School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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    UNESCO Cultural Heritage Sites and Tourism: A paradoxical relationship
    Vecco, M ; Caust, J ; Pechlaner, H ; Innerhofer, E ; Erschbamer, G (Routledge, 2020)
    Conservation and management of cultural heritage sites are characterised by several paradoxes, which also affect the tourism activities related to these sites. The World Monument Fund monitors damage to heritage buildings and sites. It identifies three major threats facing heritage sites: political conflict, climate change and tourism. The tourist is thus seen to be as damaging as war or rising sea levels. In the World Monument Fund’s (2018) list of the most endangered 25 monuments in the world, approximately one-third were diagnosed as being ‘in danger’, mainly from tourists.
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    The Arts Funding Divide: Would ‘Cultural Rights’ Produce a Fairer Approach?
    Caust, J ; Byrnes, W ; Brkic, A (Routledge, 2019-10-11)
    It seems that the funding of arts practice is always a contested domain, whatever political view or system is dominant. In some contexts, for example, there is no government support for the funding of arts practice, while in others there are different interpretations of what this entails. In most forms of government, several sectors of society (agriculture, mining, manufacturing and sport) receive government subsidies. In a capitalist state this is sometimes described as ‘welfare capitalism’. However, those opposed to the government funding of arts practice believe the arts should not be included in this framing because they are regarded as ‘non-essential’ (Bell and Oakley, 2015; Brabham, 2017; Brooks, 2001). Thus, in this framing the arts and cultural sector is not seen as a fundamental component of society and government support of the arts is seen as an indulgence and not a necessity.
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    Women and Arts Leadership
    Caust, J ; Caust, J (Routledge, 2018)
    Women are the major consumers of most arts practices, yet they are generally less visible than men in arts leadership roles. This chapter explores the issues and challenges around women in the arts and in arts leadership in different artforms. Judy b. Rosener argues that the expectations of women and men in the workplace are different because of long-term social conditioning. Exploring issues around gender and arts leadership is important because it relates to cultural, economic and social issues connected with both art and society. The invisibility of women as leaders in the arts is evidenced by who are recognized as the leaders of arts practice and the leaders of major arts institutions across the globe. Women are certainly visible as leaders of small to medium arts organizations in various artforms, but as the organizations become bigger or more important, the presence of women at the top diminishes.
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    Is UNESCO World Heritage recognition a blessing or burden? Evidence from developing Asian countries
    Caust, J ; Vecco, M (ELSEVIER FRANCE-EDITIONS SCIENTIFIQUES MEDICALES ELSEVIER, 2017-10)
    To both acknowledge and protect many cultural heritage expressions, sites and practices, UNESCO has instituted three conventions; Tangible Heritage, Intangible Heritage and Diversity of Cultural Expression. If a site/practice receives this UNESCO badge, it is an acknowledgment of its universal cultural and/or natural value as well as recognition of the need to protect it from harm. However, the UNESCO badge is an important marketing tool in world tourism and its presence ensures many more visitors to a site/practice that is UNESCO recognised. With increasing wealth and mobility, many more people are travelling than was possible even a decade ago. Increasing numbers of visitors can negatively impact on a site/practice as well as affect the local culture and integrity of a region, particularly in developing countries. So, is the UNESCO recognition a blessing or burden? This paper addresses the challenges that ensue from the UNESCO conventions by considering three UNESCO World Heritage case study sites in Asian developing countries. In particular, it seeks to understand the extent to which UNESCO's World Heritage approach protects or further undermines the cultural heritage sustainability of these sites.
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    Arts, Culture and Country
    Caust, J ; Meyrick, J ; Parsons, H ; Brisbane, K (Currency House, 2022)
    The past two years have been a particularly dark time for the arts in Australia. Not only are we living through a pandemic, but the federal government has shown little interest in—or understanding of—the plight of the sector and its artists. The pandemic comes on the back of seven years of continuous erosion of public assistance to the arts at the national level, with more than ninety arts organisations defunded, while funding to individual artists has been significantly reduced. Many are struggling to survive in the face of repeated lockdowns and border closures to control the pandemic. For years the arts sector has provided evidence of its economic benefits, as well as its intrinsic value to society. Yet politicians remain impervious to these arguments. Increasingly, it is ideology rather than evidence that determines government policy. In other words, support for the arts is not primarily a question of economics. It is a question of values. The pandemic has made people realise the seminal importance of the arts and culture to our national well-being, but politicians do not see them as a central part of policymaking. Arts and culture are intertwined. We need to change how we view the relationship between the two within the political framework. This monograph presents some ideas on how to do it.
