tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/cultural-capital-13033/articlesCultural capital – The Conversation2023-07-11T00:11:03Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093232023-07-11T00:11:03Z2023-07-11T00:11:03ZNZ music schools under threat: we need a better measure of their worth than money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536693/original/file-20230710-21-j4gzbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5072%2C3374&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Funding for the arts and tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand has long been insufficient. Run the two together, as is <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-06-2023/all-the-university-courses-on-the-chopping-block">happening this year</a>, and we find ourselves at a precarious junction.</p>
<p>Arts and humanities departments in general are threatened by job and course losses due to the university underfunding crisis. In music education alone, the cuts have already been extensive. </p>
<p>Te Auaha, <a href="https://www.xn--tepkenga-szb.ac.nz/">Te Pukenga</a>’s creative campus in Wellington, has folded most of its <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/129945313/music-programmes-at-te-pkengas-weltec-whitireia-campuses-could-be-gone-by-years-end">music programmes</a>. The Auckland campus of the Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand (MAINZ) is <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018884653/audio-students-staff-in-limbo-as-mainz-to-close">closing</a> too. </p>
<p>Schools of music at Auckland, Waikato and Otago universities have all gone through significant restructuring over the past decade. Massey University’s creative programmes may be <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/492835/staff-fear-big-job-cuts-as-massey-university-reconsiders-courses-with-low-enrolments">under review</a>. The future of the New Zealand School of Music at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington is also uncertain.</p>
<p>The country’s creative and critical culture of music will be substantially diminished as a result. How can we sustain vibrant popular, classical, jazz, electronic and experimental music scenes without the institutions that nurture and produce musical talent?</p>
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<h2>Other measures of wealth</h2>
<p>Music shapes and helps us understand who we are as people and as a culture.
As the pioneering New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn put it, we need “a music of our own, a living tradition of music created in this country”. </p>
<p>Or as musician and producer <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/summer-2022/28-12-2022/maori-music-is-hitting-the-mainstream-and-its-not-by-accident-2">Hinewehi Mohi said</a> more recently: “We need music and we need waiata Māori to really tie us together and create a sense of cultural identity and nationhood.”</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/starved-of-funds-and-vision-struggling-universities-put-nzs-entire-research-strategy-at-risk-207708">Starved of funds and vision, struggling universities put NZ’s entire research strategy at risk</a>
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<p>It may be a truism to say music and other art forms are a public good, but it’s a truth nonetheless. And in tough times the arts become nothing less than an essential service. Studies from <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647756/full">Finland</a> and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00858-y">Germany</a> have shown how
music helped people maintain a sense of community and wellbeing during pandemic lockdowns.</p>
<p>Even just bingeing on streaming services involves consuming the artistic labour of composers, sound designers, dialogue editors and scores of production creatives. In other words, we need the arts and artists, whether or not we’re conscious of it.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the Treasury’s <a href="https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/tp/living-standards-framework-2021-html">Living Standards Framework</a> now recognises values beyond the purely fiscal, and that “wealth” and “capital” have broader meanings “not fully captured in the system of national accounts, such as human capability and the natural environment”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536692/original/file-20230710-32332-6pc1g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hinewehi Mohi: ‘create a sense of cultural identity and nationhood’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Short-term fixes and long-term harm</h2>
<p>The social and economic benefits of music are well established, and were substantiated in the key findings of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s 2022 <a href="https://mch.govt.nz/valuing-arts-research-report">Valuing the Arts</a> report.</p>
<p>The rewards are both social and individual. Educators, psychologists and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/gm5cg8p2rFpRKpnagQrr/full">employers</a> are well aware of music’s cognitive, intellectual and behavioural <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-want-your-child-to-be-more-resilient-get-them-to-join-a-choir-orchestra-or-band-190657">benefits</a> – including how group music making develops teamwork, empathy and grit, all components of resilience.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-break-the-cycle-of-crisis-in-aotearoa-new-zealands-arts-and-culture-it-starts-with-proper-funding-199772">We need to break the cycle of crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand’s arts and culture. It starts with proper funding</a>
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<p>A rapidly changing world requires young performers, composers, technologists and thinkers who are able to keep pace. Short-term solutions to financial problems, however, can cause <a href="https://theconversation.com/starved-of-funds-and-vision-struggling-universities-put-nzs-entire-research-strategy-at-risk-207708">long-term harm</a>.</p>
<p>Cuts to the New Zealand School of Music, and other similar programmes across the country, will have broad repercussions, diminishing the depth and breadth of music education. The creative industries will be starved of young talent (echoing labour shortages in other sectors).</p>
<p>Theatre <a href="https://thebigidea.nz/stories/unforgivable-attack-latest-blow-in-gutting-of-nz-theatre-education">faces the same</a> destructive spiral. In a larger society, some damage might be absorbed. In a country of five million it becomes palpable.</p>
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<h2>Better funding models</h2>
<p>The current tertiary funding model uses staff-student ratios as the primary funding metric. But this doesn’t work for music or any discipline where teaching and learning take place in small groups, intensively, often involving one-to-one tuition. </p>
<p>The argument that music and theatre courses should be cut because of low enrolments is perverse. A low staff-student ratio, along with specialist facilities and equipment, are <a href="https://gpseducation.oecd.org/revieweducationpolicies/#!node=41720&filter=all">beneficial</a> for developing both individual talent and outstanding teamwork. Similar needs and costs are not challenged in science education, nor should they be in arts.</p>
<p>This kind of teaching can be time and labour intensive for students and teachers, but it is the only way to produce the results that define excellence. Students don’t learn to perform, compose or engineer compelling music in generic lecture theatres alongside hundreds of others.</p>
<p>Similarly, box-office returns and gross revenues aren’t great measures of true artistic, experiential and cultural value. Stadium shows may indicate commercial viability, but musicians and audiences <a href="https://news.pollstar.com/2019/10/08/underplays-in-overdrive-why-big-artists-are-increasingly-playing-small-venues/">thrive in intimate settings</a> where new ideas and material can be tested and real rapport established.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-show-must-go-on-but-its-time-to-re-think-how-we-fund-the-arts-in-nz-156488">The show must go on, but it's time to re-think how we fund the arts in NZ</a>
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<h2>Music and value</h2>
<p>We clearly need a more nuanced and holistic measure of the value of arts and education than the simply financial. As Robert Kennedy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert-kennedy-gdp">famously said</a> of GDP:</p>
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<p>It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.</p>
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<p>To that end, the <a href="https://www.tec.govt.nz/">Tertiary Education Commission</a>, the government’s main interface with the sector, should reflect the Treasury’s Living Standards Framework when accounting for the broader social contribution of higher education. </p>
<p>Various precedents already exist in the form of international measures such as the <a href="https://gnhusa.org/genuine-progress-indicator/">Genuine Progress Indicator</a>, the UN’s <a href="https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI">Human Development Index</a>, the <a href="https://www.centreforthrivingplaces.org/about-measurement-policy/thriving-places-index/">Thriving Places Index</a> and the OECD’s <a href="https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111">Better Life Index</a>.</p>
<p>All in various ways try to incorporate the importance of community, culture, work-life balance and overall life satisfaction. It should come as no surprise that wellbeing and participation in music are <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-10373-008">closely correlated</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dugal McKinnon works for the New Zealand School of Music Te Kōki, Victoria University of Wellington-Te Herenga Waka. </span></em></p>The country’s creative and critical music culture will be substantially diminished if the university funding crisis hits any harder.Dugal McKinnon, Associate Professor, Composition and Sonic Arts, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1959342023-02-07T19:04:47Z2023-02-07T19:04:47ZDark Emu has sold over 250,000 copies – but its value can’t be measured in money alone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508553/original/file-20230207-13-pqykou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C3723%2C2942&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bruce Pascoe</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linsey Rendell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bruce Pascoe’s <a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/dark-emu?_pos=27&_sid=160b08e95&_ss=r">Dark Emu</a>, first published in 2014, represents that rare bird in small press and independent publishing in Australia: a long-term sales success. </p>
<p>Dark Emu attempts to debunk the idea that pre-European Aboriginal people were purely “hunter-gatherers”. </p>
<p>Indeed, it suited settler-colonists, Pascoe argues, to fail to recognise Indigenous agricultural practices as organised, intelligent land management. In the original publisher’s press release, Pascoe described it as a book “about food production, housing construction and clothing”. </p>
<p>By mid-2021, seven years later, it <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2021/july/1625061600/james-boyce/transforming-national-imagination-dark-emu-debate#mtr">had sold</a> an impressive 250,000 copies.</p>
<p>But sales are just one way to demonstrate the success, or value, of a book. </p>
<h2>Measuring value beyond sales figures</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2022.2147573">We tracked</a> the impact of the original edition of Dark Emu over five years, from 2014 to 2019, to look at how it contributed to (or otherwise altered) six categories of value, or “capital”. They were: financial (the primary way our culture measures a book’s success), but also social, human, intellectual, manufactured and natural. </p>
