Political Economy Approach to Creative and Cultural Industries - Essay Example

What does the 'political economy' approach to the study of the Creative and Cultural Industries involve What are its advantages and disadvantages Introduction The world economy in general and the national economies in particular, in twenty first century, are more or less dominated by post-industrial knowledge-based exchanges. Primary production or manufacturing is becoming decreasingly important sectors of the postmodern economy. The importance of cultural industry is not merely limited to its economic capabilities (which is, of course, relatively strong); but also to the prominent role it has on the making and unmaking of peoples' identities, attitudes, values and lifestyles. The dynamics and complexities of the relationships between culture, creative industries and the political and economic development of societies have gained the attention of theorists and researchers from the mid-twentieth century itself. The post World War II world saw the mainstreaming of studies on cultural and creative industries as it was an absolute necessity to explore and grasp the changing nature of politics and economics in the developed countries. Defining Culture and Creative Industries The end of the cold war marked the beginning of a 'cultural turn' in the globalized world. The worldwide dissemination of the values and attitudes of the West in general and the United States of America in particular has been the focus of attention for not only academicians but also for ordinary people from across the world. There have been intense debates over the impact of globalization and the consequent transformations in the realm of culture from a number of conflicting standpoints. The idea of cultural imperialism has been particularly influential in the understanding of the profound transformations that are taking place in the sphere of culture. Regardless of the difference among these contesting perspectives on the characterization of this cultural turn, there exists a consensus on the incredible role of global media as carrier of the unprecedented changes pertinent to culture at both global and local levels. However, culture should no longer be perceived as a locally bounded 'whole way of life' as the components of culture themselves have profoundly changed. It has been suggested that culture should not be viewed as introverted, tied to place and inward looking as it used to be in history. Rather, culture is seen as an outward-looking 'translocal learning process'. The intangibility is one of the important factor in defining a cultural product or commodity. Certainly, the content of cultural commodities is immeasurable and 'cultural' in nature. Here, cultural means that the use value of a cultural commodity is satisfying some of the mental, psychological needs of a user in one way or another from a culturally determined standpoint. Speaking from the opposite, a cultural commodity has no 'physical' value apart from its ability to gratify given cultural tastes of a consumer. In broad terms, cultural industries are characterised by the production, creation, transmission, dissemination, registration, protection, participation and mass consumption of cultural and creative types of intangible and immeasurable contents, which are available in the market as exchangeable commodities or services. Globalisation represents not only the competitive distribution but also the co-operative sharing of cultural and creative goods. Cultural industries deal with the mechanisms of production, distribution and use of cultural goods. Laws and provisions concerning copyright and intellectual property rights are used to protect and ensure the value based exchangeability of such commodities and services in the marketplace. The term 'cultural industries' denotes that culture is part of the economic sector. The state considerably regulates the cultural industry as a sector of economy but not without political implications. Crafts, designs, printed and published materials, multimedia creations, pornographic productions, designs of various types, photographic articles, music, audiovisual and cinematographic creations and artistic performances are some of the popular forms of cultural and creative commodities. Cultural and creative industries encompass activities that are part of cultural and artistic production. It does not mean that cultural industry and creative industry are, as analytical categories, synonymous or interchangeable. Based on the predominant quantity of artistic or creative content, creative industry can effectively be differentiated from culture industry. Therefore, while advertising and architecture are part of creative industries, television programmes and cinemas are part of cultural commodities. Creative industries include distinctive fields such as advertising, architecture, art and antiques markets, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure software, music, performing arts, publishing, software and computer services and television and radio. Content creation, production, distribution and consumption are the four principal areas of cultural industries. The advances in technology and the developments in information technologies, digital media, e-commerce and new communication channels have profoundly changed the character of cultural and creative industries in twenty first century. Cultural and creative industries have a major share in the international trade and a deep impact over cultural lives of peoples of different countries. The international flow of cultural goods and services are higher than ever. Cultural trade flows include the transnational and cross-border distribution of books, television programmes, audio and video CDs, films, documentaries, internet data and information, videogames, paintings and sculptures. It has been argued by a number of theorists that the postmodernist culture is affirmative. On the contrary, Adorno (1991) criticises the mass culture merely as a product of what he understands as 'culture industry'. While seeing mass culture as retrogressive and making passive effects on the spectators, Adorno underestimates the positive aspects of popular culture and its potentialities for democratising the culture itself. He fails to see the democratic transformation of culture through the medium of mass culture. Therefore, postmodernists have come up with the argument that Adorno holds an elitist appraisal of pure artistic modernism against a culture of the people. Adorno's perspective is regrettably one-sided in only seeing the