In Praise of Commercial Culture - Hardcover

Cowen, Tyler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674445910 ISBN 13: 9780674445918

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Does the market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the late 1990s intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favourable attitude towards the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist, Martin Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it.

About this title

Review:

A masterful performance...Cowen has provided a marvelously exuberant counterblast to the wide-spread view that in our philistine, materialist world the arts are going to hell in a handbasket. They are not. They are alive and well, and thriving as never before. Cowen goes a long way towards explaining why. For anyone with any interest in the history, funding and encouragement of the arts, "In Praise of Commercial Culture" is not to be missed.--Winston Fletcher "Times Higher Education Supplement "

About the Author:

Tyler Cowen is Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0674445910
• ISBN 13: 9780674445918
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288