New Public Management in cultural fields? Professionalization, commodification and “expertization” in French contemporary poetry

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Key topics: autonomous driving. See the paper for implementation details and experimental results.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

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Original abstract

New Public Management (NPM) has been the subject of academic study in many sectors, but much less so in the cultural sector. This article focuses on poetry, the actions of public authorities in a largely publicly funded sector, and the consequences of these actions on the status and social life of poets. Using a qualitative methodology based on interviews, this article shows that NPM has influenced cultural policy in poetry by creating a quasi-market of literary activities and sources of income for poets (readings, performances, workshops, scholarships and grants, and residencies) where demand from public authorities (state, local authorities, multiple autonomous actors financed by public funds) for “artistic services” provides work opportunities to poets in the form of short, non-renewable contracts. This transforms poets into “service providers’, obtaining contracts from multiple organisations, often with cross-financing. Every market requires regulation: in the case of poetry, a “proceduralizing” process accompanies the growth of this quasi-market. However, one of the specificities of culture is that the state chooses without really choosing, because a democratic state does not possess the legitimacy to impose or choose according to aesthetic or political preference. Contemporary state patronage of poetry, therefore, is ambiguous: it requires poets to perform artistic and even social work for which they are paid, albeit privately. The work is literally more social because more and more contracts offered to poets include a social component where culture is considered a means of educating and/or repairing social bonds. This system ends up commodifying poetry, changing poets into “service providers” and “sales reps” of their own work, propounding a double process of professionalization and “expertisation”. Faced with the impossibility of choosing, the State appeals directly and indirectly to “poetry experts”, sometimes directly soliciting poetry actors in the selection procedures, and more generally by relying on the reputation of poets which has been manufactured in the world of poetry by the poetry actors themselves. The article illustrates how a cultural policy, inspired by the principles of NPM, can change the status of actors – here artists – even going against the representations of the artists and managers who manage this quasi-market. Paradoxically, the actors do not want this commo-dification despite it being the fruit of an organisational system linked to transformations in public action and management.

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