Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Meyrick, Julian, author

Title What matters? : talking value in Australian culture / Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett
Edition [CA & US version]
Published Clayton, Victoria : Monash University Publishing, [2018]
©2018

Copies

Description 1 online resource (157 pages) : illustrations
Contents Front cover; Title page; Imprint and copyright information; CONTENTS; Dedication; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I: The problems; 1. Some Definitions; 2. Parable of Value 1: Patrick White and the Problem of Numbers; 3. Parable of Value 2: Digital Disruption / There's an App for That!; 4. Parable of Value 3: The Adelaide Festival of Ideas; Part II: Where to from here?; 5. The Language of Value; 6. Narratives of Value; 7. The Reporting of Value; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index; About the authors; Back cover
Summary Too often, cultural leaders and policy makers want to chase the perfect metric for activities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The major problem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value - to governments, the business sector, and the public in general. When did culture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs, films, games, art installations, clothes, and the objects that fill our daily lives become a matter of statistical measurement? When did experience become data? This book intervenes in an important debate about the public value of culture that has become stranded between the hard heads (where the arts are just another industry) and the soft hearts (for whom they are too precious to bear dispassionate analysis). It argues that our concept of value has been distorted and dismembered by political forces and methodological confusions, and this has a dire effect on the way we assess culture. Proceeding via concrete examples, it explores the major tensions in contemporary evaluation strategies, and puts forward practical solutions to the current metric madness. The time is ripe to find a better way to value our culture - by finding a better way to talk about it
Analysis Australian
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Politics and culture -- Australia
Arts and society -- Australia
Social values -- Australia
Cultural property -- Valuation -- Australia
Culture -- Economic aspects -- Australia
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture.
Arts and society
Cultural property -- Valuation
Culture -- Economic aspects
Politics and culture
Social values
Australia
Form Electronic book
Author Phiddian, Robert, author
Barnett, Tully, author
ISBN 1925523829
9781925523829