Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture

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Master of Arts Thesis

Euroculture

University of Uppsala

University of Groningen

January 15, 2010

The Challenges of Creativity:

Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy in Europe

Submitted by:

Iryna Matsevich Student number: 840922p408 Contact details: Str. Pritycki 78-150 Minsk 220140 Belarus

Supervised by:

Prof. Eva Hemmungs Wirtén Dr. Judith Anna Vega

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MA Programme Euroculture

Declaration

I, Iryna Matsevich hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “The Challenges of Creativity: Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy in Europe”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within it of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the List of References. I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.

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The present-day repositioning of cultural and creative industries into the centre of the European economy has raised an immense number of issues in cultural policies. The European cultural and creative industries have taken central stage in the European economy in both theory and practice. In this thesis I attempt to analyze the contradictory theoretical issues of the present-day EU programs on cultural and creative industries. The purpose of this enquiry is to provide the background for the reconstruction of the conception of “sustainable creative Europe” and its implications for cultural policy programs. This conception may facilitate deep understanding, further consistent elaboration and implementation of European cultural policies.

One of the key questions of this thesis concerns the issue of the economic determinism and its threats to sustainable development of European cultural policies. The European Union has kept the issue of potentially common cultural policies on the margins of the economic agenda for more than half a century. I seek to account for the conceptual interrelations between the EU programs on the cultural/creative industries and cultural policies without relapsing into positioning economic discourse as the determinant in the EU programs on cultural polices. Simultaneously, my intention is to question the potential transition from the economic programs on cultural and creative industries to the wider discourse on cultural studies, where cultural policy programs may be reformulated.

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challenged the further programming of the EU cultural policies. My aim is to critically scrutinize the cultural and creative industries programs in the framework of the programs on present-day European cultural policies.

Research Question, Purpose and Objectives

In light of the described developments, the main research question of this work is:

Which conceptual presuppositions may be distinguished in present-day European policies on cultural and creative industries?

From this follows a set of subquestions:

− What do the terms of cultural and creative industries mean in the context of the current EU cultural policies?

− How do the terms of cultural and creative industries transform into concepts? − How is the concept of creative industries applied in the EU political

programs?

− Why and how does the conception of creative industries need to be subjected to a critical analysis?

In accordance with the delineated scope of questions the purpose of this thesis is to reconstruct the conceptual foundations of the programs on cultural and creative industries in the context of present-day European cultural policies.

The main objectives of the thesis are:

− to scrutinize the transformation of the terms of cultural industries and creative industries into the political concepts within the European programs on cultural and creative industries;

− to critically analyze the present-day programs on cultural and creative industries;

− to delineate the perspectives on the transition from the conception of “European creative industries” to the “sustainable creative Europe” conception.

The Relevance of the Thesis

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further elaboration of a shared European approach to this field. This approach may be consistently applied to political programs only within a conception prepared and justified beforehand. Second, the need for the shared approach is economically determined. The absence of common cultural policies undermines the success of economic integration. The competitiveness of the European cultural and creative industries stimulates an intensive growth of GDP. The EU fosters the development of this sector in order to be a long-term competitive rival with the USA and the BRIC-countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Therefore, the phenomenon of cultural and creative industries has attracted the attention of scholars and politicians alike, respectively as a strategic platform of the twofold process – the European economic growth and the European cultural integration.

Concept and Significance

This thesis elucidates the conceptual foundations of cultural and creative industries programs, which shape European cultural policies. The emergence of the concept “culture industry” in the Frankfurt school preceded the recognition of the culture industries phenomenon as an enterprise with its own principles of self-organization and development. Later, the concept was used by politicians in political programming to describe the development of the field at the crossroads between economy and culture. In the early 1990s, the concept “creative industries” joined the paradigm of the cultural policies from the former decade and coexisted with the concept “cultural industries”.

The definitions of the concepts of “cultural industries” and “creative industries” differ between interpretative communities. In this thesis, the concept “creative industries” designates the integral field of coordination between arts, science, business and manufacturing. The “creative industries” concept comprises the narrower concept of “cultural industries”, usually associated with integration between arts, business and manufacturing (excluding many fields of the integration with science).

Methodology and Theory

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clusters”1. In the early 1990s, the research of cultural industries tended to focus on the economic paradigm to classify the types of cultural and creative industries without an intention to give the precise definitions of cultural and creative industries (Garnham 1997; Cunningham 2002). Since the mid 1990s, the literature on cultural studies (Lash and Urry 1994; Landry 2000; Lash and Lury 2007; Hesmondhalgh 2007) has demonstrated how to use semiological, hermeneutic and historic methods in the research of cultural and creative industries. As a result, cultural studies have revealed the limitations of the economic approach to the analysis of cultural and creative industries.

However, far too little attention has been drawn to the “definitional form” of the concepts of cultural and creative industries and the logic behind them. In addition, no research has been found that seeks to place the concepts into wider discourses on a social theory. Despite the predominantly fuzzy definitions of cultural and creative industries, I attempt to reveal the logic of these concepts by “positioning” them in different classes of categories, both economic and cultural.

The further exploration of the programs on cultural and creative industries is steered into the actor-network theory (ANT) of the English sociologist John Law and the French sociologist Bruno Latour to render its ontology and principles of cognition. The research employs the actor-network theory (ANT) in order to use its potential in the consideration of human and inhuman actors connected in a net. According to the definition of the British sociologist John Law, the ANT is “an approach to sociotechnical analysis that treats entities and materialities as enacted and relational effects, and explores the configuration and reconfiguration of those relations” (Law 2004, 157). I argue that the ANT with its methods of the recursive “flat mapping” assists in comprehension of the multi-dimensional field of cultural and creative industries.

There are different theories and approaches which may be employed to analyze the programs on cultural and creative industries. The studies of these industries are largely based upon the empirical investigation of economic principles of the cultural and creative industries evolution (Caves 2002; Cunningham 2008; Power 2008). In this context, the emergence of the field of cultural and creative industries is considered as a

1_{Creative clusters include industries, which are “usually linked through vertical (buyer/supplier) or}

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result of the economic restructuring, when art, science, business and manufacturing rapidly integrate.

