WHAT IS CULTURAL POLICY RESEARCH?

Abstract

Cultural policy research exists in many contexts, asks many different kinds of questions and adopts a wide repertoire of research methodologies from a raft of academic discourses. This article investigates the research questions and approaches being undertaken by those working in this field. In order to achieve this, the article draws upon readings of contemporary publications in the field and on the authors’ experiences of building a research capacity in the area of cultural policy in a British – and, more particularly, a post‐devolution Scottish – university. The article traces the emergence of an academic discipline in the field, and seeks to advance this by reviewing a tripartite research agenda investigating: the history and historiography of cultural policy; the principles and strategies of cultural policy; and, the relationships between cultural policy and cultural theory/cultural studies.

KEYWORDS:

• cultural policy
• research questions
• disciplinarity, theory and practice

Notes

1. In passing, from our readings and our practice, we see that cultural policy research is marked by the diversity of its audiences: academics certainly – and in both the specialist researcher and the student market – but also public bodies and specialist agencies involved in culture and the arts; cultural institutions such as consultancies and think tanks; and, of course, policy makers and politicians at every level from local to international. This leads us to conclude that the diversity of audiences that cultural policy research seeks to address is a distinctive and even defining condition.

2. Reflecting on our political and academic context in a post‐devolution Scottish university, this is a potent call to action – an important recognition of the potential of applied research in this field.

3. Jameson’s essay, “On cultural studies”, might have been an interesting one to have seen anthologised in Lewis and Miller’s anthology, if only as an explicit counterpoint to the volume’s thesis of cultural policy studies.