Cultural goods creation, cultural capital formation, provision of cultural services and cultural atmosphere accumulation

The cultural atmosphere in a society is accumulated over time through the consumption of cultural services and is diminished through depreciation. Using cultural capital (e.g., cultural heritage, paintings, music scores), cultural services are provided by the cultural-services industry (e.g., museums, opera houses); cultural capital is enlarged by new cultural goods created by individuals. Individuals’ utilities are positively affected by the cultural services they consume, by the cultural goods they create and by the cultural atmosphere and the cultural capital accumulated in society. In a laissez-faire economy, individuals tend to ignore the positive external effects of their cultural-services consumption and creation of cultural goods on other individuals via accumulating cultural atmosphere and cultural capital. Consequently, suboptimally little cultural atmosphere and cultural capital will be accumulated. The efficient intertemporal allocation can be restored by introducing an appropriate subsidy that not only stimulates consumers’ demand for cultural services and the creation of new cultural goods but also enhances the accumulation of cultural atmosphere and cultural capital.

Communicating across difference: Co-cultural theory,capital and multicultural families in Korea*

Utilizing Orbe’s co-cultural theory and Bourdieu’s theories of capital, this study examines the lived experiences and the communicative interactions employed by members of seven multicultural families in South Korea. Findings show the intertwined roles of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital with co-cultural communication orientations, when interacting with members of the majority group. Particularly, findings reveal differences between Korean husbands and immigrant wives. For Korean husbands, economic and social capital are the most critical influential factors in their choices of communication orientations, while for immigrant wives, cultural and symbolic capital are most significant. Additionally, contrary to previous research, Confucianism and patriarchy played key roles in the marginalization of Korean men in multicultural families and influenced their co-cultural communication orientations.     

Cultural Capital

Economists traditionally distinguish between three forms of capital: physical capital, human capital and natural capital. This paper proposes a fourth type of capital, cultural capital. An item of cultural capital is defined as an asset embodying cultural value. The paper considers usage of the term cultural capital in other discourses, notably sociology after Bourdieu, and contrasts these with the proposed usage in economics. The relationship between cultural and economic value, upon which the economic concept of cultural capital relies, is explored, and the possible implications of cultural capital for economic analysis discussed, including issues of growth, sustainability and investment appraisal. The paper concludes with some suggestions for further theoretical and empirical research.     

Motivation,satisfaction and loyalty in the case of a film festival: differences between local and non-local participants

The last few years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of cultural events and festivals. The increasing competitiveness among them and the need to safeguard their future viability make it necessary to identify factors that not only attract and satisfy new participants, but also retain previous attendees. Accordingly, this article examines the relations between motivation, satisfaction and loyalty in the case of a cinema event the Valdivia International Film Festival (Chile), distinguishing, in turn, between local attendees and visitors. To achieve this goal, a structural equation modelling is performed based on the data obtained through a survey conducted among festival attendees. The results show there are different motivations for attending a festival (leisure, professional motives and cinema) and that some directly affect satisfaction and loyalty. Similarly, satisfaction is presented as an unquestionable antecedent of loyalty, the latter being measured by means of different concepts. Finally, the research highlights some significant differences between residents and tourists and seems to point to the existence of a kind of cultural tourism focused on an interest in the cinema, which contributes to the festival’s continuity and sustainability. All of this allows us to extract some implications for the managers of this type of event and for those responsible for the destination’s cultural and tourist policy.     

Money and moneyness: thoughts on the nature and distributional power of the ‘backbone’ of capitalist political economy

This paper contends that political economy may profit from an understanding of money that is both able to account for its systemic importance as well as money’s specific role for the contemporary distribution of wealth. ‘Money-ness’ is a strategic factor in profit-making and capital accumulation. If we accord moneyness to all those instruments that make the repackaging of credit and other financial assets and liabilities and their capitalization possible, we arrive at an understanding of money that underscores the Marxian analysis of the structural importance of the money relation for capital accumulation that is up to speed with current financial innovations. As a social structure and process, moneymaking through capital permeates society. As a public-private deal between the state, rentiers, banks, and taxpayers that has existed since the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, it binds these actors together in shifting relations of dependence. Under financial capitalism today, what counts as money and how far moneyness stretches into the realms of financial innovation has been a core object of struggle in the public-private deal of money creation.     