To go beyond the economic assessments of the programs on cultural and creative industries, it is useful to follow the ANT with its principles of cognition. The ANT might assist to overcome the economic realism in the comprehension of the policies on cultural and creative industries. This kind of realism implies that the programs on cultural and creative industries appear as a result of the actual restructuring of the economy (the emergence of a new institutional infrastructure). I try to balance it with the nominalistic approach, which points out the primary role of the concept-formation in the further determination of policies. In accordance with the nominalistic approach, the deployment of the new concept in cultural policies leads to the formation of new institutions and occupations in reality.

The ANT approach is employed in the thesis as relevant for the description of the conception of creative industries in the framework of the present-day social theory due to its ability to grasp objects, things, techniques, technologies, subjects and nets of their interrelations as simultaneously deployed in the synergetic dynamics. I trace the characteristics and the principles of social ontology and epistemology of the ANT, which contribute to the development of the conception of creative industries.

In such a way the research establishes the rationale for the scrutiny of the interconnections between:

1) the ontology of creative industries as a mobile and flexible actor-network field of social reality;

2) the epistemology of the conception of creative industries as the principles of the cognition of the outlined ontological field.

Limitations

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However, B. Latour argued that in the situation of the ecological crisis the ANT should not be fragmented in the exploration of different fields of the world. To respond to the challenges of the ecological situation the researcher has to grasp the wholeness of the world. That is why the limitations of the ANT might be reestimated since the ANT “engages in cosmopolitics” (Latour 2005, 262), where nature and society are tightly interconnected.

Terminology

In order to analyze the transformation of the terms of cultural and creative industries into the concepts, it is crucial to differentiate the meanings of “term” and “concept”. “Term” signifies a precise meaning, whereas “concept” denotes a highly abstract and complex idea or a set of ideas. Reconstructing the conceptual framework of political programs I describe an “intellectual structure underlying a research project that emerges from an integration of previous literature, theories, and other relevant information” (Hay 278).

Throughout the study the term “programs” is used to point out that the research is fulfilled at the level of political programming. The meaning of the concept of creative industries is analyzed in the framework of the EU political programs. I explore programs as a set of political statements about cultural and creative industries, which determines the ways of policy-making. However, I do not examine them at the stage of implementation.

The term of the “European cultural policies” needs a special clarification since the programs on cultural and creative industries are scrutinized within the programs on European cultural policies. It is important to keep in mind that the term does not signify simply the sum of cultural policies of different European countries. It rather denotes the framework of an integrative cultural policy, which might shape the European identity as an embodied whole.

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Sources and Material

I begin the research with the historical reconstruction of discussions on culture-industry interconnections. The German philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno gave the first definition of the term “culture industry” and transformed it into a concept. The further analysis of the cultural policy programs reveals the transformation of the philosophical concept of “culture industry” into the political concept of “cultural industries”.

The present-day program documents on the EU cultural policies constitute the background for the reconstruction of the conception of creative industries. I focus on three groups of documents:

a) elaborated by and for the EU organizations;

b) developed by non-governmental organizations for the EU; c) presented by independent researchers for the EU.

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Chapter 2. From Culture Industry to Creative Industries: A Historical Overview 2.1. The Culture Industry: From the Critical Social Theory to Cultural Policies

Over the past century, integration processes between culture, science, industry and business have been much disputed. One of the most influential interpretations of this integration is the concept “culture industry” which was introduced by German philosophers M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno in the book “Dialectic of Enlightenment” (1947). They defined it as a repressive mass ideology, in which the values of consumption and technical rationality are predominant. To point out the difference between the concepts “cultural industry” and “mass culture”, Adorno admitted: “In our drafts we spoke of ‘mass culture’. We replaced that expression with ‘culture industry’ in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art” (Adorno 85).

In the Information society, the issue of the culture industry has become more acute, and arguments for and against the culture industry have increased public concern about future cultural policies, and have drawn attention to terms and concepts of political programs, which shape and determine cultural policies. In these circumstances, it is crucial to analyze presuppositions of the emergence of the term “culture industry” as one of the key concepts in present-day European cultural policies.

Considering the first period of the culture industry genesis, Horkheimer and Adorno drew attention to self-identification and self-description of this sector as business: “The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries…” (Adorno and Horkheimer 121). This way of self-identification set out a framework for the further interpretation of the role of cultural industries in society in terms of mass production and consumption.

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possibility to revise the verdict to the culture industry and its pernicious effects. The authors did not conjure up a utopian prognosis of the culture industry destruction or reformation.

Critical and pessimistic reflections of German philosophers drew attention of politicians and civil society to effects of mass production and consumption, mechanisms and directions of the culture industry development emerged. The development of the culture industry policies of the 1960-1990s years is the illustration of the transformation of the culture industry from an abstract philosophical concept into the political concept of “cultural industries” (plural form) used in policy programs. The first cultural industries programs in Europe (Ahearne 23) focus on the role of cultural capital1 in an economic growth.

In order to exploit cultural capital, it is necessary to examine beforehand how to facilitate the formation of a corresponding infrastructure. The conditions for the cultural industries development depend on both an infrastructure of institutions and social subjects, involved into the work of these institutions. Horkheimer and Adorno were the first philosophers who articulated the correlation between the culture industry infrastructure and structures of mass consciousness. They considered this correlation referring to Kant’s categories: “Kant’s formalism still expected a contribution from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to fundamental concepts; but industry robs the individual of his function” (Adorno and Horkheimer 124).

The implicit question of this statement may be articulated in the following form: how does the “industrial schematism” of cognition and practical experience transform in contemporary society (if it does)? To answer this question, it is necessary to explore the functions of the culture industry concept as a so-called “filter” (Adorno and Horkheimer 126) of cognition. I shall return to this question in the next section.

