ABSTRACT
This chapter is about some of the underlying, or hidden, discontents that arise as philosophical problems in cultural management—mostly to do with language—in the way, for example, that authors talk about cultural management and the arts. It explores cultural management discourses of practice that implicate social and ideological assumptions, veiled subjectivities, and unspoken affirmations of power reinforced through those discourses. Discourse of practice focuses on the epistemological, ethical, and logical assumptions that underpin the ways of doing in a practice, like cultural management/cultural policy. Epistemological assumptions relate to presumed knowledge, or what we think we know whether or not there is evidence to sustain it. Discourse of practice has its roots in practice theory, which looks at the "integrative practices" that arise in the activities and behaviors of actors in a field. They include explicit and implicit rules, normative procedures, principles, commitments, and assumptions that form into ways of doing, behaving, and thinking.
