Introduction

Culture, economy, policy: trends and developments

Lily Kong

Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore

Introduction

The important nexus between culture and economy isby no means a recent development nor a novel inclusionon the social science agenda. As Harvey pointed out inhis foreword to Zukin's (1988) Loft Living, the artist, asone `representative' of the cultural class, has alwaysshared a position in the market system, whether as ar-tisans or as ``cultural producers working to the com-mand of hegemonic class interest''. In the last two tothree decades, in the US and more lately, in westernEurope, cultural activities have become increasinglysigni®cant in the economic regeneration strategies inmany cities. Geographers, however, have been slow toanalyse this integration of the cultural and economic inexplicit terms, and it is only in recent years that a re-worked cultural geography (Cosgrove and Jackson,1987; Kong, 1997) and a ``new'' economic geography(Thrift and Olds, 1996) has considered the constitutiverole played by culture in economic development and theway in which economic forces are in fact culturally en-coded (see Ley, 1996 and the other papers in the specialissue of Urban Geography, 1996). Often, this relation-ship between the cultural and economic is facilitated,enhanced or hampered by policy. Yet, as in the idealisttradition, many more state cultural policies have beenbased on the notion of culture as a realm separate from,and often in opposition to, the realm of material pro-duction and economic activity than is explicitly ac-knowledged (Shuker, 1994, p. 54).

The ®ve papers that follow deal with various dimen-sions of culture, economy and policy from a number ofdistinct geographical, economic and socio-politicalcontexts. As a prelude and backdrop to these speci®cdiscussions, I will provide in this introductory review,the historical context within which to cast the ®ve con-tributorsÕ contemporary discussions. Speci®cally, I willoutline the trends and developments in the nexus be-tween culture, economy and policy, drawn primarilyfrom the literature that exists on the experiences in the

West. I will begin by taking the reader through someattempts at characterising the relationships betweenculture, economy and policy as the world enters the 21stcentury, followed by an overview of how cultural eco-nomic policies have developed from the 1950s onwards,particularly in the West. I will then provide an overviewof the papers to follow, highlighting the common areasof analyses and the distinctive contributions to the lit-erature on culture, economy and policy.

On the relationships between culture, economy, policy

Research that interrogates the mutually constitutiverelationship between culture and economy has grownmainly in recent years, a re¯ection no doubt of theconditions as we enter the 21st century. As Scott (1997,p. 323) points out,

. . . capitalism itself is moving into a phase in whichthe cultural forms and meanings of its outputs be-come critical if not dominating elements of produc-tive strategy, and in which the realm of humanculture as a whole is increasingly subject to commo-di®cation, i.e. supplied through pro®t-making insti-tutions in decentralized markets. In other words, anever-widening range of economic activity is con-cerned with producing and marketing goods andservices that are infused in one way or another withbroadly aesthetic or semiotic attributes.

The relationship between culture and economy is dia-lectical, for while local cultures contribute to the natureof economic activity, economic activity is also part ofthe culture-generating and innovation in particularplaces. While this connection is true for cultural as wellas non-cultural products, in cultural-products indus-tries, the connection has special signi®cance because ofthe ``intensity of the recursive relations between thecultural attribute of place and the logic of the localproduction system'' (Scott, 1997, p. 325).

Increasingly, local and national governments haverecognised this connection between the cultural and

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economic, and have sought to reap the bene®ts by de-liberately formulating and implementing policies thatharness the linkage. Such ``cultural economic policy'', asit is often called, has been the subject of increasing re-search attention although it is not always agreed whatconstitutes a cultural economy and a cultural economicpolicy.

As a starting point therefore, and to establish somecommon understanding for the speci®c papers tofollow, it would be useful to brie¯y take stock of thediscussion on what constitutes a cultural economy anda cultural economic policy. Lash and Urry (1994)characterise cultural industries as innovative, ¯exible,creative, existing at the intersection of the local andglobal (e.g. global distribution networks which rely onlocal distinctiveness), and at the front of the post-in-dustrial, information and knowledge-based economy.Scott (1997, p. 333) suggests that particular productionrelations and distribution methods characterise a cul-tural economy. In particular, cultural-products indus-tries can roughly be epitomised in terms of ®ve maintechnological-organisational elements: considerableamounts of human handiwork, complemented byadvanced ¯exible computer technologies; dense net-works of small- and medium-sized establishments thatare strongly dependent on one another for specialisedinputs and services (though large and relatively inte-grated ®rms are also common); huge demands on locallabour markets and enormous demands on workerskills; enjoyment of external economies, many of whichbene®t from mutual learning and cultural synergiesmade possible by the presence of many interrelated®rms and industries in one place; and the presence ofinstitutional infrastructures that ease the functioning ofthe local economy.

