The International Journal of Cultural Policy
Professor Oliver Bennett has edited the The International Journal of Cultural Policy, published by Routledge, since he founded it in 1994. It provides an outlet for an interdisciplinary and international exploration of the meaning, function and impact of cultural policies. Cultural policy is understood as the promotion or prohibition of cultural practices and values by governments, corporations, other institutions and individuals.
Such policies may be explicit, in that their objectives are openly described as cultural, or implicit, in that their cultural objectives are concealed or described in other terms. The historical range is not limited to any given period, but the Journal is primarily concerned with material that is relevant to the contemporary world and which contributes to a fruitful international exchange of ideas.
The Journal acknowledges the multiplicity of meanings around the idea of culture and the inter-relationship of these meanings. However, whilst it takes a broad view of culture, encompassing a wide range of signifying practices that include the products of the media, the arts and various forms of government or religious display, the Journal will attempt to maintain a focus on policies relating to culture as symbolic communication rather than to culture in the anthropological sense as ‘a whole way of life'.
The Journal publishes papers that reflect on cultural policy from any relevant discipline, provided they make an original academic contribution to the study of cultural policy. Papers based on research that is primarily ‘instrumental' (such as market research) or on research designed for the advocacy of a preconceived institutional position will not be accepted. This does not exclude applied research of high academic quality, particularly research that advances methodology.
The Journal addresses itself to all those with a serious intellectual interest in how and why different agencies and agents attempt to work on the cultural practices and values of individuals and societies. As an interdisciplinary and international Journal, it requires its contributors to write in a clear, readable style. Special editions of the Journal are designed around particular themes, which may relate to a specific set of issues, a geographical region or a particular cultural practice.
For further information, including an index of all published papers, please click here.
Special Issues
Popular Music and Cultural Policy
Creativity and Cultural Policy
The Cultural Policy Review of Books
Sport and Cultural Policy in the Re-imaged City
Intellectuals and Cultural Policy (Part Two)
Intellectuals and Cultural Policy (Part One)
The Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy
Urban Space and the Uses of Culture
French and German Cultural Policy