Aim
ICCPR aims to provide an outlet for an interdisciplinary and international exploration of the meaning, function and impact of cultural policies. Cultural policy is understood as the promotion or prohibition of cultural practices and values by governments, corporations, other institutions and individuals.
Such policies may be explicit, in that their objectives are openly described as cultural, or implicit, in that their cultural objectives are concealed or described in other terms. The historical range is not limited to any given period, but the ICCPR is primarily concerned with material that is relevant to the contemporary world and which contributes to a fruitful international exchange of ideas.
ICCPR acknowledges the multiplicity of meanings around the idea of culture and the inter-relationship of these meanings. However, whilst it takes a broad view of culture, encompassing a wide range of signifying practices that include the products of the media, the arts and various forms of government or religious display, ICCPR will attempt to maintain a focus on policies relating to culture as symbolic communication rather than culture in the anthropological sense as ‘a whole way of life’.
ICCPR addresses itself to all those with a serious intellectual interest in how and why different agencies and agents attempt to work on the cultural practices and values of individuals and societies.
Function
The main function of ICCPR is to promote, in association with the International Journal of Cultural Policy, a biennial research conference of high academic standards in different parts of the world.
The conference provides an opportunity for researchers to present papers that reflect on cultural policy from any relevant discipline, provided they make an original academic contribution to the field. Proposals for papers are rigorously assessed by at least two members of the Scientific Committee (see below). Papers based on research that is primarily ‘instrumental’ (such as market research) or on research designed for the advocacy of a preconceived institutional position are not normally accepted. This does not exclude applied research of high academic quality, particularly research that advances methodology.