Given these characteristics of cultural industries, thetype of cultural work that would fall under their purviewwould include a whole range of activities, from ``the arts,the media, the crafts, fashion and design to sports,recreation, architecture and townscape, heritage, tour-ism, eating and entertainment, local history, and thecharacteristics of the cityÕs public realm and social life,its identity and external image'' (Bianchini, 1993a,b,p. 209; see also Wynne, 1992; Kearns and Philo, 1993;Landry and Bianchini, 1995). This diverges from earlierconceptions of ``culture'' as referring purely to the ``higharts''. In fact, various authors have been careful to posereminders to governments of the need to seriously rec-ognise the important contributions and impacts ofpopular culture in their cultural policies. Rie� (1993,p. 76), for example, pointedly expresses this when heargues that the prestige and economic signi®cance ofhigh culture is waning, and increasingly, operas, sym-phonies and even museums can only survive throughstate subsidy or private philanthropy. On the otherhand, he argues,

All things being equal, Wal-Mart is a better invest-ment than Gucci, just as Michael Jackson is morevaluable as a cultural commodity (both in the literalsense of return on investment for those who under-write his recordings and tours and in terms of thenumbers of people throughout the world who area�ected by him) than Yitzhak Perlman or even suchdesperate popularizers as Luciano Pavarotti (Rie�,1993, p. 76).

This is an about-turn from many earlier positions inwhich popular culture was (and sometimes, still is)constructed as commercial, inauthentic and so unworthyof government support, investment and encouragement,in opposition to `high culture' or `the arts' (Shuker,1994, p. 54).

Cultural economic policies conceive of culture in thelanguage of economics, ``with the attendant measure-ments applied to policy analysis: investment, leverage,employment, direct and indirect income e�ects, socialand spatial targeting and so forth'' (Booth and Boyle,1993, p. 22). Frith (1991, p. 140) identi®es three types ofcultural industries policy: an industrial cultural policywhich focuses on the local production of cultural goodsto be consumed nationally or exported, such as elec-tronic goods (the radio, discman, etc.) and the massmedia; a tourist cultural policy which focuses on ``thosecultural goods which can only be consumed locally ± theconsumers are the ÔimportsÕ, coming in to experienceeach cityÕs unique Ôaura''; and a cosmetic cultural policy,in which culture is a sort of ``urban make-up, to be in-vested in because it helps a place seem attractive not justto tourists but to visitors who might decide to stay ±investors looking to locate new industries, new sorts ofwhite collar employees''.

Development of cultural economic policies

Cultural economic policies are but one aspect of alarger set of policies broadly termed `cultural policies'.Bassett (1993), and Bianchini (1993a) for example, ex-amine the historical development of cultural policies inBritain and Europe respectively, and illustrate how, inthe 1950s and 1960s, cultural policies conceived of`culture' narrowly as the ``pre-electronic Ôarts''' (Bian-chini, 1993a, p. 9), with little sense of how these culturalresources could be exploited for economic developmentpurposes.

The same neglect of the economic potential of cul-tural resources was carried into the 1970s and 1980s,when cultural policies served social and political agen-das rather than economic ones. These decades werecharacterised by new urban social movements, whichprompted politicians to give greater political and cul-tural autonomy to the grassroots. As part of these

386 Introduction / Geoforum 31 (2000) 385±390

movements, politicians began to adopt a wider de®ni-tion of ``culture'' and to see cultural development as anintegral part of urban policy and politics. The goals wereto enable greater access to cultural facilities and activi-ties for all citizens, promote individual and group self-expression, encourage face-to-face interaction and pro-mote community rebuilding, and counter trends towardsdomesticisation of cultural consumption (through thegrowing popularity of television and videos). In otherwords, there was a reassertion of the city centre as a``catalyst for civic identity and public sociability''(Bianchini, 1993a, p. 10) and the primary goal of cul-tural policy was to enhance community-building. Eco-nomic (re)construction through cultural resources wasnot critically on the agenda.

