European inventory of
societal values of culture

Bertacchini, Bravo, Marrelli, & Santagata - Cultural Commons

Bertacchini, E., Bravo,G., Marrelli, M., & Santagata, W. (eds.) (2012). Cultural Commons: A New Perspective on the Production and Evolution of Cultures. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN: 978 1 78100 005 2

This edited volume offers an agenda for researching cultural commons, discussed through various issues and cases. It explores how cultures can be understood, treated, and researched as commons and discusses the implications this has for understanding cultural production, evolution, and transmission in particular spaces, times, and communities. The book explores the idea of a cultural commons in a wide range of areas, including landscapes, art and design, gastronomy, heritage, the performing arts, and the online world. Although its chapters are written mainly from the perspective of cultural economics, the scope of the volume is truly interdisciplinary.

In this volume, culture is treated as ‘humanly constructed shared resources that arise from collective and interactive activity of members of groups or communities’. Apart from analysing numerous cases of cultural commons – from English Lake District and Milanese design, through virtual commons and gaming, to World Heritage Sites – the volume puts forward some contested issues. One of these is that cultural commons, unlike natural ones, do not have limited carrying capacities and can be used an unlimited number of times (as is the case, e.g., with listening to music or reading books). Consequently, the key issue here is not the limits to the use of culture but how those who benefit from it should and can contribute to its maintenance. Likewise, it is important to discuss how reproduction processes take place so that cultural resources and expressions are transmitted to future generations. The book demonstrates how identifying cultures as shared resources is useful in eliciting the main factors and social dilemmas affecting the production and evolution of cultural expression.