The Contingent Public Value of ‘Good Design’: Regulating the Aesthetics of the Australian Urban Built Environment

The proposition that the urban built environment can, and indeed should, be made more visually attractive is a long‐standing feature of the governance of Australian cities. In this vein, this paper examines how ‘good design’ in terms of visual aesthetics is currently pursued including through the development assessment process and the work of government architects. The paper begins by tracing the background of contemporary regulatory practice from long‐standing ideas around beauty and its value through to the urban design movement of today. Next, it considers in more detail various rationales for aesthetic governance and what might be better forms of regulatory practice. In short, it will be argued that while there can be scope for regulation to deliver superior outcomes, this practice must be sensitive to a high degree of contingency in what the public values and that deliberate empirical inquiry into the latter is desirable.     

Urban renewal as policy innovation in China: From growth stimulation to sustainable development

A major policy innovation in China, urban renewal creates an opportunity to promote sustainable inner‐city development and to foster economic growth in an environmentally and culturally sound way, which demands a close investigation of its context, internal and external dynamics, and policy features. Property‐led redevelopment dominated China's urban renewal since the early 1990s, as a result of the market reform and political decentralization. Recently, it has become important to meet the interests of local communities and the diverse stakeholders in the effort to preserve the urban history and cultural fabric of cities. Contextual factors in urban renewal policy and its innovation are investigated by analyzing a pioneering case in Guangzhou from a longitudinal study approach. The impact of the structural‐instrumental, cultural‐institutional, and environmental perspective on policy innovation with the change of contextual factors that transformed the development ideology and the managerial practice are identified to provide a new angle of studying policy innovation in the urban field.     

United in diversity? The convergence of cultural values among EU member states and candidates

The European Union (EU) is considered to be a unique economic and political union that integrates most European countries. This article focuses on the cultural aspect of European integration, which has been increasingly debated over the course of deepening and widening integration and in the context of the legitimation crisis of the EU. Among the main goals of the EU is to promote certain values, which raises the question of whether it has been efficient in (or enabled) reducing cultural value gaps among the participating countries. World polity and institutional isomorphism theories suggest that cultural values may trickle down in a vertical manner from the institutions of the EU to its member states and candidates. Furthermore, hybridisation theory postulates that values diffuse horizontally through intensified interactions enabled by the EU. These two perspectives imply the possibility of cultural convergence among countries associated with the EU. By contrast, the culture clash thesis assumes that differences in cultural identity prevent value convergence across countries; growing awareness of such differences may even increase the pre-existing cultural value distances. To test these different scenarios, distances in emancipative and secular values are compared across pairs of countries using combined repeated cross-sectional data from the European Values Study and the World Values Survey gathered between 1992 and 2011. This study finds that the longer a country has been part of the EU, the more closely its values approximate those of the EU founding countries, which in turn are the most homogenous. Initial cultural distance to the founders’ average values appears irrelevant to acquiring membership or candidacy status. However, new member states experienced substantial cultural convergence with old member states after 1992, as did current candidates between 2001 and 2008. Since 1992, nations not participating in the integration process have diverged substantially from EU members, essentially leading to cultural polarisation in Europe. The findings are independent of (changes in) economic disparities and suggest the importance of cultural diffusion as one of the fundamental mechanisms of cultural change. This empirical study contributes to the literature on European integration, political and sociological theories of globalisation, and cross-cultural theories of societal value change.     

文化动力：一种解释城市发展与转型的新思维

城市发展动力问题一直备受社会和学界关注。新型城镇化背景下,以人为本的思路要求城市发展模式从规模粗放型向质量集约型转变、从增量扩能向做优存量调整。因为单纯依赖土地、劳动力、资金和管理效率等要素的“传统模式”,很难维持城市的可持续发展。在新背景下,大城市如何进一步发展,提升内涵与质量？文化动力模式作为一种新的发展路径,是对该问题的学术回应。文化动力中的“文化”,并不是指那种模糊的、抽象的、无所不包的文化,而是指那些与本地居民生活息息相关的生活文化设施、多样性组织、各种文化实践等构成的城市场景,以及场景中隐藏的自我表达、超凡魅力和时尚等价值观与生活方式。这些因素能对创意阶层产生吸引作用,并影响该群体的城市流动和新兴公司选址等。从这个角度来说,文化动力模式作为一种全新思维,重塑着城市发展与转型的后工业路径。     

