Cultural Intermediaries and the Media (original) (raw)

Are we all cultural intermediaries now? An introduction to cultural intermediaries in context

European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2012

The term 'cultural intermediaries' is good to think with: it has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of 'new' and 'creative' work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption (e.g.

Mediating production and consumption: cultural capital and cultural workers

This paper examines recent debates about the role of what Bourdieu termed cultural intermediaries in the formation and reproduction of the relations of cultural capital. Workers in the cultural or creative industries were given a central place in Bourdieu's schema in the creation of hierarchies of value in the production and consumption of symbolic goods. Subsequent writers about the apparent emergence of a creative economy (Lash and Urry 1994; Featherstone 1991) have given workers involved in the production and distribution of cultural goods a pivotal place in the development of late or post-modernity. More recent work (Negus 2002; Nixon and du Gay 2002) has criticized the validity and coherence of the term as it has come to be understood and called for more rigour in its definition and use. This paper adds to this debate by considering the book trade as a space in which the gap between production and consumption of cultural goods is mediated. It suggests that cultural intermediaries, as cultural workers, are engaged in the reproduction of the cultural aspects of social class by ‘shoring up’ their insecure position in the relations of cultural capital, rather than simply being the taste leaders of a reflexive modernity.

Cultural industries and cultural policy Article (Accepted version) (Refereed

This article analyses and contextualises a variety of relationships between the cultural industries and cultural policy. A principal aim is to examine policies which are explicitly formulated as cultural (or creative) industries policies. It seeks to address questions such as: what lies behind such policies? How do they relate to other kinds of cultural policy, including those more oriented towards media, communications, arts and heritage? The first section asks how the cultural industries became such an important idea in cultural policy, when those industries had been largely invisible in traditional (arts and heritage-based) policy for many decades. What changed and what drove the major changes? In the second section, we look at a number of problems and conceptual tensions which arise from the new importance of the cultural industries in contemporary public policy, including problems concerning definition and scope, and the accurate mapping of the sector, but also tensions surrounding the insertion of commercial and industrial culture into cultural policy regimes characterised by legacies of romanticism and idealism. We also look at problems surrounding the academic division of labour in this area of study. In the final section, we conclude by summarising some of the main contemporary challenges facing cultural policy and cultural policy studies with regard to the cultural industries. The piece also serves to introduce the contributions to a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy on 'The Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy'.

The Culture Industry Revisited

One of the Frankfurt School's major contributions to sociology, as well as media and communication studies was Theodore Adorno and Max

Introduction to 'The (Digital) Cultural Industry

2009

The interaction between culture and economy was famously explored by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer by the term ‘Kulturindustrie’ (The Culture Industry) to describe the production of mass culture and power relations between capitalist producers and mass consumers (1997 [1947]). Their account is a bleak one, but one that appears to hold continuing relevance, despite being written in 1944. Today, the pervasiveness of network technologies has contributed to the further erosion of the rigid boundaries between high art, mass culture and the economy, resulting in new kinds of cultural production charged with contradictions. On the one hand, the culture industry appears to allow for resistant strategies using digital technologies, but on the other it operates in the service of capital in ever more complex ways. This publication, the first in the DATA browser series, [1] uses the concept of the culture industry as a point of departure, and tests its currency under new conditions.

The problem of cultural intermediaries in the economy of qualities

The Cultural Intermediaries Reader. Eds. J.S. Maguire & J. Matthews, 2014

Production is … at the same time consumption, and consumption is at the same time production. Each is directly its own counterpart. But at the same time an intermediary movement goes on between the two. Production furthers consumption by creating the material for the latter which otherwise would lack its object. But consumption in its turn furthers production, by providing for the products the individual for whom they are products. The product receives its last finishing touches in consumption. (Marx, 1980/1857-8: 24) This passage in Marx’s outline for his critique of political economy is famous for its provocative framing of the systemic, contingent links between production and consumption. It rather neatly introduces intermediation without labouring the theoretical problem raised by its status as a necessary movement between spheres that are simultaneous, unified, and identical. The idea that some form of mediation between production and consumption has to take place for either to exist has a long history but interest in modelling how this mediation works in practice has been uneven. Bourdieu’s (1984) formulation of the cultural intermediary occupations of the new petit bourgeoisie has acted as probably the single biggest impetus to research exploring the practical mediating function of work in professions like advertising, design, retailing, branding and marketing .