An article in The Australian by Stuart Cunningham and Jason Potts represents the sort of intervention that is less about extending our understanding of the issue at hand but about appearing to intervene. The content is less important than the fact of the intervention and the patina of expertise further added to the brand. The main point of the article is that their new research method shows culture is more expensive in rural areas than in cities; and that the National Broadband Network will address this. Lots of space is given to showing how better their methodology is than others, but when we come to the substantive account the whole thing looks decidedly wobbly.
The basket of ‘mainstream’ cultural consumer items is made up of:
“mass culture (blockbuster movie); family culture (library visit); interactive culture (cultural or music festival); home culture (music album, downloaded where possible); high culture (theatre); and cultural learning (piano lesson).”
‘Mass culture’ as term was creaking when early cultural studies began its sustained onslaught in the late 1950s: how is mass distinguished from or a sub-set of ‘mainstream’? What is ‘family culture’ and what evidence is there that families visit libraries as a group or that library visitors are characterized in this way? How is a cultural or music festival ‘interactive’ – and what is the difference between a cultural or a music festival? How is 'home culture' about a downloaded music album – rather than a book (bought ‘live’ or via Kindle) or a film or a picture. What on earth makes theater ‘high culture’ – and how is this different from reading James Joyce at home after having gone to the library (on your own). As for 'cultural learning' – I take it this means lessons given live rather than the constant learning by reading a book, watching a movie etc.
Why nit pick? Because these sorts of interventions claim the authority of statistically grounded fact and the ability to throw dispassionate light on particular issues. But at bottom they are advertisements for themselves, as expertise and as method, aimed not at elucidation but the generation of interest around the possibility of more ‘indicators’ which we can use to decide public policy. Yet as they admit, all they come up with is the obvious – that the need to travel to cultural facilities makes it far more expensive to consume culture in rural than in city areas. Therefore there is no cultural divide in terms of taste but merely in terms of affordability. So much for the bush-city divide. The solution is the NBN – which will bring digital culture to these areas.
But hang on; of the basket of ‘mainstream culture’ only one category involves downloads. So how will the NBN address this divide? By downloading films, books and maybe on-line piano lessons. That is, turning this basket of diverse cultural activities into 'home culture'. Now there is nothing wrong with that; indeed most city dwellers I suspect engage in home culture more than any other. But how is this bridging the cultural divide – which is marked by the availability of public, live facilities located (necessarily, mostly) in dense regions. Well it doesn’t. Not on this account. And, as a sort of afterthought, what has that got to do with the opaque account of a ‘population scaled index’, which somehow puts Byron Bay first and Alice Springs third in a national league table of ‘per capita cultural productivity or local cultural engagement’? The answer is nothing. But then it is not meant to; its purpose is to advertise its authority as such, that it actually knows what it is talking about.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
UNESCO Expert Group
The invitation for people to become 'experts' within this programme went out earlier this year. Thirty of us were chosen out of 640 applicants. The website for the programme following the first meeting in Rabat 21st-22nd March 2011 can be found at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/cultural-diversity/2005-convention/technical-assistance/pool-of-experts/list-of-experts/
The programme is unusual and commendably risky - or at least experimental. Rather than giving money for projects it pays for technical assistance from experts - that's us - to help develop the 'governance' of culture. Perhaps we could also call it the soft infrastructure. Over 70 developing countries can benefit - they have to be 'developing' and to be signatories to the 2005 UNESCO convention on cultural diversity.
Some of the themes that came up (for me at least) at the meeting - apart from the operational technicalities which often cloud the big picture in these programmes - were the relationship of culture to economics, and the limits of the term 'technical' when dealing with cultural governance.
