Devin Beauregard

The Cultural Industries Turn in Cultural Policy

This chapter will delve into the emergence and significance of cultural industries discourse in cultural policy. This chapter will discuss the concept of the cultural industries, in depth, and explore its significance in terms of cultural policy and industry. This chapter will also engage with the concept of globalization and its relevance to the emergence and growth of the cultural industries as agents for culture and identity dissemination.

The Evolving Nature of Cultural Policy

This chapter provides an overview and assessment of cultural policy and its changing nature in recent decades. This chapter also provides an account of the current trends in cultural policy discourse, outlining the field’s major developments, themes, and debates. The purpose of this chapter is to provide readers with a general overview of the field of cultural policy studies—where it has been and where it is going—as a means of familiarizing them with the field’s key concepts and ideas, including cultural democracy, the democratization of culture, and the instrumentalization of culture. This chapter also introduces the concepts of the cultural industries, identity, nationalism, and national identity.

Cultural Industries in Québec

This chapter is the first of the three cases studied in this book. This chapter presents a brief history and overview of some of Quebec’s cultural policies, before expanding on its major cultural policy developments since the early 1990s. This chapter will chart a trend in Quebec’s cultural policies—away from cultural preservation, toward cultural growth and expansion.

A Typology of Sub-State Cultural Policy: Québec, Scotland, and Catalonia

This chapter explores the ways in which identity and identity issues have been recognized, problematized, and mobilized in the development of sub-state cultural policy. From this exploration, a common world, in the image of Boltanski and Thevenot’s (1991) economies of worth framework, of sub-state cultural policy begins to take shape. Specifically, this chapter explores the key cultural policies of Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia, respectively, in relation to the 13 analytical categories of the economies of worth framework outlined in Chap. 1 and presents a common world of its own: The World of National Minority Cultural Policy.

Cultural Distinction and Identity in Catalonia

This chapter explores the re-emergence of Catalan culture following years of repression during the Franco dictatorship. Of note in this re-emergence is the emphasis Catalan’s governments conferred to the cultural industries—in particular, the multimedia sector—as a vehicle for cultural (and industrial) growth and sustainability, as well as a consideration of the current and future socio-political climate of the sub-state.

Culture, Politics, and Identity in Scotland

This chapter charts the development of cultural policy in Scotland, primarily post-1997 devolution. It is only in the post-devolution era, in fact, that Scotland has truly developed a comprehensive cultural policy—one that actually recognizes and seeks to promote Scottish culture as something distinct and unique to its country. This chapter will also explore the active role of the cultural industries in Scotland’s cultural production and dissemination and the emphasis its government places on those industries through its policies.

Introduction: Problematizing Culture in a Global Era

The introduction chapter sets the stage for the rest of the volume. The book asks the following questions: What sets the cultural policies of sub-states apart from their majority counterparts? Do their cultural policies (and culturally significant policies) evidence a certain form, structure, or approach that helps distinguish them from the approaches of other (often majoritarian) cultures? With these questions in mind, the introduction briefly outlines the intent and purpose of the book and introduces the rationale for exploring these questions through the cases of Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia. This chapter also discusses the book’s application of Boltanski and Thevenot’s economies of worth framework.

Conclusion: Toward a Common World of National Minority Cultural Policy

The final chapter brings the book’s findings together to establish a new common world: the common world of national minority cultural policy. Through this common world, this chapter discusses the implications of the cultural industries turn in cultural policy—particularly where sub-states are concerned. In particular, this chapter discusses the significance of the cultural industries’ role in the development of identity and the implications this has on cultural policy—both in the context of sub-states and in the context of globalization. This chapter offers speculation on what this turn in cultural policy means for culture and identity moving forward and how the new common world can be applied for future research.

Positivism as cultural policy: art and social change in the works of Comte and Saint-Simon

Abstract When discussing positivism today, it almost systematically falls into the realm of epistemological discourse. This discursive turn is primarily the by-product of the social sciences’ now-traditional approach to positivism—a turn which has been seen as largely dismissive of positivism for its antiquated and reductionist approaches to research. Without trying to make an apologetic account of positivism, this article reframes it in its broader social and historical dimensions. In particular, this article aims to illustrate how positivism—as a social and political movement—conveyed a cultural policy. In other words, this article attempts to re-engage with the intellectual legacy of positivism to resituate its significance in cultural and artistic terms in French culture, society and beyond. By drawing on the notion of implicit cultural policy, this article retraces the steps of positivism and specifically builds a case for its influence on French cultural policy in the Third Republic.

Settler colonialism and cultural policy: the colonial foundations and refoundations of Canadian cultural policy

This article aims to reintegrate the colonial history of Canada as part of the grids of analysis for understanding the evolution of its Federal cultural policy. Building on the notion of settler colonialism and its implication for Indigenous population (For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ is used in place of, perhaps, more popular or familiar terms – such as ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘Native’ – in order to remain consistent with current Indigenous politics. In particular, some Indigenous scholars are reluctant to accept the label Aboriginal because they feel it is consistent with the colonial order imposed by the Canadian government [Alfred and Corntassel 2005, p. 599]). The term Indigenous also alludes to a global political awareness and to forms of alterity between different populations from North America, South America, Asia, and the Pacific. in Canada, this paper documents different transformations in cultural policy and illustrates some of its paradoxes and challenges. Building on principles developed by Indigenous scholars, this article highlights some of the components for decolonizing cultural policy in Canada. It is argued that a post-colonial cultural policy must build on the grounds of ethics (and ethos).