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Cultural institutions studies (a translation of the German term Kulturbetriebslehre) is an academic approach "which investigates activities in the cultural sector, conceived as historically evolved societal forms of organising the conception, production, distribution, propagation, interpretation, reception, conservation and maintenance of specific cultural goods". [1]
The cultural sector constitutes an interface between differing social spheres: social structures (classes, genders, ethnic groupings, etc.) interact with cultural formations (forms of expression, styles, values, habits of reception, etc.) and simultaneously overlap with economic interests and political aspects. Cultural institutions studies adopted the aim of overcoming mono disciplinary approaches and has therefore been conceived as amalgamation of cultural studies, social science, economics and political science. Consequently, this new approach investigates cultural goods, processes of meaning and value creation through cultural practices, financing structures, value added formation structures, processes of (de-)institutionalisation, organisational changes in the cultural sector, legal frameworks, cultural policy conceptions and instruments, etc. – each of those topics resulting from a synergetic confluence of forces, conditions, concrete intentions and local constellations.
The German word "Kulturbetrieb" has two major shades of meaning:
This implies that, to deal with and appreciate adequately both collective and individual action, the discipline cultural institutions studies must not only be concerned with aspects of organisational theory but also with questions of social practices, social psychology, occupational sociology, theories of socialisation, gender as well as epistemology. Of central importance is the fact that the macro and the micro levels refer to and mutually influence each other.
Cultural institutions studies investigate the formation of cultural goods and services as well as their transformation into commodities for trade or into cultural industry products. In the pursuit of cultural activities, besides actual production and distribution of cultural goods and services, processes of meaning and value negotiation and the elaboration of preferences and perceptual habits play an important role. Since many cultural activities take place in an almost completely institutionalised setting, cultural institutions studies are also concerned with financing structures, value-added chains, organisational change in the cultural sector, and with legal and cultural policy frameworks. Taking the approach of institutional and organisational theory, cultural institutions studies also investigate processes occurring place within individual companies, as well as certain structural characteristics in cultural management. Aspects of occupational sociology connected with division of labour and integration of different types of activity are also relevant to understanding co-operation of different occupational groups in the cultural sector or in cultural industries.
Although cultural institutions studies has been defined as an "inter-discipline", the following delimitation ought to contribute to further clarification of its profile.
To sum up: The focus on cultural institutions sphere demands a synthesis of cultural, sociological, organizational, and economic methods of analysis and interpretation to create a multi-perspective approach to the relevant issues. However, culture and cultural practices are definitely not an object that may be observed and described from a distant, "scientific" point of view. Cultural issues are matters of public interest and are interwoven with personal and collective identities as well as with normative and political positions. Cultural institutions studies do not claim objectivity and a positivistic analysis. But it is a necessity to embark on a debate about presuppositions of research. This points to the critical philosophical roots of this approach. [3]
In the broadest sense, cultural resource management (CRM) is the vocation and practice of managing heritage assets, and other cultural resources such as contemporary art. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture. It also delves into the material culture of archaeology. Cultural resource management encompasses current culture, including progressive and innovative culture, such as urban culture, rather than simply preserving and presenting traditional forms of culture.
An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions vary in their level of formality and informality.
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society.
The creative industries refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries or the creative economy, and most recently they have been denominated as the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as a social relation within an economy of practices, and includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status and power; thus cultural capital comprises the material and symbolic goods, without distinction, that society considers rare and worth seeking. There are three types of cultural capital: (i) embodied capital, (ii) objectified capital, and (iii) institutionalised capital.
In sociology and organizational studies, institutional theory is a theory on the deeper and more resilient aspects of social structure. It considers the processes by which structures, including schemes, rules, norms, and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior. Different components of institutional theory explain how these elements are created, diffused, adopted, and adapted over space and time; and how they fall into decline and disuse.
The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, acting, and the material objects that together shape a group of people's way of life.
In sociology, social psychology studies the relationship between the individual and society. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of psychology, sociological social psychology places relatively more emphasis on the influence of social structure and culture on individual outcomes, such as personality, behavior, and one's position in social hierarchies. Researchers broadly focus on higher levels of analysis, directing attention mainly to groups and the arrangement of relationships among people. This subfield of sociology is broadly recognized as having three major perspectives: Symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and structural social psychology.
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the production, use, and management of scarce resources. A given economy is a set of processes that involves its culture, values, education, technological evolution, history, social organization, political structure, legal systems, and natural resources as main factors. These factors give context, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions. In other words, the economic domain is a social domain of interrelated human practices and transactions that does not stand alone.
Economics of the arts and literature or cultural economics is a branch of economics that studies the economics of creation, distribution, and the consumption of works of art, literature and similar creative and/or cultural products. For a long time, the concept of the "arts" were confined to visual arts and performing arts in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Usage has widened since the beginning of the 1980s with the study of cultural industry and the economy of cultural institutions. The field is coded as JEL: Z11 in the Journal of Economic Literature classification system used for article searches.
Laurent Thévenot is a French sociologist Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris).
Cultural policy is the government actions, laws and programs that regulate, protect, encourage and financially support activities related to the arts and creative sectors, such as painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, and filmmaking, among others and culture, which may involve activities related to language, heritage and diversity. The idea of cultural policy was developed at UNESCO in the 1960s. Generally, this involves governments setting in place processes, legal classifications, regulations, legislation and institutions which promote and facilitate cultural diversity and creative expressions in a range of art forms and creative activities. Cultural policies vary from one country to another, but generally they aim to improve the accessibility of arts and creative activities to citizens and promote the artistic, musical, ethnic, sociolinguistic, literary and other expressions of all people in a country. In some countries, especially since the 1970s, there is an emphasis on supporting the culture of Indigenous peoples and marginalized communities and ensuring that cultural industries are representative of a country's diverse cultural heritage and ethnic and linguistic demographics.
Institutional analysis is the part of the social sciences that studies how institutions—i.e., structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of two or more individuals—behave and function according to both empirical rules and also theoretical rules. This field deals with how individuals and groups construct institutions, how institutions function in practice, and the effects of institutions on each other, on individuals, societies and the community at large.
Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture matters as to economic outcomes and what its relation is to institutions. As a growing field in behavioral economics, the role of culture in economic behavior is increasingly being demonstrated to cause significant differentials in decision-making and the management and valuation of assets.
Tasos Zembylas is a philosopher and social scientist with focus in aesthetics and cultural institution studies.
The study of global communication is an interdisciplinary field focusing on global communication, or the ways that people connect, share, relate and mobilize across geographic, political, economic, social and cultural divides. Global communication implies a transfer of knowledge and ideas from centers of power to peripheries and the imposition of a new intercultural hegemony by means of the "soft power" of global news and entertainment.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to social science:
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors, sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
(R.) Andrew Sayer is Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University, UK. He is known for significant contributions to methodology and theory in the social sciences.
In economics and economic sociology, embeddedness refers to the degree to which economic activity is constrained by non-economic institutions. The term was created by economic historian Karl Polanyi as part of his substantivist approach. Polanyi argued that in non-market societies there are no pure economic institutions to which formal economic models can be applied. In these cases economic activities such as "provisioning" are "embedded" in non-economic kinship, religious and political institutions. In market societies, in contrast, economic activities have been rationalized, and economic action is "disembedded" from society and able to follow its own distinctive logic, captured in economic modeling. Polanyi's ideas were widely adopted and discussed in anthropology in what has been called the formalist–substantivist debate. Subsequently, the term "embeddedness" was further developed by economic sociologist Mark Granovetter, who argued that even in market societies, economic activity is not as disembedded from society as economic models would suggest.
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