The works of Horkheimer and Adorno provided the foundations for the further development of the culture industry concept. Reviewed and placed in the context of cultural policies, the concept moved from the critical social theory to an instrumental political discourse. Stripped of its radical critical intention, the culture industry concept re-entered political discourses. It has become possible due to the demonstration by the Frankfurt’s philosophers that the “culture industry has its ontology” (Adorno 87). The

1_{Capital is “accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its 'incorporated,' embodied form)” (Bourdieu}

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culture industry ontology has to be explored seriously since the concept designates rather not “the production process” and “standardization of thing itself” (Adorno 87), but “the rationalization of distribution techniques” (Adorno 87). In these circumstances, the culture industry products are “no longer also commodities, they are commodities through and through” (Adorno 86). In other words, it means that functions of the culture industry products are determined with the principles of their expansion.

After Horkheimer and Adorno, the literature on the culture industry issues has developed from a radical criticism to instrumental political renderings of the term as an index for a specific socio-economic field. In the domain of the critical social theory the concept designates a mass ideology, whereas in the political discourse the concept of cultural industries (plural form) designates cultural and economic structures, which are embodied in reality. The shift from the Frankfurt’s concept to the political concept of cultural industries is considered by the British specialist in the cultural industries studies David Hesmondhalgh as “a refusal to simplify assessment and explanation” (Hesmondhalgh 17) of this sector and reduce its function to mass entertainment.

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This example demonstrates that the term “cultural industries” did not have strict meaning in political documents. It preserved some negative connotations derived from the Frankfurt’s texts and referred to mass production and consumption of low-quality products. However, Jack Lang and the socialist president Francois Mitterand repositioned the term into an economic discourse and supported cultural industries development as a platform for a GDP growth. Cultural industries were associated with business and mass manufacturing in addition to arts. The Langian program was the first cultural policy program (based on the economic reports) which “insisted that ‘a broadened notion of culture constituted a resource for the economy” (Ahearne 23). After the Langian program, the broad meaning of “culture” and “cultural industries” was re-estimated as a bonus for political programs on cultural policies.

The other bright example of the emergence of the term “culture industry” in the political context is the British cultural policy of the 1980-1990s. In the 1980s, the British government elaborated new programs to stimulate the cultural industries growth. In British polices the term “cultural industries” designated integration between arts, sciences, manufacturing, ICT (information and communication technologies) sector and market. The left-wing Greater London Council (GLC) launched the program on the “investment in cultural industries as a means of economic regeneration” (Hesmondhalgh 139), but did not fulfill it. In the 1990s these initiatives were reformulated (I shall consider them in the next section). Analyzing the first initiatives, the British specialist in cultural policies Nicholas Garnham admitted: “To mobilise the concept of the cultural industries as central to an analysis of cultural activity and of public cultural support is to take a stand against a whole tradition of idealist cultural analysis…” (Selwood 449). This statement points out the shift from the idealist vision of culture as arts to the pragmatic approaching of culture as cultural industries.

The shift to a pragmatic approach to the concept “culture” coincides with the transformation of the term “cultural industries” with the meaning of the particular sector of integration between diverse industries into a concept with a broader meaning of an instrument and a platform of an economic growth. The latter meaning overlaps with a broad scope of references and connotations of the concept “culture” in the pragmatic context of national cultural policies.

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which combine creation of new production and commercialization of immaterial and cultural contents” (UNESCO 5).

Thus, the arguments of this section demonstrate that Frankfurt’s introduction and interpretation of the concept “culture industry” revealed the existence of the previously ignored field of integration between arts, manufacturing and business as an integrative wholeness, a sovereign sphere of society with own principles of self-development. However, fuzzy cultural industries definitions urged further discussions on its use in cultural policies. For example, the critical intention may be revealed in the French cultural policies from the 1950s onwards till the mid-1980s (Ahearne 10-25). The main arguments brought against the concept which implied cultural industries policies were the following: the profanation of culture by means of mass production and consumption; the annihilation of an artistic core of cultural products; the Americanization due to the dominance of the American cultural industries in the world (Ahearne 2002; Hartley 2008).

The debates on the cultural industries role in modern society have not abated in the context of European cultural policies. Since the 1990s, when the ICT shaped socio-cultural development worldwide, the socio-cultural industries concept has become a key element in cultural policy programs. In the next section, I shall consider how the cultural industries concept has been further transformed and employed in cultural policy programs.

2.2. The Creative Industries: From Cultural Policies to an Analytic Enquiry

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the creative potential of cultural industries. This interest has led to the formation of the concept “creative industries”. The latter replaces the concept “cultural industries” in different cultural policies worldwide. In this section, I shall explore the meanings of the new concept and how it relates to cultural industries. I shall start with the brief description of contradictory definitions of creative industries in the European cultural policy programs. In order to overcome these contradictions in the second part of the section, I shall examine the definitional logic behind the concept of creative industries.

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concept entered the European agenda of cultural policies at the intergovernmental level (European Council 2000; European Commission 2001; European Parliament 2003). In these circumstances, it is hardly possible to ignore the existence of the creative industries concept. It has become a challenge for national governments and international organizations to find categories to shape new cultural policies on creative industries.

The most widespread meaning of the creative industries concept stems from the Creative Industries Mapping Document (1998, 2001), elaborated by the UK Government. In this document the creative industries were defined as “those industries, which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”1 (United Kingdom. DCMS 3). This definition has been further employed by the European Commission (European Commission 2005).

A major problem with this concept definition is its indeterminacy in application to local and regional cultural policies. Different countries reformulate this definition in their own way. For example, “A Creative Economy Green Paper for the Nordic region” (November 2007), based on the revised British approach, describes creative industries as “surrounding, articulating, reproducing and distributing the ‘core creative fields’ where ‘expressive value’ is most intense”. (Fleming 13). Germany, for instance, includes advertising and manufacturing of software, games in addition to cultural industries as the core sector in their definition of creative industries. The cultural industries in this context are defined as “all enterprises and self-employed persons whose economic activities focus on the production, dissemination and intermediation of artistic and cultural products or services” (Fesel and Sondermann 16). This situation with different definitions puts obstacles in the way of achieving a more coherent European cultural policy program and productive coordination of governments.

