Zuckerwise, GM; (2016) Conceptualizing culture in discourses of policy and reform in Amsterdam. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This project addresses the relationship between the concept of culture in cultural policies and the culture that is attributed to the identity of Amsterdam. Culture is becoming increasingly central to discourses of policy and reform in particular ways, which are exemplified by the case of Amsterdam that is studied. I use Critical Discourse Analysis to examine four case studies. This method enables me to divide my case studies into three categories of discourses of reform: Administrative/policy discourses, Discourses of intervention and Academic discourses. I analyze each discourse separately in order to present a holistic conceptualization of culture in the context of reform. I illustrate how culture is a concept that becomes relevant and significant in discourses of reform in different ways. Thus, alongside my aim of analyzing culture as a diversely significant concept, this project also intends to present CDA as a productive method for theorizing and analyzing contemporary culture. Amsterdam presents a city where urban policies and reforms can be described as cultural policies and reforms. It is a case where we can study 1) this kind of policy and reform that are described as cultural; 2) the shift in the context of policies and reforms, in relation to a changing concept of culture. For this study of culture and cultural policy, I suggest that Foucault’s concept of governmentality is productive. This concept is derived from the terms “government” and “mentality”, offering a tool for analyzing the convergence of technologies of government work and a new political rationality. In this case, it is a concept that is productive for analyzing how discourses of reform relate to a particular rationality that is linked to the concept of culture in the city. This is achieved through case studies that analyze the governmentality of reform in relation to identities, industries, places and practices that are associated with culture in Amsterdam.

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