From Cultural Development to Culture for Development: The Music Industries in Burkina Faso and Ghana

The creative economy discourse now informs both cultural and development policies around the world. Virtually every country now uses the concept in politics, policy, advocacy, and practice. My aim is to show what this uptake means in conceptual and empirical terms. Through an ethnography of the music industries in Burkina Faso and Ghana I explore the changing meaning and position of ‘culture’ in cultural and development policies in both countries. How does the creative economy discourse help the pursuit human development, if at all? What does this discourse mean precisely? And, most importantly, what should it mean to develop cultural industries? Overall, my dissertation frames this issue broadly and narrowly. The narrow focus is on the situation in Ouagadougou and Accra, capital cities of respectively Burkina Faso and Ghana. The particularities of these countries serve as examples to simultaneously build and illustrate the argument. Yet, the scope extends well beyond this: the aim at large is to ask questions that can be asked beyond these countries. Even though they may yield different answers around the world, I hope they will help to critically understand and use the hegemonic creative economy discourse. The originality of my dissertation work is threefold. First, I link cultural policy studies with critical development studies. I do this by connecting cultural industries to the human development approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum by exploring the link with ‘capabilities.’ Second, I provide empirical insight in the particularities of the music industries in Burkina Faso and Ghana, as both countries are nearly ab-sent from the literature. Third, I provide a theoretical framework to rethink the way cultural and creative industries can be inscribed in cultural policies and development plans by including the cultural and historical palimpsest of existing practices that both enables and limits change.