浅析中国公共文化服务理论研究中存在的问题

作为一种新生的理论,中国的公共文化服务理论研究刚刚起步,在当前国内的公共文化服务理论构建中,还存在一些问题,主要表现在:地方性的个案研究较多,系统性的宏观理论研究较少;国内公共文化服务理论的研究水平明显落后于公共文化服务的建设实践;西方成熟文化理论与中国公共文化建设实践的初级阶段存在某种程度的不对称等。面对这些问题,在今后的研究中,应更加注重本土化研究和系统性研究。     

发挥首都全国文化中心示范作用研究

中共十七届六中全会的《决定》提出要"发挥首都全国文化中心示范作用"。本文论述首都全国文化中心的文化建设、发展和繁荣,要坚持首都城市的性质,发挥首都城市的职能,要在社会主义核心价值体系建设和践行"北京精神"、为人民群众提供更好更多的文化产品和精神食粮、发展公益性文化事业、保护历史文化名城和弘扬历史名城文化、优化和加快文化创意产业发展、深化文化体制改革和建设宏大文化人才队伍等方面发挥首都全国文化中心示范作用。     

PUBLIC SECTOR CULTURE MANAGERIALISM OR MULTICULTURALISM?

Abstract: Despite dramatic change in the Australian public sector, little attention has been paid to organisational culture. With the importation of private sector strategies and structures the traditional values of public administration have been eroded. Public organisations and their members have experienced consequences of "culture shock", even "cultural revolution". Managerialism is an introduced culture which has been criticised by some academics and public servants. It is seen as inappropriate to the distinctive values and operating context of the public domain, as purporting to value-free technique while in effect operating as the mystifying ideology of a dominant elite. Managerialism has been constructed, it is argued, on simplistic and now superseded concepts of rational "management man", goal setting and planning. While managerialism is not the culture which will endow public organisations with new meaning and propel them to excellence, it can expect to increase its hold in the absence of the development of new models of the culture of public organisation. While new public sector cultures will need to be organisation-specific, to accommodate the differentiation between and within public organisations, an overarching framework of public sector values and principles will be required. One of the distinctive features of most public sector organisations is die number and diversity of their stakeholders. A multi-cultural model of public sector culture is proposed, which construes this diversity of subcultures as an instrument of strategic flexibility.     

The Cultural Economy of a Border Renaissance: Politics and Practices in the City

The production of culture in urban image-making has received much attention within geography. This paper intervenes in the culture–economy debates in a slightly different way—namely, through the lens of an understudied city of the global South. It examines the structure and discourses embedded in the Tijuana (Mexico) Municipal Plan 2005–07 to interrogate the work that culture performs with an eye to the impacts (both material and discursive) of official strategies across time and space. In so doing, two propositions are suggested. First, post-colonial spaces offer important sites from which to critique the conflation of cultural practice and policy. Secondly, the complex imbrication of culture and economy can be further distilled in grounding examples in ordinary cities.     

村民自治的历史嬗变--传统文化传承视角下的村民自治审视

传统乡村自治文化是在长期生存过程中对乡村居民生存境域进行深刻认识和对其生活经验进行系统总结后逐步形成的，蕴含着丰富的生存论方面的认识价值和实践方面的参考价值，对生存问题终极思考的永恒性使得传统和现代可以进行超越时空的对话。正是基于这样的原因，传统乡村自治文化中长期积聚的认识和经验在现代社会依然可以得到延续。通过对乡村自治文化进行历史审视和对其内涵做简要分析，发现传统乡村自治不仅出自乡村自我管理的现实需求，也源于教化及文化传承的精神需要，这就使得传统乡村自治文化在现代社会的超越性发展有了前提和基础，因此，深度挖掘传统村民自治中的优秀文化资源，积极探索其和现代村民自治的有效衔接途径，具有非常重要的现实意义。     

