Deconstructing the Difference-Engine

A Theory of Cultural Policy

Michael Volkerling

Recreation and Leisure Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

Over the fifty years since the conclusion of World War II, the cultural life of na-
tion states has been identified as a legitimate field for increased government inter-
vention. The character and purpose of this intervention have varied according to
the ideology of the state and its social, political and strategic priorities.1 The task
of constructing an adequate theoretical account of cultural policy is rendered
problematic by this diversity. However, a degree of consistency is evident among
countries that share common origins.2
The United Kingdom and its former dominionsAustralia, Canada and New
Zealandentered the postwar period sharing commonalities derived from their
immediate experience as military allies, their colonial origins, their constitutional
foundation and their ethnic composition.3 While these commonalities have since
been modified by the divergent trajectories of postcolonial development, postwar
cultural policy in these countries reveals similar patterns. The purpose of this
paper is to set these patterns within an explanatory theoretical framework.
Four basic propositions are advanced. First, it is argued that, in parallel with its
economic strategy, the state maintains an accumulation strategy for cultural capital
that rewards those whose support is required to maintain the prevailing hegemonic
coalition. Second, cultural policy is represented as an expression of the state's com-
mitment to the production of culture including the production of those social rela-
tions and identities that are maintained culturally. Third, policy authority is shown to
be established discursively and it is demonstrated that the assumptions of these dis-
courses are constitutive of public cultural agenciesthe cultural 'difference-engines'
which are charged with the responsibility of differentiating between what is and is
not culturally significant and allocating state resources accordingly. Finally, it is ar-
gued that the past 50 years have seen a redistribution of cultural authority. During
the era of Fordist state welfarism, the subsidised arts producer was paramount; in the
contemporary post-Fordist state the diverse interests of the cultural consumer hold
sway. In parallel with this change, a transition has occurred in policy strategy from
the universalisation of a monocultural received 'high culture* to the spectacularisa-
tion of cultural diversity. These propositions are demonstrated through an analysis
of the patterns of policy development in the four countries under study.
Any adequate theoretical account of public cultural policywhich can be un-
derstood simply as purposive action by the state in the cultural fieldneeds to be

Cultural Policy, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 189-212
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190 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

based on a theory of the state, a theory of culture and a theory of policy. This
paper draws onand attempts to synthesisethe extensive theoretical writing
covering these fields.

A THEORY OF THE STATE

According to Jessop, the state is an 'institutional ensemble' (Jessop 1990: 268)

which constitutes the 'strategic terrain' on which competing political strategies
are contested. Central to the operation of the state is an 'accumulation strategy'
that defines a 'specific economic growth model' (Jessop 1990, 198). This is imple-
mented through a series of 'hegemonic projects', which provide the means
through which the political, intellectual and moral leadership of a particular class
or class fraction is exercised.
Such projects may either be 'one nation strategies' which attempt to engage the
support of the whole population and reward them through material concessions.
The Keynesian welfare state represents the primary example of this type of hege-
monic project. Alternatively, they may be 'two nation strategies' which fashion a
hegemonic constituency more selectively, rewarding supporters at the expense of
those whose consent to rule is not critical to the regime's political survival.
Examples of 'two-nation' strategies are offered by the neo-liberal economic and so-
cial policies pursued by governments in Britain and New Zealand since the 1980s.
A primary contention of this paper is that, in parallel with its economic role,
the state maintains through its cultural policies an 'accumulation strategy' for cul-
tural capital: that is, the range of
valorised cultural resources., that can be 'invested' in order to ensure a return of social
power (Schiach 1989, 16).

It is in terms of this strategy that 'the symbolic economy' (DiMaggio 1992:153) of

any nation is organised. This cultural accumulation strategy is similarly aligned
with projects that enact the leadership of the dominant hegemonic group.
The state, through its complex of cultural institutions, provides the strategic
terrain on which processes of symbolic and economic valorisation of culture are
contested. Each class or class fraction engages in 'a search for symbols' that distin-
guish it from other social groups (DiMaggio and Useem 1978: 152). The results of
this process validate particular conceptions of cultural capital, privileging the
dominant and incorporating the subordinate. The balance among these contest-
ing forces changes over time in line with the periodisation of the state. The strate-
gic scope of cultural hegemonic projects also alters over time embracing either
'one-nation' or 'two-nation' projects that are articulated with economic strategies.

A THEORY OF CULTURE

Culture is that set of socially structured practices by which meanings are produced
and exchanged within a group (Crane 1992a, 1992b, 1994; DiMaggio 1978, 1987,
1992; Swidler 1986; Thompson 1990). Culture therefore encompasses
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 191

symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and cere-
monies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories and rituals
of daily life (Swidler 1986, 273).

These 'ritual practices' include activities and resources associated with recreation
and sport which may be understood as 'the ritual sacrifice of physical energy'
(Sansone 1988).
In capitalist states, cultural forms and practices are frequently commodified
and accessed through market mechanisms (Crane 1992a). These cultural goods
and services are consumed 'for what they say about the consumers to themselves
and to others, as inputs into the production of social relations and identities' (Di
Maggio 1992:133). What is commonly called taste therefore represents 'a form of
ritual identification and a means of constructing social relations' (DiMaggio 1987,
443).
Cultural policy is an expression of the state's commitment to the production of
culture (including the production of social relations and identities). In terms of
current public sector policy concepts, the cultural and artistic activity facilitated
through state intervention can be considered the outputs of cultural policy and the
production of social relations and identities (the 'impacts on the community')
can be considered its outcomes.
One effect of the entry of the state into the cultural sector has been the inven-
tion of public 'institutions capable of valorising certain symbolic goods and social
groups capable of appropriating them' (DiMaggio 1992, 135). Public cultural
agencies have functioned as cultural difference-engines: organisational mecha-
nisms that are officially empowered to draw distinctions between the value of dif-
ferent forms of cultural expression as the basis for resource allocation decisions.
Their role has been to coordinate 'institutionalised arrangements designed to
identify and deal with . . . cultural differentiation' (Hall 1992, 119). These
processes of differentiation occupy the 'policy space' (Hogwood and Gunn 1984)
which is now identified as the field of cultural policy.
Table 1 shows the domains of culture in which the state typically intervenes
(this is adapted from Diana Crane's (1992a) typology). Table 1 also identifies the
institutional support and control mechanisms established by the state as modes of
intervention. The policy approach of these state agencies within Fordist and Post
Fordist political economies is then compared. The relationships suggested by
Table 1 are examined in greater detail later in this article.

