OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

3. PROMOTING LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BY CREATING CULTURAL PRODUCTS
Culture, time and place
In 1991, Robert Reich suggested that Americans’ well-being depended not
only on the profitability of their corporations but on the value they add through
their skills and experience (Reich, 1991). Thus, the “symbolic analysts”, the
manipulators of symbols, will take their place alongside traditional managers and
workers in driving development, and this highlights the role of artists and designers.
Their role outside cultural industries is scarcely recognised, no doubt because there
is still disagreement over the link between culture and economics. Many people
continue to oppose the use of culture for commercial ends, by drawing distinctions
between the beautiful and the useful, between form and function. The growth of
the culture industries has moderated this debate. Yet the economic potential of
culture is still recognised only as a source of final consumption — books, records,
films — but not as a source of intermediate consumption in the production of noncultural
goods.
The two essential features of our contemporary economy — the knowledge
economy and the global economy — place this role of culture as a source of intermediate
consumption in the production of non-cultural goods at the centre of present-day
development issues.
- The knowledge economy gives intangible factors a determining role in the
design and production of new goods. This involves artistic traditions in two
ways. As a source of a heritage that is continually renewing itself, they nurture
creativity and they offer all economic sectors — from crafts to fashion and
furnishings, to the automobile industry — a wealth of references in terms of
signs, forms, colours and symbols. As an intrinsically creative activity, art defines
procedures or protocols for innovation that can be used by other activities.
The example of contemporary art is useful here: it shows that much progress
stems from the mingling of standards, codes and media, demonstrating to
non-cultural industries the value of such confrontations between fields or
disciplines.
- The global economy increases opportunities for diversity by offering broader
markets for specific products. Competition between products expands the
outlook of an economy where mass consumption focuses on a few quasi-generic
products. Moreover, for countries that have trouble remaining cost-competitive,
it is only by being quality-competitive that they will find new markets or niches,
recognising that this quality of goods is increasingly determined by their
aesthetic features. This demand for ever greater variety in products also points
to another feature of the contemporary economy, that of post-modern consumer
behaviour: consumers seeks to differentiate themselves by appropriating the
signs and values that mark specific products (Greffe, 2003c).
98 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005