2004 - 2005 Cultural Policy Workshops

Spring Quarter 2005

• Friday, May 20, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140C, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Norman M. Bradburn, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Harris School of Public Policy Studies; Vice President for Research, National Opinion Research Center (NORC)

Topic: “What About the Humanities…? Creating the Humanities Indicators Project"

Over the last several decades, the relevance and importance “the humanities” has increasingly been called into question—as recently as this week, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that, “Humanities Scholars Continue Their Debate Over Whether Anyone Is Listening to Them.” Have the humanities become so marginalized that they no longer serve a purpose in peoples’ lives? How does an education in the humanities—the disciplines of literature and language, philosophy, religion, art history, cinema, linguistics, and history—contribute to an individual’s career or well-being? Do people even know what the humanities are? While competing answers to these and related questions often vie for space in newspapers and magazines, no thorough study of the humanities has been conducted. This final Cultural Policy Workshop for the 2004-2005 year will begin to address these questions in a systematic way when it introduces the National Opinion Research Center’s “Humanities Indicators Project.”

“The Humanities Indicators Project” is an American Academy of Arts and Sciences effort to establish a framework for the compilation, analysis, and publication of comprehensive trend data about the humanities. The humanities indicators will equip researchers and policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, and other public humanities institutions with better statistical tools for answering basic questions about undergraduate and graduate degrees in the humanities, employment of humanities graduates, levels of program funding, public understanding of the humanities, and other areas of concern within and without the humanities community.

The goal of the “Indicators Project” is to provide parallel information to that provided by the Science and Engineering Indicators produced biennially by the National Science Foundation under the auspices of the National Science Board. Although the National Endowment for the Humanities has had authorization since 1985 to support production of similar data and indicators for the humanities, the agency’s leadership has not felt financially able to launch such an undertaking, and the Congress has not appropriated specified funding for such an effort. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997 began exploring the project in an effort to provide models of content and to study the feasibility of an on-going Humanities Indicators publication.

This workshop will report on the current state of thinking about the project and explore with participants what should constitute such a set of indicators.

This event will appeal to faculty and students who work in humanities disciplines, staff of arts & humanities non-profits, and anyone interested in the current state of humanistic inquiry or liberal education.

About Norman Bradburn and NORC:

Norman Bradburn is Tiffany and Margaret Black Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Harris School of Public Policy, the Department of Psychology, the Graduate School of Business, and the College. He is the senior vice-president for research at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), where he has also been both director and president of its Board of Trustees. He has formerly served as provost of the University, chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences, and associate dean of the Division of the Social Sciences. In March Bradburn was appointed Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation for the social, behavioral, and economic sciences directorate. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.

Trained as a social psychologist, Bradburn’s research has focused on psychological well-being and assessing the quality of life, particularly through the use of large-scale sample surveys; non-sampling errors in sample surveys; and research on cognitive processes in response to sample surveys. His books include Thinking About the Answers: The Application of Cognitive Processes to Survey Methodology; Polls and Surveys: Understanding What They Tell Us; Asking Questions: A Practical Guide to Questionnaire Construction, and Improving Interviewing Method and Questionnaire Design.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) is a national organization for research at the University of Chicago, with offices on the University’s campus, in Chicago’s downtown Loop, and in Washington DC, as well as a nationwide field staff. NORC’s clients include government agencies, educational institutions, foundations, other nonprofit organizations, and private corporations. Although its national studies are its best known, NORC’s projects--which include complex survey and other data collection strategies as well as sophisticated empirical analyses--range across local, regional, and international perspectives as well. NORC’s project work is done in an interdisciplinary framework, with strong staff cooperation across substantive areas.

Please rsvp by Thursday, May 20. For information or to rsvp, please contact Michael Washburn at washburn@uchicago.edu or 773.702.4407.

• Friday, May 6, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140A, The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue

Presenter: Richard E. Caves, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, Harvard University

Topic: “Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting"

Download a selection from: “Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting”

After a career of innovative work in international economics and industrial organization, economist Richard Caves’ recent research has focused on the organization of the arts and entertainment industries. This workshop will highlight work from Richard Caves’ forthcoming book, Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting. Extending the analysis presented in his acclaimed Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce, which uses the tools of industrial economics and the theory of contracts to explain why creative industries and the deals struck within them take the forms that they do, Switching Channels provides a deft analysis of the current state of television broadcasting. This work, which addresses how fundamental properties of creative industries “affect the organization and economic performance of TV production and distribution,” goes beyond much previous economic research on broadcasting in two ways. First, the majority of the previous research is dated. Second, and more importantly, Caves’ work approaches this subject through questions about the behavior and organization of the broadcasting sector, not from a public-policy orientation. While this may at first seem odd considering current debates about television programming, Caves argues that for public-policy approaches to broadcasting to be fruitful, one must first understand the organizational and economic dynamics of television

This presentation should appeal to anyone who is interested in industrial organization, broadcasting, or the ways in which economic analysis can help explain the organization of creative activities.

This workshop/presentation should appeal to anyone who is interested in regional economic planning and development.

About Richard E. Caves: Richard E. Caves is Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He taught at Harvard from 1962 to 2003, having previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has been mainly in the fields of international economics and industrial organization, but in recent years he has focused on the organization of the arts and entertainment industries.

In addition to his teaching and research, Caves has served as deputy to the Special Assistant to the President on foreign trade policy, has been a member on of a White House Task Force on Foreign Economic Policy, and has been a consultant on international monetary problems for the Council of Economic Advisors.

Please rsvp by Thursday, May 5. For information or to rsvp, please contact Michael Washburn at washburn@uchicago.edu or 773.702.4407.

• Friday, April 22, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Ann Markusen, Fesler-Lambert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs and Director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

Topic: “The Artistic Dividend: The Arts’ Hidden Contributions to Regional Development"

Download the papers: “The Artistic Dividend: The Arts’ Hidden Contributions to Regional Development” and “The Artistic Dividend Revisited.”

Markusen is a significant contributor to the developing field of research on arts and regional economy. While other services, finance, and industry are often seen as the core indicators of economic health, the arts and artists, a few “stars” excepted, have to this point been seen solely as consequences of economic success. Markusen argues that this is a distorted view of the structure of regional economies: rather than relying on the robust economic development of their regions, she claims that the arts, whether through the contribution of foundation support, tourist dollars, or the artists themselves, often provide essential, under appreciated contributions to the economic sustainability of regional economies. For her Cultural Policy presentation, Markusen will go beyond her previously published essays, “The Artistic Dividend” and “The Artistic Dividend Revisited,” to discuss new data and findings that relate specifically to Chicago’s arts community.

Markusen has a history in Chicago policy. Markusen spent five years in Chicago in the mid-1980s, first as Research Director for Mayor Harold Washington's Task Force on Steel and Southeast Chicago and later as Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, where she was also a senior fellow at the university's Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research and taught the MBA Economic Development course in the Kellogg School of Management. An expert on the midwestern industrial economy, she was a frequent participant on John Callaway's Chicago Tonight Show's Economics Roundtable and wrote a 1999 cover story for the Chicago Reader on "The Great Chicago Slump."

This workshop/presentation should appeal to anyone who is interested in regional economic planning and development. Robert J. LaLonde, Professor, The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, will serve as a respondent, and discuss the use of existing data sources (BLS and Census) in interpreting regional economic development.

About Ann Markusen: Ann Markusen is Fesler-Lambert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs and Director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Currently, her research focuses on occupational approaches to regional development and on the arts, high tech and defense activities as regional economic stimulants. Before joining the Humphrey Institute, Markusen was State of New Jersey Professor of Urban Planning and Policy Development at Rutgers University. She has held faculty positions at Northwestern, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado. She holds doctorate and master of arts degrees in economics from Michigan State University and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

RSVP requested by Thursday, April 21. Refreshments provided by Cultural Policy Center. The Harris School is located at 1155 East 60th Street. For information contact Stefanie White at srwhite@uchicago.edu or 773/702.4407

Autumn Quarter 2004

• Friday, November 12, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Michael J. Green, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, and Rachel Barney, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto.

Topic: “Intrinsically Scarce Goods.”

Download the paper: "Intrinsically Scarce Goods"

In this article, Barney and Green are concerned with a class of goods that are both scarce and valued for experiences that depend on their authenticity and unmediated access to them. Such goods include prehistoric cave paintings, spectacular natural sites, and several of the arts. Because these goods are scarce, access to them must be restricted if they are to survive. After characterizing the goods we have in mind, this essay proposes a scheme for distributing access to them. Finally, the authors suggest that the lessons learned from considering these goods and their distribution can be applied to other kinds of goods.

ABOUT MICHAEL GREEN: Michael Green is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Human Rights Program. He received his A.B. from the University of Michigan (1989) and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1997). He held lectureships at McGill (1996-97) and Stanford (1997-99) Universities and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1999. He received the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2004. Green works primarily in the areas of ethics and political philosophy. He has published and delivered papers on justice, nationalism, Thomas Hobbes, and David Hume’s theory of personal identity.