<p>We borrowed these six categories from a value-reporting mechanism used in the corporate sustainability sector, <a href="https://www.integratedreporting.org/resource/international-ir-framework/">The Integrated Reporting Framework</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505566/original/file-20230120-22-cs6mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Dark Emu was one of around 20,000 books published in Australia in 2014. Most of these works would have been aimed at <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-read-the-australian-book-industry-in-a-time-of-change-49044">a modest market</a>, with print runs of between 2,000 and 4,000. </p>
<p>By 2016, Dark Emu was reported to have sold more than 100,000 copies. Many local releases all but disappear from bookshop shelves within a few months of their release. But instead, Dark Emu gathered slow momentum. </p>
<p>Five years later, in 2019, it <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/i-m-hoping-it-s-a-blip-sales-down-in-difficult-year-for-publishing-industry-20200109-p53q43.html">reportedly sold</a> 115,300 copies in Australia and New Zealand in a single year.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-our-new-archaeological-research-investigates-dark-emus-idea-of-aboriginal-agriculture-and-villages-146754">Friday essay: how our new archaeological research investigates Dark Emu's idea of Aboriginal 'agriculture' and villages</a>
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<h2>Impact on manufacturing</h2>
<p>Manufactured capital looks at the physical object that’s been created. In this case, that’s the first-edition physical book of Dark Emu, as well as subsequent physical objects generated by or through it (including reprints).</p>
<p>Between 2014 and 2019, Dark Emu was <a href="https://www.screenhub.com.au/newsarticle/%20news/writing-and-publishing/performing-arts-editor/dark-emu-to-be-adapted-as-tv-documentary-259030">reprinted 28 times</a>. It was also produced as an e-book and an audio book. </p>
<p>By 2017, world rights were sold to Scribe, which published North American and UK editions in 2018. An <a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/young-dark-emu?_pos=1&_sid=160b08e95&_ss=r">edition for younger readers</a> was released by its original publisher, <a href="https://www.magabala.com/">Magabala</a>, in 2019. Magabala also published at least one secondary text: a resource for secondary school teachers, <a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/dark-emu-in-the-classroom?_pos=11&_sid=160b08e95&_ss=r">Dark Emu in the Classroom</a>. </p>
<p>We tracked the significant impact on manufacturing from this single book title as it was reproduced in various forms, showing evidence of its impact across a range of allied book industry sectors – especially the print industry – both in Australia and internationally. </p>
<h2>Supporting Indigenous creators</h2>
<p>In the five years immediately following the release of the original edition of Dark Emu, it accumulated considerable intellectual capital. </p>
<p>Numerous arts and literary sector awards recognised the book’s outstanding public, literary and cultural value between 2014 and 2019. This recognition culminated in Bruce Pascoe being awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2018.</p>
<p>The publication of Dark Emu had a significant impact on its small not-for-profit publisher, <a href="https://www.magabala.com/pages/about-us">Magabala Books</a>. Founded in 1984, Magabala is Aboriginal owned and led, and focuses on celebrating and nurturing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices.</p>
<p>After Dark Emu was published, Magabala expanded its publishing program.</p>
<p>Magabala was shortlisted for Small Publisher of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards in 2017 and 2019. That second year, it was also the fastest-growing independent small publisher in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505546/original/file-20230120-20-ct6ye3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Peter Bibby, Merrilee Lands and June Oscar heading to a Magabala book launch in 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Magabala Books</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Magabala also invested in philanthropy. Its <a href="https://www.magabala.com/pages/scholarships">Creative Development Scholarship</a> to “support professional development relating to writing, illustration and storytelling” for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers, writers, illustrators and artists supported 27 scholars between 2014 and 2019. </p>
<p>Dark Emu created jobs in the performing arts, too. </p>
<p>A dance adaptation by <a href="https://theconversation.com/bangarras-dark-emu-is-beautiful-but-lacks-the-punch-of-its-source-material-98628">Bangarra Dance Theatre</a> premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2018, involving more than 30 arts workers. Program notes for the national tour list three choreographers, 17 dancers and a production team of six, as well as 11 musicians and a composer employed to work on the production. </p>
<p>In 2019, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/bruce-pascoe-s-dark-emu-series-for-abc-tv-likely-to-still-go-ahead-20210701-p585za.html">Screen Australia</a> announced a documentary series would be developed based on the book. While delayed by COVID-19, the series is still in production. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505549/original/file-20230120-24-rmmstq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bangarra Dance Theatre’s production of Dark Emu was just one way the book led to arts jobs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bangarra/Daniel Boud</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>New understandings of Australian history</h2>
<p>To measure the book’s social impact, we focused on how it contributed to the human rights, health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in Australia, as well as how it contributed to broad public understanding of Australian history. </p>
<p>Then we looked at how the book increased public debate. (We should note, we didn’t include Peter Sutton and Kerry Walsh’s 2021 book rebutting Dark Emu, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">Farmers or Hunter-gatherers?</a>, as it was beyond the scope of our study: our research spanned 2015-2019.)</p>
<p>Digital forums provide short, sharp narratives that bring qualitative value into focus. (<a href="https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/monograph/What_Matters_Talking_Value_in_Australian_Culture/12821456">So-called</a> “parables of value”.)</p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/dark-emu-bruce-pascoe/book/9781921248016.html">Booktopia</a>, many hundreds of readers reviewed Dark Emu; 86% of them gave the book five stars, reflecting its broad popularity. This selection of Booktopia reviews speaks to the way Dark Emu contributed to new understandings of Australian history: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A marvellous book, full of information and insights which were new and fascinating to me. Well researched and well written. It should be compulsory reading for all Australian schoolchildren.</p>
<p>Super interesting and I wish I’d been taught more of this earlier in life.</p>
<p>I have only just started using this resource for my Year 9 class […] It has thus far provoked conversation and questions. It is particularly interesting as we live in an area that Major Mitchell explored, and there are numerous tracks etc named after him. Always interesting [to be] given the other side of history.</p>
<p>I couldn’t stop thinking about this book […] after reading it and going through any bush in Australia you see the landscape very differently.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our analysis identified an extraordinary degree of public debate generated by the book – in part because it soon provoked another chapter in the “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/russell-marks/2020/05/2020/1580868886/taking-sides-over-dark-emu">Australian History Wars</a>”. </p>
<p>Social commentator Andrew Bolt, for example, published several columns on Dark Emu in the Herald Sun during 2018-19. He drew heavily on an anonymous website, Dark Emu Exposed, which purports to “expose” and “debunk” what it asserts are the book’s many myths, exaggerations and “fabrications”. </p>
<p>Interestingly, <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/russell-marks/2020/05/2020/1580868886/taking-sides-over-dark-emu">Russell Marks</a> links the extraordinary sales success of Dark Emu in 2019 directly to the increase in public debate fuelled by Bolt.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">How the Dark Emu debate limits representation of Aboriginal people in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Environmental impacts</h2>
<p>It is not possible to precisely measure the air, water, land, minerals and forests required to produce and distribute Dark Emu. But we were able to make some informed estimates. </p>
<p>Figures from <a href="https://www.isonomia.co.uk/balancing-the-books-the-environmental-impacts-of-digital-reading/">an overseas study</a> found that the paper required to produce 100 books requires about one tree. On this basis, copies of the original Dark Emu title sold in Australia in 2019 consumed the equivalent of 1,153 trees. </p>
<p><a href="https://climateinemergency.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/the-carbon-footprint-of-a-book/">Other sources</a> estimate the carbon footprint of a single book is 2.71 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂ equivalent). On this basis, Dark Emu’s sales in Australia in 2019 could be said to have produced 312,467kg of CO₂ emissions. That’s the equivalent of emissions produced from 5,002kg of beef – or, the amount of beef consumed by 200 Australians <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricultural-outlook">in an average year</a>. </p>
<p>But unlike many other Australian books, Dark Emu has not just consumed natural capital: it has also contributed to it. </p>
<p>With earnings from his royalties, Pascoe purchased <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/13/its-time-to-embrace-the-history-of-the-country-first-harvest-of-dancing-grass-in-200-years#img-1">farmland in regional Victoria</a>. There, he is applying knowledge gained through research for the book to regenerate the local ecology, using Indigenous agricultural practices. He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The farm I’m working on, I got rid of the cattle and within a season the grass was knee-high again. And areas that had been cut, that should never have been cleared at all, where they were showing their bones through the soil, they’ve come good again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pascoe’s appointment as <a href="https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/185335-bruce-pascoe">Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture</a> at the University of Melbourne makes likely further positive contributions to natural capital: via teaching and research in Indigenous land management. All traceable to a single book title. </p>
<h2>Why do we measure value beyond money?</h2>
<p>In a capitalist world, it sometimes seems like the almighty dollar is the only marker of value. So many conversations about value stem from that single category – but there’s far more to it than that. </p>
<p>Our interest in value in relation to Australian books is informed by multiple disciplines that together enable a more holistic conceptualisation of value. From cultural economics, a sub-discipline of economics concerned with the economic analysis of the arts and culture, researchers like <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/economics-and-culture/14439A4E891452AA74D15EFAF3C69EC4">David Throsby</a> distinguish economic value from cultural value. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.klamer.nl/book/the-value-culture/">Arjo Klamer</a> is a Dutch cultural economist whose valued-based approach has been described as advocating “humanonics” (economics with humans and meaning left in). His work helps us consider the impact of the environment around us on how and why things become valued as social and cultural practices. </p>
