What is Cultural Capital?

Cultural capital is the wealth that is created when society recognises and invests in the components of culture and also when culture is used to provide economic social, environmental and cultural wellbeing?    It is also about creating income, self employment and social capital.

Here are a few definitions to help you understand this value:

To understand Cultural Capital and Cultural Well-being you should download and read "Cultural Well-being and Cultural Capital" by Penny Eames;  http://artsaccessinternational.org/cultural-wellbeing /

 If you don't want to download then try some of these definitions:


“Cultural capital describes the value of culture when measured as an asset in terms of economic, social and environmental resources”[1].

“...the term cultural capital is used because, like money, our cultural inheritance can be translated into social resources (things like wealth, power and status) and the cultural capital we accumulate from birth can be “spent:’ in education systems as we try to achieve things that are considered to be culturally important[2]”.

“Cultural capital is an important aspect of social capital and social capital is an expression of cultural capital in practice.   Social capital is based on and grows from the norm, values networks and ways of operating that are the core of cultural capital”.[3]

To understand these quotes we also need to understand what we mean by the word culture.  The easiest definition I have found is based if from UNESCO and this definition was accepted and adopted in the Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001.

“...culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual emotional features of society or a social groups, and ... it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs[4]”

In my publications I have simplified the meanings and suggest that  “culture is the histories (myths), ideologies, values and the rituals that expresses them[5]”.

This simple definition gives us the headings for analysing the existing culture of a society, town, community or group.   We can look at these different headings – histories (heritage and myths), values, ideologies and rituals (ceremonies behaviours) and note the positives and negatives. Then we can see how these characteristics of culture can be used to enhance wellbeing generally and become assets

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[1] Eames Cultural Well-being and Cultural Capital 2006  www.artsaccessinternational.org

[2] Bowles 2006 http://williambowles.info/ 

[3] Robinson & Williams Social Capital and Voluntary Activity: Giving and Sharing in Maori and Non-Maori Society.  Social Policy Journal of New Zealand. Issue 17:p55

[4] UNESCO 2002  UNESCO (2001)  Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity   Adopted by the 31st session of the UNESCO General Conference, Paris, 2 November 2001

[5] Eames 2009  Spirituality of Older New Zealanders : Bishops Action Foundation   www.pseconsultancy.com  

Cultural Wellbeing includes social wellbeing

There is now a significant amount of research showing the value of Social Capital, but not as much research demonstrating the importance of Cultural Capital. 

Cultural Capital is about the histories, ideologies, values and rituals of a society and how to measure that in terms of capital and wealth.   Social Capital is only a small amount of this.    It is worth looking at my paper on my website   pseconsultancy.com  and under Cultural Economics download my paper to the 17th International Conference on Cultural Economics.

The paper was warmly received particularly the emphasis on Genuine Progress Indicators and Sustainable development.

These buddha look so happy and warm on the side of the road in Japan.

     

Japan and Cultural Economics Conference

It was great having the opportunity to give a paper at the Cultural Economics Conference in Kyoto last month.   Stimulating to hear speaker after speaker emphasising the value of culture and cultural capital.

Of particular interest were papers on the way Libraries can adapt to the world of E readers and become the Third Place in towns and the hug for development.

Other papers showed how valuable having a highly experienced, intellegent and senior administrator in Local Government positions makes such a difference to the nurturing of creative towns and cities.

 The suggestion backed up with research was that it is often one or two people, sometimes the Mayor, Deputy Mayor or a senior local government official that stimulates creativity in a society.   They need others including artists to provide the sparks, but they only light up when the administator of local government official lights the match and/ or brings others together to stimulate the sector to be creative and thus create creative cities or towns.

Cultural Economics today

Japan is an amazing culture, organised and with an amazing rail and subway system which makes it easy to travel around.

The conference on Cultural Economics is stimulating.   Today I give my speech.   Visit that speech on my website www.pseconsultancy.com  and go to Cultural Economics drop down and read my speech.

Election and Cultural Well-being

“In a sense, culture is everything; it is who we are; how we see each other.  It is not just an add-on to life, but the way our lives express themselves”

Judge Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of South Africa

In New Zealand we have an election at the end of November.   The parties are putting up policies and presenting their manifestos.  They are a pick and mix of ideas, most designed to collect enough votes to win the treasury benches.  None of the parties are looking at cultural well-being and none are showing a concern for our New Zealand identity and our place in the world.

Like most countries in the world economic well-being is the main discussion point.  How do we balance the books and at the same time build infrastructure and provide social, environmental and cultural well-being?  

Do we sell the family silver and pay off the mortgage or do we keep the silver and borrow more, or design new tax systems, or do we create jobs, become greener?  Or do we try to hold the balance of power by influencing whichever party gets the majority of the votes?

