2010 - 'No wealth but life': Ruskin and Cultural Value
The Mikimoto Memorial Ruskin Lecture of 2010 was held on 18 November in Lancaster University's Management School (Lecture Theatre 1).
Speaker: Professor Robert Hewison (City, University of London)
Title: 'No wealth but life': Ruskin and Cultural Value
This lecture was held around the 150th anniversary of the publication of John Ruskin's Unto This Last. It recalls the financial crisis that prompted Ruskin to begin writing about economics, explores his reading of orthodox economists, and traces the development of Ruskin's ideas about the true nature of 'value'. The modern theory of Cultural Value, Prof. Robert Hewison argues, has been developed as a response to the pressure on cultural institutions to justify themselves in utilitarian terms - terms that Ruskin would recognize, and deplore. Hewison suggests that the demands of modern public management, as represented by the proposed structure of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), call for the development of a parallel theory of academic value.