Symbolic Resources of Local Cultures in the Experience Economy

Abstract

 In the post-industrial world, traditional communities are becoming active participants in market interactions, employing the mechanisms of capitalization of their local cultures’ material and symbolic components. The theoretical model of symbolic resources helps to identify both common and specific traits of the cultural institutes that determine the value of the “location” in the economic exchange, social communication and artistic processes. The concepts of creative industries demonstrate complementarity of the approaches to the analysis of cultural commodification that have developed in the economy of culture and within cultural studies. The interdisciplinary perspective reflects the way cultural industry operates at the level of actors, products of their co-production and their cooperation spaces. The experience economy theory shifts the focus from the consumption of ready products to the audiences’ involvement in the processes of personal transformation in local cultural contexts. The conversion of a customer’s situational experience to a sustainable need for cultural participation takes consequent steps. Each step adds value to the material and symbolic assets of an area. The model of the value chain of experience localization shows how the mutual influence of creation, production, consumption and dissemination of goods and services allow the viewer to co-participate in a “play” on the local “cultural stage”. The interaction of semiotic codes and material base of creative products frames the cooperation of creators, marketers and consumers in each sector of the local experience production. Preservation of traditions that represent the local communities’ way of life and their historical memory is an important strategy of creative businesses on the regional, national and global markets. The theory describing how the actors of the experience economy articulate the symbolic resources of certain territories can be used to analyse innovations within creative entrepreneurship and to evaluate the current state of traditional cultures.