A crucial contribution to the recognition of the creative industries concept at the international level was made by the UNCTAD XI Ministerial Conference in 2004. Four years later, at the High-level Panel on the Creative Economy and Industries for Development, the Secretary General of UNCTAD announced: “It was at UNCTAD XI in São Paulo in 2004 that the topic of creative industries for development first began to

1 _{The UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport singled out thirteen sub-sectors of}

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receive the attention it deserved on the economic development agenda” (Panitchpakdi). According to the UNCTAD definition, the creative industries include “any activity producing symbolic products with a heavy reliance on intellectual property and for as wide a market as possible” (UNCTAD 2004, 4).

The employment of the creative industries concept in political programs has its practical outcome. This statement is developed, for example, by the British specialist in cultural industries David Hesmondhalgh. He argues in the monograph “Cultural Industries” (2007) that “policymakers have increasingly come to use the term ‘creative industries’ and that term has had its own role to play in transformations in cultural policy” (Hesmondhalgh 137). The role of the new term in cultural policies is also analyzed and described by the British specialist in cultural policies Nicholas Garnham. He indicated that the emergence of the programs on creative industries illustrates, on the one hand, “a shift of focus away from support for the ‘traditional’ high arts, with their association the protection of the values of some golden age, and towards the creatively new (often associated with young, trendy and ‘cool’). On the other hand, <…> a shift of focus from the marginality of the Ministry of Fun to a serious concern with the central business of economic policy – a shift from circuses to bread” (Garnham 2001, 445-59).

Political documents and creative industries studies justify the relevance of the creative industries concept for cultural policy programs mainly in economic terms. The concept designates the field of a rapid GDP growth and job creation. This economic growth has been reconsidered as an outcome of the formation of “creative clusters”1 (the economic notion of the American economist Michael Porter). The meaning of the creative industries concept is broad and fuzzy but it has an operational function of the reformulation of cultural policies in economic terms. This function has been employed by policy-makers (Garnham 2001; Selwood 2001).

Thus, all present-day definitions of the creative industries concept are approached mainly in a pragmatic political and economic context. The purpose of the latter is to elaborate political programs for the stimulation of an economic growth. This pragmatic approach is embedded into an argumentation framework of the creative industries programs. The arguments are brought to support the statements that the creative industries increase:

− an economic growth and number of jobs;

1_{These industries are “usually linked through vertical (buyer/supplier) or horizontal (common customers,}

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− a speed and degree of the European integration on the basis of the European identity formation;

− a provision for qualitative cultural products and a wide access to them; − a degree of a regional revival;

− a diversity of social and cultural capital;

− recognition and promotion of Europe worldwide as a “creative hub”; − actualization of an individual creative potential;

− innovation production.

The summary of arguments turns out to be a contradictive set of statements. It is unclear in which way the EU will be able to combine:

− a territorial cohesion and a regional/local revival;

− the European integration and the “empowerment of minorities” (KEA European Affairs 2006, 178);

− a quality of products and a mass access to them.

The list of contradictions is endless. In these circumstances, social sciences have to assist in the verification and justification of programs on cultural policies. To follow up this call for the creative industries research, I shall analyze the foundations of the concept development.

It is crucial to highlight, that after the publication of the Creative Industries Mapping Document (1998, 2001), the British government and soon the EU organizations recognized the lack of relevant methodological instruments for the operationalization of the creative industries programs. The main difficulties were caused by:

− fuzzy definitions;

− the absence of correspondent classifications of creative activities in the framework of the creative industries sector;

− the irrelevance of previously used indicators for the estimation of the creative industries development;

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British cultural policy. The report of the British and Australian researchers of the creative industries, Peter Higgs (the UK), Stuart Cunningham (Australia) and Hasan Bakhshi (the UK), “Beyond Creative Industries: Mapping the Creative Economy of the United Kingdom”1, depictures the evolution and expansion of the creative industries concept in the field of the British statistics.

Nevertheless, one of the primary questions within a disparate ensemble of skeptic remarks touching on the potential of the creative industries concept still concerns the necessity to use this concept in cultural policies. To answer this question, it is necessary to examine significative and denotative functions, as well as descriptive and evaluative functions of the creative industries concept. The meanings of these functions will be described below.

I shall start with the differentiation of descriptive and evaluative functions of the concept “creative industries”. The descriptive function clarifies the conditions when something is labeled as “creative industries”. The evaluative function of the creative industries concept is revealed when one praises the degree of creativity of a specific type of activity. This function relativizes the meaning of the descriptive function in a sense that our appraisal can change the conditions of the indication of the particular phenomenon as the “creative industries”.

The clarification of the meaning of “creative industries” may be fulfilled in different classes of categories. The relativism of the meaning is the outcome of overlapping descriptive and evaluative functions. The indication of X as “creative” is a judgment about creativity derived from a specific class of objects/characteristics. A judgment determines a criterion of creativity. For example, according to the specialist in creative economy John Howkins, the class criterion for creative industries is intellectual property, according to the American economist and sociologist Richard Florida – the creation of meaningful forms, according to the British government – the combination of the reference classes of symbolic products and intellectual property.

A bright illustration of the “positioning” of the concept “creative industries” in systems of sociological and economic categories is the model of the so-called “creative trident”, presented in the report of the NESTA “Beyond Creative Industries: Mapping Creative Economy of the UK” (2008). The authors of the model “creative trident” argued that the main weakness of the proposed earlier creative industries definition

1_{The research was financed and directed by the NESTA, the British National Endowment for Science,}

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(Creative Industries Mapping Document 1998, 2001) is the absence of the criterion for the labeling of a class of industries as “creative”. In practice there are many types of “creative” activities beyond the pointed out industries. Moreover, in the outlined industries there are types of “uncreative” activities as well. Accordingly to new amendments, the British model of “creative economy”/“creative trident” includes three types of occupations: “creative professions in the creative sector; uncreative professions of the creative sector; creative professions outside the creative sector” (Higgs, Cunningham and Bakhshi 27).

This model prescribes the positioning of the creative industries concept simultaneously in the classes of industries and professions. In such a way the possibility of “positioning” in several dimensions may be developed. The model has been employed in the further elaboration of the creative industries classifications for the Ministry of Statistics (Higgs, Cunningham and Bakhshi 29-31) with intention to combine classifications of creative activities, professions and industries. This synthesis facilitates the accumulation of statistic data, which had been collected before the emergence of the concept “creative industries”.

