Review: The 5th International Conference in Cultural Policy Research

One "buzz word" that was repeated in many concluding remarks of the organiser and during break-time conversations, was a likely candidate: Bullshit. In a furious lecture, Eleonora Belfiore from the University of Warwick, England, accused cultural policy and cultural policy research of producing bullshit all to often. "Idiocy" would be a correct everyday language translation, but Belfiore used the term (with the reference to the book which emerged out of the academic outfield to become a bestseller, "On Bullshit," by the American moral philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt) in a theoretical, sophisticated way, to describe statements for which the relationship to reality is unimportant, because the authors believe the purpose justifies all means. Cultural policy bullshit would claim proven empirical socio-economical effects of culture without proper examination. Belfiore proved that cultural politicians write and speak that way by presenting convincing examples involving prominent members of Englands cultural policy but cultural policy researchers? That was a strong statement.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/staff/belfiore/belfiore_on_bullshit_l
atest.pdf

With Belfiores attack, a truly questionable position was put in doubt that had experienced an academic rehabilitation during the past few years: Advocacy. Cultural policy researchers had understood their role as being representatives of the interests of a culture threatened for the most part by economisation. And that in the process, the neutrality necessary for scientists was being threatened, was part of the no less furious lecture by the Norwegian researcher Sigrid Royseng about rituals in cultural policy and cultural policy research. In her analysis, inspired by anthropology and religious studies, it became clear that advocacy often enough constructs or should one rather say fantasises? an ideal image of magic cultural influence for culture that cannot possibly stand up to reality. Royseng compared the complaint about instrumental cultural policy with archaic practices of ritual cleansing by the incantation of a holy figure.
The fanatic diligence with which cultural policy controversies are sometimes carried out became understandable in this light.
http://iccpr2008.yeditepe.edu.tr/papers/Royseng_Sigrid.doc

After having lost their religious beliefs, many people wish that artists could save the world. That the world is in need of rescue became clear to the participants of the conference on their outings within the 15-million-inhabitant metropolis of Istanbul, at the latest. A traffic gridlock was a threat almost round the clock. Since driving habits are a type of social behaviour, as Peter Rühmkorf wrote years ago, it seems logical to take up the subject of ecology into the continually growing list of social areas of action in cultural work. It is quite possible that this topic will be more intensely discussed at the next conference, probably in South Korea, but certainly in one of the strongly represented East Asian countries. Until then, interested Germans can visit the website of the Cultural Studies Institute in Essen to obtain more information about the current
research on climate culture.
www.kwi-nrw.de/home/projektbereich-3.html

For the scarcely present German representatives from practice and research, the paper by Gesa Birnkraut about evaluation procedures for institutionally supported cultural facilities would have been interesting. For Birnkraut, evaluations are primarily a motivation to progress learning processes for quality control in institutions. Trust is the basis for this. The Berlin Kulturverwaltung (Culture Administration) with whom Birnkraut collaborates seems to want to supply the necessary prerequisites by abstaining from misusing data for sanctioning or in the worst case selection purposes. With that, the long, anguishing struggle between state funding institutions and cultural facilities about reporting duties might be nearing an end. The vicious circle of throwing suspicions back and forth, of suffering either under the compulsion to control or a persecution complex, might be broken. That would be a great success.
http://iccpr2008.yeditepe.edu.tr/papers/Birnkraut_Gesa.pd
A common subject at the conference was of course that of cultural economy. The fashionable status of being the next big thing however was gone. Richard Florida was quoted more as the founder of a politically effective rhetoric than as a serious researcher.

His thesis that the economic growth of cities with a tolerant milieu and technical infrastructure was primarily due to the influx of a creative class was considered hardly empirically proven. Already the term creative class as complimentary as this might be to those who are meant seemed unfocussed, and whether or not the undisputed correlation between the famous 3 Ts and economic success can be interpreted as causality was questioned by several researchers with a certain amount of derision.

In conclusion, a prominently occupied podium looked self-critically forwards. The most important perspectives: Cultural policy research must free itself of the dictate of subjects by financially strong commissioners, above all from the Creative Industries and urban development; researchers and subjects from Africa are completely lacking, those from Latin America also for the most part; pop and popular culture are largely neglected, as well as the new media (with a notable exception: http://iccpr2008.yeditepe.edu.tr/papers/Valtysson_Bjarki.doc).

It was also warned that cultural policy research could over-estimate its influence on cultural policy. It was only fitting that politics in the true sense of the word, e.g. as the political power necessary to win majorities for decisions and then to implement them, played a surprisingly small role at the conference. Not only in Germany have the political scientists, as the actual experts for these questions, avoided the subject of cultural policy. The cultural policy researchers often come from other disciplines and are sociologists, teachers, economists, philosophers, cultural or administrational scholars.

Perhaps that is why cultures dimension of power was somewhat neglected. The participants in the concluding podium discussion recognised this as a development task for the future of the conference. It is also very possible, however, that the economisation of culture has passed up politics as the forming power, which means that cultural policy research would have lost its actual object for the time being. It became clear during the conference that cultural policy power evolves in modern societies where discourse is dominant. Thus, criticism of ideologies is the demand of our time.

Several brilliant examples of this took place at this meeting. They are available on the homepage of the conference.
Details: http://iccpr2008.yeditepe.edu.tr/papers.htm
Several papers can be found in the next editions of the International Journal for Cultural Policy Research in printed form.
ttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10286632.asp