Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Digital Inequality in Cultural Institutions: Rethinking Digital Transformation Policy and Practice

Digital Inequality in Cultural Institutions: Rethinking Digital Transformation Policy and Practice

Holcombe-James, Indigo
Mandal, Anthony
Kidd, Jenny

Hardcover

Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures

Business GeneralGeneral ReferenceGeneral Political Science

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 7, 2027

ISBN10: 1350416339
ISBN13: 9781350416338
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Jan 7 2027
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.00
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

What do cultural institutions need to do digital work- and what happens when those needs go unmet?
Contemporary cultural policy positions digital transformation as a democratic enterprise: a path toward greater access, inclusion, and participation. But this book shows that the reality is far more uneven.

Drawing on nearly a decade of ethnographic research with more than 100 cultural institutions across Australia-including First Nations art centres, community archives, museums, and galleries-Holcombe-James demonstrates that the capacity to do digital work is not equally distributed. It falls along familiar lines of geography, institutional scale, and funding, reproducing and deepening existing inequalities across the sector.

Using the concept of digital capital, this book reveals how infrastructures, capabilities, and relationships combine to enable or constrain institutional digital transformation. Holcombe-James argues that addressing digital inequality requires moving beyond policy approaches that place the burden on individual institutions, toward collective and collaborative responses-shared infrastructures, distributed expertise, and sector-wide knowledge building. A vital resource for scholars and practitioners alike, this book reframes how we think about digital transformation in cultural policy, putting questions of equality and access at the centre.

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