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The basis for understanding public support for the arts in the United States is the absence of any precedent for direct national involvement (Larson 1983). The American approach to culture has reje...

Devin Beauregard has written an important contribution to our understanding of cultural policy. His book focuses on subnations, that is, territories within states that are largely populated by “nat...

This essay evaluates the character of the unique French culture of the Acadiana region of Southwest Louisiana. This Cajun space represents twenty-two of the state's sixty-four parishes (counties) o...

The forty-second edition of the Social Theory, Politics and the Arts (STP&A) Conference was held in Montreal from October 14 to 16, 2016. For the occasion, STP&A's first Lifetime Achievement Award ...

Culture and commerce are typically thought to inhabit different realms. This may be more the accepted wisdom in the United States where culture is associated with the ‘high arts’ (for example, orch...

A truism of cultural policy research is that while countries frequently debate whether to have a cultural policy, France debates what goals its cultural policy should emphasize. While so-called U.S...

This article is a scholarly overview and analysis of Hurricane Katrina's social and cultural devastation of the unique, indigenous culture of New Orleans. This study has been prepared as a scholarly and academic endeavor. However, it is also the basis for consideration of measures that could be taken to facilitate the reconstitution of the living environment of New Orleans in a way that is respectful of its folk culture. The physical devastation caused by the hurricane severely compromised the precious cultural communities of the French colonial Gulf Coast. The impact was most devastating to New Orleans because of its distinctive folk culture, which includes vivid cultural rituals such as the Mardi Gras Indians, jazz, the jazz funeral tradition, second line parades, and local cuisine. This culture is potentially fragile because it is a living culture—not based on collections preserved within the walls of a museum, but rather in the lives of its people. It is indisputably worthy of respect and revitalizati...

(2006). Cultural Policy: Definitions and Theoretical Approaches. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 319-330.

(2004). The Conceptualization of Art: Introduction. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 99-102.

Canada and the United States, like most nations, engage in a variety of bilateral and multilateral activities that promote international cultural cooperation. Although admittedly of lesser importance than military or economic force, cultural relations--including the exchange of professors, students, and various professionals, as well as tours of performing arts companies and visual arts exhibits and informational services (both print and broadcast)--are important in promoting international understanding and good will. (1) The particulars of the cultural exchange programs between Canada and the United States are not, however, the subject of this discussion. Important as such exchanges are, cultural relations between these neighboring nations have been dominated by international trade agreements as these affect their respective cultural industries. To a degree that is highly unusual considering the typically arcane provisions of such agreements, the details of U.S.-Canadian understandings governing the cultural sector have been the subject of highly emotional political debates. These debates have been especially vocal in Canada where demands for a "cultural exemption," as protection against the onslaught of U.S. "cultural imperialism," are a staple of discourse for many intellectuals, artists, and lobbyists, as well as among the general public. For Americans, these issues are less noticed except by those in the entertainment industry and the trade negotiators in Washington. It should be noted that Canada is not alone among nations in its contentions with American cultural imperialism. Figure 1 represents some generalized observations on cultural policies that are related to a broader four-nation study of public patronage with which this writer is involved. (2) With a liberal political culture that is characterized by limited government, internationalism, and an open society, Canada stands somewhere between France and the United States in its degree of cultural protectionism and overall intensity of cultural politics. Norway, like other small-language and social-democratic societies, pursues a policy of English-language telecommunications and support for highly localistic and folkloristic cultural expressions. Canada, on the other hand, lacks both the millennial-old culture and territorial isolation of Norway and the French tradition of a hegemonic culture and the national government as l'etat culturel. The United States, of course, is the great cultural exception, with a regnant popular culture that is able to indemnify its costs over a populous and prosperous society that is largely immune to cultural expressions that do not project an American sensibility. In effect, the United States can afford to have a "cultural open-door policy" because it has little to fear from foreign competition. For Canada, however, cultural free trade raises the spectre of standing unprotected against the forces of American cultural annexation. This discussion will survey the debate over U.S. cultural imperialism and Canadian concerns for cultural sovereignty, with particular reference to the international trade agreements of the past decade. The emphasis will be on the Canadian response to the commercial prerogatives asserted by the United States for its cultural industries which, in the view of many Canadians, have already achieved a cultural hegemony so powerful as to threaten their national identity. That this is an understandable, if debatable, proposition is the subject of the first section on the "Small Nation, Big Neighbor" syndrome. The second section will discuss the issue of cultural identity and Canadian demands for cultural protection. An overview of the Canadian assertion of a "cultural exemption" in its international trade agreements with the United States will be discussed in the third section. Sections four and five will focus on the two major cultural industries affected: publishing (periodicals, books, bookstores) and the audiovisual (movies, television, radio). …

(2002). The State Arts Agency: An Overview of Cultural Federalism in the United States. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 32, The Cultural Market and Public Cultural Agencies, pp. 67-80.

Buying Respectability: Philanthropy and Urban Society in Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s, is of particular interest to the readers of this journal for what it says about institutions such...

Cultures of Optimism: The Institutional Promotion of Hope, by Oliver Bennet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 231 pages, ISBN 978-113-748-4802, $95.00.It is a rare occasion to read a book in whi...

(1998). Cultural Patronage in Comparative Perspective: Public Support for the Arts in France, Germany, Norway, and Canada. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 27, The Arts and Entertainment in Comparative Perspective: France, Germany, Norway, the United States, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom, pp. 247-263.

(1995). Public Culture and Political Culture: La Politique Culturelle du Quebec. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society: Vol. 25, Changing Art Policies, pp. 225-249.