The proposed book examines economic and social development through the natural selection of social and economic institutions, and applies this to understand and consider rationales for public support for the arts. The book considers and analyses current approaches to understand public support, which are based on mainstream (neoclassical) economics. The consequence of these approaches is that arguments in favour of public support are predicated on the mainstream idea of a market failure (or failures) that warrant intervention. The book demonstrates the shortcomings of these approaches, and so turns in a new direction, developing a new approach based on the work of Thorstein Veblen.
Veblen’s approach to economics is used to develop a completely new approach to understand public support for the arts, and applies this new approach to determine if rationales for public support can be found. There are two ways in which this is done. The first is by considering public support as an institution. Public support is conceived as the most recent form of an ancient institution of public patronage for the arts. The second is to consider how the forces of workmanship and predation impact upon the very development of art. This is done by considering the case study of contemporary art, but also a consideration of how public support that is putatively designed to counter predatory forces can become ‘infected’ with the very predatory forces it seeks to resolve.
