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Social Capital and Cultural Participation in the UK. Liam Delaney Economic and Social Research Institute. Evidence From National and International Survey Data. Introduction. Social Capital is an increasingly important concept in national policy making.
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Social Capital and Cultural Participation in the UK Liam Delaney Economic and Social Research Institute Evidence From National and International Survey Data
Introduction • Social Capital is an increasingly important concept in national policy making. • Also an increasing emphasis on quantifying the role and value of the cultural sector. • This report examines survey data. • Making causal inferences is difficult. • However a number of useful inferences will be derived. • Daly (2004) - an excellent recent literature review of the topic under discussion.
Cultural Sector (DCMS) • Audio-Visual (including film, TV, radio, new media and music). • Books and Press. • Heritage (including museums, libraries, archives and historic environment). • Sport. • Performance (including theatre and dance). • Tourism (includes gambling and betting activities). • Visual Arts (including galleries, architecture, design and crafts).
Civil Renewal/Social Capital • A number of diverse theoretical positions. • This presentation considers the broadest and utilises measures across different theoretical streams. • Social trust, trust in institutions, subjective well-being, civic membership, informal group activity, political activity.
Existing Literature on the Role of the Cultural Sector • Huge literature on the economic significance of the cultural, heritage and sporting sectors. • Large and growing literature on the subjective valuation of culture and heritage. • Social as well as an economic role. • See Daly (2004) for a comprehensive review of social capital studies.
Data Utilised • European Social Survey 2002. • British Social Attitudes Survey 1984-2002. • Time Usage Survey 2000. • Home Office Citizenship Survey 2001. • MORI/ONS Omnibus Survey 2001.
Empirical Questions • Does Britain have a “social capital deficit” when compared to other EU countries? • What are the patterns of social capital and civil engagement within Britain? • What are the patterns of cultural participation within Britain? • To what extent are these patterns linked?
National Correlations between Cultural Participation and Social Capital (1)
National Correlations between Cultural Participation and Social Capital (2)
Correlations between social trust and cultural participation (UK) (1)
Correlations between social trust and cultural participation (UK) (2)
Conclusions • # 1: Levels of social capital in Britain are around average for the EU across most of the individual measures. However, there is a significant lag when compared to the Scandinavian countries. • # 2: British adults demonstrate higher levels of television viewing, newspaper reading and radio listening than the EU average. This does not translate in to more time spent watching, reading or listening to current affairs, politics and news shows. • # 3: Some evidence for strong cross-country correlations between associational membership and cultural activity and other measures of social capital. This should not necessarily be interpreted in a causal fashion. • #4: Strong evidence that individual measures of social capital are strongly related to socio-demographic characteristics in Britain. • #5: Strong evidence that individual cultural participation is strongly related to socio-demographic characteristics in Britain. • #6: Some evidence that individual measures of social capital and well being are linked to cultural and sporting associational membership, even when controlling for demographic factors such as age and education.
Future Research • Develop more refined statistical models of existing measures. • Develop refined, agreed upon, and publicised scales. • Track existing measures through time. • Do we need domain specific measures of well-being to tap in to the social benefits of cultural participation? • Disentangling the macro correlation? • A role for direct evaluation measures?