<p>He cautions that attempting to measure the value of culture in purely quantitative terms invokes the “<a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpgt/9904004.html">Heisenberg principle of economics</a>”: what is measured impacts how value is perceived. (So, for instance, measuring the value of Dark Emu in terms of its sales alone ignores other “value dimensions” that are generated.)</p>
<p>In the discipline of sociology, Pierre Bourdieu describes how cultural fields are shaped by <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu-forms-capital.htm">symbolic capital</a>. To use the field of book production as an example, writers or publishers accrue symbolic capital through markers of prestige, such as when their books receive favourable reviews or win prizes. </p>
<p>John Frow further <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/the-practice-of-value-essays-on-literature-in-cultural-studies">explains</a> that the value of cultural objects is derived from their use in different contexts (or “regimes of value”). </p>
<p>For example, within the Australian tertiary education sector, a cultural object like an Arts degree has value it would not have in another industry. And a book might be chosen for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nostalgic-classics-or-edgy-contemporary-texts-what-books-are-kids-reading-in-australian-schools-and-does-it-matter-198234">Australian school curriculum</a> based on aesthetic principles (like the quality of its prose), but also on criteria such as its depiction of a particular idea of Australia, or its relationship to other parts of the curriculum. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-thirds-of-australian-authors-are-women-new-research-finds-they-earn-just-18-200-a-year-from-their-writing-195426">Two thirds of Australian authors are women – new research finds they earn just $18,200 a year from their writing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The national value of Australian books</h2>
<p>What do locally written and produced books contribute to Australian life? </p>
<p>At a time of national cultural policy renewal – and as so many Australian authors <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-thirds-of-australian-authors-are-women-new-research-finds-they-earn-just-18-200-a-year-from-their-writing-195426">struggle to survive financially</a> – our preliminary work with Dark Emu shines light on this question. </p>
<p>Our research shows how Australian books circulate in our culture and what they bring – not just in dollar terms, but across a range of other important dimensions. </p>
<p>It’s the kind of work – collecting data relevant to our local book industry – that many contributors to last year’s <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/have-your-say/new-national-cultural-policy">national consultation</a> on a new Australian cultural policy have called for. </p>
<p>This investment is urgent, with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-years-of-austerity-revive-writes-the-next-chapter-in-australian-literary-culture-198758">new cultural policy, Revive</a>, sending a strong message that Australian authors and literature have a vital role to play in “telling Australian stories”. The evidence for gauging policy success over time will need to be broad – beyond measures of economic impact alone.</p>
<p>We need data that will complement and help contextualise the economic indicators of a book’s success, through an expanded frame of reference. </p>
<p>These additional indicators might include health and wellbeing, social inclusion and educational value, and the contributions a book makes to place-making and truth-telling. </p>
<p>Dark Emu is an extraordinary book. In many ways, it’s one of a kind. </p>
<p>But our work in measuring Dark Emu’s impact over a five-year period offers interesting future possibilities. Possibilities for how we might measure and articulate a broader set of value dimensions in relation to Australian books. The question of what a book might really be worth can – and should – be answered across multiple dimensions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julienne van Loon has been a recipient of funding from Creative Victoria, ArtsWA and the Australia Council for the Arts. She is a member of the Australian Society of Authors.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bronwyn Coate has been a recipient of funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australia Council for the Arts. She is currently the Executive Secretary/Treasurer for the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Millicent Weber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our research team tracked the impact of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe’s bestseller, over five years. We measured its value across a range of criteria, from financial to environmental.Julienne van Loon, Associate Professor, Writing and Publishing, School of Media & Communication, RMIT UniversityBronwyn Coate, Senior Lecturer in Economics, RMIT UniversityMillicent Weber, Senior lecturer, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873002022-11-14T17:03:11Z2022-11-14T17:03:11ZMoving back home doesn’t mean you’ve failed in life – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494860/original/file-20221111-24-dka0y7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>“When I was in high school,” the essayist Anne P. Beatty <a href="https://therumpus.net/2022/10/18/constraints-a-hometown-ode/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pocket_hits&utm_campaign=POCKET_HITS-EN-DAILY-RECS-2022_11_05&sponsored=0&position=7&scheduled_corpus_item_id=d4df565c-94b4-4835-b231-07973e8f1d94">recently wrote</a>, “ambition meant two things: escaping my hometown and becoming a writer”. </p>
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<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/moving-back-home-doesnt-mean-youve-failed-in-life-heres-why-187300&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>The idea that young people’s futures are best served by moving away from small towns and rural areas to big cities is deeply ingrained. The sociologist David Farrugia has described this as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.830700">metrocentricity of youth</a>”. However questions remain about whether moving away is always that easy and whether it is always the best way to achieve what you want in life.</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.857503">researched</a> how young people in rural communities in Scotland think about their future prospects. I have found that whether leaving your hometown is a good idea depends on both your aspirations and the resources you have.</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Fail Better" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492275/original/file-20221028-40947-7fl4wu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/fail-better-129121?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022+Fail+Better&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Fail Better</a></strong>, a series for those of us in our 20s and 30s about navigating the moments when things aren’t quite going as planned. Many of us are tuned into the highlight reel of social media, where our peers share their successes in relationships, careers and family. When you feel like you’re not measuring up, the pieces in this special <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022+Fail+Better&utm_content=InArticleTop">Quarter Life</a> series will help you learn how to cope with, and even grow from, failure.</em></p>
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<h2>How we make decisions about our lives</h2>
<p>French sociologist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812507">Pierre Bourdieu</a> identifies how our resources (which he terms “capitals”) provide us with certain opportunities. In his idea of “habitus”, meanwhile, he considers how our social environment influences the way that we see the world and the aspirations we develop. These ideas have been used to develop a theory of career development called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569970180102">careership</a>”. </p>
<p>Habitus helps to explain how the places we grow up in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.836591">influence</a> the kinds of futures we envisage: what we aspire to, not just in terms of employment, but also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2016.1184241">housing, family life, and community</a>. Bourdieu’s wider concept of capital, meanwhile, can be used to explain <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ780809.pdf">how people have different abilities to move away</a> from their home towns dependent on their financial resources, personal networks and previous experiences of mobility. This suggests that how we decide where to live is not always a simple choice. Our ideas emerge from our social context, and are shaped by the resources we have. </p>
<p>Research suggests that moving away from rural areas is particularly connected to entry to higher education. Canadian education scholar Michael Corbett has shown how doing well at school is likely to see you <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/learning-to-leave">“learn to leave”</a> your community. In places like the UK where going away to university is a longstanding <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/a41177">tradition</a> young people may also have the resources they need to move, in the form of grants or loans for study, among others. Here we can see how aspirations and resources combined provide opportunities for leaving.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of school pupils in uniform outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494867/original/file-20221111-22-fi0o5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Young people who do well at school often ‘learn to leave’ for further opportunities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-smiling-male-female-high-school-1188872512">Monkey Business Images | Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Notably, however, research with young people from rural areas has shown that it is not the opportunities in themselves that explain why many leave their communities. Rather, moving away <a href="https://islandstudiesjournal.org/files/ISJ-11-1-K-Alexander.pdf">is associated with</a> self-development, growing confidence and independence. This distinction is important. It shows how moving away might be something you choose to do for reasons other than simply accessing what might be considered the “best” opportunities. </p>
<h2>Staying and returning</h2>
<p>Despite the appeal of leaving, not all young people are able to, or want to move away from their hometowns. In fact, the evidence suggests that young people are increasingly staying at home <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/a41177">for their studies</a> or are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1793">returning home</a> after they graduate.</p>
<p><a href="https://repository.derby.ac.uk/item/96w6q/the-impact-of-island-location-on-students-higher-education-choices-and-subsequent-career-narratives-a-case-study-of-the-orkney-and-shetland-islands">I have found</a> that in some cases choices to stay or return are positive choices, relating primarily to relationships and careers. Some young people choose to come back to be near family or to live with a partner, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00750770802076968">and “settle down”</a>. </p>
<p>Returning home can also be a positive experience in relation to work. Graduates – especially in professions such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2013.850848">law, medicine and education</a> – may find that their rural hometowns offer employment opportunities in line with their career aspirations. </p>
