Making Culture Count
2-4 May 2012, Melbourne
Thriving on measurement?
Articulating ‘cultural value’ in a
policy context
Dr Eleonora Belfiore
Associate Professor in Cultural Policy, Centre for Cultural Policy
Studies, University of Warwick, UK (e.belfiore@warwick.ac.uk
and @elebelfiore on Twitter)
Structure
Paper articulated in four sections:
1)Some general thoughts on measurement in relation
to the arts and culture and & its centrality to the
cultural value debate.
2)On the limits of measurement: are we expecting too
much from the exercise?
3)An argumentative approach to cultural policy
4)A few examples from Britain
Why do we care about
measuring arts & culture?
 Increased concerns for transparency and
accountability in the public sector
 Necessity to spend wisely (e.g. on “what
works”) in times of austerity
 Is “measurement fetishism” the best way
to ensure the arts and culture thrive?
A clarification…
This is not going to be a whinge about
the evil of measurement…
… But we need a critical reflection on why
measurement is seen to be key to
“making culture count”…
Is measurement the only way? Is it the
best way?
Let’s be critical of “measurement
fetishism” but let’s also reject some
common assumptions
A few bad ideas we can do without:
The arts and culture are special – normal
rules don’t apply
 Commitment to measurement = philistinism
 Arts and culture as ‘passive victim’ of a
culture of measurement
Anti-measurement rhetoric
The arts as victim of measurement
"The arts stand naked and without defence
in a world where what cannot be measured
is not valued; where what cannot be
predicted will not be risked; ... where
whatever cannot deliver a forecast outcome
is not undertaken.“
John Tusa (1999) Art Matters
More assumptions to be ditched
The effects of engagement with the arts (and
consequently, the value that might accrue to
the public from such engagement) are
UNMEASURABLE
A distinction needs to be made between
measurability and commensurability
Measurement has meaning purely as an
advocacy tool (and that’s why we need it)
A few helpful questions:
 Not just ‘How to measure?’ but also ‘Why
measure?’
 Is it really the case that measurement =
accountability
 Is measurement the best solution to the
financial sustainability problem?
 Can the arts and culture thrive on
measurement alone?
Looking behind/beyond
measurement
 What does the ‘measurement fetishism’
obscure?
 What role does evidence really play in
decision-making?
 There is more to policy making than
evidence and accurate measurement
 Why is the ‘measurement fetishism’ so
resilient?
The ‘argumentative
approach’
In order to understand the reality of
cultural policy making we need to:
 Reject the prevalent linear understanding
of policy formation
 Shift to a rhetorical understanding of the
policy process as based on argumentation
and deliberation
Policymaking and the
‘rationality project’
 Emphasis on a view of policy analysis as neutral scientific
endeavour aiming at provide an objective guidance for
action (evidence-based policy-making)
 Faith in rational decision making as a guide to policy
making
 Nice fit with the ‘economic rationalism’ that is so central to
neoclassical economics
 Aim: “... Of rescuing public policy from the irrationalities
and indignities of politics, hoping to make policy instead
with rational, analytical and scientific methods” (Stone
2002)
Two corollaries:
 Political and controversial issues have been
reformulated in technical terms (the postideology myth and the ‘what matters is what
works’ discourse)
 Promotion of a linear model of the
research/policy nexus (despite the fact that
research often follows policy decisions, hence the
label policy-based evidence-making)
The problem:
The true (political) nature of policy
is obscured:
“The policymaking process is a political
process, with the basic aim of reconciling
interests in order to negotiate a consensus,
not of implementing logic and truth. The
value issues in policy making cannot be
settled by referring to research findings”
(Weiss 1977, 533).
Towards a rhetorical model of
the cultural policy process
 The ‘argumentative turn’ in policy analysis
 Central role of language in policy-making:
 Majone (1989) “[w]hether in written or oral form, argument is
central in all stages of the policy process.” and
“[a]rgumentation is the key process through which citizens
and policymakers arrive at moral judgements and policy
choices”
 “facts and values are so intertwined in policy-making that
factual arguments unaided by persuasion seldom play a
significant role in public debate” (p., 8).
Evidence is and always will be
value-based and value-laden
Greenhalgh and Russell (2006) propose to reconceptualise
policymaking as a social drama centred on
argumentation:
 “a real, enacted story in which all concerned, whether they
want to or not, become actors” (p. 37).