The problems resulting from the vagueness of the creative industries concept, that I have outlined above, is one of the reasons, I argue, undermining the effectiveness of the employment of the term and concept in cultural policies. At that point it is reasonable to move from the analytics of language to its pragmatics. The employment of the creative industries concept has been productively fulfilled mainly in the economic context. Economic policies seek to map the sector of a GDP growth. In order to follow this purpose, the space of a GDP growth should be indicated and signified.

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considers the new concept and programs on creative industries as an outcome of the formation of the ICT sector with its new institutional infrastructure (for example, the European Parliament Resolution on Cultural and Creative Industries (2003) pointed out the formation of the ICT sector as a precondition of the emergence of the creative industries concept) and new professions with multiple competences (for example, image-makers, brand-makers, creative managers, creative directors).

The overlap of the descriptive and evaluative functions, as well as the interdependence between the significative and denotative functions, reveals a specific logic behind the concept “creative industries”. This logic determines the perspectives for a theory, which may be built on the basis of the creative industries conception. It might be assumed that the main function of the creative industries conception is rather not to define the creative industries term, but to elaborate and substantiate the model of its deployment, to clarify the conditions of its appropriate application to political programs.

One of examples of the application of the analytic approach to the creative industries concept in the economic research is the work of the Australian specialists in cultural policies and creative industries studies Stuart Cunningham and John Potts, “Four Models of the Creative Industries” (2008). These authors differentiated four possible answers to the question concerning the positioning of creative industries in the economy. The place of creative industries depends on the renderings of their primary contribution to welfare, competition, growth or innovation (Potts and Cunningham 234). “Each of these possibilities parlays into a very different policy model: in (1) a welfare subsidy is required; in (2), standard industry policy; in (3), investment and growth policy; and in (4), innovation policy is best” (Potts and Cunningham 234). This economic research is the illustration how the creative industries concept positioning in a reference class can clarify its meaning and functions.

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Chapter 3. European Cultural and Creative Industries Programs 3.1. The European Approach to Cultural and Creative Industries

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact of a GDP growth in the sector of cultural and creative industries. The UN Report on Creative Industries and Development (2004) considers this sector as a platform of sustainable development1. Its rapid annual growth (2.5-5% in developed countries) attracts attention of policy-makers. Under these conditions, taking into account the economic potential of the BRIC-countries, the EU has to facilitate the formation of the European cultural and creative industries which will be competitive in the world economy in the long term.

In this section I shall analyze the documents on cultural and creative industries elaborated by the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council and Eurostat. I shall reveal what issues are discussed, what approaches and definitions of cultural and creative industries are employed in political programs on the basis of the main EU politic strategic reports and resolutions on cultural policies emerged during the last six years.

Recently, the European Commission has published the European Agenda for Culture in a Globalising World (2007) in order to draw attention of policy-makers to integration processes between culture and economy. The Agenda follows the KEA European Affairs2 research “The Economy of Culture in Europe. Study Prepared for the European Commission” (2006), which highlighted that the sector of the European economy of culture “turned over €654 billion in 2003 (more than the turnover generated by car manufacturing or ICT manufacturing), contributing to 2.6% of the EU GDP, representing close to 6 million jobs” (KEA European Affairs 2006). So far, the lack of the attention to the cultural and creative industries policies may be a threat to their future development. To be able to respond to this situation, the EU organizations formulated the purpose to elaborate a European approach to this new sector and called for the research of the cultural and creative industries concept and its meanings in the European context (European Parliament 2008).

The European Parliament has drawn attention to the interdependence between the cultural and creative industries development and the European identity formation

1_{"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the}

ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development 1997, 43).

2_{A Brussels-based strategic consultancy specializing in providing advice, support and research in relation}

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(European Parliament 2008). The existence of the common European identity is considered by the European Parliament as a presupposition of the elaboration of an integrative approach to European cultural policies, and correspondingly to the European cultural and creative industries.

Highlighting the role of cultural and creative industries in the EU building, the European Parliament is “placing culture at the heart of European integration” (European Parliament 2008). This claim indicates the shift of the Lisbon Agenda (2000) mainly from economic issues to the wider Lisbon Agenda beyond 2010. However, the uncertainty of the concepts of “European identity” and “cultural/creative industries” makes the European cultural/creative industries approach a problematic one. This situation has determined a quest of a shared cultural and creative industries concept and an approach to it.

This quest follows a twisting way, running through different disciplinary discourses and national perspectives. The working document of the European Commission “Future of Creative Industries: Implications for Research Policy” (2005) delineates the scope of the EU choices at that time. The conducted analysis summarizes the following approaches, concepts and definitions:

− D. Hesmondhalgh’s concept of cultural industries1 (2002). He pointed out the following distinctive features of cultural industries (Hesmondhalgh 17-18): risky business, creativity versus commerce, high production costs and low reproduction costs, semi-public goods, the need to create scarcity;

− the UNCTAD definition (see section 2.2) of creative industries (2004); − T. O’Regan’s2 concept of creative industries which includes cultural

industries as a subset (O’Regan 2001);

− D. Throsby’s3 model of cultural industries “centered around the locus of origin of creative ideas, and radiating outwards as those ideas become combined with more and more other inputs to produce a wider and wider range of products” (Throsby 2001);

1_{English Professor of Media and Music Industries David Hesmondhalgh tried to overcome the so-called}

“epistemological clash” between the realism of political economy and the constructivism of cultural studies, and defined cultural industries as those “based on the industrial production and circulation of texts and centrally reliant on the work of symbol creators” (Hesmondhalgh 2007, 14), “those institutions (mainly profit-making companies, but also state organisations and non-profit organizations) that are most directly involved in the production of social meaning” (Hesmondhalgh 2007,12).

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− St. Cunnigham’s1 association of cultural industries with national cultural policies, whereas creative industries − with local/regional/global policies (beyond state and national);

− the UK definition of creative industries (see section 2.2);

− R. Florida’s2 concept and definition of the creative class, as well as creative society (will be considered in the next chapter).

