Cultural economy: a critical review

Abstract

This article reviews work on 'cultural economy', particularly from within geography, and from other disciplines, where there are links to overtly geographical debates. We seek to clarify different interpretations of the term and to steer a course through this multivalency to suggest productive new research agendas. We review and critique work on cultural economy that represents a relatively straightforward economic geography, based on empirical observation while theoretically informed and driven by debates about Fordism and post-Fordism, agglomeration and cluster theory. Some of these ideas about cultural economy have proven attractive to policymakers and we map a normative script of cultural economy, with its prescriptive recommendations for economic development, which we then critique. Turning from this normative cultural economy, we move to a more theoretical discussion which reinterprets the cultural economy in light of debates on the culturization of 'the economic' in research praxis. We conclude that better acknowledgement is needed of the contradictory uses of 'cultural economy', but point nevertheless to the value of this multivalency as long as we reflect on the multiple contradictions and interpretations. With many current absences in work on cultural economy, we suggest various agendas waiting to be addressed.

Placing the Creative Economy: Scale, Politics, and the Material

“…Cases such as this underscore the contested nature of spaces and the way in which regulatory structures operate at multiple scales simultaneously. They also indicate the need to understand the local impact of economic development policies that emanate from beyond the localized urban cluster (Gibson and Kong, 2005).…”

“…Over time, the traffic in these ideas has led to an increasingly standardized narrative of`creativity-led urban economic development' that meshes well with the free-market development discourse. Within this narrative, creativity is valued only when it contributes to economic growth (Gibson and Kong, 2005).…”

Regional Imaginaries of Governance Agencies: Practising the Region of South West Britain

“…Although SWS may regard their media clusters as being in 'a specific place' the Gloucestershire, Cornwall and Wessex clusters can hardly be seen as tightly agglomerated around a focused geographical area. In contrast, the Bristol media cluster appears to be the tight-knit entity, constituted through social buzz and work-based interactions of companies that Pratt and others point to (see Gibson and Kong 2005;Grabher 2001 andScott 2000). In interview, the Bristol media cluster's strong 'internal dynamic' acted to isolate it from the rest of the South West, alongside an otherwise London-facing viewpoint:…”

“…Indeed, a striking feature of much academic research on the creative sector has been the general trend to frame it through the discourse of the 'cluster', with its development understood through a notion of agglomeration (see, for instance, Bassett et al 2002;Brown et al 2000;Coe 2000;Coe and Townsend 1998;Cole 2008;Gibson and Kong 2005;Kong 2005;Pratt Sport's (DCMS) recognition of thirteen creative sectors, and broadly follow Gill and Pratt's (2008, 2) regarding of the 'creative industries' as a political rebranding of the so-called 'cultural industries'. The DCMS (http://www.culture.gov.uk/ what_we_do/creative_industries /default.aspx, last accessed 29/11/09) who refer to the creative sectors as: advertising; architecture; art and antique markets; crafts; design; fashion; film and video; software and computer games; music and performing arts; publishing and television.…”

Cultural and Economic Complementarities of Spatial Agglomeration in the British Television Broadcasting Industry: Some Explorations

“…There has been much debate regarding the relationship between economy and culture (Allen, 2002;Barnes, 2001;Castree, 2004;Crang, 1997;Gibson and Kong, 2005;Pryke and du Gay, 2007). Amin and Thrift (2004; have provided a useful characterisation of the central features of the cultural turn and its concomitant, the cultural turn's critique of economics and the value of economics within economic geography.…”