George Yudice

The Expediency of Culture is a pioneering theorization of the changing role of culture in an increasingly globalized world. George YÚdice explores critically how groups ranging from indigenous activists to nation-states to nongovernmental organizations have all come to see culture as a valuable resource to be invested in, contested, and used for varied sociopolitical and economic ends. Through a dazzling series of illustrative studies, YÚdice challenges the Gramscian notion of cultural struggle for hegemony and instead develops an understanding of culture where cultural agency at every level is negotiated within globalized contexts dominated by the active management and administration of culture. He describes a world where “high” culture (such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain) is a mode of urban development, rituals and everyday aesthetic practices are mobilized to promote tourism and the heritage industries, and mass culture industries comprise significant portions of a number of countries’ gross national products.YÚdice contends that a new international division of cultural labor has emerged, combining local difference with transnational administration and investment. This does not mean that today’s increasingly transnational culture-exemplified by the entertainment industries and the so-called global civil society of nongovernmental organizations-is necessarily homogenized. He demonstrates that national and regional differences are still functional, shaping the meaning of phenomena from pop songs to antiracist activism. YÚdice considers a range of sites where identity politics and cultural agency are negotiated in the face of powerful transnational forces. He analyzes appropriations of American funk music as well as a citizen action initiative in Rio de Janeiro to show how global notions such as cultural difference are deployed within specific social fields. He provides a political and cultural economy of a vast and increasingly influential art event- insite a triennial festival extending from San Diego to Tijuana. He also reflects on the city of Miami as one of a number of transnational “cultural corridors” and on the uses of culture in an unstable world where censorship and terrorist acts interrupt the usual channels of capitalist and artistic flows.

Hitherto, cultural theory and empirical work on culture have outstripped cultural policy. This book rectifies the peculiar imbalance in the field of Cultural Studies by offering the first comprehensive and international work on cultural policy. Fully alive to the challenges posed by globalization it addresses a wide range of central topics including cinema, television, museums, international organizations, art, public history, drama and performance art. The result is a landmark work in the emerging field of cultural policy. Rigorous in its field of survey and astute in its critical commentary it enables students to gain a global grounding in cultural policy. It will be essential reading for students of cultural studies and cultural sociology.

Hitherto, cultural theory and empirical work on culture have outstripped cultural policy. This book rectifies the peculiar imbalance in the field of Cultural Studies by offering the first comprehensive and international work on cultural policy. Fully alive to the challenges posed by globalization it addresses a wide range of central topics including cinema, television, museums, international organizations, art, public history, drama and performance art. The result is a landmark work in the emerging field of cultural policy. Rigorous in its field of survey and astute in its critical commentary it enables students to gain a global grounding in cultural policy. It will be essential reading for students of cultural studies and cultural sociology.

A collection of essays on cultural and political innovations in Latin America. The work shows how the penetration of capital and media - known as globalization - into the political and everyday life of Latin America has had far-reaching cultural consequences. The attempt to "integrate" Latin American economies into the "new world order" has provoked a rethinking of questions of modernization, modernity, postmodernity, the meaning of pluralism, and contemporary leftist ideology in general. Within this context, the work explores the transformed terrain of Latin American culture, employing a multi-disciplinary approach that tries to transcend traditional constraints imposed by social science methodologies, historical interpretations, or aesthetic analyses. The contributors focus on the cultural politics of the various struggles in Latin America waged through intellectual and aesthetic practices, including the place of Latin America in the discussion of postmodern culture, a refocusing of the debates concerning "dependency theory" in its relation to cultural production, the relation of the state to cultural activities in Latin America, questions of race and gender, and a review of the effects of military and socialist governments on culture in recent years.