Whose economy for whose culture? Moving beyond oppositional talk in European debate about economy and culture

This paper provides an overview of the economy-culture debate as currently rehearsed within European urban and regional change circles, explores some of the key theoretical inadequacies of this debate and outlines and illustr ates one possible way of moving debate forward. The paper begins by identif ying the different ways in which economy and culture, and economy-culture a rticulations, are thought about within this debate and by arguing that what purports to be a debate about articulation collapses in practice into the respective privileging of either culture or economy. Subsequently, after a critique of the "economy-culture as differential logics" argument, we forwa rd what we consider to be the minimal conditions for conjoining economy and culture theoretically. These entail according economy and culture equivale nt conceptual standing, centring meaning and seeing meaning and practice as conceptually inseparable. We then illustrate this approach at the level of particularities, using a range of examples that span commodities, "product ive" practices and processes of consumption and exchange.