<p>Working in smaller places may also appeal to those who want to undertake work <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.04.033">more connected</a> to the community. Further, even though salaries may be higher in some large cities, housing costs can make <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203732281-5">living in regional locations</a> more affordable.</p>
<p>Moving back home is not necessarily a positive thing though. Sometimes returning home is prompted by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1793">financial insecurity and difficulties finding work or accommodation elsewhere</a>. Decision to return might also be prompted by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00750770802076968">difficult wider life circumstances</a>, for example relationship break-ups or elderly relatives becoming ill. In <a href="https://repository.derby.ac.uk/item/96w6q/the-impact-of-island-location-on-students-higher-education-choices-and-subsequent-career-narratives-a-case-study-of-the-orkney-and-shetland-islands">my research</a>, these experiences of return are especially challenging if young people perceive limited opportunities in their chosen careers in their hometown. </p>
<p>Previous research has shown that the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2002">metrocentricity of youth</a>” often influences how young people think about where to go and what to do. This runs the risk that returning (or staying) at home be <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14733285.2013.850848">positioned as a personal failure</a>. However, on the contrary, staying or returning to a small community can be a positive choice. Besides, choices to stay or leave are often driven by circumstances beyond our control. </p>
<p>As life circumstances change, decisions to move or stay <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2124">can be revisited</a>. What you decide at one point in time will not necessarily shape your future forever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether moving away is a good idea depends as much on a young person’s aspirations as it does on their resources. Staying put – or moving back – does not necessarily mean personal failure.Rosie Alexander, Lecturer in Career Development and Guidance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/805942017-08-11T13:53:08Z2017-08-11T13:53:08ZPublic vs private art collections: who controls our cultural heritage?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181787/original/file-20170811-13476-1ce133a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/art-gallery-blank-picture-frames-on-213959596">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.bmw-art-guide.com/who-we-are">BMW Art Guide</a> 2016 lists 256 private collections worldwide that are currently open to the public. But this figure omits the swiftly increasing number of multi-million dollar, independently operated gallery spaces that are stimulating audiences’ enthusiasm for art. Privately owned museums are on the rise and they’re dramatically changing the cultural landscape. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thebroad.org/">Eli and Edythe Broad</a>’s eponymous museum in Los Angeles, the <a href="http://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en/la-fondation.html">Louis Vuitton Foundation</a> in Paris, Budi Tek’s <a href="http://www.yuzmshanghai.org/about-yuz-museum-shanghai/">Yuz Museum</a> in Shanghai, and Venetian palaces operated by <a href="http://www.palazzograssi.it/en/about/collection/">François Pinault</a>, <a href="http://www.fondazioneprada.org/mission-en/?lang=en">Miuccia Prada</a> and, most recently, Russian petrochemical billionaire <a href="http://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/russian-billionaire-s-v-a-c-foundation-opens-space-in-venice/">Leonid Mikhelson</a>, are just a few of the institutions that rival, and often outstrip, public museums in their buying power, influence, and blockbuster exhibitions.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181789/original/file-20170811-13459-1q67zl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2015 fashion designer Miuccia Prada opened a gallery complex in Milan dedicated to contemporary art and culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cannes-france-may-22-miuccia-prada-666699685">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Private patronage of the arts is nothing new – Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation for his art collection in 1937 and opened a museum two years later. Many good things flow from this kind of philanthropic investment. Developing and housing an art collection can involve the regeneration of urban environments and the commissioning of innovative new architecture. The proposed transformation of Paris’s former Commodities Exchange by Japanese architect <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/13-examples-of-modern-architecture-by-tadao-ando/all">Tadao Ando</a> into an exhibition space for the personal collection of luxury brand billionaire François Pinault is a case in point.</p>
<p>Employment opportunities and initiatives for artists will undoubtedly follow. Previously inaccessible works will be made available to the public – a socially oriented step that a private collector is not under any obligation to take. In the absence of adequate state funding for the arts, the generosity of individuals can fill a significant gap in the cultural life of a city. So is there anything to worry about?</p>
<h2>Privatising public heritage</h2>
<p>Museum culture’s “drift” into private ownership seems part of a familiar pattern. The state rolls back provision and individuals pick up the slack. The question is, who then calls the shots? In the case of the arts, collectors’ personal tastes are increasingly influencing the kind of art that is commissioned, exhibited and ultimately written into history. We now need to ask who collects what and for whom? </p>
<p>We think of museums as trustees of a nation’s cultural capital. Curators choose and preserve artefacts for the benefit of future generations. They shape lasting impressions of communities and their aesthetic values and creativity.</p>
<p>These are weighty responsibilities – and public museums have often been judged harshly for the selective legacies crafted by their key decision-makers. Since the mid-1980s, the feminist activist <a href="https://www.guerrillagirls.com/">Guerilla Girls</a> have brought into focus significant gender and ethnic biases in museums around the world through a series of high-profile interventions, poster campaigns and exhibitions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181792/original/file-20170811-13490-f7bylc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Feminist art activists the Guerilla Girls draw attention to discrimininatory practices on the part of museums.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/41634028@N07/8144240315/">Ryohei Noda/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The stakes are higher when the burden of public accountability is removed. Free from the demands of representing a wider community, private collectors are able to pursue and exhibit works that reflect their own interests. What art histories will they forge? Will newly self-fashioned museums track the changing patterns of the market, display the idiosyncrasies of the individual, or give voice to the unfamiliar, the politically challenging, the historically neglected?</p>
<h2>The new now</h2>
<p>These questions attach not just to the acquisition, but also to the sale of art. Publicly funded museums adhere to rules about selling works in their collection (“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/arts/design/berkshire-museum-art-auction-criticized.html">deaccessioning</a>”). Such regulation is important for artists whose reputations may depend on the grant of museum endorsement. In contrast to public institutions, private collectors enjoy the prerogative of selling works when it suits them. </p>
<p>Consider the evolution of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/10/charles-saatchi-british-art-yba">Charles Saatchi</a>’s collection. Saatchi forged the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/y/young-british-artists-ybas">Young British Art</a> brand in the 1990s, making <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/damien-hirst-2308">Damien Hirst</a>, <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/tracey-emin-2590">Tracey Emin</a>, <a href="http://marcquinn.com/read/bio-and-key-works">Marc Quinn</a> and others familiar to audiences around the world.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181791/original/file-20170811-13463-1d0vefr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Saatchi Gallery in London’s Chelsea is devoted to new works and popular culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-april-28-2016-poster-outside-423015796">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While works by that group were once a cornerstone of Saatchi’s Gallery, they no longer figure significantly in his collection. The gallery, housed at the <a href="https://www.saatchigallery.com/">Duke of York’s HQ</a> in Chelsea, is dedicated to the “new” and understands that mission as requiring regular disposal of the past whether by way of gift or sale. </p>
<p>This is not unprecedented in the case of museums that provide snapshots of the “contemporary”. But it does raise questions about the ways in which we expect art institutions to meet the needs of audiences through time.</p>
<p>Museums are lasting repositories of collective memory, spaces that debate the past and contest urgent issues in the present. That means we need to keep a watchful eye on the ambitions and policies of institutions that shape our cultural landscape and consider how they impact on the public interest both now and in the future. </p>
<p>One thing that history has shown us is that the art world benefits from a diverse range of voices and perspectives. Models of public-private partnership that foster knowledge-sharing need to emerge, enabling new and established museums to learn from each other and from the past.</p>
<p>At the very least, art audiences need to be aware of shifts in the direction of collective heritage and not stand by as economic influence becomes a source of cultural domination. It is only by enhancing exchange between artists, institutions and their publics that we have a chance to secure a dynamic art “ecosystem” for the 21st century and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As museum culture increasingly drifts into private ownership, we need to keep a watchful eye on those shaping our cultural landscapeKathryn Brown, Lecturer in Art History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722442017-03-31T11:05:10Z2017-03-31T11:05:10ZHow Britain’s monolingualism will hold back its economy after Brexit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163433/original/image-20170331-16278-do6xt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the UK prepares to leave the EU, it has a huge number of considerations to ensure its economy prospers. One, which is perhaps overlooked, is Britain’s language policy and how important this is as an economic resource. A strategic language policy and the cultivation of language experts in post-Brexit Britain are essential if it wants to connect with fresh markets overseas.</p>
<p>This has long been a feature of international diplomacy – stretching back long before globalisation as we know it. All the big powers of the Old World depended on understanding other people’s languages to trade across cultures. A “modern” solution was found in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Babylonia">Babylonia</a>, an ancient commercial metropolitan hub in the Near East, where a polyglot community of traders came together from the Mediterranean, Persia and Turkey, and beyond. </p>