 Evidence is “rhetorically constructed on the social stage so as
to achieve particular ends for particular people”, and its
production, selection and employment in public debates
should be considered as “moves in a rhetorical argumentation
game and not as the harvesting of objective facts to be fed
into a logical decision-making sequence” (p. 34).
Rejecting the pretence that policy
analysis can ever be an objective
‘scientific’ endeavour
“Drawing on social constructivism,
postempiricists employ interpretative and
discursive methods to show that politics and
policy are grounded in subjective factors, and,
in the process, demonstrate that the “objective”
findings reported by rational techniques are as
often as not the product of deeper, less visible,
social and political presuppositions” (Fischer
2009, 120).
Why all the poor measurement &
dubious statistics in cultural policy?
Instrumentalism as rhetorical strategy
Dubious evidence fulfils a rhetorical function in the
sense that that it has persuasive power.
Exorbitant claims for the transformative powers of
the arts or their economic impact, dubious cultural
statistics and other suspicious forms of ‘evidence’ are
produced because they are perceived to have
rhetorical strength.
Is it about evidence at all?
Chris Smith, ex Secretary of State for Culture, 2003:
“… I acknowledge unashamedly that when I was Secretary
of State, going into what always seemed like a battle with
the Treasury, I would try and touch the buttons that would
work”.
“So, use the measurements and figures and labels that you
can, when you need to, in order to convince the rest of the
governmental system of the value and importance of what
you’re seeking to do. But recognise at the same time that
this is not the whole story, that it is not enough as an
understanding of cultural value”.
A different understanding of what
evidence is…
Majone 1989:
“[e]vidence is not synonymous with data or
information. It is information selected from the
available stock and introduced at a specific point
in the argument in order to persuade a particular
audience of the truth or falsity of a statement”.
Consequently, “criteria for assessing evidence are
different from those used for assessing facts”.
The argumentative model in action
A case study from Britain:
‘Defensive instrumentalism’, the cult of
the measurable and the myth of
ideology-free policy making in New
Labour’s cultural policies
Variations of instrumentalism
 Instrumentalism is in fact 2500 years old
 Most Western theories of art can be defined as
‘pragmatic’ (Abrams 1953): they all look “at the work
of art as a means to an end, an instrument to get
something done, and [tend] to judge its value
according to its success in achieving that aim”.
 Instrumental arguments always had a defensive
character/ were used to ‘make the case’ for the arts
‘Defensive instrumentalism’
(or instrumentalism the New Labour’s way)
 Older forms of instrumentalism aimed at paving
the way for a constructive articulation of cultural
value and the social and political function of the arts
 In New Labour’s version, instrumentalism has
retained in its protective dimension, but the defensive
moment leads to nothing beyond itself
 The ‘cultural value’ debate (and the unhelpful
intrinsic/instrumental dichotomy)
The ‘cultural value’ challenge
 ’Defensive instrumentalism’ is not synonymous with
philistinism
 But the difficulties in articulating the values on which
policies are based raises problems of accountability and
transparency
 The cult of the measurable as a strategy of legitimation
and as a way to bypass the problem of the articulation of
the ‘case for the arts’
 De-politicization of the cultural value debate
The long reach of Defensive
Instrumentalism
A 1980s revival:
Economic impact is back in fashion:
 “Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the
Future” for the You can Bank on Culture
campaign - March 2010
Blurb below title: “Investing in Culture will
build Britain’s Social and Economic Recovery”
David Shrigley’s video for the
Save the Arts campaign
Articulating cultural value…
In an artist’s own words…
Wolfang Tillmans’ answer when asked “What’s the best
argument you can put forward for not cutting the
arts?:
“It makes sense on an economic level. Britain doesn’t
have much to export but the creative industries are a
huge export industry. I don’t want to sound too
economical but that is the only language this
government seems to understand”.
Concluding thoughts
 Paradox of crisis of confidence alongside increased
funding levels
 A sector that is more comfortable with talking about
‘value for money’ than money for values
 A rhetorically weak position and the unresolved issue of
making a compelling argument for the sector (which no
amounts of measurement – whether rigorous or not has
been able to ‘fix’)
 A vulnerable status in a time of recession and cuts
A new stage in the
commodification process?
 When market logic is transformed into “a universal
common sense” (Bourdieu & Wacquant 2001), is there
any space in public policy for values beyond economic
value?
 Reframing the value debate and reclaiming from the
econocrats
 Acknowledge that devoting public resources to the arts
and culture is not a matter of evidence… it is a matter of
politics and values!