Value Of The Cultural Product

We have argued in this text that the questions of value are fundamental to understanding the relationships between economy and culture, and that economic and cultural value must be separated as distinct concepts in any theoretical construction of value in economical and cultural discourse. It may be that fundamental ideas, occurring in both economic and cultural theory, can indeed provide a common starting point from which the formation of value might proceed. But it is in elaboration of notions of value, and the transformation of value either into economic price or into some assessment of cultural worth, where the two fields diverge. Economists are deluding themselves if they claim that economics can encompass cultural value entierly within its ambit and that the metods of economic assessment are capable of capturing all relevant aspects of cultural value in their net. In the manysided debate about in contemporary economics settings, the tendency for a predominant economic interpretation of the world, deriving from the ubiquity and power of the modern economic paradigm, must be resisted, if important elements of cultural value are not to be overlooked. If we are serious about striving for theoretical completeness, and eventually for operational validity in decisionmaking, it is essential that cultural value be admitted alongside economic value in the consideration of the overall value of cultural goods and services.