<p>There are accounts of <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi">King Hammurabi</a> deftly exploiting his city’s growing <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=99H_tpN_iVkC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=hammurabi+bilingual+traders&source=bl&ots=b92eQcesdA&sig=0c_NY9JqdiIM_UjgVbIghG746SI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWyquK4P7SAhUDD8AKHaTtDLEQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=hammurabi%20bilingual%20traders&f=false">cultural mix as a resource</a> in the 1790s BC. He used bilingual foreign traders as cross-cultural brokers. With their language skills, they played a key role in facilitating long-range trade with distant markets.</p>
<p>One of the biggest challenges facing the UK economy now is a skills shortage. Although funding is promised to support technical skills training, UK business also requires professionals with language skills to achieve sales in fresh markets. These experts will need to speak the languages of trading partners and understand the cultures of new overseas contacts to negotiate and seal deals. Investment in this crucial soft skill is needed.</p>
<p>Government statistics show that the UK loses about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28269496">3.5% of its GDP</a> every year because of a lack of language skills and cultural awareness in the workforce. Such losses appear to be symptomatic of a chronic condition of under achieving in British business. More than a decade ago, the British Chambers of Commerce <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P6wrpieFUeYC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Impact+of+ForeignLanguages+on+British+Business+British+Chambers+of+Commerce+2004&source=bl&ots=KGlNVMF33u&sig=v1pWAJbA9e4BcZT44Fswz_pIn8E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI8uLQ7P7SAhXkL8AKHbz9Bb0Q6AEIRjAG#v=onepage&q=Impact%20of%20ForeignLanguages%20on%20British%20Business%20British%20Chambers%20of%20Commerce%202004&f=false">found</a> that linguistic and cultural barriers led to loss of contacts, turnover and profitability – and also to a reluctance to tackle new markets. This latent lack of language skills in the workforce suggests that the UK is already overdependent on Anglophone export markets.</p>
<p>This economic fallout caused by communication barriers must be addressed. Without investment in language skills, trade relations and export performance will suffer more post-Brexit. With many British people <a href="https://www.britishcouncil.org/organisation/press/uk-adults-regret-losing-language-skills-school-days">confessing</a> they are bad at speaking foreign languages, now more than ever, multilingual professionals are needed to forge contacts with new markets outside the EU. </p>
<h2>Cajolery and seduction</h2>
<p>Some might argue that, in reshaping a new economic approach, Britain will draw on the former Commonwealth – where the language spoken will predominantly be English. But proponents of (what has been dubbed as) Empire 2.0 will come up against the reality that the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bc29987e-034e-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9">rest of the world has moved on</a>. The global economy’s key emerging markets stretch beyond the Commonwealth to China, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam. And the UK will also still have key trading partners across the EU. </p>
<p>In a situation where fresh markets are sought in different parts of the world, growing a multilingual skills base must be a priority. The UK is lucky that it already has a highly cosmopolitan society, with immigrants from all over the world settled there. In the first instance, this will be a big positive post-Brexit. But longer-term investment is needed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163435/original/image-20170331-16289-1r80dyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The UK must capitalise on its existing multilingualism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Perugini / Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Richard Hardie, the chairman of the investment bank UBS, <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/language-degrees-when-the-words-are-not-enough/2017413.article">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A deep understanding of foreign languages is often essential to the combination of cajolery and seduction many companies require in their international negotiations. [However] the really valuable negotiators are those able to produce subtle phrasing to persuade someone from another culture to do something they would not otherwise want to do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The UK is about to embark on a series of trade negotiations with foreign countries post-Brexit. If Hardie is right, the negotiating teams will have to be packed with foreign language experts. </p>
<h2>Grasping the subtleties</h2>
<p>But the functional benefits of multilingual expertise are only part of the story. Anyone employed to ease negotiations overseas also needs an intercultural awareness.</p>
<p>In the words of KPMG’s French executive, <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/language-advantage_rise-of-the-multilingual-boss-creates-a--monoglot-ceiling-/41816480">Isabelle Allen</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve met a lot of people who are totally monolingual and can’t read a room of speakers [from different language backgrounds] … they do not know what people are [actually] saying. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is because language is full of nuance, it requires reading between the lines and understanding subtle turns of phrase or cultural references. For example, Westerners need to understand that the Chinese do not like to say “no”, preferring instead a vaguer “let’s see”. Clearly, intercultural sensitivity is a bonus at the negotiating table.</p>
<p>This means that native English speakers cannot simply take advantage of the rest of the world’s desire to learn their language. Just as monolingual Britons will not grasp the subtleties of interactions in international business, they do not know what gets lost in translation, too. As I show in my book <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/linguanomics-9781474238298/">Linguanomics</a>, on the market potential of multilingualism, to ignore this leads to greater misunderstandings and lost opportunities.</p>
<p>Brexit is a wake-up call for a strategic languages policy in the UK and in particular to mobilise the already rich multilingual resource that the cosmopolitan UK represents. There must be long-term strategic investment in languages education at all levels. Companies will also benefit from funding for language skills training, which in turn will be a means to generate more revenue. Here is a golden opportunity for government to support cross-sector language initiatives to ready the UK for new trade constellations across the globe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabrielle Hogan-Brun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The cultivation of language experts in post-Brexit Britain is essential if it wants to connect with fresh markets overseas.Gabrielle Hogan-Brun, Senior Research Fellow, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/650652016-09-07T15:31:59Z2016-09-07T15:31:59ZLoss of Fabric nightclub is latest blow to London’s cultural capital<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136920/original/image-20160907-25253-3jgbc7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_(club)#/media/File:Crowd_and_laser.jpg">Fabric/Wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini shut down Tehran’s coffee houses. They were places where conversations about poetry, film and literature took place, where women mixed with men who weren’t their husbands, and where alternative political movements formed. But, because of this, they were viewed as deviant social spaces that had the potential to give rise to dissidents, and so were quickly closed by the ultra-conservative Khomeini. The closure of these coffee shops changed the face of the city and the country’s politics by removing the possibility of alternative counter-cultures and the political movements they could have formed.</p>
<p>Something akin to this has been taking place in London. Britain’s Conservative government is a far cry from Iran’s Islamic Republic, but it has allowed a similar wipe out of spaces across the country that play host to counter culture. The announcement that Fabric nightclub will lose its licence and be forced to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37293705/culture-of-drugs-at-londons-fabric-nightclub-causes-licence-to-be-revoked">shut permanently</a> is the latest example. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/07/london-nightclub-fabric-close-permanently-licence-revoked-drugs">Fabric’s licence was revoked</a> following the <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2016/09/07/fabric-loses-license/">drug-related deaths of two people</a>. The decision has caused outcry among the great and the good of London’s cultural scene. More than 150,000 have <a href="https://www.change.org/p/save-london-s-nightlife-stop-the-closure-of-fabric">signed a petition to save the club</a> and social media is abuzz with potential protests. </p>
<p>Some have argued that the decision is a massive <a href="http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/as-fabric-closes-indefinitely-here-s-why-drug-testing-should-be-available-at-all-uk-clubs?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social">over-reaction</a>, while others see it as the latest decision in what is the rampant <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/fabric-closed-shut-down-appeal-reopen-campaign-operation-lenor-and-the-real-reason-fabric-was-shut-a7229541.html">gentrification of the city</a>, and the subsequent destruction of key cultural icons. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"771041922634936324"}"></div></p>
<p>These arguments are valid. But the decision to close the club is also part of a broader, far less tangible (but no less obvious) atmosphere of shutting down sites of counter-culture.</p>
<h2>Space for subculture</h2>
<p>Spaces where like-minded people can come together to express a particular subculture or political message have been a defining characteristic of the modern metropolis. Opium dens in Paris in the early 20th century, speakeasies in New York in the 1930s, squat raves in Manchester in the 90s, and Tehran’s coffee houses, to name just a few. The conflicting politics of cities have always produced “safe” spaces for counter-culture. </p>
<p>They have been “safe” because people can do things like talk about revolution and generally escape from the perceived mundane routine of modern life. They are all part of the much-celebrated rich and varied cultural capital of modern global cities that exist alongside more traditional forms of cultural consumption, such as museums, galleries or the theatre.</p>
<p>Fabric has been one of these important counter-cultural spaces since 1999. But no more.</p>
<p>Fabric was an electronic music venue that shaped <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/23/acid-house-dawn-rave-new-world">rave subculture</a>. But more than that, Fabric was an iconic venue where people came together to escape the self-absorbed, competitive and market-driven worlds of their nine-to-five jobs and engage in social experiences that were the exact opposite. It allowed social interaction between groups that would <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36311595/the-elderly-couple-who-went-clubbing-at-fabric-until-5am">otherwise be unlikely to come together</a>, dancing with strangers and creating a mass of people moving to the music. These spaces give rise to political possibilities, too, because they allow discussions and experiences of alternative and subversive politics to flourish.</p>
<p>Fabric’s battle to stay open has similarities with a famous skate spot on London’s South Bank, which was <a href="https://theconversation.com/southbank-skaters-victory-shows-grassroots-culture-still-worth-fighting-for-31926">saved from demolition in September 2014</a>. The site was under threat from development into generic retail outlets. But because it championed the counter-cultural, alternative and subversive politics of skateboarding, saving the site was critical because losing it would have dramatically reduced the cultural capital of London forever.</p>
