The Cultural Wealth of Nations
Symbolic resources affect social, cultural, and economic development. The value of being “Made in America” or “Made in Italy,” for example, depends not only on the material advantages each place offers but also on the symbolic resources embedded in those places of production. Drawing on case studies that range from the vineyards of South Africa and the textiles of Thailand to the Mundo Maya in Latin America and tourist destinations in Tuscany,The Cultural Wealth of Nations (edited by Nina Bandelj and Frederick F. Wherry, Stanford University Press) examines the various forms that cultural wealth takes, the processes involved in its construction, and the ways it is deployed.
Leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds examine how symbolic resources and cultural understandings help firms and regions develop. Through a thoughtful analysis of current-day cases, as well as historical developments, The Cultural Wealth of Nations offers an exciting new alternative to standard economic explanations about the wealth and poverty of nations.
In Chapter 5, Stefano Ponte (Senior Researcher at DIIS) and Benoit Daviron examine the case study of South African wine to show how the cultural component of material goods can be made an important site of value creation, but also creates struggle over its control. Creating and controlling symbolic value is particularly important in the global South because the terms of trade for agricultural commodities and even for labour-intensive manufacturing, which are mainly valued for their material quality attributes, have been historically decreasing. As consumption in the global North (but increasingly also in emerging economies) becomes more about signs than the material components of products, access to lucrative markets for Southern producers depends on the mobilization of symbolic resources such as place, fairness, rurality or sustainability.
Stefano Ponte and Benoit Daviron (2011) “Creating and controlling symbolic value: The case of South African wine”, in Nina Bandelj and Frederick Wherry (eds) The Cultural Wealth of Nations. Stanford University Press: Stanford, pp. 197-221.