alienation and ideology in the cultural contents produced by culture industry. Adorno's (1991) critical theory considers the existence of an alienated and alienating culture industry as a product of the capitalist commodity fetishism. Capitalism contains the forces of fragmentation and reification, which take form through industrially produced cultural commodities and lessens the possibilities for integral freedom. Obviously, Adorno was staunch proponent of modernist high culture vis--vis the consumerist, populist mass culture. For Adorno, fascism was the full scale realisation of western rationality and full-fledged instrumental reason. Culture industry too is a tool for capitalist driven integration and unification, which has catastrophic effects on entire humanity. In the same fashion, Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment too reveals the self destructive tendencies inherent in the whole project of modernity. According to Horkheimer, the very work of emancipation from various fetters would itself lead to an inevitable return to new forms of regression and domination. The enlightened reason subsumes the particular for universal and thus neglects the intrinsic qualities of things. For capitalist development, all production is under the logic of market, in which the production is not oriented towards meeting the real needs of people, but to multiply capital, that is nothing but the objectification of human beings. While capitalist class unlimitedly acquires capital, it also gains unaccounted and illegitimate political power that is inherently retrogressive and destructive vis--vis the working class. Therefore, production becomes isolated from use value and becomes for the sole purpose of exchange. In other words, the universality of exchange value under capitalism objectively subsumes the particularity of use value. It is also an act of replacing the intrinsic values of thing with its extrinsic values. The art generated by culture industry does not provide happiness but gives entertainment as a relief from labour, which is in essence most creative form of human activity. Art is detached from practice and is a product of the inevitable division between physical and mental labour in any given class divided society. The production of leisure good is not only a systemic outcome but also systemic necessity for its own reproduction. The artistic amusement one gets from the products of cultural industry constitutes a continuity and discontinuity with work. Understanding Political Economy Approach Cultural economy has become a central paradigm in cultural studies that considers culture essentially as economy and analyses it as an industry. Culture is not purely or merely seen as a realm of human activity or social development separated from the politics and economies of the concerned societies. Simply speaking, contemporary culture has a distinct and autonomous political economy. Moreover, the culture itself (constitutes) is constituted by political economy. Culture can no more be understood without analysing the processes and patterns of the production of culture. Knowledge and technology gap between developed and developing countries. The traditional notion of culture has given way to the consumerist notion of culture. Hence, the term consumerist culture is derived. The political economy approach is part of the materialist tradition of cultural studies.The political economy approach inquires culture in material terms. It is widely noted that there is a gap between production-centred approach and consumption-centred approach to the study of cultural and creative industries. Culture could be studied as simply as a sector of economy. Most importantly, culture must be studied as a type of material production. Otherwise, there is no way to understand the politics of cultural contents produced, distributed and used in the cultural and creative industries. In the last analysis, cultural production is what paramount while looking from the political economy perspective as materialism always emphasises on actual production processes in the society. "The rise of new media industries in the twentieth century led business to take a close look at the economics of communication. The result was research on everything from how to produce and market radio and television receivers to how to sell products to mass audiences. The growth of political economy was built in part on an effort to understand this process critically, i.e., to connect mass marketing to wider economic and social processes and to criticize them from a range of humanistic values" ( Mosco, 1996). Needless to say, such an effort was essentially based on Marxian theoretical premise. Mosco (1996) has identified the central tenets of political economy approach as "a strong commitment to historical analysis, to understanding the broad social totality, to moral philosophy or the study of social value and of the good social order, and , finally, to social intervention or praxis". The cultural economy perspective has gathered momentum following the so called 'cultural turn' in the wake of the post-industrial economy, thereby, not only the academicians but also the corporate sector too gives an added value to culture as a significant factor in the organizational practices, market dealings and other economic activities. Even within the discipline of economics, there is a set of influential theorists that looks at economics as a discursive formation and cultural composition of a particular type. It means that the market itself is culturally constructed, not an objectively constituted entity beforehand. Economic realities are nothing but discursive construct that are shaped by the cultural settings in which they operate. The political economy approach to the cultural and creative industries does not uphold the view that the audience is active without limits. The consumer subject does not and cannot exist in a vacuum of non-place and non-time to have pure tastes and pure choices. The sovereignty of the consumer is an illusion at the spectacular marketplace of commodity fetishism. The politics and economics of the culture industry shape the very subjectivity of the consumers of the cultural contents. According to Mosco (1996), "political economy is a major perspective in communication research". The central postulate of political economy approach is the understanding that "social change is ubiquitous" and that "three starting points that serve as entry or starting points to the social field: commodification, spatialization, and structuration" ( Mosco, 1996). As