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December 27, 2008
In concluding his Creative and Cultural Industries Justin O'Connor says that culture sets a certain limit on capitalism’s drive to accumulation. He argues thus:
If capitalism is the principle of unlimited accumulation then culture is always going to be critical; as Raymond Wiliams argued, it has an intrinsic value which is distorted when used simply for profit.
He adds that:
‘Critical’ here is not the same as being politically opposed; nor is ‘intrinsic’ about some universal, inherent quality of art. Cultural value is about something other than accumulation of profit and thus sets a limit to it. Though culture has long been caught up in commodity production in the market this does not mean that culture acquiesces to the principle of unlimited accumulation.
Shakespeare was an entrepreneur certainly, but that does not mean there is no conflict between the values of culture and the values of profit.
O'Connor adds that traditionally cultural policy has been about de-commodification, identifying certain cultural goods as having public value and thus provided for by state subsidy. The cultural industries agenda made a break with this in trying to pursue a cultural policy through industrial intervention. Over the course of the last 40 years cultural policy has moved beyond a
concern with the arts, just as it is no longer about decommodification.
A cultural industries policy is about providing the space in which content that we value might still be produced -hopefully with a beneficial economic outcome.
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