Stop then go: cultural management research in crisis

Abstract

The thesis starts in a moment of recoil on viewing elements of vanguard literature; cultural management research appears to persist in its modes of operation despite the failure of these modes to achieve the fields own aims. The literature is at a STOP and it either does not know or does resist; cultural management research thinks, at best, it is on a circuitous route, but indeed, it is circular. What the thesis adds to this is to make a forceful intervention by naming this crisis and openly describing it as paradoxical; cultural management research’s clock was stopped, the thesis has started the clock running again.

Theoretically speaking, the thesis holds, in an unstable union, contemporary cultural management theory and elements of Marxian methods as described by Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi (2018). The final theoretical element is derived from Michel Serres thoughts on w[a]ondering which are expressed in the thesis as a littoral navigation; this final element is used to wrap the theoretical elements together. As such the thesis is a meta critique and might be considered to use an aberrant methodology by those who profit from cultural management research’s reluctance to GO. The thesis supports, via a littoral methodology, splashing about in the pools at the coast over staring out to sea.

Chapter One: Cultural Management Research Through Materialist Lens answers the research question, no cultural management research cannot continue; the main issue being that it is too oversimplistic in that it has a very narrow view of its
totality. Chapters Two, Three and Four gather up support for this conclusion via various moments of dialogue. The thesis ends with an invitation to meet in the future, now that the clock has been started, to compare what is forecast in the thesis to what has occurred.

Date of Award	28 Mar 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	Andrea Phillips (Supervisor) & Julie Crawshaw (Supervisor)