Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

10-2005

Abstract

This article reviews work on 'cultural economy', particularly from within geography, and from other disciplines, where there are links to overtly geographical debates. We seek to clarify different interpretations of the term and to steer a course through this multivalency to suggest productive new research agendas. We review and critique work on cultural economy that represents a relatively straightforward economic geography, based on empirical observation while theoretically informed and driven by debates about Fordism and post-Fordism, agglomeration and cluster theory. Some of these ideas about cultural economy have proven attractive to policy-makers and we map a normative script of cultural economy, with its prescriptive recommendations for economic development, which we then critique. Turning from this normative cultural economy, we move to a more theoretical discussion which reinterprets the cultural economy in light of debates on the culturization of 'the economic' in research praxis. We conclude that better acknowledgement is needed of the contradictory uses of 'cultural economy', but point nevertheless to the value of this multivalency as long as we reflect on the multiple contradictions and interpretations. With many current absences in work on cultural economy, we suggest various agendas waiting to be addressed.

Keywords

cluster theory, creative industries, cultural economy, cultural policy, urban regeneration

Discipline

Human Geography | Sociology of Culture | Urban Studies

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

Progress in Human Geography

Volume

29

Issue

5

First Page

541

Last Page

561

ISSN

0309-1325

Identifier

10.1191/0309132505ph567oa

Publisher

SAGE

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1191/0309132505ph567oa

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