There is also an interesting different development this year.   One party is determined to have an election that is based on a President – one leader - and leaves us to forget the others in the team who may or may not be popular.  The other party is ignoring this philosophy and placing a range of people in the team in front of the electorate.   The media loves the President – he smiles and sets up photo opportunity after photo opportunity and this sells - well (they think) the newspapers.   

The challenge for all political parties, in New Zealand and internationally, is that the landscape is just so different, and the culture has changed. 

Media communication is dispersed. Internet and SKY makes it so easy to turn off the TV.   One Friday night we had the opening TV presentations.   The first was National and John Key talked and talked and staged a few questions.  Labour followed and we had the history of the Labour Party and the key policies.  Then Green profiled their policies and wandered around the country showing us that the rivers are dirty and the children are hungry.  The next day I conducted an informal poll.   What did you think of the opening presentations for the election?  Everyone I talked to had switched on the TV to listen to the presentations.  BUT everyone I talk to had listened to the first few minutes of John Key’s talk fest and switched to another channel. Several joked about John Key’s clothing, but no-one waited to hear the other presentations.  That was sad because the Labour and Green presentations were not only interesting, but beautifully presented.

These three presentations showed a significant contract in all the things that make our culture here in New Zealand.   The past represented by the National Party talk fest, Labour Party history selected history as interesting and showed the values we have now and would appeal to the middle group of voters. Green was about the future. 

How these presentations will fit with the wider political presentation will be shown in the voting at the end of November.

Spiritual Well-being and the Arts

Throughout my working life I have worked with people in prisons, in hospitals, people with disabilities, refugees and disadvantage migrants and the sick elderly.  


What I have been doing is introducing them to the arts, visual and performing arts, craft and literary arts, particularly songwriting and short story writing.


I have been conscious that many of the groups and individuals I work with have little or no contact with any formal religion.  


What I understood was that most of the artists involved in the programmes set up saw there work as being part of their spirituality.

They saw their art as being part of themselves, some acknowledge that it was their religion.  Many saw the sense of achievement as something spiritual.


Many also saw music as a expression of their own spirituality, but also where they went to get peace and become whole.   


For many, now a days, there is little in the way of connection between their feeling of peace and tranquility and any organised religious ideology.   

I was told by some people in prisons that when they could return to their cell (usually terrible places) they can find peace by taking themselves into "their fantasy world"  their spiritual world.  They would say going into this fantasy world was the only way to survive.    


Maybe there are some lessons for young people who are disconnected with society and are contemplating suicide.   Maybe a spiritual world is an essential part of well-being?  Maybe they can only get in touch with this through the arts?

Well-being and sustainable development

We have just been watching the East of United States being buffered by a storm and watched the discussions associated with the unexpected recent earthquakes in the East of the States.


We have ourselves been experiencing this year more storms with unexpected tornadoes and once in a lifetime snow and extremely strong wind (even stronger than our usual windy city).  This has been a dramatic winter.  Also earthquakes have been experienced both here in New Zealand and were grieve with the people of Christchurch and Japan.   


Extreme events – these are either just the natural processes of nature or there is something different that has been created because of our obsession with using carbon and growth.  


It could be climate change and in this scientists appear to agree, but that doesn’t explain the earthquakes.  There seems to be a pattern developing that suggests a need for us to wake up to this pattern of natural disasters and demands that we think about sustainable development. 


We should see that sustainable development cannot have its focus on growth at any cost, it can’t involve the growth of wealth by a few and it needs to be about development focused on well-being and not only well-being in our own countries, but internationally.  


The new creative thinking must involve a new way of looking at our world and is really about sustainable development that recognises well-being and the pillars of well-being first and foremost. 

So what is well-being and how do we achieve it?

Firstly, well-being – Good health, happiness, and prosperity: the state of being healthy, happy and prosperous (New Zealand Oxford Dictionary 2002)  

Now many of us use the word comfort instead of prosperity and our different objective is peace of mind.

The Maori view of health and well-being is different again, but provides us with more depth, and is helpful in our understanding of well-being linked with culture:

        [The Maori view] incorporates all aspects of a person’s internal and external worlds.  It assumes health in the spheres of physical, psychological, spiritual and family well-being and a balance among the individual, their environment and those around them. (St George, I ed: (2004) Cole’s Medical Practice in New Zealand: Publisher: Medical Council of New Zealand.)

What I find interesting about this concept of well-being is that it recognises the relationship we have with the internal and external worlds, and goes on to include all aspects of life as in the definitions I use in the four pillars of sustainable well-being. That is: social, economic, environment and cultural well-being.  www.pseconsultancy.com

The challenge is that we have to start thinking about well-being as the outcome we want for society.  This is so different from desire for growth.

The launch today of our government’s energy policy with its emphasis on more drilling, digging and exploiting any oil, coal and a token movement towards more sustainable electricity as wind farms become cheaper and more popular with energy companies, serves the purposes of growth and the promotion of commerce to favour the corporate interest.

 Those in positions of influence have seemingly forgotten they share their organic roots with the rest of us and the rest of the natural world.