A THEORY OF POLICY

Policy is essentially a discursive process of differentiation. Policy involves the use

of language and symbols for structuring areas of knowledge and social practice.
Policymaking is centrally concerned with 'a constant struggle over the criteria for
classification, the boundaries of categories' (Stone 1988, 7) by which particular
groups are identified for or excluded from privileged treatment. Policy discourse
is therefore a 'language within which people offer and defend conflicting inter-
pretations' of value and priorities (Stone, 1988, 106). This discourse maintains
192 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

TABLE 1
Support Strategies for Culture Domains

Generic
organisational Fordist Post- Fordist
Domain support strategy strategy

National Core
TV, radio Public Broadcasting Own and Privatise
Film Public film studios operate
Elite sport Sports Councils Maintain Coopt
Elite performing Arts Councils Maintain Coopt
arts
Documentary National libraries Maintain Restructure
heritage and archives
Historic places Heritage Councils Maintain Commercialise
Open space National Parks Maintain Commercialise

Peripheral
Books Copyright Regulate Deregulate/
Magazines Competition/ re-regulate
Magazines antitrust
Newspapers legislation
Other TV/film
Recording Censorship

Urban
Concerts Arts Councils Subsidise Purchase
Exhibitions Local govern- services/
Performances ment provide
incentives

Local
Museums, Local government Maintain and Commercialise/
libraries, sport promote contract out
cultural, recreation
facilities etc

particular relations of power and also determines which social groups are identi-
fied for or excluded from privileged treatment.
Policy discourse therefore enacts social power while also sanctioningin the
cultural field as well as others'the monopolistic practices of professions' and
concealing the 'self-interest which [lies] behind the rhetoric of service' (Whitson
and Slack 1987, 88). The status and role of professionals should therefore be an
integral element in any account of discursive strategies.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 193

Policy discourse represents an instrument of hegemony and a means through

which different authority claims are contested. Policy offers alternative ideological
constructs drawn from a discursive field containing * conflicting, overlapping, or
intersecting currents or formations' (Hall 1988, 55-6). Policy conflict discursively
renders the
contradictory and unstable equilibrium which constitutes a hegemony . . . in terms of the
articulation, disarticulation a n d rearticulation of . . . orders of discourse (Fairclough
1992,93).

These orders of discourse coexist within the 'ideological complex' (Fairclough

1992, 93) of cultural policy. They achieve different prominence over time as they
are employed to validate the changing hegemonic consensus regarding the nature
and importance of culture.
The principal orders of cultural policy discourse which can be identified dur-
ing the period under study may be classified as Idealist, Materialist, Market and
Nationalist. Each discourse may be distinguished in terms of its focus (who or
what it seeks to privilege); its scope (whether it is monoculturally conceived or
embraces diversity); the outcomes it proposes; its broad strategic approach; and
the authority that is claimed for its ascendancy. These characteristics are sum-
marised below (see Table 2).
Discourse is also constitutive of those organisational structures that are the in-
struments of cultural policy. Arts Councils and Ministries of Culture are not dis-
crete administrative entities but projections of prior views of culture that are
empowered through discourse.4 Their structures crystallise assumptions regarding
what culture is (and how it might best be nurtured) which reflect idealist, materi-
alist or other conceptual structuring principles according to the character of the
discourse that is empowered.
Over the fifty years since the conclusion of World War II, the implementation
of cultural policy by these agencies has entailed the defence of their 'symbolic
boundaries' (DiMaggio 1992, 142) against an array of influences which have ulti-
mately had the effect of renegotiating the basis of hegemonic equilibrium and re-
distributing cultural authority.

TABLE 2
Orders of Cultural Policy Discourse

Idealist Materialist Market Nationalist

Focus Producer Community Consumer Nation

Scope Monocultural Multicultural International Global
Outcome Appreciation Participation Consumption Spectatorship
sought
Strategy Universalisation Community Market ' Spec tacularisation'
development segmentation
Authority Enlightenment Identity Market Inclusiveness
claim * forces
194 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

THE PERIODISATION OF POLICY DEVELOPMENT

It is possible to conceptualise this process of change in terms of four phases that co-
incide with the transition of each of these states from Fordist to post-Fordist forms of
economic and social organisation. In each of these phases a differing dominant dis-
course is evident, and the principal beneficiaries, scope, key institutions, policy focus
and values also vary. Table 3 sets out the principal differences in summary form.
This suggested periodisation requires some explanation.

The Foundation Period (1945-1965)

During the Foundation period (1945-65), the example set in Britain operated as a
powerful model. In postwar Britain initially, and progressively in Australia, Canada
and New Zealand, the national, urban and local domains were the principal are-
nas for state cultural action: the peripheral domain was left to the market to sup-
ply. Postwar initiatives in Britain became normative models for cultural policy
developments in Australia and New Zealand (Jamrozik et al. 1995; Volkerling
1981); and while Canada had both British and French cultural traditions to ac-
commodate in its policy planning, those most centrally involved in this process
were 'squarely representative of traditional culture* (Ostry, 1978:61):
. . . National Parks were set up to preserve the landscape; an Arts Council was established
to preserve the 'cultural heritage of the nation'; and finally, sport was funded because of
the external benefits it was assumed to generate (specifically, the provision of alternative
and wholesome activities for troublesome youth and the promotion of national prestige)
(Bramham and Henry 1993:11).

TABLE 3
The Periodisation of Cultural Policy

Fordist Post-Fordist
Foundation Professionalisation Reaction Incorporation
1945-1965 1965-1985 1985-1990 1990-1995

Dominant Idealist Materialist Market Nationalist

Discourse
Principal Producers Professionals Consumers State
Beneficiaries
Scope National Local International Global
Key Arts Councils Ministries of Commercial Commercial
Institutions Sports Councils Interior/ market television
Culture networks
National
museums
Primary Cultural Cultural Privatisation Social
Strategy paternalism welfarism cohesion
Key values Cultivation Self-realisation Hedonism Nationalism
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 195

The particular character of Britain's cultural policy was derived from the interac-
tion between the cultural preferences and values of its leisured middle class and
postwar state welfarism. With arts policy, for example
'good' culture was taken to be, in essence, the culture of the leisured upper middle class;
that its why it was 'high culture'. . . . Culture in welfare capitalism is one of the good
things that the upper classes have traditionally enjoyed and now it is to be available to
'everyone' . . . the traditional conception of high culture persisted, but now with state val-
idation, within the story that it was for all people . . . [the] culture of an upper-class frac-
tion was proclaimed as universal (Sinfleld 1989, 39, 50, 53).

