Introducing ‘Cultural Indicator’ Suites

Objectives and Characteristics

The purpose of the indicator system is to offer an empirical portrait of certain key dimensions of the relationships between cultures and globalization. By implication, the system would neither try to achieve a comprehensive accounting of culture as such, nor seek to report on all aspects of cultural developments and policies that might be relevant for national as well as international purposes.1 Generally speaking, cultural indicators that refer primarily to national frameworks or that have no major theoretical or policy relevance for the culture – globalization nexus would be beyond the scope of what we are trying to measure, and will therefore receive little attention. For example, data on theater and film production by country are less important than their transnational content, share and distribution; even though obtaining the latter data assumes the availability of the former. In other words, the proposed system does not aim to become a generic indicator system for the elaboration of cultural statistics (nor does it seek to replace any existing systems). Rather, what we have in mind is a specialized system focused on a substantive core: the relationship between globalization and culture.

At the same time, the approach here is informed by work on cultural indicators research2 that addresses either basic methodological and data issues (Bonet 2004; Duxbury 2003; European Commission 2000; Fukuda-Parr 2001; Glade 2003; Goldstone 1998; Matarasso 2001; Schuster 2002) or questions of policy relevance (Kleberg 2003; Wiesand 2002; Wyszomirski 1998). Against this background as well as the overall conceptual framework presented in the Introduction, the indicator system should aim for the following characteristics (Deutsch 1963; Anheier 2004):3

• Parsimony, i.e., the aim to ‘achieve most with least’:
• Significance, i.e., focus on the truly critical aspects of a phenomenon and its relationships;
• Combinatorial richness, i.e., the range of hypotheses that can be tested with the system and related to this, Organizing power, i.e., the ability to bring in and integrate new aspects;
• Theoretical fruitfulness, i.e., the extent to which the system allows theory development; and
• Policy relevance, i.e., the extent to which the system is useful and of interest to policy-makers.

Challenges

The relationships between globalization and culture are too abstract and multifaceted for direct observation, and need to be broken down into dimensions and sub-dimensions. In other words, we need to make the relationships ‘operational’ and prepare them for measurement purposes. In doing so, we face a number of critical challenges. It is important to address these issues at the onset. They are the following: the unit of analysis, the aggregation problem, indicator selection, data [Page 336]coverage, and normative aspects. For each challenge, we propose a solution or at least a general approach on how to address it for the purposes of the Series.

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