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    Open Access Arts Festivals and Artists: Who Benefits?
    Caust, J (Taylor and Francis Group, 2019)
    Arts festivals are of interest to researchers, but the research focus is usually on the festival's economic or social impact. This approach does not usually reflect the engagement and experience of the artists involved. There has been controversy recently around the experiences of participating artists in open access arts festivals. Open access arts festivals are significant players in the festival landscape. They enable anyone to participate in a festival, if they pay a registration fee. This research, using a case study methodology, examines an open access festival from different perspectives with a focus on the experience of the participating artists.
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    Funding the arts : by Andrew Pinnock, Abingdon, UK, Routledge, 2024, 1–280 pp., £39.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-367-07665-8
    Caust, J (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024)
    This book raises several important issues. It considers essentially the rationale behind decision-making in government arts funding and suggests that there are several flaws embedded in the process, as well as in the philosophy behind the decisions.
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    Influence of emotions on coping behaviors in crisis: a computational analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak
    Xu, H ; Muthya Sudheendra, S ; Huh, J ; Salecha, A ; Srivastava, J (Springer, 2024)
    Widespread public crises often give rise to the proliferation of sensationalized rumors and conspiracy theories, which can evoke a variety of public emotions. Despite the growing importance of research on the relationship between emotions and coping behaviors in crisis, a dearth of natural observation-based investigation has been limiting theory development. To address this gap, this study conducted computational research to study the U.S. public’s discrete emotions and coping behaviors during the COVID-19 outbreak crisis, analyzing Twitter data, Google Trends data, and Google Community Mobility data. The results revealed that anger and fear were relatively more prominent emotions experienced by the public than other discrete emotions. Regarding the impacts of emotions on coping behaviors, it was found that the prevalence of low-certainty and retreat emotions was related to increased information-seeking and information-transmitting behaviors. Also, the prevalence of both high-certainty and low-certainty emotions during the COVID-19 outbreak was positively related to the public’s compliance with public health recommendations.
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    Apathy: Disaffection, Enthusiasm, Fanaticism
    Gook, B (C. Hurst and Co., 2023)
    Charity, community, duty, and struggle are good – not only sanctified and rewarding but also good in themselves. And yet the evidence is that society at large is losing and devaluing commitment to others: we live in times diagnosed as consisting of social pathologies and a-pathologies – where, curiously, apathy is taken as a variant of, rather than existing in opposition to, pathology. Fascinated, for obvious reasons, with their diminishing share of trust, older print and broadcast news media have exhaustively analysed the rise of social media bubbles and echo chambers, trolls, and splenetic outbursts, discovering that the profitability of these emergent media forums depends on the speed and energy of their communications, and that unsurprisingly, anger sells. Aggrieved fury would appear to be a dominant emotional state of our times. More reflective commentators, including William Davies in the UK and Joseph Vogl in Germany – both acknowledging the same condition where ‘knowledge becomes more valued for its speed and impact than for its cold objectivity, and emotive falsehood often travels faster than fact’ – observe that it can generate an emotional state in which ‘otherwise peaceful situations can come to feel dangerous, until eventually they really are’.
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    Cult of the Archaic: The Swindle of Fascist Fulfilment [Review of the book Late Fascism: Race, capitalism and the politics of crisis, by Alberto Toscano]
    Gook, B (Australian Book Review, 2024-03)
    Already it has been a big year for fascists. On Australia Day, a handful of neo-Nazis from across Australia assembled in Sydney. Dwarfed by tens of thousands of protesters at Invasion Day rallies, the fascist stunt still generated the desired confrontation with the state and response from journalists drawn into the spectacle. Two weeks earlier, German investigative journalists published details of a late-2023 meeting in Potsdam, outside Berlin. At a neo-baroque lakeside hotel, an assortment of old money, political chancers, and neo-fascist intellectuals discussed a proposal for ‘remigration’. Among the retired dentists, bakery franchisers, and parliamentary staffers was Martin Sellner, the one-time, hot-young-Austrian-face of the 212 pp European identitarian movement – a man so reactionary that even post-Brexit Britain denied him a visa.