The colonial predisposition to value the cultural hierarchies of the imperial power
ensured that an idealist conception of cultural value was embedded in Australia,
Canada and New Zealand. This celebrated culture as
the process of developing and ennobling the human faculties, a process facilitated by the
assimilation of works of scholarship and a r t . . . (Thompson, 1990, 126).

In sports policy too, the values of the English leisure class were transferred to the
realm of public policy through the influence of the 'elite schools' for 'privileged
boys' which had developed in Victorian England. These institutionalised a range
of games which were
infused with a blend of reconstructed Greek humanism, gentlemanly traditions and
Christian, or rather Anglican, principles of conduct. In this way the schoolmasters institu-
tionalised a masculine 'cult of athleticism' or 'games ethic' based on bourgeois values
such as fair play, courage and manliness, loyalty, Anglocentrism, obedience, discipline
and respect for the umpire's decision (McKay 1991, 67).

The 'old boys' graduating from these schools became not only the sporting ad-
ministrators and civil service professionals who propounded postwar public sports
policy in Britain, but also constituted the 'educational, political, religious, eco-
nomic and cultural elite of the British Empire' (McKay 1991, 56). As a conse-
quence, the 'form and content of modern sport' in Britain's former dominions
(and policies for its regulation) epitomised
. . . liberal notions such as meritocratic achievement through individual effort, freedom,
justice, democracy, fair play, equality and nationalism (McKay 1991, 56).

The strong tradition of amateur governance and management among sporting

codes meant that, for many years, there was resistance to their incorporation
within a framework of state support. Assistance from government sports agencies
and local government was therefore confined to functions such as the provision of
assistance for coaching and the maintenance of playing fields and facilities.
However, the maintenance of traditional notions of sportsmanship within the
organisational culture of male secondary education services ensured a continuing
institutional base for the perpetuation of these inherited values. This strong utili-
tarian focus was also reinforced in Britain and New Zealand by legislation enshrin-
ing the principles of 'muscular Christianity' and a wider 'rational recreation'
movement which emphasised 'the utility of physical fitness for ensuring personal
health and moral character' (Gidlow et al. 1994, 11).
196 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

In contrast, arts and heritage organisations were more rapidly incorporated

within the span of state policies. The organisational arrangements established for
the support of the arts emphasised how powerfully idealist cultural discourse
could operate as a constitutive force. The Arts Council system was almost exclu-
sively producer-focusedwith the artistic and professional staff of arts organisa-
tions being sanctioned in their 'authority as producer in determining the form
and content of production and consumption' (Abercrombie 1991, 173):

High culture is producer culture; production is the problematic and interesting element
and consumption is more or less taken for granted. Aesthetic interest focuses on the
qualities of the artist and art is an expression of the personality, outlook or talent of the
artist (Abercrombie 1991, 173)

The aura of artistic creativity was conferred on organisations which were 'typically
concerned with the preservation of existing artistic and ethnic traditions rather
than the creation of new ones' and in which the so-called 'creators' were invari-
ably 'performers who reinterpret the works of creators who are generally dead'
(Crane 1992b, 61).
The panel system of peer assessment, invented by the Arts Council of Great
Britain, was similarly designed to serve an idealist conception of culture depend-
ing as it did on the judgment of those deemed best able to adjudicate on 'the
preservation of the best that is made and written' (Eliot 1948, 22). Invariably,
these were practitioners drawn from the producer base or those with the educa-
tion or breeding required to ensure the perpetuation of the idealist ethos.
The postwar association between the state and high culture had its historical
precedents. Cultural policy developed from the end of the eighteenth century in
the context of 'the emergence and establishment of the Nation-State' (O'Conner
and Wynne, 1991, 467). The 'elaboration of a distinctive national history and cul-
ture' provided one means through which the state could achieve 'legitimation
through identification with narratives of nationality' (O'Conner and Wynne,
1991, 467). This demanded a strategy through which the products of high art
could be represented as being for all people:

A history of 'great men' and 'great artists' works as a . . . narrative [of nationality] only if
it manages to articulate (elaborate and annex) a wider National-Popular narrative. The
Nation-State succeeded only insofar as it managed to identify itself with this National
Popular. . . . this National-Popular tradition was seen to be enshrined above all in the
products of a "High Culture" (O'Conner and Wynne, 1991, 467).

Postwar cultural welfarism extended this approach to cultural policy, employing

public money to promote links between high culture and the National-Popular.
The British experiment in cultural welfarism has been characterised as a strategy
of the 'leisure elite' which 'felt confident enough in its superior civilisation to uni-
versalise its culture' (Sinfield 1989, 290); but could at the same time hold the
'lower classes .. . responsible' for [their failure] 'to take to the arts'

even though these failures may well derive from the fact that incorporation ha[d] been
largely a pretence' (Sinfield 1989:53).
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 197

The motivations of cultural policymakers in Australia, Canada and New Zealand

may have been more altruistic. New Zealand's wartime Prime Minister Peter
Fraser, for example, supported state cultural initiatives out of a conviction that
'art, in the profoundest sense, is Common Wealth.' (Barrowman, 1991, 4). Yet
despite the avowed 'one nation strategy' which informed the hegemonic project
of state welfarism, the extension of these principles into the cultural sector sub-
verted the egalitarian or universal outcomes which policymakers may have
sought. Cultural policy covertly enacted a 'two nation' strategy within the pre-
vailing public policy orthodoxy of universalism. With government support,
'high culture emerged as a status culture of a class in formation' (DiMaggio
1992,142).
In common with social policy programmes, cultural welfarism was subject to
middle class capture (Mishra, 1984, Thomson, 1991, Shannon, 1991). As one
Canadian commentator has remarked,

one of the more notable effects . . . of cultural intervention . .. involves a transfer of in-
come from the general population to a fairly narrow segment of the population who
enjoy an above average socio-economic status (Globerman, 1982, xxii-xxiii).

