Arts Management and Cultural Policy Research

J. Paquette, E. Redaelli

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349689934, 9781137460912
• eBook ISBN: 9781137460929
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

This book aims to present concepts, knowledge and institutional settings of arts management and cultural policy research. It offers a representation of arts management and cultural policy research as a field, or a complex assemblage of people, concepts, institutions, and ideas.

1

Knowledge: Disciplines and Beyond

1.1 Introduction

The Western construction of knowledge has been the source of a longstanding debate between Platonists and Aristotelians (McKeon, 2001). For Plato, the sensory side of human experience leads away from the critical rationality upon which truth depends (Eisner, 2007). For Aristotle, knowledge is differentiated along three lines: theoretical, practical, and productive. Theoretical knowledge is knowledge that purports to know things that cannot be any other way than the way they are; practical knowledge is knowledge of contingencies; and productive knowledge is knowledge of how to make things. The modern university’s engagement within the philosophical roots of knowledge is reflected in the vocational–academic tension among faculty in the traditional disciplines of letters and science, and faculty affiliated with professional schools.

In this book, we wish to unveil several features of knowledge in arts management and cultural policy. The field is characterized by fragmented knowledge involving multiple kinds of actors – that can be grouped into practitioners and scholars – and two main discursive practices – arts management and cultural policy. A field is a relational construct (Bourdieu, 1993) involving not only different disciplines, but different modes of knowledge production, created within and outside of academia and going beyond the rules of disciplines or interactions among disciplines. The value of the field as a unit of analysis is that it does not focus on one set of actors, but considers the totality of different knowledge producers (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The notion of field allows us to refer to and think of cultural policy and arts management research in a cohesive way without disregarding their remarkable heterogeneity. Given the heterogeneous character of knowledge in the field of arts management and cultural policy, we ask: What approach could help us navigate the field’s variety? What units of analysis need to be considered for us to articulate our investigation? What could be a common vocabulary for discussing the different ways of producing knowledge?

We will start by analyzing the notion of discipline that ignited the debate about arts management (Evard & Colbert, 2000) and cultural policy research (Scullion & García, 2005), and we will chart how the idea of discipline has unfolded in the university and what implications it has for the development of knowledge. The delineation of disciplines, in fact, not only creates specific boundaries, but calls for different ways of creating connections that implies either different disciplines working together side by side or integrating specific disciplinary knowledge into interdisciplinary projects. In this context, the delineation of disciplines draws attention to the space of transdisciplinary knowledge production because it involves knowledge producers different from those of the university – and implies a knowledge production that goes beyond the structuring of academic disciplines. Walking the boundaries of this fragmented landscape will allow us to discover the existing connections.

1.2 Discipline and expertise: academic and professional knowledge

Over the years, the disciplinary organization of knowledge has been the focus of several prominent scholars (Lattuca, 2001; Messer-Davidow et al., 1993). Foucault, for instance, pointed out how contemporary society disciplined knowledge through institutions such as prisons, hospitals, armies, and schools (Foucault, 1980). Each institution determines what constitutes knowledge according to specific rules and values. Several studies have focused on the disciplinary organization of knowledge within academia, highlighting the growth of different disciplines and analyzing the conceptualizations and methods underpinning the different frameworks ( Jones, 2011). Before the 1850s, American universities offered classes in only a few basic disciplines – such as mathematics, classical languages, and philosophy. Today, academic institutions, such as the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Texas at Austin, offer courses in more than 170 areas of study.

But how is academia organizing knowledge within disciplines? And, even more simply, what is a discipline? To better understand arts management and cultural policy research within the context of academia and its disciplines, we will use the definition of discipline offered by Hyland (2012): In academic contexts, disciplines shape collective definitions of identity within their frameworks of understanding and value. Disciplines are places where participation involves learning to communicate in specific ways using disciplinary-appropriate systems of meanings and practices – including drawing from a context already accepted and framing an argument carefully crafted for a particular audience (Hyland, 2009). An already-accepted context consists of ideas, questions, theories, and methodologies organized in specific ways of communication; in turn, specific ways of communication include specific modes of crafting texts, such as conference presentations, talks, and papers. Each type of text has its own disciplinary requirements, such as the specific structure required by a paper in order to undergo the peer review process (Bazerman & Paradis, 1991; Bazerman & Priopr, 2003).

The term “discipline” needs to be treated with a measure of caution, however, because disciplines have been seen in a number of different ways. For instance, Kolb (1981) draws on learning-style differences to provide categories that distinguish hard from soft and applied from pure knowledge fields; Berliner (2003) distinguishes “hard” and “easy-to-do” disciplines accordingly to their ability to understand, predict and, control the phenomena they study; and Storer and Parsons (1968) oppose analytical to synthetic disciplines.