Cultural intermediaries in the making of branded music events: digital cultural capital in tension

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have overlooked how intermediaries and their digital cultural capital enhance the relationship between brand values and consumer identities; their specific uses of digital technologies; and how those uses are displayed in activities where intermediaries create consumer experiences. This paper thus explores the role that cultural intermediaries (music bloggers and an advertising agency) and their digital cultural capital play in making and communicating a branded music event. Briefly, intermediaries used a set of digital technologies (social media, guest lists, blogs, and websites) to create and orchestrate an authentic and exclusive experience between brands and consumers. We draw on empirical material from interviews and ethnographic work conducted in Santiago, Chile. Our study identifies digital technologies used by cultural intermediaries in communicating branded music events, including as: promotional tools; advertising campaign efficacy evaluation mechanisms; and relational objects that connect advertising agencies, music bloggers, brands, and consumers. By exploring the tensions and conflicts that arise among bloggers and advertising executives, we shed light on the uses and exchanges of digital cultural capital for commercial purposes, resulting from the connections between intermediaries that come from different fields of cultural production.     

The political economy of cultural spending: evidence from Italian cities

We investigate the relationship between Italian municipalities’ spending on culture in the 1990s and 2000s and a number of political variables—such as a left/right dummy, an election-year dummy and a term-limit indicator—controlling, among other things, for economic and socio-demographic characteristics of the population, the level of human capital and instruction, proxies of social capital, the extent of private financing of cultural provisions and touristic and artistic relevance. We use a panel-data regression analysis and find that, indeed, some determinants of public expenditures on culture are political. In particular, we identify an electoral cycle in which the incumbent spends less on culture in an election year. This result is robust for variations in the empirical model accounting for both the persistence and spatial interdependence of cultural expenditures by municipalities.     

The role of cultural heritage in attracting skilled individuals

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by built heritages and cultural environments, alongside other locational factors, in explaining the growth of human capital in Sweden. We distinguish between urban, natural and cultural qualities as different sources of regional attractiveness and estimate their influence on the observed growth of individuals with at least three years of higher education during 2001–2010. Neighborhood-level data are used, and unobserved heterogeneity and spatial dependencies are modeled by employing random effects estimations and an instrumental variable approach. Our findings indicate that the local supply of built heritages and cultural environments explain a significant part of human capital growth in Sweden. Results suggest that these types of cultural heritages are important place-based resources with a potential to contribute to improved regional attractiveness and growth.     

REVIEW ESSAY

This paper interrogates the concept of cultural intermediaries through an analysis of the New Zealand designer fashion industry, an industry composed of small networked enterprises which offer a wide range of educational, aesthetic and business services. The authors argue that ‘cultural intermediaries’ can no longer be thought of in terms of particular occupations, spaces or events. Instead, cultural mediation is more productively understood as a function of the multiplicity of activities and relationships organised around the new economic spaces of the fashion industry, all of which are subject to the exigencies of capital accumulation. Moreover, the proliferating activities that comprise the New Zealand fashion industry are profoundly gendered, both in terms of women's numerical dominance and the gendered skills and attributes that these activities mobilise. These women are all producing, mediating and consuming fashion, making up the complex economic and cultural networks which comprise the fashion industry and also supporting the industry through their own fashion consumption and the creation of a broader fashionable sensibility. It is in this context that the authors ask ‘Who needs cultural intermediaries indeed?’     

SYMBOLIC PRODUCTION AND VALUE IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES

This article discusses value creation within the fields of cultural production. It departs from Bourdieu's field model, and seeks to develop it to fit unrestricted cultural production, for example television production. Bourdieu for the most part discussed the production of value (or forms of capital) in relation to fields of restricted cultural production, that is, within the fine arts (e.g. art, literature). Although one of his best known works dealt with television, one cannot say that he used the possibilities inherent in his own theory thoroughly enough to analyse this field of mass production. This article builds on recent discussions on the role of field theory in media studies, and seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of value production in fields of large-scale or unrestricted cultural production. It is argued that the conflation of commercial value with other kinds of value is more intense in the subfield of unrestricted cultural production, as production in this part of the field needs to obey outer demand in a way that production at the pole of restricted production does not.     

