So far I have already proclaimed an idea about the conservation of the resource like time and attention, I will follow my own instruction and will be rather brief. I am going to speak not about the book but about one cannot read there. I am going to dwell on two aspects.
The first point. Imperceptibly the conditions have matured and symbol systems start circulating in the economic domain. The same things happened when previously free good (for instance, pure water or fresh air) due to the certain circumstances turn out to be limited, exhausted comfort. At the same time it gets the value, which wasn’t perceived before, and since that very moment the good should be managed rationally. In fact, it is an economic task: to allocate the resources due to the selected objectives in optimum way. It is common knowledge that aims of culture are not determined and its’ resources are far from being estimated. Nevertheless, I am absolutely convinced that everything is ready for the management process. That is why my book is called “Economics of Symbolic Exchange”.
When we talk about the symbol systems we inevitably face the question, what are the resources in fact? On the one hand these are words, symbols and signs. For centuries they have been appearing, multiplying and reproducing and by the present time the semioshere is so tightly filled in that it is more and more complicated to give a title to anything, for example, to a web-site without being close on the heels, without getting under the copyright law, trade marks, etc. All that is turning into the serious problem. For instance, I have to buy the signs from cyber-squatters – here is the real economics.
On the other hand, the markets, which are drawing the attention, in particular, the markets of culture rapidly develop their proposal, but finally turn on shortage of attention and limits of human, personal resources. Even such traditionally measurable resource like free time is limited as well as the newly operated resource like attention, memory, emotional and cognitive resources. It might seem that it is untimely to talk about the estimation of these resources. However, please, look around! The markets of advertising have already learned how to measure attention quite exactly. The whole range of industries would not survive without it. It is well-known how much a free minute of any social strata costs, how much it costs at the particular time of the day, etc.
That knowledge belongs not only to TV but also to urban space, public transportation, when they put the video on monitor or on any other place. The better any sphere can assess the personal resources, the more money an advertiser is ready to invest in it. The fast success of Internet is tightly connected to the so-called targeting process, the person-oriented commercials, when an advertiser understands whose attention he is buying and to what extent.
Recently two great innovations made the revolution in the field of information technologies. First, there was the launch of Napster. Its founder was Sean Fanning, 18-years-old American student. He invented how to set up the unmediated connections between the people, which let us directly exchange the valuable information. Second invention was such Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo, Yandex and similar vehicles, without which the many people cannot imagine their live today. The significant fact: Google has got relatively low income (around one billion US dollars), but it is assessed far beyond cut-off – around one and half hundred billion dollars. For those who understand how stock markets operate, it is obvious that people are waiting for sharp increase of a demand for the navigation services, provided by the company.
Now I would like to talk about another topic, which has just been touched but not covered in details in my book. I am going to speak about the prospects to establish the state culture policy, using the new information technologies context. To my mind, the issue is rather appropriate within the walls of the Academy of Public Administration.
I dare think that namely the absence of culture factor a century ago prevented the great economists to put up the correct questions about the public well-being. The well-being was assessed in economic indicators: an income, a level of consumption, etc., understanding that figures did not reflect the social reality. But how other indicators could be defined? It is known that increase of economic well-being (for example, in Britain since the time of World War II it has been tripled) doesn’t bring the proportional increase of luck. Generally it doesn’t bring luck at all.
The sole economics is not enough for happiness. We need the culture part in order to manage it, and we need the quantity information on culture dynamics. The economists have never got an access to such information, they traditionally operate with the prices. Even in that field there is a lot to be done. Non-utilitarian economics gets more and more weight. Apparently the time to put on record the culture domain has come. There are all pre-conditions for that – technical means (first of all – Internet), which provided the high level of communication and registration.
If we make an attempt to manage the culture, then we should do it quite opposite to what have already been done. Speaking figuratively, the ray of information light reaches the micro-space of culture. As always the stumbling block is the question how to estimate the result in culture, what could be considered as a result, what indicators are relevant, what should be taken in account and what should not be. The actual task of present time is to elaborate the indicators for culture and to set up the feed-back between a producer and a consumer of culture product, it let us improve the management. The basic approach to indicators is the following: they should fall in as signals from culture consumers about the perceived quality of a book, a movie or a performance… Meeting with the work of art, the person makes the subjective evaluation on quality of spending time. In many cases (if not in majority) the relevant indicator of the culture institution activities is the capacity to draw the attention. With minor reservations, it is so. The more attention is drawn, the more distinct the audience preferences are, in particular for multiple consumed goods. It is obvious for all non-profit parts of culture – libraries, museums, archives, performing arts. A museum can arrange the record of attention easily, but a library needs it most of all. The library is going to be the first to fall in a severe competition with profitable on-line libraries, which provide the same basic service – the access to the written context. That’s why a library should revise its mission and “product portfolio”.
