School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe challenges of valuing culture in Australia, and the role of symbiosis in understanding cultural interactions( 2019)This research examines the conditions and narratives that surround cultural value, particularly within the fields of cultural diplomacy, cultural policy and the arts. These conditions and narratives are situated within the context of knowledge or innovation-based societies where, over the past two decades, a rise in cultural value discourse has occurred. Knowledge-based societies also feature post-industrial economies and, therefore, in this thesis, the tendency to value culture in terms of economics is of particular significance. In Australia, this is evident across various municipal levels, from local councils to the federal government. Through a series of case studies encompassing the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the City of Melbourne and a federal policy proposal for a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, I argue a common approach to the valuation of culture is evident, and is one that is rooted in instrumentalisation—or what Yudice characterises as expediency, where ‘culture-as-resource’ is a means to an end. However, this narrow scope limits the possibility to understand more about the different types of value that culture (such as the arts) can have, particularly when it comes to aesthetic exploration of new knowledges, global networks and relationships. To explore alternative considerations of what value culture can offer to both societies and people alike, I consider European theatre collective Rimini Protokoll’s ability to display the culture of nations in their touring performance of 100% City. Here, another realisation of the value of culture is discernible. In political terms, this is cultural value that resides outside the typical state-to-public facilitation of public diplomacy and rests on a people-to-people mode of communication. As a result, I argue that the current, utilitarian vocabulary surrounding the value of culture should be expanded and developed further to reflect its operation today in the age of global networks and relationships. Such an expansion incorporates a symbiotic consideration of the interactions that occur over the course of cultural relationships and counterbalances the over-reliance on economic and political factors and evaluations. My proposal serves to further refine understandings of ‘the cultural’ within the discourse of cultural value. To do so, I draw upon the biological understanding of relationships, referred to as symbiosis, to study how cultural value is understood amongst the private and public sector actors across three key dimensions: the economic, the political and the social. As a result, I propose cultural symbiosis as a conceptual metaphor that assists in the articulation of the more complex and multifaceted relations that cultural activity can generate. This conceptualisation provides the basis for an approach that better articulates the relations of cultural activity and one that extends the neoliberal vocabulary currently used to describe culture and the discourse of cultural value.
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ItemTaiwan in Their Hands: cultural soft power and translocal identity making in the New York Taiwan Academy( 2019)In 2011, Kuomintang (KMT) President Ma Ying-jeou created the Taiwan Academies as a cultural exchange initiative to enhance Taiwan’s soft power and introduce Taiwan’s culture to the world, while also competing against China for space in the realm of competing notions of Chineseness internationally. Three Taiwan Academy resource centres were established that year in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. This thesis presents a historical case study analysis of the Taiwan Academy resource centre in New York between 2012-2014, in order to examine the context of production of soft power discourse and the empirical consequences within a specific program, among a target audience. To this end, it examines soft power from the perspective of translocality, in order to uncover the often-overlooked socio-cultural, relational, and spatial aspects of cultural strategies aimed at generating soft power. This study responds to two central research questions. First: what kind(s) of cultural messages were being produced and exported to New York by Ma's administration in Taipei? Second: how were these messages translated, interpreted and received in practice, in their implementation at the New York Taiwan Academy? To address these, this research first re-conceptualises a de-Westernised, localised framework for interpreting cultural soft power discourse under Ma’s KMT administration. It then considers Taipei’s strategy of generating cultural soft power through Taiwan Academy from two perspectives: from “above”, in Taipei, and “below”, in New York. From “above”, it evaluates Taiwan Academy as a political strategy, in relation to relevant domestic, cross-Strait, and international contexts. From “below”, this study conducts a grounded analysis of two Taiwan Academy cultural programs and the translocal processes and practices that re-/defined the role of Taiwan Academy in New York. The conclusion integrates these two perspectives in order to address the dynamics and limits of Ma’s use of cultural soft power within the Taiwan Academy. In doing so, this thesis aims to explicate the contingent, relational, and inherently translocal nature of soft power practice.
