technology in financial markets

This paper offers a cultural approach to technology as an alternative to what we see as a prevailing treatment of technology in social studies of finance. This latter treatment, which we refer to as the ‘tools of coordination’ approach, sees technologies as mediators of market behavior that promote standardization and coordination. While this may be one important function of some technologies, taking a cultural approach to studying financial technologies highlights other important aspects of financial activity – in particular profit making. Instead of focusing primarily on how technologies coordinate market behavior, we focus on how technologies enable profit-making practices, in particular arbitrage. In two different case studies, one examining arbitrage between stock exchanges during the late nineteenth century and the other focusing on contemporary high-frequency trading, we employ the cultural approach to technology. We find that while new technologies do eventually promote greater coordination in financial markets, they are initially deployed for the opposite purpose, to produce what we call network differentials that allow some to profit at the expense of others.     

国内外文化创意城市建设对比研究

文化创意城市发展模式对全球城市应对后工业化困境功效卓著。首先,描绘国外文化创意城市概念从“萌生”到“成熟”的路径衍化。其次,总结了国内外著名文化创意城市,维也纳、哥本哈根、巴黎、伦敦、北京、上海、深圳和杭州的发展经验。再次,从目的、方向、路径等方面通过比较视角梳理国内外文化创意城市建设的差异。最后,总结对我国文化创意城市建设的启示,认为应将文化创意城市发展融入城市总体发展规划,大力促进当前“双创工作”深入开展,并在充分尊重城市历史文化基础上凝聚市民大众共识,形成文化创意城市发展方向,来促进我国文化创意城市的发展。     

Reassembling the Cultural

The central argument in this paper is that actor-network theory (ANT) does not do ‘cultural economy’ symmetrically: it has had a lot to say about economy but much less to say about culture. This rejection of culture is ontological and epistemological: culture appears in ANT largely as an artefact of modernist thought rather than as an empirical aspect of agents' performances. And yet if ‘economy’ can be critiqued and reinstated as performative, so too can ‘culture’. To explore this, we focus on objects of concern that – unlike the financial markets that have formed the core of ANT-inspired thinking about the economy – are assembled by actors in and through what they themselves understand to be cultural materials, cultural calculations, cultural processes, cultural institutions. In such examples, ‘culture’ is continuously invoked and enacted by actors in constructing their actions, whatever critical sociologists might have to say about its ontological status. It seems paradoxical that a theoretical approach that makes sacrosanct the associations constructed by agents who assemble their own world, generally discusses ‘culture’ only from the point of view of critical epistemology. Bearing all this in mind, we argue that it is time for us to ‘reassemble’ the cultural.