Even though there are differences among disciplines with regard to their degree of cohesiveness, disciplines are, overall, fluid and permeable entities impossible to define with precision. Some disciplines are closely knit in terms of tradition, methodology, topics, and standards of quality; other disciplines lack cohesion in these aspects, and consequently their disciplinary borders are ill-defined. However, no discipline has a single method of inquiry or standard method of verification (Becher & Trowler, 2001). Overall, instead of uniformity, we find entities that are fluid and permeable. To this end, researchers have identified four patterns of variation in disciplines that create a divide between the two major disciplinary groups: the humanities and social sciences (MacDonald, 1994). The four patterns of variation identified are: compactness to diffuseness; explanatory versus interpretive goals; conceptually driven to text driven; and degrees of epistemic self-consciousness. Moreover, there are cultural and geographic variations among disciplines (Podgórecki, 1997). Different levels of economic development, political ideology, and educational systems highlight the contextual contingency of disciplines – especially as disciplines are very much dependent on local struggles over resources and recognition.

A major impact on the disciplinary organization of universities was caused by the reorganization and consolidation of professions during the second half of the 19th century. This led to stratification within knowledge between those who have and use it (i.e. practitioners), and those who produce it (i.e. academics) (Geisler, 1994). The consolidation of professions resulted in the creation of knowledge as expertise that was different from knowledge acquired through liberal studies. During this time, the pace of professionalization was frenetic and saw the rise of numerous occupational associations. The vocational–academic tensions that emerged from the consolidation of professions have been studied, in particular, with regard to business and medical schools (Halpern, 1987).

With the consolidation of professions, expertise became the kind of knowledge necessary to be successful in a profession. This created a tension within academia that saw people disregard the traditional liberal arts education as a source of valuable knowledge production. At the same time, the inclusion of professional training in the university became an integral part of university reforms, and professional education was offered largely through graduate education. American universities became committed to both scientific progress and its application as professional expertise (Halpern, 1987).

Arts management emerged in academia at a time when masters programs were created to support the need for increased professionalization (Conrad & Eagan, 1990; Conrad et al., 1993) following the initiation of numerous vocationally oriented programs post-World War II. Since then, arts management has been finding its way in academic discourse through classes, programs (such as minors, majors, and masters), conference presentations, talks, and working papers. However, these forms of academic discourse are rarely transformed into the strongest defining text(s) of a discipline – a distinction usually reserved for research articles in science and social sciences.

On the other hand, a number of arts management electronic journals and blogs¹ have emerged in recent years and are fostering the circulation of arts management ideas. This demonstrates that arts management research discourse does not entirely satisfy the most orthodox definition of discipline as stated by Hyland (2009): Arts management does not have a strong enough system of meanings to be able to develop a communicative rhetoric that reaches the research paper format. At the same time, it is worth noting that arts management emerged from the management literature (as will be discussed in Chapter 2). The first studies and research efforts in arts management were in the context of the management discipline. Similar observations can be made for cultural policy: it emerged as a topic of inquiry in the midst of public policy research. In Chapter 5, we describe the most conventional approach to cultural policy as developed by the public policy sciences.

As for the debate between academic and vocational knowledge, it is worth mentioning how this is still impacting the world of arts management education. The majority of arts management professors enter academia with a professional background, and the debate surrounding curriculum standards has consistently included the requirement for a professional internship. Similarly, cultural policy research is often produced by practitioners and developed according to the standard of consultancy research, with the goal of serving a specific client.

1.3 Multidisciplinarity: ideas, institutions, and interests

An important aspect emerging from the previous section is that knowledge has been organized in disciplines within the university, and therefore has been structured according to a multitude of norms and ways of validating what is sound and solid research. While boundaries among disciplines were drawn, a desire for collaboration emerged at the same time, creating space for multidisciplinary research. This involves collaboration among different disciplines, implying the exploration of one topic using methods and perspectives from different disciplines.

“Multidisciplinarity” signifies the juxtaposition of disciplines that look at the same topic or set of problems without stepping out from their disciplinary ways of inquiry (Klein, 1990). It is essentially additive; not integrative. Even in a common environment, researchers still behave as disciplinarians with different perspectives. Their relationship may be mutual and cumulative, but not interactive. The results of research do not have a clear connection that presents an explicit relationship. Sometimes, research even shows an eclecticism that misses a clear, unifying thread – which could be questionable because the participating disciplines are neither changed nor enriched, and the lack of a “well-defined matrix” of interactions between them means that disciplinary relationships are likely to be limited and transitory.

Cultural policy, as we will see in Chapter 6, assembles different disciplinary approaches, and is therefore defined differently by each discipline. Sometimes, researchers overlook the ramification of multidisciplinarity; many misunderstandings in cultural policy research are due to the fact that research does not pay enough attention to how disciplinary differences shape the object of study (Gray, 2010). The social sciences, political sciences, sociology, economics, and urban planning all provide their own perspectives on cultural policy, embedded in their specific disciplinary frameworks. In the humanities, another set of disciplines articulate the study of cultural policy according to their analytical values. As a result, the object of study is contingent to each discipline, without clear connections or explicit relationships. This is the nature of multidisciplinary research, whose challenge, for researcher and reader alike, is to maintain an academic openness and rich understanding of each discipline’s assumptions.

