Value systems: public value and cultural value

The other question at the heart of justifications, legitimations and cynical reasonings, is the question of how instrumentalism putatively pursues public value, the “ultimate end of public policy” (Moran et al., 2006, p. 390). Public value is a key legitimation discourse in public policy and often appears concomitantly with equally legitimising terms such as public services, public goods, the public domain (“citizenship, equity and service”), the public interest, and of course, the public sphere (Parsons, 1995, p. 12).

Public value, however, is typically and tautologically described (via the Work Foundation) as simply “what the public values” (Oakley et al., 2006, p. 2), but also the willingness to pay via “contingent valuation” (Frey, 2003, p. 20) and the capability and legitimacy of a service (Keaney, 2006, p. 13; Lee, Oakley and Naylor, 2011, p. 291).

Given the contested nature of the public ab initio, the concept has been described as a

“messy hybrid” (Oakley et al., 2006, p. 3) and as “chronic” (Vickery, 2011, p. 21).

The term originated in the US during the 1990s (and later the UK) as part of the New Public Management project (NPM), which aimed to deliver efficiency and effectiveness to public services, reflecting a wider notion of value beyond measurement (Keaney, 2006, p. 3). Like policy and rationalism, however, NPM reflected managerial approaches which viewed problems as technical, rather than deeply rooted, social and political issues and as a result the term public value has suffered a “backlash” in recent years (Lee et al., 2011, p. 297). For some, therefore, public value has come to represent the “new planetary vulgate” of neoliberalism (McGuigan, 2005, p. 233), techniques of upbeat and “’postmodern’ business” (ibid., p. 237), and from the point of view of cultural policy in particular, has been strategically “embraced by think tanks, politicians and cultural organizations” as part of the “restless marketplace” of policy (Lee et al., 2011, p. 297).

The concept of cultural value has similarly emerged from bureaucratic attempts to determine value outside of simple measurement, and specifically, the need for an identifiable value system for cultural policy “commensurable with other calls on the public purse” (DCMS, 2010, p. 9). The term was developed in the early to mid 2000s and, like public value, has a “relativism” (ibid., p. 21) that makes it “difficult to define or codify” (Oakley, 2004, p. 74). Holden’s concept of cultural value relies on the securing of legitimacy through an agreement between what he claims are the [instrumental] needs of the politician and the policymaker, the [intrinsic] needs of the cultural practitioner and the [audience] needs of the public (Holden, 2006, p. 59).

This definition of cultural value aligns with economist David Throsby’s account which rests on a balance between economic value and (tautologically) cultural value (Throsby

referenced in Keaney, 2006, p. 31). Throsby defines the cultural component of cultural value with reference to putatively intrinsic characteristics, including “aesthetic, spiritual, social, historical, symbolic and authenticity value” as well as “pricelessness”

(Throsby referenced in Keaney, 2006, p. 31). ³³ In summary, therefore, models of cultural value like Holden’s or Throsby’s, create an “acceptable” framework for funding decisions (DCMS, 2010, p. 5) and as with public value, create legitimacy for cultural policy.

The pitting of intrinsic against extrinsic values of culture (and to an extent positive and negative instrumentalism), and cultural value systems, though somewhat inconsistent and ultimately ideological, again highlights the tensions at play in relation to cultural policies when compared with other areas of government. Though intrinsic cultural values have been demonstrated as problematic and extrinsic values have obvious policy appeal (or public value), Holden has convincingly argued that cultural engagement is rarely driven by the latter (i.e. for social or economic reasons), which underlines the problem with advocacy and campaigns that are solely based on extrinsic value arguments (Holden, 2006). The ultimate implication of these complicated valuations of culture is the separation or separateness of cultural policy from other policy sectors, regardless of how policy analysts might want to disavow this (as indicated in comments by Selwood, cited in DCMS, 2010, p. 13). This issue will be further considered in Chapter Seven.

33 These views of cultural value contrast with models which emphasise cultural rights (ethics) and sustainability (Reeves, 2002, pp. 36-37; Ministry of Education and Culture 2010c).

4.3.15 Conclusions

This review has outlined a genealogy of terminologies, trajectories and “silent births”

(Foucault, 1972, p. 154) within the discourses of cultural policy and the creative city. It has described their shared histories and understandings in relation to utility and argumentation vis-à-vis culture, creativity and cultural policy, and illustrated the stakes at play in relation to choosing one model over another. This genealogy has been conducted in the context of discourse, legitimation, instrumentalism and cynical reason.

In doing this, the chapter has suggested that political and ideological conflicts over the utility, strategic use, and ownership of culture and creativity, particularly in respect of the economy, are historical and have created resistant and dichotomous discourses (Foucault, 1980, p. 83) that are deeply embedded in the specific trajectories and histories of each term. This chapter has also shown that the consistently positive resonances of creativity and culture, armoured by links to discourses of innovation and entrepreneurialism (as well as science, technology and economics), embody apparently progressive and rational economic and knowledge (or creative) economy values, which play a major part in the success, longevity, apparent public value and legitimacy of the creative city paradigm. This has created clashing and dual systems of intrinsic/sign/autonomous/romantic and extrinsic/use/instrumental/utilitarian values, which continue to resonate in discourses of both the creative city and cultural policy and impact on legitimation and trust between the stakeholders of cultural policy.

This chapter has also demonstrated the ideological, contested, dependent, and self-perpetuating nature of instrumentalism and its positive (tangible, accountable policies) and negative (cynical, exploitative) interpretations. The concept of cynical reason has been raised in respect of questions over the autonomy, agency and consequently

sincerity of instrumental discourses such as the creative city, with potentially serious implications for legitimacy (in terms of Habermasian consensus). Moreover, this review has suggested that the malleability and richness of culture and creativity in relation to both cultural policy and the creative city, has facilitated their appropriation for historic and emerging models of the state, knowledge and the economy, driving and resulting in instrumental discourses and difficult stakeholder relationships, raising questions over the public function of cultural policies. This is particularly profound in the context of the dependency of urban development on the private sector and the beneficiaries of policy in putatively democratic societies. In order to locate this context and creative city discourse as it relates to cultural policies, through the lens of culture, creativity and cultural policy, this dissertation must now turn to the discrete and located cases of Scotland, Finland and Ireland. What follows, therefore, is a discourse analysis of three national cultural policies as a basis for later consideration of the state, capital and colonisation.