The first concerns how far culture should be presented (perhaps sold!) as part of economic development rather than a 'human rights' development goal in itself. Related to this was the extent to which culture and its impacts could or should be presented in economic impact terms; how far the pragmatic attempt to do this begins to undermine other values which we might give to culture. The wider background to this was how culture and economics sit together; to what extent have these become complementary bed-fellows, or do they retain the friction and the antagonism previously associated with the liberational promise of culture. Things have certainly changed since art and industry were two distinct worlds, far-away from each other. But to my mind the smooth mutual accommodation promoted by many of the proponents of the creative economy risks loosing much that is valuable in culture. Not just that it 'reduces' culture to economics (this is often true) but also that it leaves the idea of 'economy' untouched. 'Economy' and 'economics', rather than being challenged as a historical constructs become absolute terms - like culture - with fixed boundaries and definite meanings. In fact the growing power of this foregrounding of 'the economy' is only too clear in the way culture and economics are not 'mutually accommodating', rather the latter gaining dominance over the former. Adorno might have called this 'reconciliation under duress'.
The second relates to the idea of the 'technical': it implies that there is something called 'good governance' and with technical assistance this can be spread across the globe. This makes the programme sound more patronising than it is. It is very much a client-driven process and the experts are not briefcase wielding drones helicoptered in to tell the locals what to do. The experts I met were from a great range of countries and have vast amounts of experiences in working in developing countries. Far more than I have. Its just that at some point we might have to acknowledge that this is not simply 'technical assistance' nor can it be. In trying to promote the good governance of culture we are making a political statement which we might as well acknowledge upfront. Which means that we might not only face challenges in developing countries - but also challenges in developed countries. The governments of these latter have long abandoned some of the more radical demands on culture that are alive, well and vital in many developing countries. Hopefully the experts might come back with a useful message for the rather smug metropolitan global centres of the 'developed' world.
The programme is unusual and commendably risky - or at least experimental. Rather than giving money for projects it pays for technical assistance from experts - that's us - to help develop the 'governance' of culture. Perhaps we could also call it the soft infrastructure. Over 70 developing countries can benefit - they have to be 'developing' and to be signatories to the 2005 UNESCO convention on cultural diversity.
Some of the themes that came up (for me at least) at the meeting - apart from the operational technicalities which often cloud the big picture in these programmes - were the relationship of culture to economics, and the limits of the term 'technical' when dealing with cultural governance.
The first concerns how far culture should be presented (perhaps sold!) as part of economic development rather than a 'human rights' development goal in itself. Related to this was the extent to which culture and its impacts could or should be presented in economic impact terms; how far the pragmatic attempt to do this begins to undermine other values which we might give to culture. The wider background to this was how culture and economics sit together; to what extent have these become complementary bed-fellows, or do they retain the friction and the antagonism previously associated with the liberational promise of culture. Things have certainly changed since art and industry were two distinct worlds, far-away from each other. But to my mind the smooth mutual accommodation promoted by many of the proponents of the creative economy risks loosing much that is valuable in culture. Not just that it 'reduces' culture to economics (this is often true) but also that it leaves the idea of 'economy' untouched. 'Economy' and 'economics', rather than being challenged as a historical constructs become absolute terms - like culture - with fixed boundaries and definite meanings. In fact the growing power of this foregrounding of 'the economy' is only too clear in the way culture and economics are not 'mutually accommodating', rather the latter gaining dominance over the former. Adorno might have called this 'reconciliation under duress'.
The second relates to the idea of the 'technical': it implies that there is something called 'good governance' and with technical assistance this can be spread across the globe. This makes the programme sound more patronising than it is. It is very much a client-driven process and the experts are not briefcase wielding drones helicoptered in to tell the locals what to do. The experts I met were from a great range of countries and have vast amounts of experiences in working in developing countries. Far more than I have. Its just that at some point we might have to acknowledge that this is not simply 'technical assistance' nor can it be. In trying to promote the good governance of culture we are making a political statement which we might as well acknowledge upfront. Which means that we might not only face challenges in developing countries - but also challenges in developed countries. The governments of these latter have long abandoned some of the more radical demands on culture that are alive, well and vital in many developing countries. Hopefully the experts might come back with a useful message for the rather smug metropolitan global centres of the 'developed' world.
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