Moreover, in addition to the variety of definitions and approaches, the working paper of the European Commission represents the divergence between the cultural/ creative industries programs and the empirical data collected by Eurostat. The latter employs the conception of “information economy/society” with the central notion of the ICT (information and communication technologies). The derived conclusion is that the EU has elaborated the cultural and creative industries programs which are contradictory because researchers have not yet prepared a grid for the coherent conception of the European “creative economy/society” as alternative one to the conception of “information economy/society”.

One of the main reasons of the convergence of the conceptions of “information society” and “creative society” is the lack of the data on the EU cultural sector. The analysis of this data can reveal particular features of the culture sector dynamics and the contours of the conception of “creative society”. Under the circumstances of the absence of this conception, the EU organizations are adapting the terms and data of the theory of “information society” to the new slightly crystallizing conception of “creative society”. As a result of this adaptation, the theory of “information society” focuses on the influence of the ICT on cultural and creative industries.

In the situation of the current construction of the conception which will be able to describe the peculiarity of the European creative industries, the European Commission temporary employs R. Florida’s approach and his definition of the creative class (see the definition in the next chapter) to describe the European creative class. European researchers use Florida’s index of creativity (“3-T approach”: development of technology, talent and tolerance) in accordance with the research “Europe in the Creative Age”3 (2004).

1_{An Australian Professor of Media and Communications} 2_{An American Sociologist and Economist}

3_{This research is fulfilled by Richard Florida in collaboration with Irene Tinagli, a doctoral student at}

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Despite the popularization of Richard Florida’s book “The Rise of the Creative Class” (2002), there are many counteracting views on Florida’s theory. The vice chair of the Canada Council of the Arts, Simon Brault admitted: “However, what emerges from a closer look at the issues dealt with by Florida is a scenario which could further stir up economic competition among cities and regions in the Western hemisphere and less a new theory of real evince for the cultural sector” (Wiesand and Sondermann 3). Moreover, there are many examples, which do not fit into Florida’s theory. One of them is the Dutch cultural policy (except Amsterdam), which undermines Florida’s conclusions regarding bohemianism and a creative ethos: “Amenities – such as culture, environmental beauty and, as a typical Dutch amenity, the amount of historic buildings – are most likely to attract a creative class to Dutch cities” (Wiesand and Sondermann 3). Nowadays, the representatives of the European Commission call for the definition of cultural and creative industries and a correspondent theory elaborated on the basis of the EU policies.

Since the publication of the first European Parliament Resolution on the Cultural and Creative Industries (2003) till nowadays, the EU has gradually moved from the economic agenda to the manifold/poly-dimensional cultural agenda (KEA European Affairs 2006). This shift is especially visible in the study of the documents of the KEA European Affairs and the European Commission.

“The Economy of Culture in Europe” (2006) is the first KEA study on the pan-European creative and cultural industries development prepared for the pan-European Commission. That is the reaction to the call of the European Parliament and the European Commission for the creation of the European cultural and creative industries map (European Council 2000, 2006; European Parliament 2003). Exploring and comparing different national approaches to cultural policies, including the emerging cultural and creative industries policies, the KEA outlines the notions of “cultural sector” and “creative sector” as a point of departure for the elaboration of the pan-European approach.

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Affairs 2006, 53). The KEA did not give any strict definition of culture, reducing its meaning mainly to the number of cultural activities, which play a crucial role in the economic development:

− Fostering grass-roots initiatives aimed at achieving social and socio-economic empowerment (social cultural projects, cultural associations, amateur theatre or dance companies, volunteers launching a festival),

− Top-down projects initiated from administrations and institutions (for example local policies aimed at recycling brownfield sites to socio-economically improve an abandoned area). (KEA European Affairs 2006, 9)

This definition of cultural activities articulates the economic dimension of culture. However, it is crucial to draw attention to the fact, that the KEA researchers attempted to use the concept of culture embracing its political, economic and social dimensions in one report. Unfortunately, they did not manage to combine these dimensions in all chapters of the report.

The meaning of the term “creative sector” in the abovementioned KEA report includes “the remaining industries and activities that use culture as an added-value for the production of non-cultural products” (KEA European Affairs 2006, 53). Combining these terms the KEA introduced the notion “cultural&creative sector” to designate the scope of the economy of culture in the EU. This notion has become the basis for the first comparative analysis of the statistic data in the outlined fields.

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first “comparable data relating to culture” in Europe, which was first time published in 2007 (European Commission, Eurostat 5).

The recent call of the European Parliament for the cultural and creative industries research articulates the request for the conception of the European cultural and creative industries (European Parliament 2009). The latter is supposed to facilitate the building of “creative Europe”. The turn to the programs on “creative Europe” is revealed in the shift from the notions of “information industries”, “information economy”, “information society” to the notions of “creative industries”, “creative economy” and “creative society” in European political programs (KEA European Affairs 2009). However, in practice, the failure of the framework program FP7 with its deployment of the concept “information economy” has shown that the present-day European resolutions “have made little effort to integrate culture and creative sectors in the research programmes” (KEA European Affairs 2009, 139). After this failure, the shift from the conception of “information economy” and society to “creative” and “cultural” one has been discussed by the EU organizations as both a theoretical and practical project, which is considered as alternative to the previous programs on “information economy”. For instance, in 2001 the European Commission developed the report “Exploitation and Development of the Job Potential in the Cultural Sector in the Age of Digitalization”, where the key term “creative industries” designates the integrated sector of the cultural industries and the telecommunication sector.

One more important topic discussed by the EU organizations is the contribution of cultural and creative industries to the European regional revival, “as they enhance local attractiveness and help revitalize local economies, including through the clustering of cultural and creative industries at local and regional level” (European Council 2009, 4). The far-going orientation is the formation of an “inclusive society”, “European citizenship” on the basis of the European cultural and creative industries (European Council 2009, 4). In this context, creative industries have become a magic “field” for the approaching of the main “challenges that the European Union is now facing, particularly the demographic changes, social cohesion, globalisation and sustainable development” (European Council 2009, 4).

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(European Council 2009, 4) is laid out as a mechanism of the coordination between member states (MS) and the EU organizations in the sharing of the best/most successful patterns of policies. It means that although member states preserve national responsibilities and powers over cultural policies, they are urged by the EU Council to share their experience. Thus member states try to reform their own policies in accordance with the effective models and patterns justified by other countries.