Cultural participation in major Chinese cities

We study the socioeconomic determinants of cultural participation in thirteen major Chinese cities for a broad range of indicators that cover highbrow and popular cultures. Consistent with previous studies from high-income countries, we find strong support for the elitism hypothesis: education and income increase participation in a broad range of cultural activities. There are also some exceptions. Interestingly, we also find a U-shaped relation between participation and city development for free and publicly supplied culture. Moreover, the impact of education, and to some extent also income, is weaker in richer cities. These findings contribute to understanding China’s key policy objective of promoting equal access to culture.     

The impacts of fundraising periods and geographic distance on financing music production via crowdfunding in Brazil

We conduct an analysis of 1835 pledges to 10 music production projects hosted on the largest Brazilian crowdfunding platform, namely the Catarse Web site, and we assess the relation between the fundraising accumulation period, the donor–entrepreneur distance and the propensity of donors to back projects. Our results suggest a significantly negative association between distance and the value of capital pledged to projects, which is consistent with the notion that the entrepreneur’s network of close contacts might play a central role in funding. Furthermore, our results contradict the idea that crowdfunding reduces the inhibiting effect of donor–entrepreneur distance. In addition, the results show that a long project exposure is associated with higher values of pledges. These results suggest practical implications for the study of crowdfunding as a financing platform. This study contributes to the literature on the use of crowdfunding as an alternative funding source in a major emerging market.     

Audio-visual production and shortcomings of distribution in organisation studies

This article considers the relation of audio-visual media to research in organisation studies, a scholarly market of the cultural economy. Guided theoretically by affect, audio-visual media place emphasis on mental and physical sensations that most organisation studies research, whether objective or subjective, tends to overlook or only imply. Too often, underlying disciplinary assumptions impose controls that are incompatible with the transmission of affect. Now, it is the case that those who have accumulated cultural capital within the field privilege conventions already found in the logic of the printed word. At issue is the implication that the culture of print effectually suppresses experimentation with audio-visual media as an alternative form of presentation. To illustrate the problem, I draw on first-hand experience of efforts to establish the research contribution of a short film.     

Music consumption at the dawn of the music industry: the rise of a cultural fad

This paper discusses the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics of consumers and their past consumption are less effective in explaining the decision of purchasing a cultural good than the characteristics of the product itself, which allow for imitative behaviors and are at the basis of distinction. While the former approaches are well documented in the literature, the latter refers to Bourdieu’s idea of objectified cultural capital, which has been revisited and empirically explored. Because the various causal effects interact with each other, this paper tests a theoretical model which matches individual characteristics of the consumer with the properties of the cultural product. Specifically, we discussed the emergence of a new version of a cultural good, which is able to broaden the dimension of the market by gaining rapid success in its audience. This diffusion pattern is a quite rare event, but disruptive for the market and extremely profitable for the producer. The authors label this occurrence a disruptive cultural fad and try to understand the determinants of its adoption. The hypotheses of the model are tested on a unique dataset of microdata of purchasing transactions in Milan in the early nineteenth century, when the music by Gioachino Rossini emerged as a disruptive cultural fad at the dawn of the music industry. Results show that key features of a successful disruptive cultural fad are the role of some specific patterns of personal past consumption, the capabilities of generating positive network externalities in the consumption, and, surprisingly, the lack of negative ones due to any possible hip or snob effect.     

江苏国家历史文化名城保护地方立法发展、比较及完善

江苏13座城市入选国家历史文化名城,体现了该地区深厚的文化历史积淀和优秀的城市精神内涵。地方立法作为一种法律保障,对加强历史名城保护、弘扬优秀传统文化、约束各类破坏行为起到重要作用。对江苏10座地级市的名城保护地方立法发展进行梳理,对各市立法名称、目的、体例、保护对象、保护措施、法律责任进行比较研究,提出修订和新增相关立法时可采用的思路和建议,可为丰富名城保护法治理论提供参考。     

