The book Cultura, gobernanza local y desarrollo urbano of the professor of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Joaquim Rius analyses the problematic of the articulation between culture and contemporary city, where cultural industries have become the engine of urban development. The work compares the cultural policies of Valencia and Barcelona, and highlights that in the capital of L’Horta public and private participation in terms of funding and social activism is lacking.
The study that has led to the book points out that the local cultural policy has gone from being focused on participation to being an entrepreneurial strategy that “unfortunately has been abused of”, explains Rius. “Product of this abuse of culture as resource is its conversion into an empty instrument of its most innovative and transgressive content, so that it has become a legitimating tool for the elitist governance of the city”, says the researcher.
The structure that forms the art market is present in the artistic neighbourhoods of capitals such as New York or Paris, but also in the postmodern dynamics from which new areas arise that concentrate art gallery and studies that become the scenarios for the consumption of art nowadays. Cultura, gobernanza local y desarrollo urbano (‘Culture, local governance and urban development’), published in November 2018, provides a vision of this structure and studies the phenomenon of concentration of artists in these new neighbourhoods.
“Apart from infrastructural factors, there are professional factors such as the search for a network that allows them to flexibly develop their creative projects and the creation of self-help communities in the early stages of the artistic career, which allows them to rehearse innovations and at the same time to get a first value assessment of their talent”, says Rius.
The book, published by the University of Valencia, compares the cultural policies of Barcelona and Valencia, and highlights the process by which cultural institutions are hybridising. “In the case of Barcelona there is a public and private participation in terms of financing, social participation, which makes them more permeable to the cultural pulse of the territory. This seems to be the great unfinished business of Valencia, in which the ownership or management is of a single administration and there are no sectoral or local participation mechanisms that are transparent and not clientelistic”, explains Rius.
This is why the researcher makes a proposal in his book for a new cultural governance in which administrations are more facilitators than providers, and in which the local and regional level have a renewed role and where the artistic dimension is articulated. In this way, “artistic institutions would become active generators of cultural value and would not be simple passive receptacles of activities”, he says.
For Rius, the sociological analysis of cultural and urban policies is an essential element to assess not only the immediate impact, but also to know the costs associated with large infrastructures or sporting events and their opportunity losses in creative and social terms. “Sociology provides an understanding of the creative dynamic based on the interactions that explain why some cultural neighbourhoods may work, enabling and facilitating free exchange or may become façade spaces that do not provide real creative value”, says the researcher.
Cultura, gobernanza local y desarrollo urbano is the product of more than ten years of research on the confluence of the sociology of art, culture and urban sociology. The professor has developed all this work between Barcelona and Valencia, within the framework of the Centre for Studies on Culture, Power and Identities, which he also currently directs. “Initially, the study was of a more theoretical type, but at the moment it has been more sought for its applicability in the evaluation of cultural projects in cities such as Barcelona and Valencia, but which can be applied to other countries”, says Joaquim Rius.
Book:
Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins. Cultura, gobernanza local y desarrollo urbano. Políticas culturales en Barcelona y Valencia en perspectiva comparada. Collection: «Desarrollo Territorial», 20. ISBN: 978-84-9134-347-9
