Oliver Bennett

RETHINKING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF THE ARTS

The paper presents a critical discussion of the current debate over the social impacts of the arts in the UK. It argues that the accepted understanding of the terms of the debate is rooted in a number of assumptions and beliefs that are rarely questioned. The paper goes on to present the interim findings of a three‐year research project, which aims to rethink the social impact of the arts, with a view to determining how these impacts might be better understood. The desirability of a historical approach is articulated, and a classification of the claims made within the Western intellectual tradition for what the arts “do” to people is presented and discussed.

Beyond the “Toolkit Approach”: Arts Impact Evaluation Research and the Realities of Cultural Policy‐Making

This article presents a reflection on the possibility and potential advantages of the development of a humanities‐based approach to assessing the impact of the arts, which attempts to move away from a paradigm of evaluation based on a one‐size‐fits‐all model usually reliant on empirical methodologies borrowed from the social sciences. A “toolkit approach” to arts impact assessment, as the article argues, demands excessive simplifications, and its popularity is linked to its perceived advocacy potential rather than to any demonstrable contribution it may make to a genuine understanding of the nature and potential effects of artistic engagement. The article also explores the relationship between research, advocacy and the actual realities of policy‐making with a view to proposing a critical research agenda for impact evaluation based on Carol Weiss’s notion of the “enlightenment” function of policy‐oriented research. In particular, the article attempts to highlight the contribution that cultural policy scholars working within the humanities could make to this area of policy research.

Determinants of Impact: Towards a Better Understanding of Encounters with the Arts

The article argues that current methods for assessing the impact of the arts are largely based on a fragmented and incomplete understanding of the cognitive, psychological and socio-cultural dynamics that govern the aesthetic experience. It postulates that a better grasp of the interaction between the individual and the work of art is the necessary foundation for a genuine understanding of how the arts can affect people. Through a critique of philosophical and empirical attempts to capture the main features of the aesthetic encounter, the article draws attention to the gaps in our current understanding of the responses to art. It proposes a classification and exploration of the factors—social, cultural and psychological—that contribute to shaping the aesthetic experience, thus determining the possibility of impact. The ‘determinants of impact’ identified are distinguished into three groups: those that are inherent to the individual who interacts with the artwork; those that are inherent to the artwork; and ‘environmental factors’, which are extrinsic to both the individual and the artwork. The article concludes that any meaningful attempt to assess the impact of the arts would need to take these ‘determinants of impact’ into account, in order to capture the multidimensional and subjective nature of the aesthetic experience.

Review essay: The Torn Halves of Cultural Policy Research

Anyone seeking to understand what currently constitutes the field of cultural policy research could, in addition to following the pages of this journal, usefully turn to Critical Cultural Policy Studies, edited by Justin Lewis and Toby Miller, and to J. Mark Schuster’s Informing Cultural Policy. In these two volumes, the reader will encounter two very different worlds, both, in effect, staking claims to the ownership of cultural policy research, yet each largely oblivious to the preoccupations of the other. At the same time, in attempting to define the field in this way, these books to some extent become emblematic of it. In this extended review, they have therefore provided me with a focus for the exploration of some of the broader issues surrounding cultural policy research. For Critical Cultural Policy Studies, Lewis and Miller have assembled a series of journal articles and chapters or extracts from books, most of which were first published in the 1990s, addressing either the United States or the United Kingdom context, and mainly written by academics and researchers in communications, media or cultural studies. The book is divided into nine sections, dealing respectively with cultural studies and the cultural industry; radio; television and film; the Internet; the arts and museums; sport; music; international organisations and national cultures; and urban planning. The concept of culture that these categories reflect is largely that of culture as a set of signifying practices or symbolic goods. At the same time, with the inclusion of sport and urban planning, the editors gesture towards a broader, anthropological notion of culture as “a whole way of life”. The result is not altogether coherent. Within the narrower definition of culture, there are some surprising omissions, such as books, magazines and newspapers; and within the broader definition, the selections just seem arbitrary. On what grounds, for example, is sport included, but not science, which has arguably been a far greater determinant of the culture of the West? Why urban planning and not family policy, which can lay at least as great a claim to altering the texture of contemporary cultural life? What is needed here is a more rigorous account of how culture as “a whole way of life” is to be analytically constituted.

On religion and cultural policy: notes on the Roman Catholic Church.

