Cultural Economy: Achievements, Divergences, Future Prospects

Abstract

This paper reflects on two decades' scholarship in geography on cultural economy, assessing strides made against some of the expectations of early proponents. Cultural economy continues to be a polysemic term. In some quarters, it refers to a type of economic geography into which matters of 'culture' are absorbed. This work frequently focuses on the empirics of the so-called 'cultural and creative industries'. Others see cultural economic research as an opportunity to move beyond the epistemological constraints of 'culture' and 'economy', questioning their status as foundational categories. This latter approach has been used in a broader set of empirical projects encompassing technology, knowledge, and society. Contrasting threads of cultural economic research have helpfully moved geographical scholarship beyond paradigmatic limitations, but jostle somewhat uncomfortably within existing (and increasingly specialised) disciplinary and subdisciplinary fields. The risk is that by questioning the categorical underpinnings of much specialised research, cultural economy struggles to 'belong' in the increasingly coded and compartmentalised university setting. I conclude with a discussion of future prospects. Some measure of vitality could be achieved through incorporation of a cultural economy perspective into the pressing issues of climate change, human sustenance, and urban infrastructure planning. These are issues for which the polysemy of cultural economy could prove constructive, transcending technocentric market 'fixes' and bland assumptions about how best to 'green' our cities -promoting instead ethnographic interrogations of how humans access, use, exchange, and value financial and material resources as moral and social beings.

The Contribution of the Creative Economy to the Resilience of Rural Communities: Exploring Cultural and Digital Capital

“…Current research finds rural creatives are networked regionally, either working in a city‐centric manner or re‐orientating their creative practice toward local rural markets (Gibson ; Herslund ). It suggests rural creatives work in formal and informal capacities in their communities (Thomas et al .…”

Manufacturing and cultural production: Towards a progressive policy agenda for the cultural economy

“…Policies aimed at the cultural economy have come to play an integral role in the urban development strategies of cities around the globe (Grodach and Silver, 2014;Hutton, 2008;Scott, 2004;Van Heur, 2010). 1 Yet, conceptions of what constitutes the cultural economy remain polyvalent, meaning that policy imaginations, and resulting implementations, are fluid and divergent (Gibson 2012). Urban policy-makers have turned toward and interpreted the cultural economy in two primary ways: as an appendage of a larger creative or knowledge economy or as a means of enhancing consumption (Evans 2009).…”

Beyond prices: The cultural economy of water in the Cordillera highlands of Northern Luzon, Philippines

“…Polanyi's theories are re‐tested in a contemporary democratic and developing country and on the whole, his concept of ‘embeddedness’ has stood the test of time. From obscurity, Polanyi's work is being revisited and has been used in many applications within the purview of institutional economics and a cultural economic perspective (Gibson, : 282–283; Gibson and Kong, : 541–546). For example, Amin and Thrift (: 149) argue that economic transactions are embedded in social and cultural networks girded by relations of trust, familiarity, convention and power.…”

“…The cultural economy approach is one of the many lenses by which the dichotomy of water can be adequately studied (Pratt, : 1–2). Various interpretations of the cultural economy approach suggest a refreshing exploration of the economy (Gibson, : 282–289; Gibson and Kong, : 1–3). Paul du Gay (: 303–304) calls into question dominant positions on the relationship between culture and the economy, proposing ways of articulating the terms together.…”