<h2>City for sale</h2>
<p>The influx of vast amounts of money into London from the super-rich means that no part of the city is safe from being sold off and turned into luxury flats or identikit shopping malls. Housing, retail and social services are all being hawked by cash-strapped local councils, but in doing so, many of London’s key cultural icons are being lost forever (<a href="http://www.thelondonmagazine.co.uk/property-experts/expert-opinions/gentrification-wars.aspx">Battersea Power Station</a> and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/oli-mould/%25E2%2580%2598love-where-you-live%25E2%2580%2599-and-other-lies-of-gentrification">Earls Court</a> to name just two). </p>
<p>When places like Fabric disappear – places that allow particular subcultures to flourish and alternative forms of politics to be forged – the damage is even more telling as they destroy the very possibility of subcultures forming in the first place. Hence, the richness and diversity of London’s cultural capital suffers.</p>
<p>The closure of Fabric is a huge black mark against London’s current “redevelopment” craze. Like Tehran in the 1980s, if London continues along this path of destroying its iconic counter-cultural sites, all that will be left is an empty shell of a city that has no real culture at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oli Mould does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The closure of one of London’s most famous clubs is part of a bigger and more worrying trend in the city.Oli Mould, Lecturer in Human Geography, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473912015-10-06T11:26:01Z2015-10-06T11:26:01ZWhy being part of the precariat is harder for some than others<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96979/original/image-20151001-23065-uh3n4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A precarious foot on the job ladder. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cleaner via Dmitry Kalinovsky/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For 30 years after the end of World War II, most young people left school at the earliest opportunity and entered full-time employment immediately after. Most school-leavers were able to find work consistent with their ambitions and expectations and getting a job was usually closely followed by leaving home, marriage and parenthood.</p>
<p>For the vast majority of young people today, the journey into adulthood is more complex, truncated and unpredictable than it was for previous generations. But this changing nature of employment is not experienced evenly across society: life as a member of the young “precariat” with uncertain job prospects is very different depending on how well-off your family is already. </p>
<p>In post-war Britain, the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Leaving_home.html?id=NawoAAAAYAAJ">move from school to work</a> was often both speedy and collective, and employment alongside older workers also helped reinforce certain attitudes, values and cultural norms. There was often a close connection between family, work and leisure, and the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Education_Work_and_Social_Change.html?id=ZVrUngEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">world of work offered</a> a degree of certainty and continuity that does not exist for most young people today. </p>
<p>Yet we should not look at the past through rose-tinted glasses. Factory jobs were a bleak and alienating experience for many, and not all young people settled easily into working life – the ready availability of employment <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3305480&fileId=S0047279400016755">masked the way</a> some “churned” chronically from job to job. </p>
<p>Today, few young people go into full-time employment immediately after leaving school and secure work is difficult to find – not only for those with few qualifications. Of those graduating from UK universities in 2014, <a href="https://www.hesa.ac.uk/component/content/article?id=3630">more than a fifth</a> still did not have a job six months later, and almost a third of those who were in work were in employment which did not require a degree. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,105640,en.html">New figures published</a> by the Higher Education Funding Council do show that three-and-a-half years after leaving university, 96.4% of graduates were employed, 80% of them in “professional occupations”. However, the experience is different for black and minority ethnic graduates: only 66% had a “professional” occupation.</p>
<h2>The birth of the precariat</h2>
<p>Despite various claims <a href="http://news.cbi.org.uk/business-issues/education-and-skills/gateway-to-growth-cbi-pearson-education-and-skills-survey-2015/">about skills shortages</a> and young people’s supposed lack of “employability skills”, underemployment – being in a job for which you are over-qualified or having part-time, temporary or insecure employment – is <a href="https://radicaledbks.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/great-reversal.pdf">now a significant problem</a>, especially for younger workers. </p>
<p>Part of the consequences of this means that access to the traditional signifiers of adulthood – not only finding a job but leaving home, financial independence, getting married, and so forth – have become disturbed or suspended, in some cases <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Lost_Generation.html?id=Y0qbeZWOJ4EC">almost indefinitely</a>. </p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that British economist Guy Standing, drawing on the ideas of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Precariat.html?id=8qE-nQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">has argued that</a> we have seen the rise of a distinct social class – the precariat. Their working lives and social experiences are broadly characterised by uncertainty, insecurity and uncertain future prospects.</p>
<p>It is difficult to definitively measure the size of this new precariat. There were <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_414231.pdf">1.7m people working</a> in temporary jobs in the UK between May and July 2015, according to the Office of National Statistics, which also says <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34125544">744,000 people</a> were employed on zero-hours contracts between April and June. Figures it released in August show there are also <a href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/47391/edit">922,000 16-24 year olds</a> classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET). </p>
<p>Young people are particularly vulnerable to such circumstances, but <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Poverty_and_Insecurity.html?id=bgdbdjWNXskC&redir_esc=y">research also suggests</a> that labour market insecurity is not merely a phase confined to youth. Repeated periods of unemployment, often interspersed with repetitive training programmes and various dead-end jobs, is becoming the norm well into adulthood, especially for those from less affluent backgrounds.</p>
<h2>Cultural capital counts</h2>
<p>The precarious nature of the 21st century labour market is more serious for some than others. As <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Handbook_of_Theory_and_Research_for_the.html?id=OHclAQAAIAAJ">Bourdieu highlighted in 1986</a>, young people from different social class backgrounds have access to greater or lesser amounts of social, economic and cultural capital. Those from higher social classes are often able to mobilise these forms of capital in ways which provide significant advantages over others. </p>
<p>While economic capital can be used to pay course fees or limit student debt, it can also <a href="https://theconversation.com/unpaid-internships-just-the-job-if-your-parents-can-afford-it-14365">subsidise young people</a> through the low-paid internships which are increasingly necessary in order to break into desirable occupations such as law, advertising, fashion or the media. It can also allow young people to travel or take a “year out” to enrich their CV and build the cultural capital – attitudes, interests and dispositions – which <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Mismanagement_of_Talent.html?id=7QYpAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">employers often demand</a>, especially in the most prestigious forms of employment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96981/original/image-20151001-23065-1bzgz3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Give it to the intern.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographee.eu/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cultural capital is, however, mainly associated with certain qualities accrued within the family, via the education system and other long-term forms of socialisation and cultural activity. It is evident in the different accents, dispositions, attitudes and expectations displayed by individuals from different backgrounds. Social capital is related to this and includes networks of family, friends and broader connections through which those from the higher social classes are able to secure interviews, negotiate work experience, and obtain employment. </p>
<p>Sadly, those who lack the social economic and cultural capital to be able “work” the harsh realities of the 21st century labour market are most likely to enter up the precariat – and stay there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Simmons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With secure jobs hard to find, it’s easier for people from higher social classes to be in temporary work.Robin Simmons, Professor of Education, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441572015-07-08T05:24:42Z2015-07-08T05:24:42ZWhere you grow up matters for sporting success – that’s why Yorkshire cricketers are so good<p>With the Ashes test series between England and Australia continuing what has already been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-british-media-woke-up-to-the-womens-world-cup-44035">glorious summer</a> of sport, we find ourselves about to watch something remarkable and yet so often taken for granted.</p>
<p>Not for the first time, Yorkshire County Cricket Club will have provided almost a third of an England <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/33346761">squad for a test match</a>. The first Ashes test will have Adam Lyth, Adil Rashid and Joe Root as born-and-bred Yorkshiremen, with Gary Ballance (born and educated in Zimbabwe, but Yorkshire-based) completing the quartet in the 13-man squad.</p>
<p>While sports science and research tends to focus upon the biological and psychological training <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-it-take-to-be-an-elite-athlete-depends-on-the-sport-18208">necessary to become an elite performer</a>, success in sport is much more complex than this. Underpinning any athlete’s “bio-psycho” make-up is the socio-cultural environment in which they are brought up. </p>
<p>This is now acknowledged in sports performance development, thanks partly to a <a href="https://www.sportscoachuk.org/sites/default/files/Participant-Development-Lit-Review.pdf">review undertaken through SportCoachUK</a>, which looked at the importance of geography and location in sporting participation, alongside other factors such as children’s socio-economic status and their educational background. The culture in which young athletes are brought up can have a significant impact upon the opportunities available to them to engage and participate in sport. </p>
