• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• International Journal of Cultural Policy close

Andrzej Szczerski’s book ‘Transformation. Art in East-Central Europe since 1989’ is an impressive study of contemporary art created in the region after 1989, which underwent radical changes such as...

Augustin Girard, who died on 9 July 2009, spent 30 years of his professional life (until retirement in 1991) in the French Ministry of Culture, spanning a ‘classic’ period of cultural policy in Wes...

by Michel Foucault/edited by Michel Senellart/translated by Graham Burchell, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, xvii + 346 pp., ISBN 978‐1‐4039‐8654‐2 Neo‐liberalism is not Adam Smith; neo‐libe...

In recent decades, murals have become a common phenomenon in urban landscapes. They are markers of identity and can provide benefits to individuals, communities, and cities. Some murals are created...

The recent development of heritage industries and national heritage promotions in non-Western countries opens a new space for international cooperation and competition in ways that directly link to...

Implementing culture-based development strategies is a recent trend in large and small cities all over Europe. The definition of culture and the objectives of cultural strategies are highly contested in the public debate. Analysing the newspaper debates on the establishment of the Cultiva foundation in Kristiansand, Norway, this article discusses how and why the discursive debate on the definition of culture creates different discursive positions in the public debate on culture-based development. In the different discourses on what these strategies should be, there are a number of antagonisms that contribute to defining the relationships and interfaces between the different discursive positions. The main lines of discursive conflict are between urban planners and/or policy-makers who follow a spatial logic that emphasises a comprehensive understanding of territorial planning and cultural workers and/or artists who follow a critical artistic creation logic that emphasises the values that exist in art and t...

The following is a cultural anatomy of the city of Galway in the west of Ireland. The paper traces the evolution of the cultural profile of the city over the past four decades. It places the city’s...

In recent times, the Dutch Traveler community has successfully gained official recognition of its heritage. At first glance, one would consider that Tajfel’s ‘creativity’–in this case a desire to change a ‘negative social identity’ through the use of heritage–explains the aim of the community to gain official recognition. However, if ‘creativity’ were responsible for this aspiration, it would be an extreme and radical form of it. The aim of the Traveler community to preserve its way of life and its survival as an ‘ethnic group’ lies at the heart of its motivation to strive for official recognition of its heritage and use this recognition as a weapon against the local authorities. In this interesting case of legal ‘instrumentalization’ of cultural heritage, the actions of the Dutch Traveler community prompted changes in governmental policies. Prior to receiving official recognition of their heritage, policies were often aimed at abolishing their way of life.

by Fred R. Myers, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002, 410 pp., ISBN 0‐8223‐2932‐8 (hardback), ISBN 0‐8223‐2949‐2 (paperback) My choice here might seem an odd one. For Myers’ book is not about ...

Cultural policy research has so far paid little attention to the field of external cultural policy. The multiple interactions between internal and external cultural politics, however, as well as the growing significance of external cultural policy in the contemporary global arena of cultural and linguistic antagonisms, necessitate its inclusion in the cultural policy research agenda. Focusing on the specific instrument of Cultural Institutes abroad, this paper traces their historical development from the time of their original deployment by the European great powers, to their recent adoption by a host of lesser and greater countries. The different phases of this policy instrument development demonstrate its unique versatility and adaptability to a variety of contexts and functions and, more generally, its strategic role in the workings and processes of external cultural policy. The current state of Cultural Institutes challenges the widespread belief in the declining cultural role of the nation state and ...