Understanding Cultural Policy provides a practical, comprehensive introduction to thinking about how and why governments intervene in the arts and culture. Cultural policy expert Carole Rosenstein examines the field through comparative, historical, and administrative lenses, while engaging directly with the issues and tensions that plague policy-makers across the world, including issues of censorship, culture-led development, cultural measurement, and globalization.
"This book is an in-depth introduction to the basic concepts, principles, workings, and functions of cultural policy in the United States. In it, I hope to provide readers with some concrete, practical knowledge about how cul-tural policy operates, knowledge they can use to understand and navigate on-the-ground choices and conflicts. The book includes the histories and theory of cultural policy that I believe every cultural administrator should hold in a professional repertoire. The field lacked a bespoke, synthetic work covering the historical, conceptual, and practical dimensions of cultural pol-icy in the U.S. (This made it just about impossible to cover everything in one semester, and made for an over-long and repetitive reading list that was the bane of my students for a decade.) I have tried to build that work. The book was conceived as a primer for cultural administrators and aspiring policy-makers, for those who are closely affected by cultural policy, and those who wish to intervene in cultural policymaking. I hope that it will give cultural administrators the foundation they need and will ease the future progression of students toward the advanced study of cultural policy.This book’s focus on practical knowledge and its full integration of the administrative dimensions of policy distinguish it from existing approaches to cultural policy study and analysis." - Preface