Museum situation is not so critical, but it cannot be delayed as well: being in great need of money, a museum is sitting on innumerable riches. Is it fair to be responsible for preservation and maintenance of culture “property”, estimated in billions or even in trillions and not to be able to receive even the thousandth of stored collection cost? Is it correct to be excellent premises for sponsors and advertisers and not to have means for the timely restoration of items and equipment of the depositories? Is it acceptable to pass through the myriad of visitors and not to capitalise their attention?
If the time quantity is recorded and forecasted, the financial agreements will flow like a river as they do to all concentrators of attention. Hence the interest will be multiply increased as well as the price of posters, banners, bronze nameplates “such item is restored by means of such-and-such company”, “the hall is supported by such-and-such company”. In museums it is worth studying the experience of urban commercials and TV with its tariff scale, ratings and prime-time, because everyone has its own “prime-time”: main points of expositions, works as hits, the places of pilgrimage… It is quite clear that for an advertiser the crisp statistics is much more important then any agitation. Museums need to have the clear tariffs, balanced with the prices on similar ads-holders (banners, Internet-clicks, etc). After all, the better consumer attention is recorded, the faster advertiser will come. Until a museum cannot represent the particular data, a sponsor can only guess, what this or that action will bring to him, how many and what kind of people will see his logo. That is why sponsors are not very active.
There are more than enough means to reveal visitors’ real interest. Among them there are the usual video cameras, IR sensors-counters, electronic cards, which let us track returns and the repeated looks, and the cards, fixing the time a person spends around one item (today every security service can do that). Until the necessary (and not expensive) electronics appear in museums, we can establish the accumulation of reports from the museum staff who work in the museum halls (the personnel are always aware). The separate group of indicators can be also formed from the explicit opinion of visitors. Apart of usual boring questionnaires we need to push people to inform us about their impressions. For example, you can arrange the “voting” near the items and at museum exit, you can give bonus for exchange of consumers reflection. It is even easier to accumulate and exchange the opinions via Internet (discussions, ratings, reviews, statuses, ranks and all sorts of interactivity).
Certainly, it is a fine skilled work. And it can not be done for free. The conundrum is that none is ready to pay money neither for management consulting nor for management in the non-profit culture. The “heads” don’t express enthusiasm, considering these ideas, and finally there is vicious circle: the first steps are not enough financed and designed, and the rest is going itself pell-mell.
In order to create and to check-out the key indicators system it is enough to know the product specification and methods. But, please, do not try to create something universal – one for all: the institutions of different types need to have the own system of indicators. Moreover, the small provincial library/club/museum can not be evaluated by the same criteria as their national-scale fellows. The universal indicator is capacity to draw attention. Technically everything is ready to set up the feed-back between culture institutions and their consumers. And the links between the efforts and the results could be represented to funding authorities. The point is availability of political gift and administrative readiness, including not so important but necessary result, expressed in money. Whatever you may say, the non-profit sphere is very tired of lack of money.
System of indicators in culture and management conundrums
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Mikhail Lermontov,
Deputy Chair of Expert Board for State Policy, the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications
As many sayings go, a contemporary human being consumes relatively small amount of foodstuff in comparison with the capacity of consumed impressions – they are the main part of human life. There is a term “economics of impressions”. Alexander Dolgin asks the fair question – what is a measure for impressions if there is such. Could money become the measure of impressions and therefore the measure of cultural product value? If yes, then the data could be used in the Ministry of Culture to elaborate the culture policy. Recently the Ministry of Culture in co-operation with our Expert Board completed the discussion and represented the strategy of information society development in Russia. That strategy is the first step for understanding the importance of symbolic exchange within the state policy. The problem of symbolic exchange measurement was not described in that document and there is no version how to put it into practice. In his book Alexander Dolgin, on the contrary, propose the technology of such measurements – its results could be used in the framework of administrative reform as criteria in order to define the budget funding.
