ABSTRACT
Culture has a wide variety of meanings and values. To invoke ‘culture’ is to open up a Pandora’s Box of different symbolic representations and complex personal, national and group identities (Eagleton, 2000). In the discourse that follows some groups and individuals have more ability to shape cultural representation and understanding than others. Cultural institutions, creative industries and different communities (of interest and/or of place) constantly struggle to construct and claim ‘their’ interpretation of culture. Increasingly the power to name, construct meaning and exert control over the dissemination of ideas about culture underpins divisions within society (Stevenson, 2001), and as Harvey observed: ‘The ability to “name” things, acts and ideas – is a source of power’ (1989: 388).