However, from the mid-1980s especially, this em-phasis on personal and community development andparticipation, and the revitalisation of public social lifewas replaced by ``a language highlighting cultural poli-cyÕs potential contribution to urban economic andphysical regeneration'' (Bianchini, 1993a, p. 13). Basedon the experiences of cities such as London, Glasgow,Birmingham and Newcastle, mid-1980s to 1990s culturaleconomic policy may be characterised in four ways.First, there is growing investment in the infrastructureneeded for cultural production, for example, studios,workshops, marketing and support organisations, andthe planning of ``cultural districts''. Relatedly, there isincreasing support for new technology sectors, such astelevision (cable and video), ``central to the whole ®eldof popular culture'' (Bassett, 1993, p. 1775). Second,there is the launching of ``¯agship'' development pro-jects for arts centres, theatres, and concert halls in inner-city areas and the launching of high pro®le events orfestivals, often linked to local heritage themes, to en-courage cultural tourism. Third, there is investment inpublic art and sculpture and the revival of urban publicspaces for multiple forms of activity (Bassett, 1993,p. 1775). Fourth, there is growing partnership betweenbusiness and public sector agencies, including develop-ers, banks, and companies of national and internationalsigni®cance (Bianchini, 1993a, p. 2).

If e�ectively implemented, cities can derive multiplebene®ts from cultural economic policies. Myerscoughand John (1988) highlights how direct employment for asigni®cant proportion of the population can be gainedthrough the growth of ®rms in the cultural industriessector, how growth in ancillary industries may be stim-ulated, how urban renewal processes could result cata-lytically, how the image of a region could be improved,and how a place could be made better to live and workin. The development of cultural industries in cities couldalso give rise to intra-urban cultural synergies. This isbecause these sectors transact with each other inten-sively and draw on similar labour and material re-sources, as well as design cultures and images rooted in

the local urban context (Molotch, 1996). Marshall(1920) referred to this synergy between the cultural andthe economic as the bene®cial e�ects of ÔatmosphereÕ in19th century industrial districts. Further, Bassett (1993,p. 1783) points out how cultural economic policieswould supplement tourist strategies, encouraging over-night stays and conference bookings. In addition, a highcultural pro®le could swing a relocation decision by thekind of company needed to attract highly skilled pro-fessionals. In that sense, cultural policies can be used as``symbols of modernity and innovations'' (Bianchini,1993a, p. 15; Bassett, 1993, p. 1779). A signi®cant valueof a successful cultural economic policy is therefore theimage that it will create of a city, underscoring the rise ofthe representational, the growing importance of imageconsciousness associated with modern economic for-mations, in which the image becomes a currency in andof itself (Thrift and Olds, 1996, p. 314; Burgess andWood, 1988; Watson, 1991). At the end of the day, whilecultural facilities and resources may not be more im-portant in ``determining a cityÕs appeal to investors thanlocal educational and skills levels, the quality of localschooling and of the local environment'', they have,however, become ``increasingly important complemen-tary factors in the competition between cities possessingsimilar advantages'' (Bianchini, 1993a, p. 18). Culturalactivities could also attract people back to downtownareas, making other consumer developments morepro®table (Bassett, 1993, p. 1779).

Why did this emphasis on the economic potentialrather than social and political role of cultural policiescome about? Two main sets of conditions precipitatedthe change, which are consumption and production re-lated. First, Bassett (1993, p. 1775) argued that changesin cultural consumption and social class led to a generalrise in the consumption of cultural products. This, inturn, was related to a decline in working time and anincrease in the proportion of disposable income spent onleisure activities (Bianchini, 1993a, p. 1). Second, the lossof jobs in traditional industrial sectors with the collapseof the industrial base in many cities, the need to adapt tothe processes of economic restructuring of the 1970s andearly 1980s, and growing competition in the new post-industrial service economy prompted governments toreexamine their cultural policies and mine the potentialrole of cultures for economic gain. Indeed, as citiescompete for scarce new investment, the competition touse cultural policy to guide ``place marketing'' (Kearnsand Philo, 1993) has become increasingly important andnecessary to construct images of new post-Fordist, con-sumption-oriented cities to attract investors, promising agood quality of life for executives and other mobileskilled international personnel (Bassett, 1993, p. 1779;Bianchini, 1993a, p. 1). In this sense then, cultural policyof the 1980s and 1990s has become a response to theglobalisation of capital (Booth and Boyle, 1993, p. 22).

Introduction / Geoforum 31 (2000) 385±390 387

While useful, some cautionary words must neverthe-less be sounded about the implementation of culturaleconomic policies. First, Bianchini (1993a, p. 15) hasindicated that the direct impact of such policies on thecreation of wealth and employment is often actuallyrelatively small. In fact, Bassett (1993, p. 1785) indicatesthat many of the jobs in the sector are likely to be low-paid service jobs. Many small ®rms in cultural industriesalso have high failure rates. Furthermore, not manycities can achieve success as major cultural centres.There are threshold levels in the provision of variousforms of high art. Smaller cities will ®nd it di�cult tocompete, while larger cities will bene®t from linkagesand feedback e�ects between artistic sectors. A possiblestrategy that small cities can adopt is to cooperate withneighbouring cities in cultural specialisation and jointmarketing (Bassett, 1993, p. 1785). More crucially,however, there are tensions and contradictions withinmany a cultural policy, tensions which Bianchini (1993a,p. 3) has characterised as di�erences between ``old andnew, social and economic, community and elite-orient-ed'' policies. In particular, there is, ®rst, a divergencebetween policies, which encourage exclusive high cultureand those more populist which seek to encourage pop-ular access to them. Second, there is a tension betweendeveloping elite ¯agship programmes to enhance urbancompetitiveness as opposed to decentralised, communi-ty-based provision of more popular cultural activities,targeted particularly at low income and marginalisedsocial groups. Third, there is a con¯ict between culturalpolicy as an internationalisation strategy emphasisinggrowth and property development versus the need toprotect and develop indigenous local and regionalidentities and the cultures of socially and economicallydisadvantaged immigrant communities especially(Bianchini, 1993a, p. 19), particularly, where communityself-development and self-expression are of concern(Bassett, 1993, p. 1785). More radical critiques of cul-tural economic policies are that they are a ``carnivalmask'' because they allow politicians to ``concealgrowing social inequality, polarisation and con¯ictwithin cities'' or ``optimistically, as a `social glue' forintegrating new immigrants, encouraging social cohe-sion and shaping new civic identities'' (Harvey, 1989a,quoted in Bianchini, 1993a, p. 14). This critique of cul-tural policy is further emphasised in the rejection ofculture in urban regeneration as ``mobilisation of thespectacle'', a crude way of trying to ``justify and repaycontemporary urban lifestyles'' because the gentri®edcity that is often close to the central business districtneeds the urban spectacle to reinforce residential choice(Harvey, 1989b, cited in Booth and Boyle, 1993, p. 22).

As cities see out the 1990s and enter the 21st century,re¯ections on comprehensive holistic cultural planningthat is truly regenerative have emerged. While culturalpolicies were innovative in the symbolic and economic

spheres in the 1980s, linked as they were with the``selling of places'', in the late 1990s and beyond, Bian-chini (1993b, p. 211) suggests that policies on culturewill have to be linked with policies on education,training, research and development. This is because theeconomic success of cities will depend on advanced in-dustries and services, which make intensive use of high-quality human resources with specialised skills andknowledge. To be truly e�ective therefore, culturalpolicies should not be measured purely by income oremployment generated but should contribute towardsimprovement in the quality of life, social cohesion andcommunity development. The really important mission,according to Bianchini (1993b, p. 212) is to develop acultural planning perspective that is ``rooted in an un-derstanding of local cultural resources and of cities ascultural entities ± as places where people meet, talk,share ideas and desires, and where identities and life-styles are formed''. To do so requires that there is ``anexplicit commitment to revitalise the cultural, social andpolitical life of local residents'' and this should ``precedeand sustain the formulation of physical and economicregeneration strategies'' (Bianchini, 1993b, p. 212). Thisargument is made by other writers in various guises.Wynne (1992) calls for the arts to be made a daily partof peopleÕs lives, socially and economically, and arguesthat only then will they ``reside within the wider com-munity associated with that everyday life, rather thanexisting as an appendage to it ± in some exclusive arenaoutside of everyday experience''. This, he argues, makesfor the arts as a form of investment (providing botheconomic returns and quality of life) rather than subsi-dy.

What the papers o�er . . .