The institutions of public cultural policy were controlled largely by people drawn
from the white, urban, professional and commercial world whose educational and
economic privileges combined to allow them to appropriate as their own the cul-
tural preferences derived from the English leisure class. At the same time, the
challenge of the new or avant garde allowed a continual regrading process to
occur through which internal hierarchies of taste could be established within this
culture world.
This new middle class has been variously described as the Professional Middle
Class (PMC) (the Eherenreichs, 1979) or the Salaried Middle Class (SMC)
(Gould, 1981). The 'established component 'of this group is 'the professions which
enjoy considerable power and status along with 'a marginal component made up of
lower professionals and clerical occupations' (Jamrozik, 1991, 48). This estab-
lished component is 'the dominant element in the reproduction of the hege-
monic strata of the bourgeoisie' (Clegg, Boreham and Dow 1986, 199). For this
group, access to the high culture services provided by cultural welfarism repre-
sented 'a means to defend or advance their standing in the cultural and social hi-
erarchy' (DiMaggio and Useem, 1978, 157).
Cultural welfarism failed to achieve the universalisation of cultural provision
and appreciation. It instead operated as a system of paternalism, consolidating a
range of cultural conventions for the new middle class to use as emblems of dis-
tinction sanctioned by the imprimatur of state endorsement. It was left to the in-
stitutions in the peripheral domain of culturewhat was termed 'mass
culture'to provide a 'shared symbolic universe' (Hall 1992, 150) for those not
encompassed within the world of high culture; in terms of their capacity to cele-
brate the cultural distinctions they enshrined, mass and elite culture therefore op-
erated as 'dialectically interdependent phenomena' (Sinfield 1989, 176),
confirming the hegemonic dominance of the educated class.
198 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

The Professionalisation Period (1965-85)

The hegemonic consensus operating during the Foundation period was eventually
challenged from a variety of directions. The institutions of cultural policy were
perceived as privileging a narrow range of cultural traditions at the expense of
others of equal validityin particular, class or ethnically based cultural expression
or cultural activity occurring outside the dominant urban centres (Hawkins, 1991,
Kelly, 1984). The centrality of the notion of 'excellence' as a primary policy focus
was called into question.
This questioning was sometimes gentle, as with the suggestion from the Canada
Council that 'excellence is more to be found with an open and sensitive mind
than to be applied from a single preconceived idea' (Canada Council, 1978, 19).
In other cases, excellence was interrogated from a strongly polemical perspective.
The 'Eurocentric Great Tradition, and its imperialist assumptions' was charac-
terised as 'oppressive' since, by applying a 'single hierarchy of imposed values' as a
basis for judgments about arts funding, it prevented 'any pluralistic assessment' of
cultural significance (Kelly, 1984, 92).
A common factor unifying other criticisms was the materialist focus of the op-
positional discourse which was generated. It proposed a close relationship be-
tween cultural expression and community needs. Thus, a 1976 Council of Europe
report on 'socio-cultural animation' advocated that the purpose of cultural policy
should be the promotion among the mass of the people of
active use and development of their native culture, of experience and practice of the arts
according to their own conception, and the evolution of life-styles of their own choice
(Simpson, 1976: 10).

In the arts, this involved a call for 'cultural democracy'empowering communities to

effect productive cultural change. As the Shelton Trust's 1986 manifesto maintained,
the ideas that constitute cultural democracy both enable and depend upon direct partici-
pation, and take as their aim the building and sustenance of a society in which people
are free to come together to produce, distribute and receive the cultures they choose
(Shelton Trust, 1986, 40).

To the extent that these ideas drove arts policies in Australia, Canada, Britain and
New Zealand, they represented 'an invocation of social democracy in . . . arts pol-
icy' (Hawkins, 1991,47).
In the field of recreation and sport, increased government involvement in com-
munity based services was also promoted both as a form of expression and social
control. Thus, Great Britain's 1975 White Paper on Sport and Recreation, con-
ceived recreation provision as being 'part of the general fabric of the social ser-
vices' and, noting the 'social stresses on young people today', prescribed active
lifestyles as a palliative to 'hooliganism and delinquency' (Coalter, 1990, 20). This
theme was elaborated during the same year in the first annual report of the New
Zealand's Council for Recreation and Sport:
Increasing urbanisation, speed of communication and transportation, a developing mul-
tiracial society, a shorter or changing working week, greater discretionary income, the
rising crime rate, changing social and moral values are some of the elements of modern
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 199

living. These factors disrupt citizens of all ages and contribute to social disorganisation.
Through involvement and interest in recreation and sport, people of all ages, social
ranks, races and countries have opportunities to meet and come to know and under-
stand their neighbours. They will be able to make new friends, find creative outlets, ob-
tain their physical exercise, actively participate or be entertained, gain success and
identity and be involved in their own community affairs. Appropriate recreation, actively
adapted to the needs of the individual, helps build the integrated personality necessary
to withstand successfully the tensions of modern living which lead to antisocial behav-
iour, particularly among the young (CRS: 1975, 2).

Materialist cultural discourse also argued for multicultural relativity rather than
the monocultural hierarchy on which the Foundation period had been erected.
Personal and community development and identity, derived from active participa-
tion in cultural and recreational activities, replaced taste, enlightenment and ap-
preciation as dominant values.
Institutionally, this new discourse forced structural modifications. To those
structures which continued to cater for the inherited status quo, were added new
elements capable of containing and empowering this discourse in ways that would
unlock resources: for example, Australia's Community Arts Board (Hawkins 1991)
and Aboriginal Arts Board; New Zealand's regional and community arts councils
and Council for Maori and South Pacific Arts (Volkerling 1981); and Canada's
Explorations programme. In Great Britain, ideological conflict between advocates
of idealist and materialist concepts of culture dominated relations between the
Arts Council of Great Britain, the Regional Arts Associations and local govern-
ment agencies for over a decade (Kelly 1984; Shaw 1987). Similar debates regard-
ing sports and recreation provision emerged within local government (Henry
1993).
New boundaries require new defenders. Community arts workers and 'anima-
teurs', recreation planners and facilitators emerged to contest these new discur-
sive perspectives. Not only was discourse institutionalised: it was professionalised.
The management of cultural policy agencies was increasingly effected through the
reconciliation of competing discourses. Since a variety of discursive perspectives
idealist, materialist, bicultural, multicultural, professional, amateurhad to be
reconciled within the boundaries of a single organisation, new relational concep-
tual frameworks had to be found to offer a unifying policy rationale.
The concept of cultural policy, promoted by UNESCO from 1970 and subse-
quently elaborated by Malraux and others (Girard 1972), was credited with suffi-
cient explanatory power to contain the diversity of these conflicting discursive
elements. What UNESCO came to call 'the cultural dimension of development'
proposed a meta-narrative of resistance: it envisaged a primary agenda for na-
tional development premised on cultural grounds to which economic policy
would be subservient. Culture was 'seen as the higher collective good which soci-
eties cannot forego without destroying themselves' (Girard 1972: 143). Cultural
development was intended to become both
goal and process. It is a goal because it means giving the society the ability to create its
own life and environment. This ability means participation. But the process of cultural
development entails more than participation alone. To be meaningful, such participa-
tion must be critical and continue to feed the sources of change (UNESCO 1976).
200 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

While such values were widely espoused by the community arts movement,5 they en-
tered national cultural policy dialogue largely at the level of rhetoric. Nevertheless,
with the emergence of such policy discourses, new institutional structures were seen
as necessary to domesticate this meta-narrative. Increasingly, states looked to the es-
tablishment of Ministries of Culture as mechanisms for the development of such
policy frameworks and for achieving coordination and rationalisation of cultural re-
sources. While bureaucratic self-interest is not the sole explanation, among the con-
sequences of these developments was the consolidation of
a certain kind of infrastructure related to the formulation and administration of cultural
policynot completely congealed but very solidly entrenchedthat the political regime
of the day cannot shake or topple (Meisel 1989, 90).