In Russia culture gets only one percent of state budget! The main reason of such disastrous situation is underestimation of capitalisation of culture product. Only with quantity assessments we can approach to actualisation of that problem at the State level. Today the Ministry of Culture has no arguments for the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development to prove that in healthy society the person needs to consume not less than certain level of culture and it cost something – and State should pay for that. Depending on how much money the State is able to invest in the formation of culture within the context of rapidly developing information reality, the quality of our life and life of our children will be at high or not very high level. That is why Dolgin’s proposal is very interesting in terms of monitoring system and state planning. I think together we will be able to create the model samples for some parameters that can be used even today. And our Expert Board is ready to become the ground for the joint activities.
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Basics for the new school of culture studies
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Grigory Revzin, Columnist of “Kommersant” Newspaper, Editor-In-Chief of “Project Classica” Magazine
The book by Alexander Dolgin has united many trends, it reminds me the teamwork of the whole research institute. It looked like that institute has got a department for economics, a department for contemporary culture studies, where the researches are devoted to culture in Internet and in mass markets. There is a department for project and practice, which is mainly specialized on collaborative filtration method as well. Also there is very small department for cultural studies (somewhere of the 4th floor, office #46, Friday as a working day). At first glance, the last trend is less visible but no less important, because to my mind the book offers a new paradigm for culture studies.
That paradigm has three basic theses. The first thesis is that culture costs money. It does not mean it should be sold immediately. For example, the cost of the State Hermitage is approximately 150 billions US dollars. Its collections are excluded from the markets, but we understand what economic scale has such object, what kind of management should be applied there and what kinds of operations are possible. There are objects with rather less value, but even that small value is not represented. So, if the culture costs money, there should be specific markets of culture. It follows the second thesis – money and culture interacting with each other behave unusually, not like other markets do. That phenomenon should be studied. And the third thesis – there is possibility to influence process of interaction of culture and money. How it could be done with the help of money is described by the author in details, how it could be done with the help of culture should be further studied.
The cited theses are very simple. However they are absolutely out of the framework of the traditional culture studies, and they look very strange, if not hostile. Still the main thesis affirms that culture is invaluable and it should not cost any money. And that postulate reminds banal relations of good and evil: culture can influence money, it is a positive but limited influence; and money unambiguously has bad influence on culture and the only thing we can do is to minimize that evil.
At the heart of the new paradigm there are concepts about the producer of any culture good, a good itself and its consumer. And culture market is the way to organize all three parts. From the traditional cultural point of view the situation does not look like that. Firstly, the aim of culture is to reproduce culture, not to produce any good. Secondly, a good exists exclusively at the moment of reproduction, particularly in contemporary arts. Thirdly, the consumer cannot assume the culture good. It can be grown from inside like a schoolchild steadily opens the works of Leo Tolstoy in order to understand them as times goes by.
It is worth notice that a system “producer – culture good – consumer” has been already actively used in culture studies, and it has been even considered to be banal. I mean the semiotic culture studies when the same process was interpreted as follows “sender – text – receiver”. Any culture information exists in the framework of that model. Thus, it looks very natural, when economics of symbolic exchange appeared during the symbolic exchange of signs. Actually the book can be considered as the continuation of the semiotic researches, which were held at Yuri Lotman’s school even in the 1960s.
But two issues are left without answers in the framework of traditional semiotic of the 60s-70s and they are easily responded with the help of Dolgin’s ideas. The first question is why do people exchange the signs? The book gives the simple and clear answer: because it is profitable for them, they have got the economic motivation. And the second –as far as I know there is no convincing model of symbol systems evolution. The author of that book has introduced the economic market notion of aggravating selection.
The number of other ideas could also become the basics for a new school for culture studies. In present time the relations between culture and money could be apprehended as the relationship of two corporations, competing for social regulation. The shares of one corporation are actively exchanged for the shares of the other, and that is, in fact, the process of symbolic exchange.
Extract from book (about market of culture) Chapters 2.2, 2.3
The economic logic is mostly productive when it has a full-fledged economic agent and two things are defined: resources and objectives. It is necessary to allocate the existed resources in accordance with the selected objectives. Business in the field of culture is the same case: resources could be measured by money, the objectives are monetary as well. That is why economists prefer to look at culture from the business point of view.
Understanding the culture as the sphere of production/ circulation of signs and symbols, we can ascribe the nine of ten to the commercially motivated activities. Here will be the industry of Å&M – Entertainment and Media, industry of luxury and style and most of arts (performing and visual). Due to the monetary indicators, there will be 90% (regardless the aesthetics, attenuated in utilitarian products). If we are guided not by money but by time of consuming, the part of culture tied with business will be even more. The rest of the so-called non-commercial (non-profitable) culture is tightly linked with a market, like a satellite, revolving in the gravitational field of heavy nucleus.
