NEO‐LIBERALISM, CULTURE AND POLICY

Abstract

This article looks at the hegemonic process of neo‐liberal globalisation and its implications for culture in general and cultural policy in particular from a critical perspective. A consideration of its ideological features is a necessary supplement to the economic analysis of neo‐liberal globalisation. Ideology mediates economics and culture. As it is used here, the concept of “ideology” refers to how dominant power relations and inequalities are legitimised by distorted representations of reality at various levels. While these include abstract theory and professional expertise, it is argued that everyday language and “common sense” exemplify the operations of ideology most profoundly in securing consent to prevailing and otherwise questionable arrangements. Culture is now saturated with a market‐oriented mentality that closes out alternative ways of thinking and imagining. The general argument is illustrated with several examples drawn from across the range of lived experience and institutionalised structures, especially in the arts and broadcasting. The logic of the annual European Capital of Culture competition is also discussed with reference to the neo‐liberal framework for urban regeneration. Specifically, the experience of Glasgow 1990 and the plans for Liverpool 2008 are addressed in this regard.

KEYWORDS:

• neo‐liberalism
• globalisation
• hegemony
• ideology
• cultural capitalism
• urban regeneration

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Jan Flaherty for helping me research some of the material in this article, and Stuart Wilks‐Heeg for bringing me up to date on Liverpool. Earlier versions and parts of the article were presented in talks at the following: the University of Warwick’s Centre for Cultural Policy Studies research seminar on The New Public Management and the Rhetoric of Culture in January 2004; the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference on Communication and Democracy at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in July 2004; the Kulture, Offentligheit og Demokrati conference at the University of Bergen, Norway, in September 2004; and the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies Special Research Lecture and Liverpool 800 Local and Urban History Research Seminar at the University of Liverpool in November 2004; the Universities of Newcastle and Wollongong in Australia and at Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2005.