A microeconometric study of theatre demand

We develop a model of theatre demand with learning by consuming, and test some of its implications on a large random sample of theatregoers and non-theatregoers. This seems to be the most comprehensive econometric study of demand for the theatre from individual data. We hypothesize that each time the consumer watches a play, he experiences a degree of pleasant or unpleasant surprise on the basis of which he will revise his future expectations of his own taste. The learning phase is likely to be unusually long for highly differentiated cultural goods. Our set of data contains unique information about the full price and the fixed cost of theatre, the objective quality of the outing, past experience of and taste for the theatre, and consumption of substitute leisure activities such as reading, television and cinema. Our methodology and data enable us to infer price elasticity on survey data from knowledge of theatregoing experience and taste. After controlling for many variables, we conclude that demand for the theatre is price-elastic, which contradicts previous estimates on aggregate time-series data. Moreover, we estimate demand conditional on past attendance after controlling for selectivity bias. Satisfaction reported by consumers after the last play is also estimated and interpreted as an ordinal conditional choice.     

Against accumulation: lifestyle minimalism,de-growth and the present post-ecological condition

The post-2008 financial crisis era has seen an upsurge in popular cultural narratives that implicitly challenge principles of economic productivity, consumption and growth by lamenting a so-called ‘world of too much,’ advocating ethics of minimalism, and renouncing everyday busyness. Narratives range from lifestyle advice on simplicity and de-cluttering private homes, to quests for the reduction of individual labor, communication, social contacts and distraction. This article questions these narratives in terms of eco-politics. Using Kate Soper’s concept of ‘alternative hedonism,’ the article analyzes a selection of five self-help books and one blog that promote lifestyle minimalism in order to interrogate their potential in stimulating de-growth eco-politics through popular culture. Drawing on post-ecological theory, it argues that narratives of lifestyle minimalism are paradoxical in that they resist yet at the same time promote capitalist cultures of growth. To overcome this limitation, it is crucial to understand and transform the narrative premises of lifestyle minimalism in ways that contextualize problems of ‘excess,’ ‘clutter’ and ‘a world of too much’ as intrinsic to the current system of capital accumulation. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential of an eco-movement that joins the alternative culture of minimalist hedonism with the eco-political agenda of de-growth.     

The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa: The Relationship Between Funding,Capacity and Research Community in a Nascent Field

The emergence of vibrant research communities of computer scientists in Kenya and Uganda has occurred in the context of neoliberal privatization, commercialization, and transnational capital flows from donors and corporations. We explore how this funding environment configures research culture and research practices, which are conceptualized as two main components of a research community. Data come from a three-year longitudinal study utilizing interview, ethnographic and survey data collected in Nairobi and Kampala. We document how administrators shape research culture by building academic programs and training growing numbers of PhDs, and analyze how this is linked to complicated interactions between political economy, the epistemic nature of computer science and sociocultural factors like entrepreneurial leadership of key actors and distinctive cultures of innovation. In a donor-driven funding environment, research practice involves scientists constructing their own localized research priorities by adopting distinctive professional identities and creatively structuring projects. The neoliberal political economic context thus clearly influenced research communities, but did not debilitate computing research capacity nor leave researchers without any agency to carry out research programs. The cases illustrate how sites of knowledge production in Africa can gain some measure of research autonomy, some degree of global competency in a central arena of scientific and technological activity, and some expression of their regional cultural priorities and aspirations. Furthermore, the cases suggest that social analysts must balance structure with culture, place and agency in their approaches to understanding how funding and political economy shape scientific knowledge.     

The cinematic mode of production: towards a political economy of the postmodern

Cinema marks a profound shift in the relation between image and text – indeed it is the watershed of the subjugation of language by image. Cinema as an innovative shift in both industrial capitalism and cultural practice marks, therefore, the restructuring of language function in accord with the changing protocols of techno-capitalism. The ‘talking cure’, otherwise known as psychoanalysis, is itself a symptom of cinema. As a precursor for TV and computing and Internet, cinema transacts value transfer across the image utilising a production process that can be grasped as founded under the rubric of what I call ‘the attention theory of value’. The deterritorialised factory that is the contemporary image, is an essential component of globalisation, neo-imperialism, and militarisation, organising, as it were, the consent (ignorance of) and indeed desire for these latter processes. Thus ‘cinema’, as a paradigm for image-mediated social production, implies a cultural turn for political economics. It also implies that it is the interstitial, informal activities that transpire across the entire surface of the socius as well as in the vicissitudes of the psyche and experience that are the new (untheorised) production sites for global capital – and therefore among the significant sites for the waging of the next revolution.