The development of social indicators from content analysis of social documents

If we agree that social indicators indicate or measure only within the context of a theory of social change, and if we further assume that theories of social change which deal only with social conditions, behavioral interchanges or transactions, and the material environment, are likely to be unsuccessful because they ignore the mental side of life, it follows that we will want our theories of social change, and the social indicators associated with them, to incorporate the cultural and group psychological aspects of social behavior.When we look to possible data bases in search of raw material for social indicators of culture and group psychology there are, broadly speaking, two possibilities. Data may be gathered from interviews or from cultural artifacts.But interview response data, because of (a) their reactive character; (b) the difficulty of compiling time-series of responses; (c) the impossibility of making use of historical sources and (d) difficulties of validation against indicators external to the survey research context are, perhaps, less than ideal as a possible basis for social indicator systems. This leaves us with the possibility, and with the problem, of developing group psychological and cultural indicators from an analysis of cultural artifacts: literary documents, films, political speeches and other sources of this sort.     

结构主义和后结构主义化的批判理论--让·鲍德里亚的消费社会理论

鲍德里亚虽主要以一套仿象、内爆、超现实的理论闻名于世,但其真正基础却是他在成为明星学者之前提出的一套社会理论。鲍氏社会理论实为一种结构主义和后结构主义化的另类批判理论。它属于批判理论,因为它像法兰克福学派的批判理论一样,立足于以彻底否定的态度分析当代西方社会;它不同于法兰克福学派的地方在于它先后采用结构主义和后结构主义作为基本分析武器。在马克思主义阶段,鲍氏用结构主义把现代社会界定为符号化社会,即由等级性差异系统支配的社会。在后马克思主义阶段,鲍氏用后结构主义进一步把现代社会分为确定性阶段和不确定性阶段,强调资本主义最新阶段的特点是“能指的解放”、“能指的游戏”。     

Mobilizing the Will to Prosecute: Crimes of Rape at the Yugoslav and Rwandan Tribunals

Widespread and systematic rape pervaded both the genocides in Bosnia–Herzegovina in 1992 and in Rwanda in 1994. In response to these conflicts, the Yugoslav Tribunal (ICTY) and the Rwandan Tribunal (ICTR) were created and charged with meting justice for crimes committed, including rape. Nevertheless, the two tribunals differ in their relative success in administering justice for crimes of rape. Addressing rape has been a consistent element of the ICTY prosecution strategy, which resulted in gender-sensitive investigative procedures, higher frequencies of rape indictments, and more successful prosecutions. In contrast, rape has not been a central focus of the ICTR prosecution strategy, which resulted in a sporadic approach to gender-sensitive investigative procedures, inconsistent rape indictments, and few successful prosecutions. What accounts for this disparity in rape prosecutions between the Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals? Building off the existing literature that discusses factors such as legal instruments and resource capacity of the tribunal, this article argues that transnational advocacy helped generate the necessary political will to adopt and implement legal norms regarding crimes of sexual violence at the ICTY and the ICTR. Following the importance of transnational advocacy as agents of norm change, this paper also explores the antecedent conditions of advocacy mobilization that conditioned different levels of mobilization vis-à-vis the ICTY and the ICTR, including media attention and framing, connections and interest match with local groups, and geopolitical context.     

秦皇朝覆亡新论--兼谈文化交流的一些理论问题

秦皇朝的迅速覆亡,是因为秦统治者将秦国西戎范围内形成的文化价值观念生搬硬套地移植到中原,拒绝接受中原的先进文化改造,从而遭到中原文化的全面阻抗.秦皇朝的覆亡说明了文化交流中的一个普遍规律:一种边缘文化要想成为主流文化,必须具有两个重要条件,一是必须勇敢地融入主流文化之中,二是必须保持自己的文化特色.     

