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Book Review: A Handbook of Cultural Economics

Every day, with heroic pluck and determination, media managers and scholars face all kinds of difficult challenges. None of these challenges, however, begins to approach the herculean labors of the handbook editor and contributors. Ruth Towse’s A Handbook of Cultural Economics demonstrates many of the advantages of the handbook form: It offers a panoramic view of the field, it accrues the considerable authority of its many voices, and it can claim a natural resting place on the library reference shelves. However, more pointedly, it also reveals the limitations of that form: Without a strong principle of organization, its panoramic perspective sometimes drifts toward fragmentation and even incoherence, many of its voices lose some of their authority in trying to compress a very large corner of the field into a very brief summary, and its good fit on the reference shelves does not guarantee its usefulness for readers. All together, it succeeds only partially as a survey of the field and presents something less than an essential resource for media managers and scholars. Along with a brief editorial introduction, A Handbook of Cultural Economics comprises 61 entries, arranged alphabetically from “Anthropology of Art” to “Welfare Economics.” Most entries are written by European academics, although others come from the field of policy and the art worlds themselves and some from outside of Europe. The entries spread more or less evenly over topics in the fine and performing arts, in the heritage industries, and in the media and cultural industries. Some entries address specific forms and media (“Ballet,” “Opera,” “Television”), others broader problems or players in the field (“Awards,” “Nonprofit organizations,” “Tax concessions”), and others more theoretical questions (“Baumol’s cost disease,” “Contingent valuation,” “Value of culture”). Several longer entries run more than a dozen pages; several shorter ones run less than a few pages. Most essays lean toward abstraction and theorization of their topic, although many remain more closely tied to a practical context. Already in its form and orientation, there are difficulties here. First, the Handbook’s 61 alphabetical entries tend to leave the reader feeling as if the forest has been lost for the trees. Apart from Towse’s all too brief introduction, there is very little concern to define and situate the field of cultural economics. If a handbook should work as a kind of guidebook, the visitor (or resident) of that field might like a more substantial sense of the lay of the land— rather than only a discontinuous procession of landmarks with no connections between them except for cross-references at the end. Cultural economics develops through a particular history, it finds a home in particular institutions, it defines itself with reference to particular problems and problematizations, and it orients itself with and against particular scholarship in other disciplines. These questions receive insufficient attention in the Handbook, which would be much stronger with an introductory section of essays to contextualize the field. Furthermore, if there is not much attention to the big picture, the little pictures of the 61 entries might be arranged more harmoniously. Why allot separate entries for “Cinema” and “Motion Pictures”? Why separate “Digitalization” and “Internet culture”? Why not allow for much closer connections (and even conversations) among those entries, ones on “Broadcasting,” “Television,” and so on? In contrast, like its sibling volumes in a series from BFI, Hilmes’s (2003) The Television History Book comprises six themed sections (each with its own scene-setting introduction), each in turn comprising a half dozen or so short essays, most with short sidebars to pursue some questions further. The difference between the two volumes is more than cosmetic; forms of discourse structure knowledge in important ways. In The Television History Book, trees of knowledge grow higher in growing together, building on shared foundations (for only the most banal example, in saying more in fewer words); in many ways, the Handbook seems to frustrate rather than flatter knowledge of cultural economics, sometimes falling into redundancy and often losingopportunities formoredepthofanalysisacrossentries. Intheirsometimesextremecompression, individualentries do not allow for very much depth of analysis. Entries such as “Digitalization” offer pleasant surprises in going as far as they do—in that case, moving in only a few pages from a broad and airy conceptual background to an informed and intelligent discussion of arguments over technologies fordigitalrightsmanagement.However,evensuchastrong entry lacks the depth and currency of a developed newspaper article. What is even more troubling is how constraints of space tend to push practical application and concrete context off the table in favor of more theoretical and abstract economic analysis. Sometimes this perspective helps