<p>The challenges of Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards (the British ski jumper in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rqI8xwXVac">Eric “the Eel” Moussambani</a> (the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who became famous at the 2000 Sydney Olympics), could have been mitigated if they’d been born elsewhere. Had they been born into a culture of opportunity (Eddie in a Nordic country and Eric in a country with its own Olympic-sized swimming pool) then things could have been so different. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L1aWsFpg3To?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Eddie the Eagle at the 1988 Calgary Olympics.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Location matters</h2>
<p>A number of academic studies have identified that the size of the place you are born in can influence your chance of making it at a top level. In <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410500432490#.VZeJnflVhBc">the US</a> it’s been noted this was most effective in cities of less than half a million inhabitants. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Hancock5/publication/271933096_Positive_Youth_Development_From_Sport_to_Life_Explicit_or_Implicit_Transfer/links/552d23cf0cf29b22c9c4b61e.pdf">Research</a> has also suggested that “smaller communities may foster a more salient context for youth sport participation” due to their structure, function and underlying cultural approach to the game.</p>
<p>One study of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2015.1009492#.VZvq47cb4TV">handball and football players in Denmark</a>, found that size and density of a population affected the proportion of youth players from a community becoming elite athletes. It found the odds of young people registering to play handball and football increased in smaller rural communities, compared to larger urban ones. </p>
<p>Another <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2159676X.2013.766815#">study of a sporty Canadian town</a> suggested that socio-cultural influences, such as rivalry between local communities and growing up with a stable group of teammates, were important factors in athletic development. </p>
<p>When it comes to sport, where we are born is as important as who we are born to and what genetics we have. Books such as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Bounce_The_Myth_of_Talent_and_the_Power.html?id=jY-zgZgrKEUC&hl=en">Bounce</a> by the journalist and table tennis player Matthew Syed further reflect and popularise this. There is a direct link with culture, or somebody’s place of upbringing, and sport. </p>
<h2>Local grassroots sport is vital</h2>
<p>All of the Yorkshire players have family connections and involvement in the game – <a href="http://www.canadacricket.com/archives/2003/whyplay.htm">not unusual at all in cricket</a>. An analogy might take us away from sport and into the developing realms of archaeological science, where it’s possible to tell what monarchs <a href="http://www.livescience.com/47403-richard-iii-really-ate-like-a-king.html">such as Richard III</a> ate (and therefore where they lived) from studying the isotopes in their bones. Perhaps the historical Yorkshire dominance in cricket might be described as a “sporting cultural isotope” – where sport is a central tenet to the county, and where living there allows access to participation, support and a cultural way of life that helps develop performers. Yorkshire appears to excel at this (and especially in cricket).</p>
<p>Other sports and places have similar influences. Take the likes of Ireland and the <a href="http://www.gaa.ie/about-the-gaa/mission-and-vision/">Gaelic Athletic Association</a> (GAA). The whole notion of community engagement and community involvement is very often centred around Gaelic Games. The GAA clubs are at the heart of the community (much like club cricket is in some area of Britain – and in particular Yorkshire), reinforcing how vital these grassroots clubs are to our sporting legacy.</p>
<p>Since cricket has gone global (and in particular on pay-per-view television rather than freeview), <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/33407465">youth cricket in England has come under pressure</a>. All the more reason to reinvest and focus on local community engagement to survive.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87650/original/image-20150707-1288-1f79fta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">God’s own cap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gin_soak/529444697/sizes/o/">gin soak/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there is a growing awareness of the need to understand athletes as people, not just bodies, the emphasis of sports science research continues to focus on improving times, results and performance. Perhaps this is at the cost of understanding the individual. </p>
<p>In an age of consistently reported <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31118639">inactivity of our children</a> it is important that we find opportunities beyond school and the home to allow young athletes to develop in a supportive culture of engagement so that they can have every opportunity to excel in their chosen sport. Failing that, ensure your children are born and brought up in a small enough community that supports young development. Failing that, move to Yorkshire.</p>
<p>(<em>Martin Toms is NOT a Yorkshireman. He wishes to blame his parents for not bringing him up there and thus not allowing him to fulfil his cricketing potential.</em>)</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Toms does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not just about physical training and psychology, sport is influenced by your location.Martin Toms, Senior Lecturer, School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365792015-02-03T05:12:17Z2015-02-03T05:12:17ZThe condemnation of memory: what’s behind the destruction of World Heritage sites<p>Recently in Aleppo, Syria, the Jabha Shamiya militia has started carrying out a new urban warfare strategy: tunnel bombing. Aside from the human damage wrought by this tactic, it is also extremely damaging to Aleppo’s Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site. </p>
<p>In addition to the collateral destruction caused by warring religious and political sects, the destruction of World Heritage sites is often associated to the absolute iconoclasm of several Islamic fundamentalist groups. Recent examples include the <a href="http://www.vocativ.com/world/afghanistan-world/bamiyan-buddhas/">demolition of the Bamyian’s Buddhas in Afghanistan</a> and the destruction of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/30/us-mali-crisis-idUSBRE85T04E20120630">Timbuktu’s Holy Shrines in Mali</a>. </p>
<p>However, these are only the most visible examples of a broader threat to cultural heritage around the world. And Middle Eastern extremist groups are far from the only ones responsible; profitable looting, unchecked industrial and urban development, and collateral damages during conflicts – all have led to the destruction or disappearance of cultural heritage. </p>
<h2>An international collaboration</h2>
<p>Cultural heritage can be either tangible (sculptures, monuments), or intangible (oral traditions, performing arts); movable (paintings, manuscripts), or not (archaeological sites). They can represent a number of things: they can memorialize an important era in history, symbolize a nation’s power or act as a profitable source of income. For these reasons, they’ve been the object of manipulation and destruction for millennia, whether it was the looting of the pharaohs’ tombs 2,500 years ago, or Scipio’s complete annihilation of Carthage in 146 BCE. </p>
<p>In November 1945, representatives from different nations gathered to ponder the causes of two consecutive global conflicts. The group, made up of politicians, scientists, philosophers, and artists, identified part of the problem as mankind’s “ignorance of each other’s ways and lives” – an inability to understand, appreciate and preserve different cultures.</p>
<p>At the end of the conference, thirty-seven countries created UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and signed its constitution; a year later, twenty countries ratified it. The institution was dedicated to the promotion of “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind” through the advancement of cross-cultural knowledge, and the protection of cultural expression in its many forms. Through international collaboration, the organization soon went to work, preserving endangered cultural sites like the Abu Simbel temple in Egypt. </p>
<p>In November 1972, during UNESCO’s 17th session, the state parties adopted the “Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage,” and created the “World Heritage” designation, which they assigned to extraordinary cultural achievements, such as the Andean road system and the Great Wall of China, and natural landscapes, like Iguazu Falls and Turkey’s Göreme National Park.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70850/original/image-20150202-13049-176co85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">World Heritage sites can include natural landscapes, like Iguazu Falls, located at the border of Argentina and Brazil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Iguazu_Décembre_2007_-_Panorama_3.jpg/640px-Iguazu_Décembre_2007_-_Panorama_3.jpg">Martin St-Amant/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Convention mentioned that “The deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world.” It also emphasized the global ownership of this heritage, along with the responsibilities of future generations. </p>
<p>As of today, 779 cultural properties, along with 31 mixed sites (natural and cultural) are listed in 161 state parties throughout the world. For the past 70 years, a set of conventions, recommendations, and declarations, have contributed to the development and implementation of new regulations, which tackle issues such as illegal trafficking, protection of cultural heritage during conflicts, and defining what should be considered “intangible cultural heritage” (such as “male-child cleansing ceremony of the Lango of central northern Uganda,” or “Mongolian caligraphy”). </p>
<h2>Present day problems</h2>
<p>However, as of 2015, in addition to the non-listed cultural heritage features, <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/danger/">46 World Heritage sites</a> and <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/?pg=00174">38 cultural practices</a> are considered endangered. </p>
<p>For instance, in Crimea and Ukraine, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has raised concerns about the lack of measures in place to protect archaeological and cultural resources; the destruction of several historic churches and fortresses has already occurred. Meanwhile, in Yerevan, Armenia, corruption and misplaced nationalism has led to an almost complete eradication of the old city, which dates from the 18th and 19th centuries. In Bolivia, extensive mining activities is threatening the survival of the 500-year-old Potosí colonial settlement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70851/original/image-20150202-13045-nw6c08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An aerial shot of Potosí, a 500-year-old city in Bolivia. Note the mining activities in the top-left corner of the photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Potosi_air.jpg">Gerd Breitenbach/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>America hasn’t emerged unscathed. In New York City, much of its modern architectural heritage – like the American Folk Art Museum – is being neglected. It’s also estimated that up to 80% of the archaeological sites in the US have been looted and damaged.</p>
<p>Finally, rampant looting has taken place in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and large parts of Southeast Asia, due to an illegal antiquity trade market <a href="http://museumanthropology.net/2007/07/07/mar-2007-2-2/">estimated to be worth upwards of a billion dollars per year</a>. Some of these pirated artifacts will end up for sale <a href="http://www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/GovernmentAffairs/LettertoAmazon/tabid/222/Default.aspx">online</a>, on the auction block at <a href="http://art-crime.blogspot.com/2013/12/sothebys-sells-symes-marble-matched-by.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">Sotheby’s</a> – even in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/06/stolen-statues-ngas-indian-artworks-found-to-be-looted-shouldnt-surprise">national museums</a>.</p>
<h2>Shared memory: the ultimate common denominator</h2>
<p>Why, despite international efforts such as the UNESCO, is cultural heritage still under attack worldwide? </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6ZGyuVXFvssC&pg">Some have blamed nationalistic regimes</a>, which often attempt to politicize cultural artifacts, using them to reinterpret the past for specific ideological purposes. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/887647/Organised_crimes_in_Art_and_Antiquities">Others have highlighted</a> the striking contrast between the massive profit created by the illegal antiquity market and the relatively low penal risk tied to it. <a href="http://these-de-doctorat-chloemaurel.blogspot.com">And some have also pointed to</a> the lack of enforcement of UNESCO regulations; they’ve also suggested the creation of modern-day “<a href="http://www.wmf.org/journal/remarks-bonnie-burnham-president-world-monuments-fund-press-conference-heritage-and-conflict">Monument Men</a>” – individuals tasked with safeguarding at-risk areas of cultural importance in countries at war. </p>
<p>But above all, there seems to be a disconnect among nations and individuals in how they comprehend the concept of world heritage, and its importance as a means to safeguard mankind’s memory. </p>
<p>When the UNESCO convention was signed, the world had just emerged from two global conflicts. While each nation had its own agenda, all the attending state parties sought to find common denominators: shared goals that would persevere beyond ideology, politics, power and economics. It’s an ambient universalism that’s particularly well represented in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70853/original/image-20150202-25825-sttjc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The creation of UNESCO was undoubtedly influenced by the destruction caused by two World Wars, in which entire cities – along with countless structures of cultural importance – were left in ruins. Here, a decimated Cologne, Germany is pictured in 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Koeln_1945.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The challenge of the UNESCO participants, then, was defining a set of universal values that would preserve and promote a culturally diverse world. To the assembled parties, the modification and re-interpretation of the past was one of the greatest threats to world peace. This was particularly conspicuous in the creation of the <em>Ahnenerbe</em> during Nazi Germany. This research institute, headed by Himmler, was charged with studying “Aryan culture” and finding evidence supporting Hitler’s imperialist and racial ideology.</p>
<p>UNESCO decided that the sum of all of mankind’s experience and achievements was to be safeguarded and shown as the heritage of all. It would serve as the ultimate common denominator. Some of the charter’s lessons are simple: the past belongs to no particular nation, no culture is a hermetic entity, and it is a fluid concept, always gaining new elements. </p>
<p>A relativist perspective on the concept of World Heritage would question the right of institutions to meddle in the affairs of individual countries. I would argue that the huge number of people risking their lives on a daily basis to preserve pieces of their cultural heritage is the strongest evidence of a universal devotion to safeguarding our shared memory. </p>
<p>In order to support this effort, increasing international collaboration between different institutions has occurred at the scientific, law enforcement and judicial levels. The ongoing efforts of UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sits (ICOMOS), INTERPOL have led to positive results, such as the registration of art dealers and the closure of loopholes that allowed artifacts from looting to enter the legal antiquity market. </p>
<p>Of course, more needs to be done. </p>
<p>In Ancient Egypt, one of the worst punishments an individual could receive was the chiseling off of his or her name from all monuments and statues – the idea being that the person would be doomed to be forgotten for eternity. In Ancient Rome, this type of post-mortem sentence was named <em>damnatio memoriae</em>, the condemnation of memory.</p>
<p>It is the opposite – the preservation of mankind’s shared memory – that is at the core of World Heritage. As war continues to rage <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/24/war-has-damaged-all-but-one-of-syrias-world-heritage-sites-satellite-images-show/">in places like Syria</a>, the same countries that have pledged to preserve the world’s heritage should consider what’s also at stake – beyond politics, beyond economics – and recognize how much can be lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bastien Varoutsikos is affiliated with SAFE and Heritage for Peace.</span></em></p>Recently in Aleppo, Syria, the Jabha Shamiya militia has started carrying out a new urban warfare strategy: tunnel bombing. Aside from the human damage wrought by this tactic, it is also extremely damaging…Bastien Varoutsikos, Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/321912014-10-23T09:23:10Z2014-10-23T09:23:10ZArtists’ installations raise questions about abandoned buildings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62126/original/2psp3mc2-1413573585.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Immigrant faces from the early 1900s watch Ellis Island visitors pick their way through a crumbling hospital.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This fall, French street artist <a href="http://www.jr-art.net">JR</a> and American cinematographer <a href="http://bradfordyoung.com">Bradford Young</a> each installed a series of portraits in crumbling New York buildings. The two projects were not coordinated, but together they raise questions about the strange allure of dilapidated property. While the content of the installations is certainly worth sustained contemplation, it was the artists’ choice of sites that captured my attention.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62131/original/jhmy8pw9-1413574810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who’s looking at whom?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JR’s Unframed installation at Ellis Island is sparse, fashionably ecological, maybe even beautiful. He has pasted large-scale archival photographs of turn-of-the-century immigrants here and there throughout the island’s abandoned hospital. </p>
<p>The fading images, designed to disintegrate like the buildings themselves, infuse the landscape with a faint hint of human presence. At times the figures appear on windows, filtering the sunlight, framed by the lush, overgrown green and sparkling blue beyond. Sometimes they’re in stairwells or plastered on old filing cabinets.</p>
<p>Bradford Young’s Bynum Cutler <a href="http://creativetime.org/projects/black-radical-brooklyn/artists/bradford-young/">installation</a> in the old PS 83 school building in Brooklyn features giant, close-cropped video portraits of elders from the Bethel Tabernacle AME Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The church owns the building, and for a few years in the 1980s, the congregation used this space for worship. Like JR, Young arranged his portraits in an abandoned building, but this one is boarded up; inside it’s dark.</p>
<p>A cool white glow emanates from projection screens, falling softly on a row of church pews. Silhouetted visitors float into the space, encountering the portraits for a few moments, then float out again past the dusty altar, as if carried by the overpowering, ethereal soundscape furnished by composer Gingger Shankar.</p>
<p>Both installations trade on a fascination with structural decay — perhaps rooted in a natural curiosity about urban abandonment. But in some ways, the buildings are like the <a href="http://www.crateandbarrel.com/reclaimed-wood-top-stainless-steel-base-48x28-parsons-dining-table/s186930">reclaimed wood dining tables</a> and <a href="http://www.potterybarn.com/products/eat-sign/?cm_src=AutoRel">industrial-era typography</a> that appear in home furnishing catalogs. As objects, they become symbols of sophisticated consumer taste.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hardhats, everyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact it’s hard not to see the two exhibits as a metaphor for the nation’s underfunded cities. A public hospital on Ellis Island and a public school in Brooklyn: both buildings were constructed with taxpayers’ money over a hundred years ago. They offer evidence of a profound economic investment in a robust and healthy industrial workforce.</p>
<p>Now within these ruins, visitors survey the material traces of values that are dilapidated and decaying too. In today’s global, <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/the-paradox-of-flexibility/">flexible economy</a>, the state is not as concerned with the development of a robust and healthy workforce. Rather, as individuals, we are expected to take responsibility for our own lives. </p>
<p>In fact, when entering these buildings, the mostly middle-and-upper-class tourists sign liability waivers, assuming personal responsibility for their own health and well-being. Then they embark on tours of the past — tours of a moment in which such responsibilities were not left to individuals, but rather shared by the public.</p>
<p>The installations transform the two buildings — constructed as real, material resources — into cultural resources. A robust public sector once generated economic capital for the nation. But now the school and hospital are access points for <a href="http://theory.routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/cultural-capital">cultural capital</a>.</p>
<p>Visitors experience these sites not to receive medical attention or an education, but rather to engage in an abstract exchange: one that is less material, more about intellect and taste. The installations confer a kind of status on visitors. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students don’t pass this way anymore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their dissonant elegance evokes emotion, but the sites remain mute witnesses to history. Instead of focusing our attention on communities deprived of basic resources, the buildings look as if they’re just trash, waiting for someone to come along and innocently recycle them into something more beautiful — and consumable. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62132/original/zc34j8hv-1413574827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yesterday’s medical workers, today’s cell phone pic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JR says his work is about “<a href="http://www.jr-art.net/jr">raising questions</a>” and the two installations certainly do that. Why were these buildings abandoned? Who owns these once-public resources? As private developers buy and <a href="http://ny.curbed.com/places/ps90">repurpose civic structures for private use</a>, it’s worth considering the people who need public schools and hospitals (and don’t need luxury condos). How might a deeper understanding of urban abandonment help us address the challenges facing cities today: gentrification, racial segregation, underfunded schools?</p>
<p>These artists bring the melancholy of abandonment to the surface. What can we make of that melancholy and our fascination with it? How can we channel it? Or would we rather just take a picture?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee VonBokel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This fall, French street artist JR and American cinematographer Bradford Young each installed a series of portraits in crumbling New York buildings. The two projects were not coordinated, but together…Aimee VonBokel, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Museum Studies, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.