Operationalizing cultural citizenship: towards a concept of culture regime*

This paper contributes to the study of cultural citizenship by laying the foundations for a concept of culture regime. Depicting culture as a malleable concept that encompasses both particularistic and universalistic elements, the paper emphasizes the potential of the concept of culture regime to bridge those of citizenship, language and ethnicity regime. While presenting narrow conceptions of culture as ethnic identity as a defensible compromise in the context of comparative empirical research, the paper discusses how the study of culture regimes could integrate broader approaches to culture by incorporating other forms of cultural claims and identities that go beyond ethnic traits. In doing so, the paper aims to promote an inter-disciplinary dialogue on cultural citizenship, arguing that some of the differences in cross-disciplinary approaches to culture owe to methodological rather than ontological considerations.     

It is not just who you know: Dominant knowledge and civic participation

Abstract

Civic participation and its role in increasing social capital is touted as a key element in the regeneration of urban communities. This approaches assumes that urban communities are homogenized collective interests and misses the diversity of interests that capitalize on the growth of institutionally supplied social capital brought about through redevelopment projects. This article examines the participatory processes in a Southern California urban community using social and cultural capital frameworks to show that resident participation is a classed and racialized project that privileges those with dominant knowledge, cultural awareness and language skills. The field of contestation, or the political space developed by institutional players for urban regeneration also plays a key role in determining who participates and how decisions are made. While civic participation is presented as a process that is democratic and open to all, this article argues that participation exists within a cultural context that much like the ‘hidden curriculum’ in education, privileges the knowledge of dominant groups.     

对马克思唯物史观解释框架的再认识——兼论文化的源泉和基础地位

长期以来,马克思唯物史观的公式化解释框架表述为:生产力→生产关系(经济基础)→政治上层建筑→思想文化上层建筑的线性决定和反作用关系。其中,文化只是被决定者。这种生产力决定论其实是传统哲学(传统唯物主义和传统唯心主义)制造抽象理论元基点的形而上学理论方式。按照马克思终结传统形而上学、确立社会历史实践本体论的哲学变革理路,可以把唯物史观的解释框架理解为……生产力→生产关系(经济基础)→政治上层建筑→思想文化上层建筑→生产力……的循环。其中,文化又构成了生产力、经济和政治的源泉和基础。我们需要确立社会历史实践整体观,在中国的经济体制改革取得成功后,确立推进社会主义文化大发展大繁荣的文化自觉,为进一步的生产力提升、经济发展、政治建设和社会进步,充实文化上的源泉和基础。     

The first and last signs of Main Street: semiosis and modality in California and Hong Kong Disneylands

Main Street is an indelible image in the American consciousness made hyperreal at Disneyland California in 1955. For subsequent parks in Tokyo and Paris, Disney recontextualized Main Street, but Hong Kong Disneyland’s version was formed as a copy of the California original. This copy demonstrates that transference of a structural form to a new cultural context is not a guarantee of the concomitant transmission of the originating culture’s sensory modality. The arising dissonant tension between the form (signifier) and substance (signified) of Hong Kong’s Main Street has led to its ongoing semiosis due to local cultural and corporate pressures. This paper presents a framework to analyze this dissonance and semiosis through comparison of external and internal photographs of the same eight landmarks at both parks. The problem of transferring meaning into a new cultural context for an international sign suggests Hong Kong’s Main Street could be the last that Disney constructs.     

The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis

Abstract. This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress – a syndrome whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as 'human development', arguing that its three components have a common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by increasing individual resources ; rising emancipative values strengthen people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights . Analysis of data from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the linkage between individual resources, emancipative values and freedom rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions and cultural zones; that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect of individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that this effect operates through its impact on elite integrity , as the factor which makes freedom rights effective.     

当代中国文化形态及其走向

中国的改革开放和社会转型,带来了传统与现代、本土与外来的文化交汇,催生了各种不同的文化形态,这大致可分为主流文化、精英文化与大众文化三种形态。社会和谐发展的前提应该是主流文化、精英文化与大众文化良性互动。然而在全球化背景下,这三种文化形态内部关系紧张,同时精英文化与大众文化深受消费主义的影响,出现了精英文化商品化与大众价值观扭曲现象,这是今后我国社会主义文化发展繁荣亟需解决的重要课题。