But if economics can help the business-participants in the sphere of culture, in respect of the consumers it mainly keeps silence. Neither resources, nor the aims of spectators/ listeners/ readers are not described in the language of the economics. If we proceed from that point of view, the only possible economic question is – how can the consumers of culture efficiently deal with their free time? The efficient use of any resource can be reached easier, if there is a description (subject) of desired result. Hence the principal economic questions: how to define the culture value and how to measure it?
Firstly let us consider that any person is able to define the final personal value of cultural consumption. At least, one can say, if he/she satisfies more or less than usually. The practice of recommendation service, built on clients’ opinions, confirms that generally they easily got the skill of marking. Secondly, the better is mark (integral feeling of value, expressed in arithmetic mark, as it used to be in recommendation systems) the more efficient a person spends the free time. If we accept both assumptions, then consumer of culture is becoming almost full-fledged economic agent: realised aims, capability to track the accomplishment, and all necessary resources at one’s disposal – free time, money and cultural capital.
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Culture proposal and navigation issue
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Vitaly Kurennoy
Department of History of Philosophy, Higher School of Economics,
Research Centre of Phenomenological Philosophy, Russian State University for Humanities.
The book is very interesting not only to economists or cultural philosophers. Literally we can say, the book is a sum of modern economic and cultural knowledge: the quantity of information, data and the theoretical base are amazing. I don’t think I can recall any similar Western editions to compare. It is undoubtedly the unique work.
Another question is how to regard at it. I think, the book is very symptomatic, and in this sense it is a point of productive growth – and it doesn’t matter whether we agree or argue with author. The book does not continue the outdated blind approaches like “market and culture” or how to measure the harmony with algebra, etc. The main problem and specifics of the situation is that contemporary culture and society get into an absolutely new stage, the essence and consequences we still do not entirely understand. It is connected with truly highly explosive level of culture differentiation and hence the complication of navigation in that field. Traditional institutions of culture do not keep pace of changes and they do not manage their work in new conditions. I think without realization of a completely new, revolutionary and not very clear phenomenon, it is very naive to talk about culture policy at the state level or about any relationship between culture and business. “Economics of Symbolic Exchange” is a heroic attempt to cope with the new situation. Alexander Dolgin proposes realistic, non-banal and perspective ways. I am not going to agree or to disagree with him. I would like to stress the importance of such book appearance. It let us better consider the coming issues.
Extract of book (about navigation) Chapters 1.2, 2.1, 2.3
The navigation is main issue of contemporary culture. Producers would like to draw the attention to their production; they are not interested in narrowing the circle of payers, and they point the target group. The commercial agents, working in the culture field are aimed at maximum coverage of the audience. For that reason the consumer has a lot of “garbage” correspondence, and it is hard to distinguish the right information by “envelope” design. The materials of different kind and purpose are circulated in the fused information “irrigative” system, including radio, TV, Internet, paper mass media, etc. All these channels of information dissemination can operate together or separately, considering or not considering the presence of each other. But all of them are stumbled in one narrow place – human perception and its limited capacity.
Producers are interested in increasing the returns due to the scale of production. Along with the increase of sales the significant lines of budget (staff wages, office maintenance, rights acquisitions) are becoming the less part in the price of production item. That part of expenditures is tending to zero and the prime cost is almost equal to prime cost of sound-carrier. That is why the mass production is very profitable and records corporations try to raise the yields (and sales, of course) by all means.
There is one more specific reason to increase the yields. While the courts are judging the file-exchangers, the music spills over to black market and disseminates in millions of private collections. There is a problem to gain the sales proceeds. It makes the producer rapidly change the range of goods in order to consign to oblivion what has already been sung, sold and listened. The haute couture houses do the same, producing their collection with such a speed, that models are becoming out of date faster than pirates could manage to fill the market. Usually the rhythm of innovation is dictated by the necessity to abolish the competitors.
Not only the main producers with their interests to raise the yields are responsible for music overproduction but the illegal producers and graphorrheans as well. However the problem lies not only in overproduction. If there were ten or hundred times more music, there is no harm in it, but the bad works repress the good ones. In absence of efficient expertise, the unchecked raise of the choice leads to the problem of noise. Any ratings or billboards are unhelpful here.
