Some Features of Cultural Policies Applied in Belgium,Particularly in the French-Speaking Community

The training of arts and cultural administrators in Taiwan is related to the development of Taiwan's cultural sector and the centralized system of its government. In this top-down system, the government has long played a leading role in the development of the arts, cultural policies, and industries. The purpose of this article is to examine elements of historical events and factors causing change in the environment to discover the characteristics of arts/cultural administrators, the skills needed for arts/cultural administrators, and the development of curriculum. The researcher divided the historical development of Taiwanese arts administration into three waves. The first wave is from 1949 to 1980, the second wave is from 1981 to 1990, and the third wave is 1991 through the present. Through a discussion of various historical events, factors concerning arts administration and its training system are discovered. In conclusion, after reviewing Taiwan's development in the area of arts administration, one finds that viewing arts administration as a profession is a relatively recent phenomenon. The training of arts administrators and curators in the visual arts was the first area to develop. Training for performing arts administrators was not emphasized until the 1980s. Graduate programs of arts administration in universities have been promoted only since the middle of the 1990s.     

Teaching Arts Management: Where Did We Lose the Core Ideas?

In light of the need to start clearing the methodological confusion in the field of arts management, this article provides a critical overview of the teaching curricula in the field. Distinction is made between programs that copy directly from business management; programs that focus on the technological process of producing an artwork (usually run by practitioners); those that interlink cultural management and cultural policy (highlighting the role of public governance as a higher principle); and programs that focus on an entrepreneurial approach to arts management, connecting it to issues of creativity and innovation. The author calls for clear goals to educate administrators and arts or cultural managers. The suggestion is made to follow what I call the Janus syndrome: looking toward managerial and economic realities but primarily focusing on the arts—the aesthetic and the social aspects of the field. A question is raised about the position of art in arts management curricula, as well as the organization of undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the field.     

Impact of the Arts on Individual Contributions to US Civil Society

Abstract

Many studies have emerged in recent years examining the impact of the arts on educational outcomes, physical and mental health outcomes, local economies, and community well-being. Yet considerably less attention has been given to the impact that participation in the arts has on social behaviour that promotes a civil society. This study seeks to remedy this gap in the literature by examining the effect that both audience-based arts participation and direct participation in the arts have on three measures of civil society. We rely on data from the General Social Survey, which offers information on the arts participation behaviour of a random sample of adults living in the USA (n?=?1.341). Multivariate analysis is used to estimate the effects of audience-based arts participation as well as personal participation in the arts (creating art) on three dimensions of civil society: Civic engagement, social tolerance, and other-regarding behaviour. We find strong evidence that the arts enhance civil society. Both audience-based participation in the arts and personal participation in creating art are linked to higher levels of civic engagement, higher levels of social tolerance on some dimensions of the measure, and higher levels of other-regarding behaviour. Our findings have important implications, in that they demonstrate a strong association between the arts and individual-level social outcomes that contribute to the health of civil society.     

An Exploratory Analysis of Fertility Differentials in India

The association between improving economic conditions and declining growth of population has led economists and demographers to hypothesise a direct relationship between indicators of economic development and fertility rates. Using recent National Family Health Survey data and the 1991 Census to explore factors contributing to fertility rates in India, we found that economic variables explain 70 per cent of the interstate variations in India's fertility rates. However, several non-economic variables explain an even greater proportion, for example, indicators of female autonomy explain 84 per cent of the variations. Our analysis demonstrates that to successfully explain Indian fertility rates, models must rely heavily on non-economic variables.     

Arts,apartheid struggles,and cultural movements

ABSTRACT

This study i) briefly sketches some anti-apartheid arts initiatives of the 1980s; ii) examines the anti-apartheid academic common sense that assumed that “real struggle” could occur only within the labor movement; while iii) both are discussed in relation to early Afrikaner conservative cultural theory. The role of social theory within these sites of resistance is discussed. The article offers a lived methodology by including evocative observations from some social actors who participated in, and contributed to anti-apartheid art, drama and writing. The objective is to draw out debates on struggle rather than to offer a discussion of arts initiatives themselves. These are examined in terms of Albie Sachs’ pleas for discussion beyond the weaponization of art, one that restores the humanity robbed by apartheid.     

转变行政管理思路 发展市场经济制度——皖粤黔川稳增长和转方式调结构调研报告

2012年经济增长下行压力加大,各地方采取了积极有效应对措施,实现经济平稳发展。该文根据对皖粤黔川四省的调研,在肯定成绩的同时,也找出了一些存在的困难和问题,并从长期困扰中国社会主义市场经济发展的思维习惯、管理体制、政策法规和运作路径入手,提出转变行政管理思路、改善行政工作方法等对策建议。     

The Cultural Logic of Work: Explaining Labour Deployment and Piece-Rate Contracts in Matar Taluka,Gujarat - Parts 1 and 2

This two-part essay seeks to explain why group-based and individual piecework arrangements have become the modal form of payment for a variety of agricultural tasks in central Gujarat, India. Part 1 of the essay reviews New Institutional Economics (NIE) and Marxist Political Economy (MPE) approaches to the labour process, and claims that while the 'efficiency' and 'disciplinary' considerations emphasized by NIE and MPE in their explanations of contractual change are important influences on the labour process, specific institutional outcomes depend heavily on the cultural realities of actors' practices. Part 2 challenges the epistemological assumptions of NIE and MPE narratives, specifically that agents with stable identities perform actions with fixed meanings. Instead, the recent surge in piecework employment must be viewed as part of an ongoing tussle between the dominant Lewa Patel caste and the subordinate Baraiya/Koli caste to alter their relative standings in the social order. Their unceasing attempts to reinvent their group identities have involved shifting understandings of 'work' - with direct implications for labour contracts. As a corrective to NIE and MPE, the essay proposes a semiotic approach to the labour process that bundles the notions of 'social regulation' and 'self-regulation' into the concept of 'work governmentality'.     

Admitting a Bad Influence: Contracting the Public Service

Abstract

Emulation of the private sector is a longstanding controversy in public administration, but could it constitute a bad influence, of the kind that parents seek to guard against by scrutinizing their children's peers? Effectiveness provides a perspective on how helpful or harmful private sector influence has been for the public service. The practice of contracting-out under the A-76 process receives particular scrutiny relative to maintaining the effectiveness of public agencies. A second perspective on private sector influence examines, through the theoretical perspective of transaction-cost economics, the promise of cost savings that justified recent acceleration of contracting-out. The author, himself a government contractor, also bases his analysis on personal experience.     

Citizenship,enclaves and earnings: comparing two cool countries

This paper uses the Canadian 2006 Census and the Swedish 2006 register data to analyse the citizenship effect on the relative earnings of immigrants, using instrumental variable regression to control for citizenship acquisition. We ask: ‘Is there a citizenship effect and if any, in which country is it that we find the largest effect and for which immigrant groups?’ We add one further dimension, asking if the size of the co-immigrant population in the municipality has an effect on earnings. We find that the impact of citizenship acquisition is substantial in both Canada and Sweden. However, the place of birth of immigrants is important. In most cases, immigrant women in Sweden enjoy a higher citizenship premium than is the case for immigrant women in Canada. Amongst men the picture is more mixed. Most European groups receive a larger citizenship premium in Canada as compared to Sweden. Being in a city with more immigrants of the same background is better for earnings in Sweden than in Canada. However, being in a city with a lot of immigrants (regardless of origin) is better in Canada as compared to Sweden.