Cultural Institutions Studies - Delineation of The Discipline

Delineation of The Discipline

Although Cultural Institutions Studies has been defined as an “inter-discipline”, the following delimitation ought to contribute to further clarification of its profile.

1. While Culture Management Studies – analogous to management studies – are usually considered to be an application oriented discipline, Cultural Institutions Studies are basically not oriented in this way. This new discipline observes, analyses and comments on structures and processes in the cultural sector and in cultural organisations. Its goal is to indirectly influence cultural policy, cultural economics, and conditions within cultural enterprises, i.e., their management and administration. In this way, Cultural Institutions Studies is also concerned with theory-building.
2. Cultural Institutions Studies focuses on the emergence and development of specific cultural goods. This approach keeps a certain (but not critical) distance to the mainstream conception of "culture" usually encountered in contemporary cultural studies and sociology of culture. Speaking generally, anything created by man and enabled through socialisation is conceived as part of “culture”. Cultural Institutions Studies, however, uses a narrower definition of “culture”, reserving the term “cultural good” to artefacts embedded in a concrete institutional setting. Of course, historically, there were periods when music or painting were able to develop without any institutional setting. Researchers active in Cultural Institutions Studies, however, generally insist that cultural goods and practices "cannot be understood apart from the contexts in which they are produced and consumed".
3. Commercial activities in cultural sector presuppose clear ownership relations as well as the establishment of scarcity: both are due to legal and economic policy interventions. However, in contrast to common traditional cultural economics studies, Cultural Institutions Studies proceed from the assumption that the formation of non economic value is not just an accidental accompaniment of price formation. Monetary and non monetary value formation processes are mutually related to each other, often in a very tense relationship. Cultural goods with an exchange function must therefore be comprehensively analysed, taking into consideration all their multiple symbolic and economic, private and public, social and political functions.

To sum up: The focus on cultural institutions sphere demands a synthesis of cultural, sociological, organizational, and economic methods of analysis and interpretation to create a multi-perspective approach to the relevant issues. However, culture and cultural practices are definitely not an object that may be observed and described from a distant, “scientific” point of view. Cultural issues are matters of public interest and are interwoven with personal and collective identities as well as with normative and political positions. Cultural Institutions Studies do not claim objectivity and a positivistic analysis. But it is a necessity to embark on a debate about presuppositions of research. This points to the critical philosophical roots of this approach.