Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Theories of value
- 3 Cultural capital and sustainability
- 4 Culture in economic development
- 5 Economic aspects of cultural heritage
- 6 The economics of creativity
- 7 Cultural industries
- 8 Cultural policy
- 9 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
2 - Theories of value
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Theories of value
- 3 Cultural capital and sustainability
- 4 Culture in economic development
- 5 Economic aspects of cultural heritage
- 6 The economics of creativity
- 7 Cultural industries
- 8 Cultural policy
- 9 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Yvan: Of course it's logical, you ask me to guess the price, you know very well the price depends on how fashionable the painter might be …
Marc: I'm not asking you to apply a whole set of critical standards, I'm not asking you for a professional valuation, I'm asking you what you, Yvan, would give for a white painting tarted up with a few off-white stripes.
Yvan: Bugger all.
(Yasmina Reza, Art, 1994)Introduction: why value?
In a fundamental sense the notion of ‘value’ is the origin and motivation of all economic behaviour. At the same time, but from a very different perspective, ideas of value permeate the sphere of culture. In the economic domain, value has to do with utility, price and the worth that individuals or markets assign to commodities. In the case of culture, value subsists in certain properties of cultural phenomena, expressible either in specific terms, such as the tone value of a musical note or the value of a colour in a painting, or in general terms as an indication of the merit or worth of a work, an object, an experience or some other cultural thing. Of course both economics and culture, as areas of human thought and action, are concerned with values in the plural – i.e. the beliefs and moral principles which provide the framework for our thinking and being.
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- Information
- Economics and Culture , pp. 19 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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