Cultural Policy, Work and Identity

Book excerpt: How have cultural policies created new occupations and shaped professions? This book explores an often unacknowledged dimension of cultural policy analysis: the professional identity of cultural agents. It analyses the relationship between cultural policy, identity and professionalism and draws from a variety of cultural policies around the world to provide insights on the identity construction processes that are at play in cultural institutions. This book reappraises the important question of professional identities in cultural policy studies, museum studies and heritage studies. The authors address the relationship between cultural policy, work and identity by focusing on three levels of analysis. The first considers the state, the creativity of the power relationship established in cultural policies and the power which structures the symbolic order of cultural work. The second presents community in the cultural policy process, society and collective action, whether it is through the creation of institutions for arts and heritage profession or through resistance to state cultural policies. The third examines the experience of cultural policy by the professional. It illustrates how cultural policy is both a set of contingencies that shape possibilities for professionals, as much as it is a basis for identification and identity construction. The eleven authors in this unique book draw on their experience as artists and researchers from a range of countries, including France, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden.