«The Expediency of Culture is a pioneering
theorization of the changing role of culture in an increasingly globalized
world. George Yúdice explores critically how groups ranging from indigenous
activists to nation-states to nongovernmental organizations have all come to
see culture as a valuable resource to be invested in, contested, and used for
varied sociopolitical and economic ends. Through a dazzling series of
illustrative studies, Yúdice challenges the Gramscian notion of cultural
struggle for hegemony and instead develops an understanding of culture where
cultural agency at every level is negotiated within globalized contexts
dominated by the active management and administration of culture. He describes
a world where “high” culture (such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain)
is a mode of urban development, rituals and everyday aesthetic practices are
mobilized to promote tourism and the heritage industries, and mass culture
industries comprise significant portions of a number of countries’ gross
national products.
Yúdice contends that a new
international division of cultural labor has emerged, combining local
difference with transnational administration and investment. This does not mean
that today’s increasingly transnational culture—exemplified by the
entertainment industries and the so-called global civil society of
nongovernmental organizations—is necessarily homogenized. He demonstrates that
national and regional differences are still functional, shaping the meaning of
phenomena from pop songs to antiracist activism. Yúdice considers a range of
sites where identity politics and cultural agency are negotiated in the face of
powerful transnational forces. He analyzes appropriations of American funk
music as well as a citizen action initiative in Rio de Janeiro to show how
global notions such as cultural difference are deployed within specific social
fields. He provides a political and cultural economy of a vast and increasingly
influential art event— insite a triennial festival extending from San
Diego to Tijuana.(...)».Continue a ler.
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