The Professionalisation phase of cultural policy therefore saw the inclusion of mem-
bers of this cultural infrastructure more centrally in the hegemonic coalition
whose function was to achieve equilibrium among these contending cultural
forces. However, despite the accretion of professional power by this group 'the
moment of its hegemony was also the start of its decay . . . ' due to the failure of
the welfare capitalist assumptions on which it generally rested (Sinfield 1989, 240).

The Reaction Period (1985-90)

It required an alteration in the organisation of the political economy of these

states to achieve fundamental change in cultural power relations. The transition
of these countries (which was perhaps more emphatic in the case of Britain and
New Zealand) from Keynesian Fordist economies to post-Fordist enterprise
economies (O'Brien and Willkes 1994; Abercrombie 1992) had a considerable
cultural impact.
This transition is described here in terms of two periodsReaction (1985-1990)
and Incorporation (1990 to the present). This is because the discursive strategies
which provide policy justifications differ significantly during the decade; and be-
cause, after the first five years, the focus of state involvement moves from the dis-
mantling of the old order to the active articulation of new values and policies.
Arguably, it may be more accurate to conceive of these developments not as sepa-
rate periods but as linked phases in the cultural consolidation of the post-Fordist
state. However they are periodised, the patterns of change remain clear.
They are predicated upon the empowerment of a new constellation of inter-
ests: 'finance, capital, the professional and bureaucratic middleclass . . .' (Wilkes,
1993, 207). This new constellation of interests comprised the middle class 'baby-
boomers'the second generation of the new professional and commercial mid-
dle class which had formed within the welfare state environment. Their cultural
interests included not only 'non-material' or 'social' consumption of high culture
products, but also 'material consumption (such as eating out and tourism)'
(Jamrozik, 1991, 217). The consumers of material products are drawn primarily
from 'the upper and middle classes' (the established component); and from the
working class as well (the marginal component) (Jamrozik 1991, 216). In this
case, 'the providers include relatively low status workers' and the services and
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 201

products are provided on a commercial basis. (Jamrozik, 1991, 216). However, in

the case of non-material consumption, what is distinctive is

the role performed by the new middle class both as provider and consumer of... activi-
ties supported by public funds. In both functions, the members of the new middle class
are the main participants (Jamrozik, 1991, 217).

If middle class capture of non-material public cultural services remains a feature

of this period, the scope for this same group to express their consumption prefer-
ences for material goods and services expanded enormously. Post-Fordist eco-
nomic strategy is 'allied with niche production and internationalisation of
consumer markets' (Abercrombie 1991, 183). Such strategies therefore expanded
the range of cultural goods and services over which consumer choice could be ex-
ercised, including products designed for specialist rather than mass markets and
acquired from international rather than just national sources.
Increased emphasis on the market involves a 'shift in power and authority from
producer to consumer'; 'any increase in the importance of consumption involves
a diffusion of authority' (Abercrombie 1991, 172). Embracing the primacy of the
market entails 'structural changes that weaken the basis of cultural authority'
(DiMaggio 1992, 142). If public cultural agencies are cultural difference-engines,
the market economy operates, in the cultural field, as an 'engine of declassifica-
tion.' (DiMaggio 1992, 142). 'Market societies'

inherently undercut any heirachialisation of status, instead producing a multiplicity of

sometimes parallel, sometimes autonomous, sometimes conflicting plays of distinction
(Hall op at 276).

There are elements within such market societies which seek in cultural goods and
services 'symbolic props for the definition of cosmopolitan selves' (DiMaggio
1992, 149); in such cases, however, while the
system of classification is highly differentiated . . . boundaries are weak, relatively non-hi-
erarchal and far from universal (DiMaggio op cit 149).

An 'undisciplined play and disorder' results which constitutes 'a peculiarly mod-
ern form of consumption, the chief characteristic of which is its insatiability and
constant striving for novelty' (Abercrombie 1991, 175, 178). This is reflected in,
among other things, the development of 'pay to play' approaches 6 to the con-
sumption of recreation and leisure services, rather than the more stable patterns
of participation which previously were dominant; and to a fondness for spectacle
among audiences for cultural and sporting events.7
Market societies also give rise, more significantly, to the 'active consumer'
(Abercrombie op cit: 178) 'for whom consumption is a central life activity'.
According to this view, consumers cease to be passive recipients of products, and
instead become engaged in a process of 'giving ever-new meanings to commodi-
ties' leaving 'producers with the necessity of trying to catch up with innovative
consumers' (Abercrombie op cit, 179). This, it is argued, is symptomatic of the
'process of acquiring cultural citizenship':
202 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

a democratisation that undermines the authority of the producer as surely as the exten-
sion of the franchise undermined the political authority of the ruling class (Abercrombie
op at 184).

The restructuring of the public cultural sector is a feature of this period. To advo-
cates of economic rationalism, the increasing cost and complexity of the public
cultural sector represented easy targets. Typically, the resulting policy change in-
volved reduction in the level or significance of central government funding for
culture; the invocation of a 'mixed economy of culture' predicated on increasing
levels of private sector support; emphasis on accountability; a split of policy and
service delivery functions; a move from direct subsidy to the purchase of services;
and at the local level, the contracting out of programmes and services to private
providers.
Thus, in Britain, the Conservative Arts Minister who came to power in 1979, cut
the Arts Council's grant and warned that the arts world
must come to terms with the situation and accept the fact that government policy in gen-
eral has decisively tilted away from the expansion of the public to the enlargement of the
private sector (Shaw, 1987, 40).

The Council's chairman, Sir William Rees-Mogg concurrently argued that subsidy
'weakens the sinews of self-help' and its Director called on arts organisations to
'go out and hustle' for private sector support (Shaw, 1987, 38).
Similarly, policy discussion papers prepared for the Australian Cultural
Minister's Council in 1989 were predicated on 'two principal assumptions':
that self reliance is the best way to achieve a healthier cultural sector in Australia and . ..
that this cannot be achieved unless governments provide incentives and support the
acquisition of the skills of self reliance (Macdonnell, 1989, 2).

Likewise in Canada, a 1986 government report on culture and communication

(MSS, 1986, 160) proposed the introduction of'an incentive system to help per-
forming arts companies become more financially independent of government'. A
cut of $8.7 million in funding to the Canada Council followed in 1993.
The introduction of transparent and accountable systems of management and
a more entrepreneurial approach to policy development and implementation
were apparent within both central and local government. In Britain, compulsory
competitive tendering for the operation of local cultural and recreational services
was introduced following the release of the Green Paper on Competition \in the
Management of Local Authority Sport and Leisure Facilities (DoE 1987). This asserted
that 'the absence of direct and equivalent competition' produced 'inefficiencies
in monopolistic public services' (Coalter, 1990a: 155) and advocated more struc-
tural and procedural reform to eliminate wasteful practices and increase account-
ability for results. Similarly, New Zealand's Local Government Act was extensively
amended in 1989 to require Councils to conduct their affairs with a clear separa-
tion of conflicting functions, comprehensibility and openness of decisionmaking,
accountability and con testability by interested parties (LGA, 1989, section 23c).
One effect of this policy reorientation has been to empower a new managerial
elite in the arts, less focussed on cultural gatekeeping and more engaged with the
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 203

'celebration of entrepreneurship' (Whitson and Slack 1987, 29). This new manager-
ial elite has also begun to displace the entrenched structures of amateur governance
which dominated organised sport over the previous century (Whannel 1992).
The recruitment of such managerialist perspectives into Ministries of Culture
changed their role from that of presiding cultural ideologues to watchdogs of the
public purse. Through the establishment and monitoring of an overall cultural
planning framework and compliance system, cultural ministries increasingly per-
formed a control rather than a policy development function with respect to the
arms-length cultural institutions for which they were responsible.
Thus, in Canada, the 1986 report Economic Growth: Culture and Communication
(MSS, 1986, 155) called for the introduction of an 'accountability framework'
within which the Canada Council might operate in future which would include a
'corporate strategy' which would be 'reviewed annually . . . by the Minister'.
Planning systems, based on those originally developed in the United States for the
administration of the Pentagon, would be developed as a control mechanism
through the introduction of
a results oriented mission statement, specific corporate objectives, organisational pro-
gram structures designed to meet these objectives, resources assigned to the programs in
broad terms and a statement of the results expected. (MSS, 1986, 155).

Similarly, in Britain a 1993 review of the Arts Council (Price Waterhouse, 1993,
12) proposed a primary role for the Department of National Heritage in setting
the Arts Council's framework, comprising its financial, legislative and social policy para-
meters'

and proposed that the Council should 'govern within these parameters' and that
its future grant in aid should be 'partly dependent on reasonable performance
against key indicators' contained within this framework.
This assertion of increased control over arts funding agencies, stands in con-
trast to the dominant tendency of the period which involved the retreat of the
state from other areas of national life in which it had previously played a domi-
nant role. Most significantly, perhaps, the Reaction period led, in New Zealand in
particular, to the deregulation, privatisation and commercialisation of public
broadcasting. The need for newly corporatised public television companies, in
particular, to capture market share introduced a new dimension into elite sport
which, from the time of the Los Angeles Olympics, increasingly acquired a market
value as a global electronic commodity. This not only transformed the character
and economy of sport, but also set the parameters for the most recent period of
cultural policy development.

The Incorporation Period (1990-1995)

By the 1990's, the period of Reaction had produced the elements of a new cultural
policy formation whose systematic articulation is now becoming evident. These in-
cluded Ministries of Culture more attuned, by virtue of their formal brief, to a
204 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

control rather than a policy function; a range of secondary cultural institutions in-
ternally divided by the competing discourses which are the legacy of the period of
Professionalisation; a market emphasis which undercuts traditional cultural authority;
and a powerful, privatised and commercially motivated telecommunications indus-
try, global in its reach and increasingly sophisticated in its technological capacities.
The political setting in which these resources are available for deployment is
dominated by 'an economic philosophy which encourages selfish social attitudes'
(Sinfleld 1989, 297) and is premised on structural disadvantage (Kelsey and
O'Brien 1995). The post-Fordist state pursues a 'two-nation' economic strategy op-
erating through a 'limited hegemony' which confers its benefits selectively.
A strategic difficulty for governments operating in this mode is to foster a sense
of national purpose and unity through normalising the sharp social differences
such economic strategies create. In the words of former British Home Secretary,
Douglas Hurd, there is a need to maintain
social cohesion alongside the creation of wealth through private enterprise: these are the
conditions of our future progress (Sinfield 1992; 296).

This equates with the New Zealand government's 'two broad strategic objectives'
which are 'to accelerate the [country's] rate of economic growth' while enhanc-
ing 'social cohesion in New Zealand' (Bolger 1994, 6).
In such circumstances, the nation's cultures represent a resource which can be
exploited to underpin 'national-popular hegemonic projects', the purpose of
which is to mobilise national pride and deliver rewards for the constraint which
economic policies impose. Strategies to exploit these resources are now, to a de-
gree, in private hands: commercial television operators and the business interests
on whose sponsorship high profile sporting and cultural presentations depend.
Television operators are becoming sponsorship dealmakers for the type of inter-
national sporting events which form the core of their broadcasts, conflating within
a single organisation the roles of 'major sponsor, chief initiator and manufac-
turer' of events (Atkinson 1995, 43). The role of the state has accordingly dimin-
ished to be associated principally with perfecting the human resources on which
such activities are based. In New Zealand, the links between these factors in na-
tional life have been made quite explicit:
New Zealand has yet to explore fully the possibility of sharing its unique culture with the
world . . . Only in one sphere have we truly excelled across the board and that is in sport.
Our sports men and women have established a reputation out of all proportion to our
size. However, there is much more that we can achieve . .. The performing arts provide
us with a unique opportunity to show the world the culture of excellence, which we are
developing, also expands [sic] to the performing arts . . . As our economic position im-
proves, we will invest more in providing an environment in which both our artists and
our sports people can perfect their talents, and exhibit them on an international stage.
(Bolger 1993; 33).

The trappings of cultural and sporting excellence and achievement are now dis-
played by the post-Fordist state as a guarantee of its egalitarian inclusiveness and
as an ideological sanction of the methodological individualism which underpins
its economic strategies. Sport and television have been crucial to this strategy:
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 205

A major theme of television's representation of sport is the need for hard work, dedica-
tion and sacrifice to win through to victory. The global star system produced by television
provides a set of evocative role models of the manifest rewards of this new, hardworking,
committed individualism (Whannel, 1992, 208).