ABOUT RACHEL BARNEY: Rachel Barney is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto, where she is also appointed in the Philosophy Department. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University (1996) and her B.A. form the University of Toronto (1989). She has also held the Canada Research Chair in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her current research interests include Plato’s Gorgias, Platonic ethics and moral psychology, and the sophistic movement. She has published in “Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy” and “Phronesis,” among other places.

• Friday, October 29, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: David Grazian, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Topic: "The Production of Popular Music as a Confidence Game: The Case of the Chicago Blues"

Download David Grazian's paper: "The Production of Popular Music as a Confidence Game: The Case of the Chicago Blues"

In this article, Grazian argues that the production of live music shares many formal properties with that of confidence games: specifically, (1) a set of structural relationships in which operators, ropers, insiders, accomplices and marks are enmeshed, (2) the deployment of carefully planned strategies of deception, and (3) a pattern of success owed in part to the moral and financial motivations of insiders, the willingness of the state to assist in the enterprise, and the desire among victims to be swayed by the production. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in some of Chicago’s most popular blues clubs, Grazian examines these three components of live music production qua confidence game. He also briefly discusses how one group of participants—local blues musicians—reacts to their own performances as musicians/confidence artists. Finally, the paper concludes by exploring the broader implications this case suggests regarding other types of live music production.

ABOUT DAVID GRAZIAN: David Grazian is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2000. His research and teaching interests include the study of mass media and popular culture, urban sociology, symbolic interaction, and ethnographic methods. His current research examines the production and consumption of urban nightlife in Philadelphia.

Winter Quarter 2005

• Friday, February 25, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Donald Sassoon, Professor of Contemporary European History and Leverhulme Major Research Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London

Topic: “The Globalization of Cultural Markets"

Download the paper: "On Cultural Markets"

Why do some cultures excel in the production of opera? Literature? Why do some nations import twice as many films as their neighbors? How does a “national culture” become the dominant producer of cultural products in our interconnected, globalized world? With these questions serving as a backdrop, Donald Sassoon begins to unravel the mysteries of the business of culture, explaining, through a ride-ranging comparative investigation, the evolution of cultural markets.

Sassoon debunks the perceived attitude that the culture industry is a unified, 20th-century branch of production. He contends that older, more variegated patterns of development, including economic, education, industrial, and technology advances, relate to international relations of cultural dominance. Sassoon weaves a narrative history of cultural hegemony, market assumptions, profit motives, and commodities, from the early 19th century operas of Verdi and Hugo’s Les Miserables, to 21st century Japanese animation and the action movies.

Sassoon’s presentation should appeal to anyone who is interested in the dynamics of global cultural exchange, cultural hegemony, or the influences of international interdependence on the development of national cultures.

About Donald Sassoon: Donald Sassoon is Professor of Contemporary European History and Leverhulme Major Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. A native of Cairo, Egypt, Sassoon was educated in France, Italy, London, and the United States. His primary publications include One Hundred of Socialism. The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, HarperCollins, the New Press, translated into Italian, Greek, Swedish, and Spanish; Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, Harper Collins, Published in the USA by HarcourtBrace as Becoming Mona Lisa; The Making of a Global Icon, November 2001, and translated for publication in Italy, Korea, Poland, Taiwan, Brazil, and China, and to be published in the Czech Republic and Sweden.

An essay related to Donald Sassoon’s talk is available on the Cultural Policy Center website: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu.

RSVP requested by Thursday, February 24. Please RSVP by responding to this email. Refreshments provided by Cultural Policy Center. The Harris School is located at 1155 East 60th Street. For information contact Stefanie White at srwhite@uchicago.edu or 773/702.4407.

• Friday, February 11, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Harrison C. White, Giddings Professor of Sociology, Columbia Univeristy.

Topic: “Markets and Identities: Modeling Fine Arts and Valentines."

Download the paper: "Inventory Of Dynamics In Art Markets"

Viewed by many as the most creative mind at work in the field of Sociology today, Harrison White returns to the University of Chicago to present a refinement of an argument offered in his influential “Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production” (2002).  Recently reissued in paperback, “Markets from Networks” argues against overly theoretical accounts of market interaction favored by economists for a more empirical explanation of economic processes.  White maintains that producers create market niches that increase profit and eliminate competition.  Producers carve out these niches by anticipating supply and demand rather than responding to it.  These anticipatory actions are based on producers’ perceptions of their competitors’ identities: to remain competitive, each producer must make itself appear similar to its competitors while retaining sufficient distinction to fulfill its own unique niche. 