Besides this variegated multidisciplinarity, in Chapter 6, we will argue that cultural policy research can be grouped around ideas, institutions, and interests. Despite the important disciplinary variety of cultural policy research, most of the ways in which researchers talk about cultural policies, and most of the theoretical language and mediation with the object(s) of study, involve problematizing cultural policy as the fruit of interactions between ideas, institutions, and interests. This link provides us with some key elements that can help us better appreciate works that may not originate in the same discipline, and apply different methodologies of research.

1.4 Interdisciplinarity: functions of management as disciplinary bridge

Research projects within academia have also tried to integrate disciplines through interdisciplinary efforts. Interdisciplinarity addresses topics that are too broad or complex to be dealt with in one discipline or profession (Franks et al., 2007). The key concept that differentiates interdisciplinarity from multidisciplinarity is integration: multidisciplinarity is merely additive, and does not reach integration. Interdisciplinarity, however, requires an understanding of the methods, epistemologies, and paradigms of disciplines themselves, and an understanding of how to connect disciplinary knowledge (Karlqvist, 1999). Interdisciplinary research involves developing conceptual links (Lyall et al., 2011), such as using techniques from one discipline to inform a theoretical model in another. Interdisciplinarity creates a bridge between disciplines, and a new common space that melds two or more disciplines (Baird et al., 2004).

The concept of interdisciplinarity was not only shaped by ideas of knowledge, but also by ideas of curriculum. Interdisciplinarity gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, when the concept was characterized as bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives into integrated programs of teaching and research (Franks et al., 2007; Klein, 1990). Knowledge integration was the foundational principle of educational reforms aimed at eliminating social and epistemological barriers. This idea promoted a notion of unity and synthesis of knowledge, and was invoked as a method of reform. A few publications and initiatives were influential contributors to the current understanding of interdisciplinarity: Integration: its meaning and application (Hopkins, 1937) and the Foundation (later renamed Centre) for Integrative Education’s Integrative Principles of Modern Thought represented concerted projects of knowledge integration.

Arts management research, more than cultural policy research, is growing as an interdisciplinary research and it is developing topics of inquiry that bring together several disciplines and create new common spaces shaped as topics of arts management. In particular, the interdisciplinary nature is not developing in only one direction, but is building integration on different topics involving different disciplines – such as marketing, leadership, fundraising, programming, and entrepreneurship. All these topics will be further analyzed in Chapter 3. However, here we would like to give a few examples. Arts marketing, for instance, integrates mainstream managerial marketing with the specific and often unique attributes of arts organizations (i.e. performing arts or museums). In arts marketing, attention to audience development – an important attribute of arts organizations – is used to intertwine marketing strategies with art education theories and public relations issues. Similarly, the need for fundraising activities in arts organizations has led to the rise of several handbooks that adapt strategies developed by the nonprofit literature to the arts setting. Fundraising, itself, is defined as a public relations function, with a specific emphasis on issues of relationship management. Leadership issues are studied in arts management by bringing together management and nonprofit literature – but by considering the peculiar function that separates artistic and administrative leadership. Programming is studied by integrating management functions within the organization – such as planning, budgeting, and evaluation – and by using leisure study perspectives to enhance the community input and urban studies connecting arts programming with urban revitalization. Finally, arts entrepreneurship brings together research in business, higher education, and economics, crafting aspects of entrepreneurship that are important for the arts and cultural sector. For all these topics, arts management creates a bridge, a new space that integrates the different disciplines and raises arts management-specific questions that design a prolific interdisciplinary agenda.

1.5 Transdisciplinarity: understanding the field of knowledge production

Research on interdisciplinarity has prompted scholars to compare vocabulary usage while refining the comprehension of the concept. Interdisciplinarity has been compared to multidisciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. Considering that we have already articulated our position on interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, we will now focus on showing what makes transdisciplinarity relevant to our analysis – starting from describing how it is different from cross-disciplinarity. Cross-disciplinarity requires the reinterpretation of disciplinary goals and concepts in light of a specific problem. However, these reinterpretative efforts remain within the institutional boundaries of academia (Lattuca, 2001).

Gibbons et al. (1994) provide a nuanced and powerful description of transdisciplinarity. They describe transdisciplinarity as a mode of knowledge production that brings together different institutional knowledge – ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Knowledge: Disciplines and Beyond
• 2 Academic Beginnings: Arts Management Training and Cultural Policy Studies
• 3 Functions of Management as Disciplinary Bridges
• 4 More than Management: Organizational Perspectives
• 5 Cultural Policy as Conventional Public Policy
• 6 Cultural Policy Research: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests
• 7 On Paradigms: From Epistemology to Epistemic Cultures
• 8 Mapping the Field: Institutional Settings of Knowledge Production
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index