Such representations evoke nationalism while proclaiming the merits of individu-

alism and, with the state as financial patron and conspicuous consumer, they con-
firm the status of such celebrations as culturally normative.
An additional effect of the televised presentation of sports spectaculars has
been to create and legitimise new forms of spectatorship. The 'spectacularisation
of the televisual image of sport1 (Whannel 1992:195) is also transferable to other
fields of culture: opera in the park, open air orchestral concerts, rock music.
Their status is linked intertextually (Tina Turner promotes Rugby League in
Australia; Pavarotti promotes the World Cup through opera repertoire which then
endorses the subsequent 'three tenors' concerts). A new kind of spectator
for large scale live events thus emerges who is perhaps typical of this period: the
'theatregoer' (McDermott Miller 1995) drawn from the
large well-educated middleclass with complex role structures that facilitate and reward
participation in multiple cultural traditions (DiMaggio 1992: 144).

Spectatorship at high profile events provides opportunities for the acquisition of a

new type of cultural capital: 'the self and its tastes become a project upon which
the middleclass consumer constantly works' (DiMaggio op cit, 144). The status of
attendance at an event, preferably in the privileged ambience of corporate boxes,
is confirmed by the television relay through which the event is mediated to an
international audience and the privilege of those attending is displayed and
confirmed. This process conflates notions of social position with 'expensive up-
market entertainment' (Sinfield 1989, 55) producing through electronic dissemi-
nation new universal benchmarks of cultural status.
At the same time, the celebration of national character associated with such spec-
tacle (one day cricket, ice hockey, the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, the new
Rugby Superleague, the America's Cup) allows the state scope for advancing other
agendas through capitalising on success: republicanism in the case of Australia; cul-
tural sovereignty in the case of Canada; tourism in the case of the United Kingdom;
and international market competitiveness in the case of New Zealand.
Cultural policy has therefore entered a phase in which it is increasingly
privatisedincorporated into the commercial worldor incorporated into wider
state agendas. In contrast to the earlier Professionalisation period, in which cultural
agendas were envisaged as setting parameters for economic development, cultural
policy now is being subsumed within wider domestic and international strategies.
'Culture' we are told in Australia's recent cultural policy statement is
so intricately .. . interwoven i n t o t h e fabric o f o u r life, s o sensitive . . . t o g o v e r n m e n t poli-
cies i n all areas, s o c r u c i a l . . . t o o u r national a n d personal sense o f identity ( D C A 1994, 2 ) .

that it now warrants full Cabinet recognition and new administrative arrange-
ments which will bring broadcasting and the arts together within a common
policy framework. Similar change has recently occurred in Canada and Britain.
206 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

It remains to be seen whether this new machinery of government will serve the
announced values of 'innovation, self-expression, heritage and participation'
(DCA 1994) or whether its primary purpose will be to harness culture more effec-
tively in the construction of 'one-nation, national-popular' cultural projects which
promote greater acceptance of the current hegemonic coalition as it pursues its
otherwise divisive 'two-nation' economic strategies. If British precedents are a
guide, it is this latter alternative which is more likely.
Britain's new Department of National Heritage operates less as a 'promoter or
protector of leisure' than as 'an element in the maintenance of hegemony':

The introduction of the Department has signified a shift from the traditional role of the
state promoting leisure interests, to a new role in which leisure is used to promote gov-
ernment interests. This can be seen in the early work of the department, with its empha-
sis on supporting national sports stars and teams, encouraging international sport to
Britain, implementing sports and cultural programmes for unemployed people, and pro-
viding, through the National Lottery, a last desperate chance for the deviant citizenry to
make amends while further implicating them into the politics, if not the economics of
the market (Ravenscroft, 1994, 131).

The spectacularisation of culture in a commercial context has its equivalents in a

personal setting. The current emphasis on spectacle at the macro level has, ac-
cording to Chaney (1993), its equivalent at the micro level. The practice of con-
suming symbolic goods as a means of marking personal identity, which was
consolidated during the Reaction period, recapitulates in a personal context the
emphasis on spectacle which now seems apparent at a national level. In effect, the
focus on 'the style of life constituted through symbolic action with mass-mediated
products' represents an invitation to the individual

to constitute identity and engage with symbolic complexity through their personal forms
of spectacular display (Chaney 1993, 36).

It is also arguable that the commitment among governments to cultural diversity is

another aspect of the celebration of the spectacular. Just as in colonial times the
legitimacy of the imperial state was proclaimed through the use of emblems of in-
digenous culture as its 'regalia' (Anderson 1991, 183), the post-Fordist state, may
well be using the 'exotic hybrid' (DCA 1994, 1) of cultural diversity as its legitimis-
ing emblem. New national museums and the 'museumizing imagination'
(Anderson 1991, 178) which attends government heritage programmes, are
directed towards the appropriation of this 'exotic hybrid' as an 'expression of
national unity and identity' (PDT 1985, 8). Thus, in New Zealand, we see unprece-
dented capital expenditure on the new Museum of New Zealand as a 'vigorous na-
tional symbol' (PDT 1985, 8); 'an expression of New Zealand as a distinctive
Pacific culture' (PDT 1985, 8); a twenty-first century nation in which cultural di-
versity is able to flourish' (PDT 1985, 7). Canada has an equivalent institution in
its new Canadian Museum of Civilisation ('a forum for dialogue between peoples
of different cultures' (MacDonald and Risford 1988, 1); Britain is similarly com-
mitted to a major new programme of support to heritage sites and institutions
funded by the proceeds of its new national lottery.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 207

In terms of cultural style, the prevailing approach to programming these muse-

ums also has a bias towards the spectacular: an 'experience-based' approach
(MacDonald and Risworth 1988, 14) which requires museums to
organise festivals, provide hosting services and retail goods, furnish conversational chan-
nels between interacting groups [and] engage visitors' senses and emotions (MacDonald
and Risworth 1988,12,15).

Will these approaches genuinely 'build a solid foundation for world peace based
on mutual appreciation? (MacDonald and Risworth 1988, 14). Will the concur-
rent promotion of cultural diversity genuinely result in the achievement of
a heterogeneous national culture, its make-up reflecting the diversity of achievement is-
suing from contemporary society? (Jantjes, 1990, 82)

Is it likely that current approaches will construct 'from these diverse autonomies a
new superstructure for cultural practice? (Jantjes 1990, 82). Or will they instead
result in a commercially and electronically mediated collage of the carnivalesque?
However these questions are resolved, one thing remains clear. In the mid
1990s, decisions over the character and development of public culture no longer
rest authoritatively in the hands of public policymakers. Much of our cultural expe-
rience is now mediated through the marketplace and through commercial trans-
national telecommunications companies to which the state is an accessory. And in
the field of the arts and heritage, the state's glamourisation of cultural diversity has
displaced its historic connection with a single overriding 'official culture' sustained
by a unitary narrative; we now live 'at the intersection of many different narratives'
(O'Conner and Wynne, 1991, 476) where the state plays the role of indulgent host:

The use by the State of 'high culture' is in decline. The communal participation in a
shared (High) national culture is replaced by the injunction to 'party' (O'Conner and
Wynne, 1991,478).

