APG5067 Cultural economy and sustainable development

This unit examines the relationship between cultural production and consumption and new agendas for sustainable economic and social development developed by UNESCO, the World Bank and other international agencies. By cultural economy we include the broad range of cultural/creative industries, arts and traditional cultural practices and products, handicraft and forms of manufacture. We explicitly situate these as economic practices embedded in wider social and cultural contexts. Through our interdisciplinary and practice-based approach, we examine how cultural economies might be used to provide employment, strengthen identity and resilience and point to more sustainable, less volatile and dependent growth for developing countries. Through lectures, case studies and workshops, students are encouraged to bring their own experiences to bear on this emerging field of development.