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THEORIES OF CULTURE, THEORIES OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION
Week 4

Terms
◦(Critical) Political Economy
◦Cultural Studies
◦Neoliberalism
◦Neoclassical Economics
◦Content analysis
◦Active audiences
◦Discourse
◦Polysemy
◦

Perspectives
◦Sensitive to the potential power of the cultural industries
◦As makers of texts,
◦As systems for the management and marketing of symbolic creativity
◦As agents of change
◦ethical and normative questions
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Neoclassical Economics
◦A scientific study of economic affairs – how consumer preferences might be most efficiently
satisfied
◦Cut off from moral philosophy, questions of human rights/needs, social justice
◦“ The equation of human well-being with the meeting of preferences, rather than in terms of
fundamental human needs …. provides a limited basis on which to proceed in assessing the cultural
industries”
◦Neoliberalism: the production of efficient markets should be the primary goal of public policy;
“TV = a toaster with pictures”
◦- Such a definition denigrates the way in which culture can potentially contribute symbolically to
people’s lives in powerful ways
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Critical Political Economy



Critical Political Economy: Trajectories
◦North-American
◦Reductionist/Determinations
◦Cultural Industries
◦Cultural Industries Approach is better at examining:
◦Contradictions
◦The Specific Conditions of Cultural Production
◦Tensions between Consumption and Production
◦Symbol Creators
◦Information and Entertainment
◦Historical Variations in the social relations of Cultural Production
◦
◦What are the systemic social consequences of cultural production?
◦
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Sociology of Culture/Business, Management/Organization Studies
◦What actually happens in these organizations?
◦Company Data/Business relations + Discourse (how to achieve “success”)
◦Data Analysis – how to maximize efficiency (achieve success)
◦Macrosocial and Microsocial Analyses
◦Pressures, Forces, Dynamics, Mediations
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Texts, Meanings, Representation
◦Content Analysis – objective, verifiable measure of meaning
◦Polysemy
◦Aesthetic variation for interpretation
◦Cultural Studies
-Questions of ordinary cultural artefacts and experiences
◦Ordinary culture needs to be taken seriously; integrated analysis
◦The complexity of “culture” (anti-essentialism/politics of recognition)
◦The politics of authority in culture
◦Identity, subjectivity, discourse, and meaning
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◦Who speaks and how are we heard? Active Audiences? Social Power?
◦- Fiske (uncritical populism)/digital optimism
◦
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Production Studies
◦Creative Industries (Power (Foucault), postmodernism) – policy oriented)
◦Cultural Work/Labour – lived experiences of cultural workers (creative industry/economy policy
issues)
◦Precarity
◦Production Studies – routines and rituals/grounded  in-depth analyses to better understand
dynamics of macrosocial forces
◦Critical Media Industry Studies – strategies as they intersect workers experiences in all their
complexity, ambiguity, and ambivalence.
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Theoretical trajectories
◦Neoclassical Economics
◦Critical Political Economy
◦Moral Economy of Culture
◦Sociology of Culture
◦Production of Culture/Cultures of Production
◦Critical Sociological Approaches
◦Cultural Studies
◦Cultural Economy
◦Creative Industries
◦Cultural Work/Labour
◦Production Studies
◦Critical Media Industry Studies