[Commlist] Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal - new book

/Defund Culture/ is now out, published by mediastudies.press:

https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal

It's available open access, under the CC4r: Collective Conditions for 
Re-Use commitment, so please feel free to share widely.

The abstract and contents are provided below.

Regards, Gary

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Gary Hall,/Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal 
<https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal> - Why 
the Arts Are So White, Male and Middle-Class and What We Can Do About It/

https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal

Calls to expand public investment in the arts often treat the existing 
cultural and institutional landscape as a given. /Defund Culture/ 
challenges this assumption, asking instead what kinds of culture are 
being supported, through which institutions, and to whose benefit.

In pursuing these questions, the book turns attention to the structural 
inequalities that shape Britain’s creative and intellectual life. 
Drawing on critical theory, political philosophy, and cultural policy, 
Hall shows how the dominance of white, male, middle- and upper-class 
voices in the arts, media, and academy is sustained through longstanding 
funding arrangements and institutional hierarchies. Expanding access 
within this system (e.g. through social mobility initiatives)—however 
well intentioned—will not, on its own, produce structural change.

Rather than offering a programme of reform, /Defund Culture/ explores 
what it might mean to disinvest from cultural institutions as they 
currently operate. Taking cues from abolitionist calls to defund the 
police, Hall proposes redistributing resources away from elite 
institutions and toward more collective, commons-oriented, and radically 
relational alternatives grounded in redistribution, institutional 
transformation, and epistemic pluriversality.

The book is published by mediastudies.press, and is available online and 
as a free download in PDF and ePub, on a CC4r: Collective Conditions for 
Re-Use basis. A paperback version is also available.

https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal

A response to /Defund Culture/ by Roger Malina is also available as:

Roger Malina, 'Defunding, Activating, and the Afterlives of Culture: On 
Gary Hall’s /Defund Culture/ and /Activating Fluxus, Expanding 
Conservation/, eds Hanna Hölling, Aga Wielocha, and Josephine Ellis': 
http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2026/1/22/defunding-activating-and-the-afterlives-of-culture-roger-mal.html

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Contents

Preamble

PART 1: WHY THE ARTS ARE SO WHITE, MALE, AND MIDDLE-CLASS

Chapter One: The Culture Wars and Attack on the Arts
Chapter Two: Culture Must Be Defunded
Chapter Three: Culture in Ruins: "Are We the Bad Guys?"

PART 2: AND HERE’S SOME OF THE THINGS WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

Chapter Four: Culture and the University as White, Male, Public Space
Chapter Five: De-Liberalizing Culture and Theory
Chapter Six: Coda

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About mediastudies.press

mediastudies.press <https://www.mediastudies.press/> is a scholar-led, 
nonprofit, diamond open access publisher in the media, film, and 
communication studies fields.

You can learn more about mediastudies.press, including their operations 
and OA principles, on their site:

https://www.mediastudies.press/about <https://www.mediastudies.press/about>

The press is a member of the Open Book Collective 
<https://openbookcollective.org/packages/2/info/> and the ScholarLed 
<https://scholarled.org/> consortium, and also publishes the History of 
Media Studies journal. Please contact them at press@mediastudies.press.


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