This paper argues that religious institutions have largely been neglected within the study of cultural policy. This is attributed to the inherently secular tendency of most modern social sciences. Despite the predominance of the ‘secularisation paradigm’, the paper notes that religion continues to promote powerful attachments and denunciations. Arguments between the ‘new atheists’, in particular, Richard Dawkins, and their opponents are discussed, as is Habermas’ conciliatory encounter with Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). The paper then moves to a consideration of the Roman Catholic Church as an agent of cultural policy, whose overriding aim is the promotion of ‘Christian consciousness’. Discussion focuses on the contested meanings of this, with reference to (1) the deliberations of Vatican II, and (2) the exercise of theological and cultural authority by the Pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is argued that these doctrinal disputes intersect with secular notions of social and cultural policy and warrant attention outside the specialist realm of theological discourse.

INTELLECTUALS, ROMANTICS AND CULTURAL POLICY

This paper explores the relationship between intellectuals, Romantics and cultural policy, with particular reference to the work of William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). It first examines the idea of the intellectual in an English context and then briefly traces the idea of cultural policy from its use in practical policy discourse to its more theoretical application within a general politics of culture. Within a plurality of “romanticisms”, Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1801), his Essay, Supplementary to the Preface (1815) and Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry (1821) are identified as particularly significant “moments” of English Romanticism. The paper goes on to explore the extent to which these poets might be considered intellectuals and how, in these texts, they articulated ideas of cultural policy which have continued to resonate strongly in the contemporary world.

Researching the social impact of the arts: literature, fiction and the novel.

This paper offers a contribution to current debates in the field of cultural policy about the social impact of the arts. It explores the conceptual difficulties that arise in the notion of ‘the arts’ and the implications of these difficulties for attempts to generalise about their value, function and impact. It considers both ‘essentialist’ and ‘institutional’ perspectives, first on ‘the arts’ in toto and then on literature, fiction and the novel with the view of making an innovative intellectual connection between aesthetic theories and contemporary cultural policy discourse. The paper shows how literature sits uneasily in the main systems of classifying the arts and how the novel and fiction itself are seen as problematic categories. The position of the novel in the literary canon is also discussed, with particular reference to the shifting instability of the canon. The paper suggests that the dilemmas thrown up in trying to define or classify the novel are likely to be encountered in attempting to define other art forms. The implications of these findings for the interpretation and conduct of traditional ‘impact studies’ are explored.

The manufacture of hope: religion, eschatology and the culture of optimism

This article builds on earlier research, which concludes that societies cannot sustain themselves without cultures of optimism. These cultures are reproduced by a complex of ‘optimism promoters’, all of which can be seen to be engaged in a kind of unstated or ‘implicit’ cultural policy, with the production of optimism as one of its goals. The institution of religion is part of this complex. Its role in the production of optimism is the focus of this article, with particular reference to soteriology (theories of salvation) and eschatology. From a ‘detached’ and ‘functionalist’ perspective, it analyses how religions manufacture hope through (1) the production of meaning, (2) their models of divine justice and (3) theories of ultimate destiny. These matters are discussed in relation to Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. The article concludes that the optimisms of religion are of a quite different order from those promoted by other institutions.

Cultures of Optimism

Drawing on material from a broad range of fields, this article identifies an ‘optimism of everyday life’ and proposes that it performs significant psychological, social and cultural functions. These functions are briefly reviewed, with particular reference to psychological and physical health, family and social relationships and the achievement of goals in different contexts. It is argued that the necessity of optimism has given rise to a complex of optimism promoters, which function as agents of implicit cultural policy. The family, religious institutions, the medical profession, psychotherapists and counsellors, businesses and political leaders are, amongst others, all seen to be part of this complex, deeply engaged in the reproduction of cultures of optimism. Whilst a multiplicity of values is reflected in individual expressions of optimism, a kind of meta-value is expressed in its common, cognitive form: of energy over entropy, of living over dying.

Personal Well-Being

The claims grouped under this category can be seen, in many respects, as a derivation of Aristotle’s theory of catharsis that was discussed in Chapter 3. In these cases, the medical metaphor which, as we have seen, has been at the centre of an interpretative debate over Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the Poetics, has been developed into full-blown new theoretical developments focusing on the effects of the arts on individuals’ well-being and, more recently, quality of life. Two main derivations of the original Aristotelian ideas can be identified under the heading of ‘theories claiming that the arts can be beneficial to personal health and well-being’, one more theoretical, the other more pragmatic in its nature and aims.