Clive Gray

COMMODIFICATION AND INSTRUMENTALITY IN CULTURAL POLICY

Cultural policy has been changing in similar ways across many countries in recent years, with these changes placing an increasing emphasis upon the use of “culture”, and particularly the “arts”, as instrumental tools for the attainment of non‐cultural, non‐arts, goals and objectives. It is argued that this process is closely related to a broader set of societal changes – specifically the establishment and acceptance of a commodified conception of public policy – and that the future shape of cultural policy cannot be fully understood without reference to these changes. The fact that the precise nature of both the cultural policy and societal changes that are taking place differ considerably between nation‐states implies that arguments concerning the “globalisation” of culture and cultural policy require reformulation to take into account the specific variations that are generated by governmental choices.

The politics of the arts in Britain

Acknowledgements Introduction The Commodification of the Arts Managing the Arts: 1945-79 Who Runs the Arts? The Network for Arts Policy in Britain The Arts at the Centre The Regional Politics of the Arts Local Government and the Arts The European Dimension Explaining the Politics of the Arts Bibliography Index

Instrumental policies: causes, consequences, museums and galleries

Instrumentalization has been seen to have taken place in the museums and galleries sector in Britain, and across the cultural sector as a whole. This article locates this instrumentalization in the context of changes in both the public management of goods and services within the British political system and the dominant ideologies that are used by political parties. The specific characteristics of the cultural policy sector are shown to have mediated these changes and, consequently, how instrumentalization has been introduced, and managed, within it. The ability of endogenous actors to manage the instrumentalization process demonstrates that it is neither inevitable nor unmanageable.

Museums and the ‘new museology’: theory, practice and organisational change

Abstract The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain. There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an ‘old’ to a ‘new museology’ that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings from 23 publically funded museum services across England, Scotland and Wales are presented to explore the roles of professional and hierarchical differentiation, and how there were organisational and managerial limitations to the practical application of the ‘new museology’. The ambiguity surrounding policy, roles and practice also highlighted that museum workers were key agents in interpreting, using and understanding wide-ranging policy expectations. The practical implementation of the ‘new museology’ is linked to the values held by museum workers themselves and how they relate it to their activities at the ground level.

Analysing cultural policy: incorrigibly plural or ontologically incompatible?

Approaches to the study of cultural policy are currently tied to particular disciplines. This can lead to a failure to appreciate the real differences between these disciplines in terms of what they are investigating, and how they go about these investigations. The differences that exist at ontological, epistemological and methodological levels between differing disciplines mean that it is not possible to simply adopt what each discipline is saying about cultural policy at face value. Without greater theoretical and methodological understanding of the tools that are available for the analysis of cultural policy, it is unlikely that a more sophisticated approach to analysis will be generated. The consequences of this for both the analysis of cultural policy and future directions of analysis in the field are discussed.

Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management

Politics takes diverse forms within the museums sector, from the effect of national government policies and funding decisions to the manner in which the contents of museums are presented to the public. This diversity of political forms leads to the creation of a range of administrative and managerial contexts within which museums operate. This paper explores the relationship of political practices and administrative and managerial regimes for the manner in which museums and galleries in the United Kingdom undertake the functions that they are responsible for, and indicates the possibilities and problems for museum and gallery practice that are associated with different political forms.

Are governmental culture departments important? An empirical investigation.

It has been often claimed that governmental culture departments are not particularly significant or important for governments as a whole. The extent to which this is true is investigated through a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments of departmental significance using the United Kingdom and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as a case study. Departments are assessed across a number of criteria incorporating expenditure, law‐making, policy centrality, ministerial career trajectories, press coverage, departmental age, executive centrality, manifesto coverage and staffing patterns. On these the British example demonstrates that culture departments are not significantly important for governments as a whole. The comparative implications of this finding are identified, and potential new research areas are indicated.

Arts council England and public value: a critical review.

This is an electronic version of an article published in Gray, C. J. (2008) Arts council England and public value: a critical review. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 14 (2), pp. 209-214. International Journal of Cultural Policy is available online at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10286630802106383

Hyperinstrumentalism and cultural policy: means to an end or an end to meaning?

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the implications for cultural policy of the logic of the instrumental view of culture taken to its conclusion. Policy developments that establish sets of justifications and rationales that have nothing to do with the cultural content of the policy concerned, but which arise from a deliberate realignment of policy frameworks, establish a form of hyperinstrumentalism. With hyperinstrumentalism the focus on outcomes and the ends of policy means that cultural policy is only as important as the ends to which it is directed. As such, hyperinstrumentalisation demonstrates the consequences for the sector of conditions where claims about the value of culture are irrelevant to political actors. The paper questions whether sense can be made of this shift as a coherent and strategic political choice, rather than as a simple assault on culture. The case of Northern Ireland’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure is used to illustrate this. The authors question whether hyperinstrumentalism undermines the justification for an autonomous domain of cultural policy.

The politics of museums

The Politics of Museums is the first book to thoroughly examine how and why museums are political institutions. Clive Gray investigates the ways in which power, ideology and legitimacy affect the operations of both individual museums and entire museums sectors around the world. The analysis distinguishes between the international, national and local politics of museums and deals with such topics as the instrumentalisation of museums, globalisation and museums, the symbolic role of museums, and how museum professionals affect the operations of the museums sector. The politicization and depoliticization of museums are explained and the political significance of museums for nations, governments and citizens is identified. This analysis of museums marks an original approach to an often undervalued societal resource and will be enjoyed by all who have an interest in the world of museums.