Economies of Expertise: Consultants and the Assemblage of Culture

Abstract

Consultants have emerged as significant actors in the assembling of culture after neoliberalism. This paper considers their role in the assemblage of the British subsidised cultural sector as part of the assembling of culture more generally. In particular, it is concerned with the status of consultants as private sector actors, which differentiates them from other forms of expertise that tend to be located in the state apparatus, in that they must earn money to resource their work and remain solvent. By placing their work of assemblage in relation to this imperative, we can understand the difference it makes. Based on a close study of a London cultural consultancy, it is argued that specific governmental and managerial trends send trajectories of value through the assemblage which the networked consultants attempt to control and capture. These economies have seen consultants contribute to the broad shift in the assemblage of culture from something that occupied a distinctive sphere requiring protection from the ravages of the market to a potential contributor to economic and social development.

KEYWORDS:

• assemblage
• cultural intermediaries
• culture
• creativity
• value creation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank CCI for being so accommodating to the research this paper is based on. A version of the paper was presented to the New Zealand Geographical Society Conference in December 2012 and the Association of American Geographers Conference in 2013 and I appreciate the useful feedback I received on both occasions. I also thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal for their incisive and productive comments.

Notes

1. This is a pseudonym. Details of the organisation, their projects and their clients are deliberately vague to disguise identities.