New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xi, 229 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-137-32776-5.
This collection of essays makes a strong case for the need to explicitly incorporate insights from the fast-growing, fast-changing nations of East Asia, and to extend conceptual understanding about cultural policy and the creative industries beyond the dominant Anglophone and European contexts. Drawing upon case studies from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the thirteen essays in this collection aim to provide interdisciplinary insights into cultural policy formation in this region.
The essays work around three core themes and relate these to national cases: (1) cultural identity formation and nation building; (2) negotiations between culture and the state; and (3) the rise of creative industries policies. A feature of all essays is that they frame these debates around the implications of economic growth and modernization, and the greater role being played by markets in the allocation and distribution of cultural resources.
Considering the national framing of cultural policies, Terence Chong discusses how the “bureaucratic imagination” in Singapore has been forced to adapt from its historical suspicion of art as vaguely subversive of national culture towards a more active embrace of the arts and culture in the “Renaissance City” strategies of the 2000s. Li-Jung Wang observes that the strong Chinese nationalism of early Taiwanese cultural policies has given way to a more fluid understanding of multicultural Taiwan that recognizes indigenous cultures and cultural diversity within the nation. Anthony Fung locates strategies for games industry development in China in the context of the “big question” of how much control over culture the Chinese party-state is prepared to cede to the market and the private sector. In contrast to the Singaporean and Taiwanese cases, Fung concludes that a more market-oriented approach to culture has been linked to a relaxing of discourses of strong nationalism, the Chinese case is one where national discourses of Chinese identity and state hegemony remain paramount, and that exposure to the wider forces of globalization has had only a limited impact on the shape of China’s games industry.
Addressing the case of the “Korean Wave,” Ki-won Hong proposes that nation branding has been central to Korean cultural policy, with the cultural products of the Korean Wave being central to a reinvigorated Korean cultural diplomacy in the 2000s. The focus on the changing relationship between culture and the state is also central to Hye-Kyung Lee’s discussion of Korean cultural policy, although it focuses more particularly upon the arts, and the often-troubled relationship between Korean artists and the government.
A critical question in the collection is the degree to which state agencies are prepared to fund the arts and culture, and at the same time cede governance over cultural forms and products to civil society. Lorraine Lim discusses this in the context of Singaporean live theatre, which has become more popular as the nation has become more prosperous. The popularity of live performance opens up questions about its capacity to challenge governmental norms in culture and society, such as the question of equality for gays and lesbians in Singapore. Jerry Liu attempts an ambitious—and perhaps too ambitious—theorization of changing structures and discourses of cultural governance in Taiwan and China, arguing that “governance by culture” remains the norm in China, whereas Taiwan has been marked by a growing turn towards self-governing citizens working with and through culture. Mari Kobiyashi argues that Japan has been marked by a turn towards greater local autonomy in cultural policy and a partial democratization of culture as a result.
The essays by Keane and Zhou and Xin Gu address, in different ways, the impact of marketization on cultural policy in contemporary China. For Keane and Zhou, the new directions in Chinese cultural policy point towards a greater application of “soft power” concepts in relation to cultural exports, and a growing embrace of innovation and entrepreneurship in the arts, media, and cultural sectors. They express the cautious hope that the turn towards “creativity” in Chinese policy discourses (which extends well beyond the cultural sphere) opens up spaces for more bottom-up, participatory cultural forms. Xin Gu draws upon the Shanghai case study to argue that the promotion of creative clusters that occurred in the 2000s has exhausted itself, falling prey to rampant real estate speculation and the difficulties in reconciling artistic production with the demand for “urban spectacle” in China’s showcase global city.
Hsiao-Ling Chung refers more specifically to the creative industries, and to cultural and creative industries (CCI) policies in Taiwan in the 2000s. Drawing upon five urban case studies (Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and New Taipei City), Chung considers the tensions between industry development and cultural development strategies, and the ways in which local authorities seek to broker the relationship between global aspirations to develop “creative cities” and the need to engage local artists, entrepreneurs, and the wider community in urban cultural development. Nobuko Kawashima takes the specific case of the Japanese film industry, arguing that its creative and economic resurgence in the 2000s was linked to a more explicit articulation to creative industries strategies and the branding of genres such as anime as central to “Cool Japan.” Given the heavy reliance upon the domestic market, however, Kawashima questions the sustainability of such strategies, particularly as China, Korea, and Taiwan turn more towards branding the creative industries as being central to their soft power projections and cultural diplomacy.
This collection points to the vibrancy of debates in East Asia around cultural policy and creative industries, and the wider futures for cultural policy in a global knowledge economy. At the same time, all authors are cautious to not simply attribute cultural shifts to generic forces such as globalization or neoliberal ideologies, but rather to situate them in particular national policy settings, institutional contexts, and discursive formations.
Terry Flew
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
pp. 615-617