The need for the further development of the European approach to the cultural and creative industries policies was recognized with the substantiation of these industries as an instrument and a platform for the European cohesion policies. The report of the European Commission “Creativity and innovation: driving competitiveness in regions” (2009) develops this statement and brings arguments. A region is considered as a space of the “localized creativity”, rooted in culture. Under the conditions of globalization, demographic change, climate change and uncertainty of secure energy sources (European Commission 2009, 7), creativity has been recognized as an alternative to natural resource for sustainable development. To illustrate its strategic role, I shall outline that the part of the contribution to the European R&D and innovation for the period 2007-2013 − €86 billion − is a quarter of the total Cohesion Policy resources (European Commission 2009, 8). As examples of the biggest projects of the European cohesion policy there may be mentioned such creative clusters as Musikpark (€5 million, 2004-2019), NanoHealth (€21 million, 2009-2014), Economic Clusters of Cultural Enterprises1 (European Commission 2009, 8). The shift to the regional clustering, embodied in the abovementioned projects, has prioritized in practice a pragmatic approach to culture, which is mainly concerned about “how to exploit positive spillover effects produced by culture” (European Commission 2009,10), “how EU integration can bring economic prosperity” (European Commission 2009,19).

The following conclusions may be drawn from the study of the cultural and creative industries documents. The concepts of cultural and creative industries are rendered and deployed in different ways in member states’ cultural policies. In order to find common points of convergence, the EU calls for the elaboration of the European approach to programs on cultural and creative industries and their implementation in reality. Without shared concepts of cultural and creative industries the EU faces serious traps in fostering the development of the net of creative clusters. The role of cultural and

1_{Economic Clusters of Cultural Enterprises is a free platform for consulting in the cultural and creative}

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creative industries in sustainable development of the EU is crucial since these industries produce goods which shape the European identity. Taking into account the conclusions of the section 2.2 and the specific logic behind the concepts of cultural and creative industries, I assume that the peculiarity of the present-day European approach to cultural and creative industries is revealed rather not in the stern unified delineation of the industries and professions of the “creative sector”, but in the “re-branding” of the member states’ economies, the whole European economy and society as “creative”. The further crystallization of the European approach depends on the elaboration of the consistent conception of “creative industries”, “creative economy” and the theory of “creative society”.

3.2. The Shift from an “Economization of Culture” to a “Culturalization of the Economy”

Political programs on creative and cultural industries contain proclamations of the turn from the “economization of culture” to the “culturalization of economy”. To examine this tendency I shall analyze the terms in which culture and processes of “culturalization” are defined in political programs. The definition of “culturalization” depends on the definition of culture. Due to the variety of these definitions one always might find arguments for and against the “culturalization of economy” in reality. My task in this section is to explicate the terms of the delineation of the “cultural turn” in the documents on the European cultural and creative industries. Following this consideration I would like to question whether it is possible to overcome the economic discourse in the cultural/creative industries programs and conception.

In order to be consistent in the analysis of the abovementioned turn, I shall start with the definitions of the “culturalization of economy” and the “economization of culture”. The European Commission defines these processes in the following way:

The “marketisation” of culture and the “culturalisation” of the market means, on the one hand, that high culture is becoming increasingly commercial and, on the other hand, that cultural content is increasingly shaping commodity production. (European Commission 2008, 19)

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and evaluation of the cultural sphere, which, in turn, leads to the general question of subsidy and of the canon of values and selection criteria that lie behind support for the arts and culture in the European states. (European Commission 2008, 18)

I refer to these definitions from the European Commission in order to preserve the meanings, which have been employed in the EU documents. The explication of the context of their formation might help to find means and directions of its transformation. I shall start with the brief historical overview of the issue development.

One of the factors of the movement of the issues of the economization and culturalization to the centre stage is the formation of the integrative sector of cultural and creative industries. The previous discussions on the phenomenon of culture industry in the framework of the critical social theory contributed to the convergence of the economic, political and cultural discourses. The Frankfurt’s school showed the way in which cultural industries may be scrutinized as a specific mechanism of the social cognition in the twentieth century, overcoming the traditional reference of the concept “industries” to the economic field of manufacturing. The very term “industry” as the indication of manufacturing caused the initial caution in the use of this concept in cultural policies because of the reference to the economic dimension.

The cultural and creative industries have been interpreted mainly in economic terms since the mid-twentieth century. However, since the 1990s the tendencies of the reconsideration of cultural and creative industries in the discourse of cultural studies (Ray and Sayer 1999; Throsby 2001; Lewis and Miller 2003; Hesmondhalgh 2007; Venturelli 2008) and sociology (Lash and Urry 1994; Florida 2002; Lash and Lury 2007) may be outlined. To some extent, the ground for this turn was partly prepared by Marxism and Neo-Marxism, their criticism of capitalism.

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The present-day “cultural turn” (the shift to cultural studies and its methodology) in the political documents on creative industries may be partly illustrated with the transformation of the language and the logic of argumentation (Appendix 2, Table 2). I shall consider this transformation reconstructing predominant discourses of argumentation in today’s political documents.

On the basis of the current cultural and creative industries programs there may be reconstructed two predominant discourses, which allow scholars and politicians to “culturalize” the economic agenda:

− sustainable development studies (where the value of cultural capital is reanimated and reestimated);

− socio-cultural space studies in human geography (where cultural capital is subjected to mapping).

I shall show how the combination of these discourses delineates and shapes the European cultural policies on the way from mapping and planning of cultural capital at the local level to the formation of “sustainable creative Europe”.

The European Sustainable Development Strategy (European Council 2006) emerged in 2001 and was adopted in 2002 by most of the EU countries (renewed in 2006), onwards after the Lisbon Strategy (2000, relaunched in 2005). Despite the fact, the European Commission in the renewed Lisbon Strategy (2007) underlines the purposes of sustainable economic growth and partly overlaps with the European Sustainable Development Strategy , two strategies continue develop parallel.