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ItemDesigning culture, policies and festivals: a cultural history of the Singapore Arts Festival, 1959 to 2012( 2017)This thesis studies the culture and cultural policies of postcolonial Singapore to chart the cultural history of the Singapore Arts Festival from 1959 to 2012. The study undertakes a detailed examination of the production of culture and contextualises the morphing cultural landscape that informs the Singapore Arts Festival. This thesis is in two parts. Part One sets out the historical contexts and conditions that inform the nature and direction of the Singapore Arts Festival. It studies the design of culture built around multiculturalism, Asian Values and Shared Values and shows how dynamic and pragmatic cultural policies weave these ideas into economic and cultural development in Singapore. The thesis sketches the role of arts in nation-building in the late 20th century and how the role metamorphoses to support economic imperatives of the 21st century. This sets the backdrop for the study of the Singapore Arts Festival. Part Two maps the cultural history of the Singapore Arts Festival through the study of all documented arts festivals from 1959 to 2012. The thesis shows how the Singapore Arts Festival harnessed artistic communities, inspired audiences, developed new platforms for the arts and became an artistic creator and arbiter of cutting-edge performances and productions for a global arts market. The thesis will show how over the decades while adhering to cultural and policy imperatives, it has evolved to present a unique set of programmes that have bonded multicultural communities, reimagined Asia and served as a laboratory for the arts. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the study of postcolonial Singapore, which is mere fifty-two years, articulating its transformation from a colonial trading post into a global city and a renaissance city for the arts. This thesis will serve as a cultural history and archive of the transformation of an otherwise imagined city-state.
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ItemMande popular music and cultural policies in West Africa( 2006-05)During the independence era in West Africa (1958–1980) many nations embarked on ambitious programmes aimed at rejuvenating their traditional art forms. These programmes were realised through new cultural policies, with music the prime target of the governments’ campaigns. I contend that in the search for an appropriate voice West African governments focussed on one group of musicians, the Mande griots. It was through their musical compositions that the State communicated ideology and doctrine to the public. I assert that to focus on a specific ethnic group and promote them as cultural ambassadors was a policy that conflicted with the core principles of West Africa’s governments, who upheld a doctrine that promoted nationalism over ethnocentrism. It was a neo-colonialist strategy designed to consolidate the rule of the governing party, a contention which I support through an analysis of the role of griots in West African society and an appraisal of the careers of musicians, musical recordings, and musical styles. This thesis represents a historical account of Mande griots in West Africa with respect to their influence on local and national politics. Part of the aim of this thesis is to create a comprehensive and accurate catalogue of West African musical recordings and groups, the results of which are located in the appendices.
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ItemNew Zealand's identity complex: a critique of cultural practices at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa( 2003)This dissertation critically analyses New Zealand’s National Museum Te Papa Tongarewa. Since it opened in 1998, Te Papa, arguably the world’s foremost exponent of the ‘new museology’, has been popularly and critically supported for its innovations in the areas of popular accessibility, bicultural history, and Maori-government management arrangements. As the first in-depth study of Te Papa, I examine and problematise these claims to exceptionality. In producing an analysis that locates the museum within cultural, political, economic and museological contexts, I examine how the museum’s particular institutional program develop, and point to limitations in its policy and practice.
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ItemReconstructing community-based arts: cultural value and the neoliberal citizen( 2011)The relationship between ‘community’ and ‘culture’ is an increasingly important one in the context of contemporary neoliberal policy strategies. Within this policy context, ‘culture’ is routinely argued for in terms of its usefulness and its opposition to instrumental rationales; while the notion of ‘community’ serves as a locus of resistance to the perceived dangers of modern life, and acts on populations by invoking their autonomy. This thesis examines how community-based arts have been drawn into these policy agendas through case studies of Footscray Community Arts Centre and Multicultural Arts Victoria. The study is informed by the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality, as well as the broad approach of ‘everyday multiculturalism’. It examines the rationales underpinning community-based arts. Specifically, it considers the relations that these organisations invoke between ‘community’, ‘culture’, and notions of cultural value. The thesis also examines the implications of these relations for the subject of community-based arts, who is variously conceived as ‘citizen’, ‘consumer’, ‘audience’ and ‘artist’. Contemporary community-based arts activity complicates prevailing relations between artists, audiences, cultural institutions and ‘communities’. The exclusionary tendencies of the aesthetic ethos are heightened in the current policy climate where economic value is attached to art and creativity. However, the forms of subjectification that take place through the norms of the neoliberal cultural economy are tied up with other norms of self-government, including affirmative practices of self-styling. This dual character of the aesthetic suggests that the ‘intrinsic’ value of ‘culture’, and its instrumentalisation are interrelated, rather than opposed, and it requires that we rethink the relationship between the cultural ‘margins’ and the ‘mainstream’.