Conference and Publication

Much has been written on the history both of intellectuals and cultural policy. Relatively little work has been done, however, on the specific relations between intellectuals and processes of cultural policy formation. On September 23-25 2005, the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies hosted a conference at Coombe Abbey, near Coventry, to explore this theme further. In particular, the conference aimed to examine the extent to which different national contexts  had given rise to different conceptions, problematics and programmes. An international group of scholars on cultural and intellectual history across a number of historical periods and national contexts (Britain, Germany, France, Holland,  USA, Canada, Russia, Hungary, Poland) were invited to contribute. A further aim was to explore the extent to which a comparative approach could be brought to shed light on the topic.

The following papers were presented at the conference:

Oliver Bennett

Intellectuals, Romantics and Cultural Policy

Jim McGuigan

Richard Hoggart – Public Intellectual

Rob Burns & Wilfried van der Will

German Intellectuals as Cultural Agenda-Setters in the Federal Republic?

Jeremy Ahearne

Intellectuals and Cultural Policy in France

David Looseley

Intellectuals and Cultural Policy in France: Antoine Hennion and the Sociology of Music

Harro Maas

The Common Sense of Numbers: Dutch Fabians, Boekman, and Cultural Policy in the Netherlands 1900-1940

Eleonora Belfiore

The Unacknowledged Legacy: Plato, the Republic and Cultural Policy

Chris Bilton

Knowing Her Place: Jane Addams, Pragmatism and Cultural Policy

Graham Murdock

Notes from the Number One Country: Herbert Schiller on Culture, Capital and American Power

Charles Acland

Harold Innis, Cultural Policy, and Residual Media

Bill Buxton

Fernand Dumont and the Vicissitudes of Cultural Policy in Québec

Chris Read

Krupskaya, Proletkul't and the Origins of Soviet Cultural Policy

John Morgan

Georg Lukács: Cultural Policy and the Communist International

Laurie Koloski

The Urge to Judge: Intellectuals and Communism in Postwar Poland, Past and Present

A collection of  these papers has been published in two special issues of the International Journal of Cultural Policy (vol 13, nos 2 & 3, 2006) and as a Special Issue book. The collection is edited by Jeremy Ahearne and Oliver Bennett.