本文透過壟斷地租概念,思考當代經濟全球化的過程與地域性,和文化形式之間有何關聯。首先,獨特性是構成壟斷地租的核心,但是可交易性的要求,卻意味沒有任何物品可以那麽獨特,而完全超出金錢計算。再者,「文化」理念之所以越來越和確保壟斷力量的嘗試糾結在一起,正是因爲獨特性和真實性的宣稱,可以最佳展現爲特殊且無法複製的文化宣稱。本文還探討都市與區域發展,如何透過蓄積壟斷地租的嘗試而進行,並指出對地方文化創新和地方傳統複甦與發明的與趣,如何附著於汲取和挪用這種地租的慾望上。知識和史蹟産業、文化生産的活力和騷動、簽名式建築和獨特美學判斷的培養,在許多地方都成爲都市企業主義的強大構成要素。在高度競爭的世界裡,從事積累區辨標記和集體象徵資本的門爭已經展開,但這隨後帶來了各種地方化的問題,涉及誰的集體記憶、誰的美學,以及誰獲利。不過,在資本家試圖交易真實性、地域性、歷史、文化、集體記憶和傳統價值時,也開啟了政治思想與行動的空間,可以在其中發明和追尋社會主義的替選出路。這種空間值得對抗性運動仔細探索和耕耘,在政治策略裡包容文化生産者的文化生産,作爲其關鍵要素。
The author begins with some reflections on the significance of monopoly rents to understanding how contemporary processes of economic globalization relate to localities and cultural forms. Firstly, while uniqueness is crucial to monopoly rent, the requirement of tradability means that no item can be so unique as to be entirely outside the monetary calculus. Secondly, the idea of 'culture' is more and more entangled with attempts to reassert such monopoly powers precisely because claims to uniqueness and authenticity can best be articulated as distinctive and non-replicable cultural claims. The author also discusses how cities and regions develop through attempts to garner monopoly rents, and how much the current interest in local cultural innovation and the resurrection and invention of local traditions attaches to the desire to extract and appropriate such rents. The knowledge and heritage industries, the vitality of cultural production, Signature architecture and the cultivation of distinctive aesthetic judgments have become powerful constitutive elements in the politics of urban entrepreneurialism in many places. But this entrains in its wake all of the localized questions about whose collective memory, whose aesthetics, and who benefits. However, by seeking to trade on values of authenticity, locality, history, culture, collective memories and tradition, capitalists open a space for political thought and action within which socialist alternatives can be both devised and pursued. That space deserves intense exploration and cultivation by oppositional movements that embrace cultural producers and cultural production as a key element in their political strategy.