OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

INTRODUCTION
This revelation of the economic dimensions of culture sparked much debate. Some
governments sought to protect the national character of such activities, on cultural
as much as employment protection grounds. Debate over the “cultural exception” and
over “cultural diversity” was sharpened as the huge amounts of spending involved
came to be appreciated, and as the recognition of artistic property rights crystallised
long-held positions.
For the same reasons, the debate has been expanded to embrace all the creative
industries, and is no longer restricted to the cultural industries as such. There are many
countries where the only hope of benefiting from global competition is to improve
the quality of the variety of their products, and culture can contribute here in two ways.
It offers a ready set of benchmarks for defining new products. By constituting the
prototype of productive activity and thus developing a culture (in the anthropological
sense of this term) it can disseminate a culture of creativity.
In some countries, the “creative” economy or modern cultural economy marks the
new frontier of employment and incomes. By “modern cultural economy”, we mean
all those sectors that offer products incorporating a high symbolic meaning or value
relative to their utilitarian value, the extreme case being the work of art, where the
symbolic value is infinitely greater than the utilitarian value (Scott, 2000) 1 . This cultural
economy is in the vanguard of the global economy and of the knowledge economy.
American films, Japanese cartoons, hybrid music from Mali, Bohemian crystal, Italian
cuisine, Limoges porcelain have all become points of reference that count for at least
as much as the most famous monuments or festivals. The debates about cultural diversity
in which so many international organisations are now caught up testify to the fact that
the economic interests and symbolic interests of those products are intimately linked.
From the national to the local level
This debate is not only national, and the contribution of culture to development
is also recognised at the local level. No one will deny that cultural facilities are
important for a neighbourhood’s quality of life, for maintaining a sound urban fabric,
for bolstering the territory’s “brand name”, and for creating jobs and incomes by
attracting tourists to historic sites, exhibitions or festivals.
Here again, the links between culture and local development were slow to be
recognised.
- At the beginning of the 1980s, it was often argued that territories could only develop
if they had an export base or a nucleus of growth, generally reliant on some raw
material or manufacturing industry. Once that base disappeared, another must
be identified at all costs, and it was thus that culture came to be considered as
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 17