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Read ‘Culture is not an industry’, by Justin O’Connor
Since I moved back to Australia and started working at a university, I’ve been struck by how people in higher education here refer to those sectors outside of academia with the blanket term ‘industry’. The typical use is something like, “We should invite some participants from industry to this workshop“ or “We need some industry partners on this research bid”. But what is meant by ‘industry’ here is actually the private and public sector combined i.e. anything outside of higher education, or perhaps ‘community’, gets bundled up as ‘industry’.
But government is not an industry any more than community is. The public sector is not an industry. Dictionaries from Oxford to Merriam Webster will tell you what an industry is, and it’s something along the lines of “the companies and activities involved in the process of producing goods for sale, especially in a factory”. Perhaps I underestimate the sectorial acuity I must have inadvertently gleaned by growing up in Sheffield and Manchester, useful for spotting the difference between, say, a Tata-owned steel rolling mill versus the Royal Festival Hall or a community arts programme.
To unthinkingly elide the public purpose, civic sensibilities, and environmental responsibilities of…
