Be C-lobal
Epistemological turn for Cultural Policy
Be C-lobal
- An Epistemological turn for Cultural Policy in the Age of New Normals
by Dr. Hae-Bo Kim (sea@sfac.or.kr)
Adjunct Professor at Department of Urban Sociology, University of Seoul
Advising Director of Policy & Strategy Division, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
[Contents]
0. Summary & Introduction
1. Context
(1) Changed life : Neo-Globalization
1-1) Above the Border: The New Cold War and De-globalization
1-2) Online: Hyper-Globalization and Hyper-locality
(2) Changing Culture : New Normals by COVID-19 & AI
2-1) The Corona New Normal: Age of Hyper-Locality
2-2) The AI New Normal: Culture as Algorithm
2-3) Changing Culture : The Age of "My Culture“
(3) Change in Need for Policy : Crisis of Contemporaneity
3-1) The Great Success of the Korean Wave and the Failure of Korean Cultural Policy
3-2) Growing gap between individuality and universality
3-3) The courage it takes to be contemporary
2. The very Cultural Failures
(1) De-centralization as a Paradox : Unattainable Local Autonomy under the Institutionalization of Culture by the State
(2) Arm’s-Length on the Tightly-knit network : The Illusion of Autonomy or Independence of Actors on the Hyper-connected network
(3) World-famous Culture Cities : Boom and Race to Blandness
3. Be C-lobal
(1) New Interpretation of Global and Local
1-1) Limit of existing locality studies
1-2) Universal and Individual
1-3) Limit of G-local
(2) C-lobal = {Close, Cultural, Contextual} × {Global}
(3) Cases of practice
(4) C-lobalization = an Epistemological Turn for Cultural Policy
4. Turns to Take
(1) from De-centralization to De-de-centralization without the center-orientation
(2) from System to Actors via De-institutionalization
(3) from Rationality to Emotion through Empathy Administration
(4) from Arm’s length to Arms' length Principle for Subjectivity of Local Actors
(5) from Universal Principle to Diverse Local cases through Middle-range theory and Social-Turn of Cultural Policy
(6) from Budget-cutting Efficiency to Touch-added Effectiveness through How-the-Many Approach
5. Time to Prepare for the Age of Culture co-created by AI
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0. Summary & Introduction
This article stems from the recognition that cultural policy cannot continue within the existing framework in the era where people's lives and way of thinking have been changed. Based on the observations of recent cultural changes, this article proposes “C-lobalization” as a new perspective necessary for cultural policy in the age of Post-corona and Culture as Algorithm, instead of failing globalization or g-localization approach.
As a result of the rapid digital transformation that has taken place during the corona pandemic, we are living in an era of "hyper-locality." We are now super-globalized through the internet and simultaneously passionate about local value. In the era of "Culture as Algorithm", people are living in fragmented worlds of "My Culture", where AI makes hyper-personalized recommendations and responds to "My Taste". But cultural administration still remains trapped within failing frameworks and perceptions to achieve contemporaneity. The gap between the universality pursued by the rational public administration and the diverse individuality desired by citizens' sensibilities continues to widen. It becomes increasingly difficult for public administration, driven and supported by universal justifications such as numbers for the empirical evidence and efficiency of policy, to respond to the desire for personalized services already offered by AI that citizens have become accustomed to. Rather than to point out the "Market failure" in dealing with the "Global public good of culture," it is necessary to understand the "Government's failure" in addressing the individual human aspects, including emotions. Unfortunately, the failures of cultural policies that pursued the ideal values such as "cultural De-centralization," "Arm’s length principle," and the "Cultural city" are often obscured without proper introspection, overshadowed by the presentation of new concepts or slogans. While there is an interpretation that the unexpected success of the Hallyu(Korean Wave) happened without government intervention, but the movement to interpret it as a result of government policies and actively intervene in the future is worrisome.
The concept of "De-globalization" is gaining momentum in the midst of an international conflicts that seems to be returning to the Cold War. At the same time, we are living our daily lives in an online platform that has become hyper-globalized as a result of digital transformation. The current "De-Globalization" is a phenomenon that encompass both "Anti-Globalization" of offline world that opposes the globalization created by 20th-century industrial capitalism and the "Hyper-Globalization" that the 21st-century digital economy is expanding in the online world. In the midst of this, there is a shift in the perception of so-called "global" things that have been perceived as universal principles and "local" things that have been perceived as subordinate to them. Cultural policy has been mainly conducted from the viewpoint of global to the local, whether it is a top-down policy implementation based on the strong leadership of the central government, or a good intention to envision the values of culture in people’s lives. Even though it claims to be diverse and de-centralized, it is actually coming down from the global universal to the local individual. The failure of thiese the Globalization and G-localization policy frameworks needs to be critically understood in the context of today’s epistemological shift in the relationship between the global and the local.
In this article, I analyze why Korea's regional culture promotion policy, which has been carried out since the 2000s with decentralization as its core policy framework, has failed to achieve the targeted value in practice from the perspective of epistemological limits. This article proposes an shift in world-view to understand not only the problems facing cultural policy, but also the new normal world that has been disrupted by Corona and AI technologies. To do so, I reinterpret the concept of "global and local" in terms of "universality and individuality" and propose a new concept of "C-lobal = {close, cultural, contextual} × {global}" to describe the non-hierarchical, interconnected, and resonant relationship between the two. As we prepare for an era of culture co-created by humans and AI, I propose the "C-lobalization" of cultural policy. To this end, I suggest six practical shifts as follow;
(1) from De-centralization to De-de-centralization without the center-orientation
(2) from System to Actors via De-institutionalization
(3) from Rationality to Emotion through Empathy Administration
(4) from Arm’s length to Arms' length Principle for Subjectivity of Local Actors
(5) from Universal Principle to Diverse Local cases through Middle-range theory and Social-Turn of Cultural Policy
(6) from Budget-cutting Efficiency to Touch-added Effectiveness through How-the-Many Approach