Public cultural policy has been subsumed within a national-popular project of

' spectacularisation'.

CONCLUSION

The primary contention of this paper is that the state, in parallel with its eco-
nomic strategy, maintains an accumulation strategy for cultural capital which re-
wards those groups in society whose support is required for its political survival.
Over the fifty years since the conclusion of World War II, the patterns of cultural
provision evident in Britain and its former dominionsCanada, Australia and
New Zealandsuggest that the educated middle classes, have been the primary
beneficiaries of the state's cultural policies.
The policy justifications which have sustained the state's strategies for the accu-
mulation of cultural capital have differed over time. In the postwar era of
Keynesian welfarism, policies of cultural universalism concealed a 'two-nation
208 MICHAEL VOLKERLING

strategy* which had the effect of subsidising the middle classes to acquire tastes
and habits which consolidated their differentiation from other groups in society.
Under the post-Fordist state, cultural policy has been applied to two ends: nor-
malising cultural diversity and providing occasions for expressions of national
unity through spectacular events whose appeal transcends the deep social divi-
sions engendered by 'two-nation' economic policies. Again, the beneficiaries of
these policies are the business and professional interests whose support is essen-
tial to the maintenance of political power. Unlike the beneficiaries of the Fordist
cultural policy, however, their tastes and interests have moved beyond the 'high
arts'. The economic privileges enjoyed by the new middle classes allow them ac-
cess to a wide range of commercial leisure products and services. Consumption
of these commercial leisure and products and services is as much a source of so-
cial distinction as the 'high arts'; and television now provides the medium
through which these consumption choices can be universalised to the population
as a whole.
The maintenance of this 'mixed economy of leisure' seems likely to remain the
primary objective of cultural policy for the foreseeable future in the countries
under study. If the theoretical framework I have offered has any validity, it sug-
gests that before any 'new vision' of cultural policy 'can command widespread in-
tellectual and political support' (Bennett, 1995: 215) fundamental change will be
required to the political economies of these states to fashion a hegemonic coali-
tion with substantially different cultural policy needs.

NOTES

1. The UNESCO series of cultural policy monographs which appeared throughout the 1970s and
early 1980s offer ample evidence of this diversity. See the series Studies and Documents on Cultural
Policies UNESCO 1970 ff.
2. The Nordic countries are frequently cited as similarly comparable in their approach to cultural
policy development. See, for example, Cummings and Katz (1987).
3. The war years impacted variously on the development of cultural policy in these countries.
Specific cultural institutions were formed. These included such organisations as Canada's National
Film Board and New Zealand's National Film Unit, originally established for wartime propaganda
purposes, but which subsequently took on broader cultural roles. In Britain, CEMA, which was su-
perseded by the Arts Council in 1946, was established initially to contribute through the arts to the
maintenance of national morale. Postwar immigration and the more cosmopolitan experiences of
Commonwealth soldiers during the war years were also important factors:

The expansion of the cultural infrastructure in New Zealand . . . was also a result of new
cultural influences . . . brought by European refugees, American troops stationed in New
Zealand during the war, and the return of New Zealand's own soldiers from overseas
(Barrowman 1991, 226).

Wider social influences were also at work:

throughout Canada, much of the population had endured over fifteen years of involun-
tary restriction. The Depression of the 1930s, followed by the war years, had left people
hungry for a better life in every way. The Report of a Royal Commission [the Massey
Report] in 1951 described a great yearning for cultural life (Thomson 1988, 35).
 DECONSTRUCTING THE DIFFERENCE-ENGINE 209

In Britain and elsewhere, state intervention seemed the best means of achieving this enhanced
'cultural life':
The war exemplified . . . a pattern of state intervention and popular co-operation to or-
ganise production for a common purpose. And its successful conclusion afforded a rare
opportunity to recast . . . society. (Sinfield, 1989, 1).
4. This point is developed in more detail in my paper "He who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune" pre-
sented at the conference TheArts: Politics, Power and the Purse, London, 4-6 March 1987.
5. Perhaps community arts movements would be a more accurate term, since the motivations and interests
of those who acknowledged allegiance to the concept of community arts differed widely both within
and between countries. As the former General Manager of the Australia Council wrote in 1980:

It should be noted that the term 'community arts' means something different in Britain
from Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In these and other countries, com-
munity or expansion arts are concerned with stirring the grass roots, so that arts council
funds go to nourish that growth, usually by applying professional skills in some way to
help improve the quality and vigour of amateur activity. In most of these countries com-
munity arts comprise workshops, festivals, artists in residence, community arts officers
paid to work in local government, visiting tutors, animateurs, competitions, and co-
operatives. They are mainly rather conventional programmes involving strong amateur
participation. From time to time, however, they spawn those wild aspirations which are
the life blood of the arts. In Britain, in addition to programmes of this type, some com-
munity artists see their work as the spearhead of the cultural democracy attack, a some-
what politicised movement with a strong and trenchant intellectual thrust or with
unjustifiable intellectual pretensions according to your point of view. The cultural de-
mocrats (sic) aim is to undermine what they see as insidious attempts by the instrument
of a state establishment (the Arts Council) to impose an alien culture on the working
class, thereby indulging in cultural colonialism or cultural imperialism. (Jean Battersby,
1980, TheArts Council Phenomenon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: London, p41)

6. 'Pay to play' is a term used to describe recently recorded trends in recreation service consumption
particularly among young adults. It refers to the 'growing trend, particularly in respect of informal
sports involvement, towards paying to sample novel activities on a short-term basis in contrast to
long-term commitment to a particular club or code' (McDermott Miller, 1995).
7. The trend towards the conspicuous consumption of spectacular attractions has been termed
'theatregoing' by leisure researchers. It refers to the large middleclass audience who prefer to
'attend high profile and spectacular events;
patronise a changing range of recreation and leisure attractions;
have many entertainment choices;
are not prepared to "rough it";
make heavy use of ancillary facilities at recreation venuesbars, food concessions etc'
(McDermott Miller 1995).
These leisure consumption habits equate with DiMaggio's (1991, 145) characterisation of middle-
class cultural audiences as exhibiting 'stratification without segmentation'.

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