ABSTRACT
Economics has long considered the Cultural Industries like any other as a product of scarcity and individuals seeking to maximize utility but also as special, in that it is the victim of ongoing market failure. With the 1980s emergence of the Cultural and Creative Industries as a productive sector, however, this view was replaced by one which saw the arts as a key driver of economic growth and innovation. Cultural Economics has therefore shifted in its concerns and arrived at a formulation of Cultural Capitals best represented by the work of David Throsby. Generating useful tools for the quantification of such activity, studies of the tourist, the tourist experience and the tourist product have also admitted the importance of the cultural artefact to travel and tourism. In contrast to cultural economists and many in tourism studies, sociologists have tended to focus on the nature and reception of cultural products as well as on the structured social relations of cultural production.