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The discourse of sustainable development has been developed since the 1960s from a reduced field of ecological issues to a wider field of economic, political and finally to cultural issues. It has become widespread to introduce any urgent problem in the context of the discourse of sustainability (“beyond simply its application to the environment” (UNCTAD 2008, 26)). The latter has transformed into an interdisciplinary field, which gradually shapes and structures any problematic situation (UNCTAD 2004). The issue of creative industries has also been subjected to the analysis in the discourse of sustainable development. So far, in 2008 the UNCTAD published “Creative Economy Report”, where there was introduced a special chapter for the substantiation of the contribution of the creative industries to sustainable development, drawing attention to tangible and intangible cultural capital. The report contains the definition of “cultural sustainability”: “a development process that maintains all types of cultural assets, from minority languages and traditional rituals to artworks, artefacts and heritage buildings and sites” (UNCTAD 2008, 26). In this context, creative industries are grasped as those, which “provide the services and the investments necessary for culturally sustainable development” (UNCTAD 2008, 26).

The first attempt in the today’s political discourse to map the economy on the socio-cultural map (in cultural terms) is undertaken in the Creative Economy Green Paper for the Nordic region (Fleming 2008). It contains the inquiry into the interrelations between “the creative industries and the wider economy” (Fleming 2008, 14), “positioning cultural infrastructure at the heart of approaches to place-making” (Fleming 2008, 14).

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The example of the formal proclamation of the “cultural turn”1 in the framework of the KEA report turns out to be the shift from the economy of culture to the cultural economy (Pratt 2004; Anheier and Isar 2008). The main subject remains to be articulated as the economic development and its drivers. The differences between two discourses of the cultural economy and the economy of culture are distinguished in the way of the articulation of the basic structures of economy and culture, their construction and determination: “Doing economics means acting on the assumption of a determinate nature waiting to be described and calculated about by a neutral observation language; doing ‘cultural economy’ means acting on the assumption that economics are performed and enacted by the very discourses of which they are supposedly the cause” (Du Gay and Pryke 6).

The development of creative industries programs contributed to the deployment of those policy programs which focus on both economic and cultural issues. As a result of this deployment, some researchers argue that “what takes place is an effective de-differentiation of culture and economy” (Lash and Urry 1994, 8). The statement refers to the balance between the intentions to articulate the creative industries programs in both economic and cultural terms. It might be crucial for the purposes of sustainable development since a language and a discourse are presuppositions of the choice of reality, which is constructed in programs, and later is objectified in practice. “Economic discourse here is not simply a matter of beliefs, values and symbols but rather a form of representational and technological (i.e. “cultural”) practice that constitutes the spaces within which economic action is formatted and framed” (Du Gay and Pryke 2).

Many of social researchers reveal and justify tendencies of the “culturalization” of economy (Featherstone 2007; Castells 2000; Lash and Urry 1994; Lash and Lury 2007). However, there is also a view that the very differentiation of the economic and cultural structures is impossible to fulfill. For example, J. Law takes this position: “I assume that economically relevant activity has always been cultural and that the tools of cultural analysis may be applied to what one might imagine to be ‘strictly economic’ activity” (Du Gay and Pryke 21). Therefore Law apprehends the material practices as economic and cultural simultaneously by means of “a toolkit that derives from semiotics and post-structuralism, and in particular a version of these approaches from

1_{“A central feature of this particular ‘cultural turn’ is a renewed interest in the production of meaning at}

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within the discipline of Science, Technology and Society (STS)” (Du Gay and Pryke 22).

Applying Law’s approach to creative industries, it is possible to reveal the absence of borders between the cultural and economic sectors. The field of creative industries is an illustration of the “de-differentiation” of the cultural and economic sectors. In terms of Law, the ontology of creative industries is the embodiment of the “material practices which extend beyond human beings” (Law 2002, 24). Following this statement, Law argues that the thesis that the European economic policies (the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty of Paris (1951)) led to the European social and cultural integration (the present-day evolution of the EU) is hardly acceptable nowadays, it is rather “the social engineering that has produced the ‘single unified market’ of the EU” (Law 2002, 25). In this context the “social” is a net of actors, human and inhuman, “gatherings” of actors. The very gatherings cannot be identified as economic or cultural. Law argues that “a notion of ‘economic culture’ doesn’t work so well” (Law 2002, 34), since “economy” designates a mode of ordering and should not be associated with ontological structures existing in reality before we apprehend them.

The present-day researchers of the creative industries development in cultural studies try to combine economic and cultural arguments in support of the employment of the concept “creative industries” in cultural policies. I shall bring two representative examples of the Australian and British researchers’ arguments, which still remain pervasively predominant.

1) For example, the Australian specialists in the creative industries studies, John Hartley and Stuart Cunningham argue that creative industries may be considered as a useful concept for the current policies since: “first, it offers an opportunity to move beyond the elitist wastefulness of arts subsidy. Second, it moves beyond limitations in the concept of ‘cultural industries’, which, in their view, is a term associated with arts-oriented policy” (Hesmondhalgh 148).

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However, all of them demonstrate by their research that the balance between economic and cultural arguments in the cultural and creative industries studies is quite relative due to the predominance of the economic approach to the creative industries policies in practice. This situation forces representatives of the cultural sector to follow the “fear of being left behind” (Anheier and Isar 6) the creative industries budget and employ the concept “creative industries” in order to be covered with the budget.

The reasons of the predominance of the economic discourse may be partly considered as an outcome of the EU political model. In accordance with the Swedish specialist in European politics Sverker Gustavsson, the EU model embodies the asymmetry between the social-policy and labour-market regulation (Gustavsson 165). The lack of the centralized power in the EU social policy coexists with the centralized regulations of the labour-market: “asymmetry is that the market is constitutionally privileged” (Gustavsson 168). But this asymmetry is simultaneously the necessity for the EU. Otherwise there would be a danger of the battle between national interests, which could ruin the principles of the common market.

The derived conclusion is that the asymmetry between the principles of democracy and capitalism, as well as between the EU and member states’ institutions does not allow overcoming the economic discourse even with the rapid development of the interdisciplinary agenda of sustainable development. The current economic crisis confirms this state and forces a reconsideration of the Renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy (adopted by the European Council in 2006) from the perspective of the member states’ economic priorities.

Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture