ANALYSING CULTURAL POLICY: INCORRIGIBLY PLURAL OR ONTOLOGICALLY INCOMPATIBLE? CLIVE GRAY DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

PROBLEM: RESEARCHING CULTURAL POLICY Different questions Different ontologies Different epistemologies Different methodologies Different disciplines Different questions

WHAT TO LOOK AT? Theories? Methods? Research areas? Disciplines?

DISCIPLINARY DIVERSITY Aesthetics Anthropology Cultural Studies Economics History Sociology Philosophy Political Science

WHAT IS LOOKED AT Definitions of ‘culture’ What is understood by ‘cultural policy’ Dominant methodologies

‘CULTURE’ IS... An essentially contested concept Multiply defined No empirical test of ‘correctness’ Modifiable Internally complex Appraisive

CULTURAL POLICY IS... Cultural sustainability and heritage Cultural and creative industries Lifestyle culture and eco-culture Cultural planning Controversial issues Whatever it is that governments say it is Production of cultural citizens Representation, meaning, interpretation A transhistorical political function

METHODOLOGIES Positivist Interpretivist Realist Ideographic Nomothetic

CULTURAL STUDIES ‘Culture’ is... Materialist/idealist Ideal Recorded experience Way of life Signifying practices

POLITICAL SCIENCE ‘Culture’ is... Societal contexts Evaluations, feelings, knowledge Formal/informal rule-governed behaviours

SOCIOLOGY ‘Culture’ is... Meanings, symbols, structures Arenas of social action Formal/informal rule-governed behaviours Social life in general

ECONOMICS ‘Culture’ is... Shared behavioural/value norms Activities and products Particular, ‘cultural’, goods The ‘arts’

CULTURAL STUDIES Cultural policy is... Literary/psychoanalytic readings of texts Gramscian ideology Foucaultian governmentality Habermasian communicative action

POLITICAL SCIENCE Cultural policy is... What governments do in the field of ‘culture’ What governments do not do in the field of culture State actions affecting cultural life of citizens

SOCIOLOGY Cultural policy is... Actions affecting cultural life of citizens Government policies affecting cultural arenas (But cf. Cultural capital/audiences/leisure)

ECONOMICS Cultural policy is... Government policies pursued for cultural purposes Government policies in the cultural arena A normative concern

METHODS OF ANALYSIS Cultural studies: interpretive Economics: positivist Sociology: realist Political Science: realist BUT variation exists

CONCLUSIONS Unless/until ‘cultural policy’ studies develops their own methodologies and definitions of what they are doing they will be dependent upon conflicting disciplines for their tools and forms of analysis Without a willingness to engage with different disciplines ‘cultural policy’ studies will fragment into mutually antagonistic, discipline-based, sub- groups Celebrate disciplinary diversity and read!

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various Louis MacNeice, Snow