There are three factors: the raise of proposal at the market of creative professions, the substitution of talent by the technology and the progress of distribution – they lead to the point, when the proposal of cultural industry is getting repeatedly higher than possibility of human perception. At any time of day and night a consumer is provided with access to the menu of thousands titles designed for millions of hours per year. In average it is designed for three hours of music per person/per day (including those who do not listen). One can listen to 60 songs – 3 minutes each or 45 – 4 minutes each. If you sleep 5 hours per day and the rest time you continuously listen to the music, you are able to listen to 285 four-minute songs per day, which means around one hundred thousand per year. However hard you may try, you are not able to listen even to one fifth of annual production of records industry, which produces more than half of million tracks. Limits of free time and vagueness of choice make the navigation to become the critical point of cultural community.
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Quality time and personal feeling of happiness =====================================================================
Prof. Marina Sviderskaya,
Department of History and Theory of Universal Culture
Faculty of Philosophy, Moscow State University
The idea is very simple: the price for any cultural service or product consists of the initial installment for access to the work and the subsequent installment for emotional experience, an impression received after the look, listening, etc. At the first glance the idea is rather mad. But I think, due to its simplicity and madness, the chances are rather high…
For me the book has the particular attractiveness (I am talking about its deepest level), because there is an attempt to overcome the estrangement. That estrangement in philosophic respect is very familiar to all of us. We live in these circumstances and remember when that estrangement appeared. The attempt is very courageous. I would say that it is a sort of “hand made” – the introduction of some primitive principle in the circumstance of general industrial pressure on a human being. Sometime ago there was an attempt to introduce that principle in industry. When the quality of Volvo cars started getting lower the managers analyzed the situation. It was revealed that the main reason was the alienation of the workers from the results of work. The people did not feel themselves creators that is why they could not provide the necessary quality. What was done at the Volvo car plant? They introduced the team work principle: the group of the workers created the car from the beginning till the end. I don’t know whether they got any positive results – that example is important for me as an illustration of my thinking.
The thinking of Alexander Dolgin is the same to some extent – in the present situation in culture we are to do something. To my mind, it is very sad when three great tenors sing one-by-one the lines of music and they are listened by the great audience of the stadium. On the one hand we can say that circles wide enough are involved in the creative works of that people. But in fact that is a monstrous deterioration of the quality criteria and open vulgarity. Alexander Dolgin does not just grieve as many of us do. In his book he proposes the ways out of the present situation. He suggests the new principle of socialization – the integration of communities according to the taste similarities that let people pass to the new quality level during the selection of appropriate good among the innumerable diversity of modern culture. I was amazed how the author subtly feels what culture should give to a human being. I am very impressed by the category of quality time. This very capacious definition, on the one hand, is rather abstract, but on the other hand – it gives the essence of the notion. Indeed, art expands the frames of human life and it increases the personal feeling of well-being. I feel it myself dealing with arts all my life. It really gives the quality time bringing a person to luck. I have never met such a remarkable definition of sense of culture although I know quite a lot of various wordings.
Extract of book (on quality time) Chapter 4.5
Any individual has some optimal, subsequent configuration of psycho and emotional conditions, which could be called “emotiogram” likewise the cerebrum work or cordial rhythms. Depending on time, a person needs (deliberately or not) certain emotions (mental state, more precisely). If there is not enough emotional experience, the emotional row is deforming, and we face the question about its correction. One is hunger for scarce (in his individual palette) feelings, which to some extent predetermine one’s behaviour and situations constructed for her/ himself. The state of affairs could be improved, turning to the arts, which is a treasury of emotions kept in preserved state.
In hands of experienced consumer arts become the tool to manage the quality of inner time. If art is “real”, it is involving the reader/spectator/ listener in its word, in its history. Plunging in it, the one would live another/ strange life and privatize it, and thus prolong one’s own life. Hence art is a tool for existential prolongation. The market of culture sells the personal time or, saying in pathetic way, it sells immortality.
The people long for happiness; whatever they link or perceive that being, it is considerably realized through emotional and creative activities. One can judge about well-being as extent of activities, but goods’ consumer is able to express it by post factum money signal. The payments will point to the accomplished profit of work or its perceived quality, or quality of symbolic communication, or more exactly – quality personal time. The last wording is considered to be the most precise. The quality time is a time defined by a person as a well-handled. Ideally it is time spent the best way according to priorities, possibilities and measures of a certain individual.
It can be regarded as a fundamental indicator of well-being, because its increase is equal to the sensed increase of life – the effect that let us look differently on the fact of culture existence.
The economic approach to culture is getting even more effective if we put down all significant kinds of spent resources then we can formulate the aims of spending. If we consider the life to be a transformation of monetary and personal resources (time, style, cognitive and emotional resources) in a quality time, it is a good reason for economics to get down to business.