In this new working paper, created specifically for the Cultural Policy Center workshop series, White advances key insights from “Markets for Networks,” with new modeling that is tighter and more transparent to show how fine arts markets can be constituted using social mechanisms that escape traditional network limitations.  For instance, according to White, dealers, gallery owners, and other operators in the art scene often serve as “mobilizers,” affecting perceptions of value in ways often more significant than supply and demand.

“Professor White’s creativity has been a beacon to his discipline. He has invented methods, concepts, indeed whole forms of analysis, with restless energy. His most recent work finds him revisiting his analyses of markets while simultaneously advancing into linguistics and other forms of cultural analysis. In his wake has come an extraordinary generation of students and colleagues, following but never catching their even more extraordinary master. Professor White is indeed an ornament to scholarly life in the social sciences.  His studies of the arts have demonstrated the intimate connection of art markets with art styles and career patterns. His theoretical concept of structural equivalence completely recast the concept of social networks then current in the literature, sending the analysis of such networks in fundamentally new directions and, indeed, founding the modern field of network analysis.”—Andrew Abbott, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology and the College, University of Chicago.

White’s workshop should appeal to anyone who has benefited White’s contribution to sociology, those conversant in economic or sociological theories of exchange, students of arts markets, and anyone interested in mechanisms that regulate market forces.

About Harrison White:  Harrison White is Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.  A member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and National Academy of Sciences, he has served on the faculties of Harvard, the University of Edinburgh, and The University of Chicago. His publications include Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts and Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action.  He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. 

• Friday, January 28, 12-1:30 pm, Room 140c, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Damon J. Phillips, Associate Professor of Organization and Strategy, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Topic: “Incumbents, Innovation, and Competence: the Emergence of Recorded Jazz, 1920-1929."

Download the paper: "Incumbents, Innovation, and Competence:the Emergence of Recorded Jazz, 1920-1929."

In this engaging study, Phillips examines recorded jazz as a musical innovation of the early twentieth century. Similar to traditional research on radical innovations, the dominant incumbent record companies exhibited hesitance and less competence in offering jazz in its most radical form. In contrast to the traditional depiction, these same incumbent firms were first movers in recording an illegitimate (but profitable) form of jazz. However, they responded to elite pressure against jazz by inserting symphonic elements (recording "orchestras" and white musicians) into the more original, but illegitimate form. We draw upon research on cultural industries to understand this and examine the competence in recording jazz by the dominant incumbents. Using data on Midwest jazz recordings, Phillips’ findings suggest diminished competence when they did record nonwhite jazz musicians. At the same time, these firms recorded jazz "orchestras," with greater competence. These outcomes are important in understanding the relationship between production competence and innovation in cultural markets.

ABOUT DAMON J. PHILLIPS: Damon J. Phillips is Associate Professor of Organization and Strategy at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Phillips research interests include social network analysis, organizational strategy, and social structural approaches to cultural markets. He has published numerous articles in such publications as The American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Organization Science. Phillips holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior and an AM in Sociology, both from Stanford University. In addition to his work at the GSB, Phillips is an accomplished saxophone player and a jazz aficionado.

• Friday, January 14, 12-1:30 pm, Woodlawn Room, Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Presenter: Thomas Smith, Clinical Assistant Professor of Economics and the Assistant Director for the Center of Economic Education, University of Illinois at Chicago .

Topic: “Swing for Your Supper: The Earnings of Jazz'ers and Other Musicians"

Download the paper: "Swing for Your Supper: The Earnings of Jazz'ers and Other Musicians"

In this study, Smith uses two new datasets to examine the earnings of musicians, specifically jazz musicians, the Study of Jazz Artists 2001: American Federation of Musician Survey and the Study of Jazz Artists 2001: Respondent Driven Survey.  This study tests the human capital earnings function (HCEF) on the earnings of musicians from both jazz and non-jazz performances.  The results suggest that human capital investments play significant, but different roles, in the earnings from jazz music and non-jazz music.  Years of schooling and years of playing music are positively correlated with the earnings from non-jazz musical styles.  With respect to earnings from jazz music, however, years of schooling has a negative impact while the point estimates for years of music experience nearly double.

ABOUT THOMAS SMITH: Thomas Smith is Clinical Assistant Professor of Economics and the Assistant Director for the Center of Economic Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1998). His research has been focused in several areas, including the occupational mobility of immigrants, the economics of nonprofit arts organizations, and the economics of philanthropy.  He has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for research projects on nonprofit industry—specifically nonprofit dance companies and nonprofit theater companies.  When not researching the economics of performing arts, Smith plays electric and upright bass with various jazz and pop groups in and around Chicago.  He has performed with award-winning cabaret singer Mary Monica Thomas and recorded bass with platinum-selling rap group Naughty by Nature.