The ®ve papers that follow address various aspects ofthe issues raised above. In some way, all ®ve papersattempt to draw together the economic and the socialand/or political relations in cultural policy and activity,re¯ecting the growing recognition of the integral rela-tionship between these spheres of life (Thrift and Olds,1996). Coe's paper, for instance, highlights the signi®-cance of these relationships at the interpersonal level,aiding in obtaining ®nance and securing distributionwhile Lovatt et al. discuss how risk in cultural industriesare minimised through the use of existing social net-works such as regulars and friends. Speci®cally, CoeÕsanalysis of the indigenous ®lm industry in Vancouveraddresses the issue of how economic actions and socialrelations are inseparable. He illustrates the ways inwhich interpersonal ties and social networks contributeto enhanced economic opportunities, for example, inobtaining ®nancing for ®lms and distribution outlets. Hetherefore argues for attention to be paid particularly to

388 Introduction / Geoforum 31 (2000) 385±390

the embeddedness and embodiment of these relations inkey actors at the level of individuals, shifting the anal-ysis from current literature which focuses on the em-beddedness of organisations and institutions. Similarly,Lovatt et al. in addressing issues of risk and trust, drawfrom their work on Micro and Small Enterprises withinManchester, England, and illustrate how the blurring ofwork and leisure became a way of reducing risk in thehigh-risk cultural industry. Speci®cally, living a full so-cial life was identi®ed as a strategy for knowing one'smarket and picking up work opportunities. At the sametime, trust within the industry is often developed in in-formal, social ways, with starting out ®rms seeking out`mentors' and trustworthy, knowledgeable individualswho could o�er advice, contacts, market informationand so forth. As with Coe, social relations, at the level ofthe interpersonal, is emphasised here.

Unlike Coe and Lovatt et al., who emphasise theintersection between the social and cultural, Kong drawsattention to the intersection between the cultural andpolitical, highlighting political and ideological interestsin the construction of state cultural policies, and itsemphasis on cultural industries for economic develop-ment. In turn, the responses of cultural practitioners tosuch ideological constructions in Singapore are alsoexamined. This explicit focus on the role of state policyin the development of cultural industries is paralleled inBrown et al.'s paper on the music policy of two Englishcities ± Manchester and She�eld. They seek to situatethe place of music policy within the wider developmentof cultural policy and urban regeneration over the lastten years. They examine the development of culturalquarters (fringe geographically de®ned areas of citycentres where local authorities have sought to concen-trate economic activity in the cultural sector) and theplace of popular music in these cultural quarters. Indoing so, they address various issues: the need to situatecultural economic policy (here, music industry policy)within the social, cultural and economic contexts of thecities; like Coe and Pratt, the importance of place andnetworks in the development of music scenes; and therelationship of local music policies to the local, nationaland international structure and development of themusic industry.

This interconnectedness of the various scales of cul-tural industries ± the local, national and international ±is a theme that re-emerges in di�erent ways in all thepapers. In various ways, all the authors underscore theinterrelationships between local, national and globalconditions in impacting cultural policies and culturalindustries, re¯ecting the ways in which scales are``nested'' (Swyngedouw, 1997). What is evident in all thepapers is that, in spite of the undisputed presence of theglobal, it is not necessarily hegemonic. Indeed, thatwhich is local and located is signi®cant, if not pre-emi-nent in the sustenance and development of cultural

industries. This is nowhere more evident than in Pratt'sargument against the assertions of technologicalreductionism and aspatiality in the literature on newmedia industries, and his account of the spatiality ofnew media. Using his case example of Silicon Alley,New York, Pratt argues that in the new media indus-tries, place and product are mutually constituted andco-constructed.

This theme section o�ers both theoretical reformu-lations as well as speci®c empirical case analyses cover-ing a range of cultural industries ± ®lm, music, fashion,and new media. While addressing a range of issuescentral to any analysis of cultural industries, a host ofother issues remain to be interrogated elsewhere. Ihighlight but three here as a way of pushing the agendafurther. First, there is need to engage debates overgovernment economic intervention in the market placeversus the operation of the free market (see Shuker,1994, for example). Second, contradictions in statepolicy between wanting to develop cultural industriesbut simultaneously wanting to keep out cultural in¯u-ences must be addressed. Cultural policy, as illustratedby Kong (this volume), then becomes a thin line to walkbetween social regulation and economic development.Third, the issue of whether cultural industries and thecoterie of policies surrounding them are in fact a largelydeveloped world phenomenon deserve some attention.The challenge is as much the attainment of an under-standing of the processes involved and the successfuland sensitive implementation of cultural policies in dif-ferent contexts.

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