(scope)” that includes both high-tech objects and objects of superior quality or objects that are exceptional in some other way. As it happens, one of the pitfalls of the French economy at the time was that it was too polarized toward industry, where it was not succeeding very well, to the detriment of an “economy of variety-scope,”46 which was particularly successful in the United States, in the area of high-tech products, and in Italy, in the area of luxury goods. It follows that “the future [belonged] to products that are not strictly ‘industrial’”47 and that rely on conventions of quality. Since the publication of Salais and Storper’s book, France has in fact seen growth in sales of products in areas that the authors deemed promising, such as wine, perfume, jewelry, and fashion.
A shift to different scales
In France, the orientation toward an economy centered on localities, on exceptional goods produced by artisans, on the luxury economy, and on the development of culture as an economic asset and a means of combating unemployment was first initiated by the central government through public policies whose inspiration went against the grain of those adopted at the end of the Second World War. At the outset, then, the initiative did not come from the business world, and certainly not from the large industrial firms, which were oriented instead toward delocalization, transformation into multinationals, and finance. The new public policies opened the door to active interventions at the local level. As it happened, actions of this sort, stimulated by regionalization, decentralization, and the growing autonomy allowed to local collectivities in the management of their budgets, encouraged the formation of an enrichment economy, but from below, as it were. The key factors were the new local cultural policies and a focus on the associative sphere, where new initiatives were encouraged and subsidized.
The public cultural policies introduced by the Ministry of Culture and Communication were characterized by “a massive use of contractual arrangements – contracts, conventions, and other protocols for agreements established by public or private organizations committed to financing and/or implementing action plans within a pre-established time period.” This led to a “generalized contractualization” in 1982–8, largely under the impetus of Michel Rocard; it took the form of intercommunal development charters and neighborhood social development operations that blended urban, social, educational, cultural, and environmental concerns.48 Thus cultural action was integrated into regional planning, which was inseparable from public action wholly based on a regional political logic; in other words, “cultural action” was approached not “as a sector for action” but in its global dimension, inscribed in a politics of regional development. Key factors in the program’s success were “strong involvement by elected officials,” “a dialogue with associations and communes,” and “intense coordination among the services: culture, regional planning, tourism.”49 In short, the implementation of this policy was based on processes of “concertation,” “dialogue,” “joint elaboration,” and “shared responsibilities,” during which cultural actors – actors in theater and film, dancers, painters, sculptors, writers, librarians, and so on – found themselves led, and in some cases compelled, to keep on working, making contacts with mayors, local officials, managers, and so on. These processes could be seen as exemplifying the “encounters” on which Jack Lang counted for an intensification of creativity at all levels.
The increase in the number of people employed in the performing arts is often attributed in part, or even wholly, to the adoption of special legislation providing a degree of financial security for intermittent workers. However, this explanation does not apply to other workers in the cultural sector, and it underestimates the role played in this augmentation by regional planning since the 1980s. The policy introduced by Lang, based on contracts involving both public authorities and private interests, encouraged the development of associations, especially in the performing arts, and it also supported development in the non-profit sector. (With the exception of “social work,” the arts, theater, and other cultural activities were the only domain in which salaried employees working for organizations belonging to the non-profit sector – around 100,000 – were nearly equivalent in number to those employed outside of that sector.) The combined budgets of non-profit associations in the economy of culture, which amounted to 8.3 billion euros in 2011, add up to roughly 10 percent of the combined budgets of all non-profit associations in France.50 But the Lang policy has led to income precarity for a significant number of workers in the cultural domain. The salaried workers employed by cultural associations in 2011, estimated at around 170,000, were working more frequently on short-term contracts even though their educational levels were higher than those of workers in other sectors.51 Contractualization thus had features in common with the “project” culture that characterized the change in management methods implemented in businesses from the mid-1980s on and that may have served as a model.
As for festivals, they are especially plentiful in France. They are typically devoted to literature, comic books, theater, and above all music (1,972 musical events were produced in France in 2013). The creation and development of festivals during the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s was first envisaged by actors on the ground, most often public figures serving as instruments of local development in interactions with government agencies; their projects benefited from the government’s decentralization measures. The budgetary equilibrium of such festivals, which depends – in proportions that vary on a case-by-case basis – on public subsidies, ticket sales, and private funds, is nevertheless fragile: when a festival is cancelled – sometimes owing to movements connected with the renegotiation of the status of intermittent workers – or even disappears altogether – most often owing to a reduction in public financing – the repercussions affect not only the culture workers involved but the entire set of local services and businesses.
Onto this development of the enrichment economy from below, which has benefited from governmental initiatives and subsidies that are often justified as measures intended to curtail unemployment, an expansion from above has gradually been grafted, as the prospect of profit has led to growth in investments in luxury goods, heritage sites, tourism, art, culture, and so on; the profitability of private capital has seemed all the less risky in these domains in that they have been supported or encouraged by public authorities. Investments oriented toward an enrichment economy are even more difficult to quantify and summarize than jobs, given the absence of transparency and the lack of an adequate accounting framework. But various indices, such as the development of luxury firms, suggest that these investments are significant and that they increase regularly, as do the profits generated.
Intensification of relationships between public cultural action and private enterprise was deemed necessary early on, in order to give substance to the idea that culture could make a significant contribution to economic growth. This intensification has taken the form of symbolic and material support on the part of public authorities for what can be designated as “culture industries,” thus making it clear that such industries are fully entitled to state support, with a primary emphasis on sectors judged prestigious on the international level – for example, haute couture, cinema, and of course the national heritage. The tourism sector, placed under the authority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010, is another exemplary case, since public efforts in favor of tourism, a real national “cause,” cannot be effective without support from private interests in the areas of transportation, the hotel and restaurant industries, and upscale commerce, all of which are highly concentrated around a few major companies. As evidence, we can consider the demand, approved by law in 2015 after lengthy debates, that stores in designated tourist zones in Paris be allowed to stay open on Sundays and in the evenings. But the concern for stimulating investor interest is also taken into account on a more local level, with the promotion of heritage sites and regional attractions. The tourism secretariat thus includes among its “poles of excellence” a “wine tourism pole” that aims to “bring together the various actors in viticulture and tourism,” most notably by organizing “winery visits.” An “ecotourism pole” focuses on tourism by boat, on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback; this form of tourism is expected to benefit the development of rural regions by increasing the commodity value of the
