Preface

The aim of this volume is to extend understanding of how value is formed and how valuation processes operate in the arts and culture. It does so against a background of a world in which market forces have become more and more powerful as a driver of public and private decision making. In these circumstances, economic considerations are playing an ever stronger role in assigning value to the things people make, consume, enjoy, buy, and sell. Of course in the arts and culture financial assessments of value have always been important, but there is a sense in the contemporary world that an economic basis for determining the value of art is tending increasingly to overshadow alternative concepts. An essential premise of our project has been the recognition that a continuing difficulty in existing studies of value in the arts and culture has been the rigid disciplinary confines within which scholars have worked. This is especially true of economists, who tend to regard economic science as being capable of explaining all human behavior, past, present, and future, but it is also true in other directions – many cultural specialists do not comprehend what is going on in neighboring disciplines and may have a particularly ill-informed view of what economics can contribute to the debate. Accordingly, the project was designed with the purpose of opening up possibilities for interdisciplinary communication and dialogue.