an epistemology, political economy approach cannot comprehend all of social life with an overarching theory. Therefore, it tries to combine theory with practice as "Marx pushed beyond theory to praxis, Freud beyond the psychoanalysis of explanation to therapeutic provocation, and so on" (Mosco, 1996). In brief, Mosco puts forward the view that " there is no single correct approach that, by itself, constitutes a definitive political economy of communication". Hence, "the political economy approach to communication is one starting point or gateway among a range of others, such as cultural studies and policy studies, major approaches that reside on the borders of political economy" ( Mosco, 1996). Therefore, it must be understood that political economy approach to the study of cultural and creative industries in particular and communication in general does not make claims larger than its defined potential to define social phenomena. Mige (1989), in his opposition to Adorno and Horkheimer's model of culture industry, founded the cultural industries approach. He vigorously argued against the notion that capital is all-pervasive. The model of instrumental reason is too abstract as tool for analysis. Mige was for rejecting both the economic determinism and economic reductionism of political economy approach in general and asserted the unaccounted complexity of cultural industries, which was not fit to be analysed in the earlier framework of culture industry. While grounding political economy approach itself, Mige looks upon technology as both oppressive and a potential tool for liberation. For Mige (1989), "the capitalization of cultural production is a complex, many-sided and even contradictory process". He challenges the positive vs. negative logic of Adorno, which is derived from German Dialectics. And, furthermore, the culture industry does not exist as a singular, unified field overwhelmed by a single process. Mige (1989) also contends that Adorno and Horkheimer overlook the importance of market forces in the shaping of culture. The Politics and Economics of Cultural and Creative Industries: The Content of Political Economy Approach Theoretically speaking, three components of new media studies are "the artefacts or devices used to communicate or convey information; the activities and practices in which people engage to communicate or share information; and the social arrangements or organizational forms that develop around those devices and practices" (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006). The characteristics of media have changed profoundly in the last two or three decades. They are not merely technological advancements. The social, political, economic and cultural aspects of such changes are important to take account of when a critical understanding of the cultural imperialism thesis is attempted. The times of mass society as well as mass media have faded away. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the historical conditions in which the new media proliferates. In other words, unless the processes and patterns through which the new media socialization takes place, it is not possible to understand them as a whole. "Linear narratives and genres that were associated with particular media technologies and forms in the past- the novel, the Hollywood film, the LP record album, the crime drama- are absorbed into hyperlinked, hybrid content that is generated and shared via diverse channels" (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006). In his seminal work "Cultural Imperialism: A critical Introduction", John Tomlinson (1992) defines cultural imperialism as "the use of political and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture". The problem here is the selection of the parameters to determine what is foreign and what is native in terms of culture. The predominant understanding of such a dichotomy between the foreign and the native culture presupposes the nation state as homogeneous community and as the primary and overwhelming reality of one's life. While exploring the construct of 'Englishness', Hall argues that such a national construct is a manufactured homogeneity. "It was always negotiated against difference. It always had to absorb all the differences of class, of religion, of gender, in order to present itself as a homogeneous entity" (Hall, 1997). A more realistic understanding of the processes and patterns of cultural domination must take account of the cleavages that exist between various social groups within the nation state. Importantly, Benedict Anderson's (1983) claim that nation is an imagined community in the era of print capitalism itself points out the mutations occurring with nation state as it confronts the reality of digital capitalism. The widespread availability of American cultural products such as music, television channels, entertainment and informational commodities is one of the important factors that enable the lopsided influence of American culture over the rest of the world. Therefore, Schiller famously defines cultural imperialism as "the sum of processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system" (Schiller, 1976). Importantly, Schiller has found a common ground between the study of media dominance and theories of economic imperialism. For him, it is necessary to look at theories such as world systems and dependency theories in order to explore the dynamics of domination in the sphere of communication. "Nothing less than the viability of the American industrial economy itself is involved in the movements towards international commercialization of broadcasting" (Schiller, 1969). On the economic realm, the proliferation of American products has a penetrating impact over the determination of the cultural aspects of the lives of millions of people from outside the United States. Many a theorists have almost equated cultural imperialism with American cultural imperialism as if the United States alone is the conductor of the concert of global cultural imperialism. What is important to note that there is no single culture that alone oppresses other cultures. With reference to the nation state as the overwhelming reality in the modern world, it is possible to classify cultural imperialism as cultural imperialism from within and without. The idea is that cultural imperialism is not only a compound, multi-layered phenomenon that encompasses a wide array of practices of a number of hegemonic cultures but also could only be defined from the standpoint(s) of the subaltern cultures from around the world. Culture is also a means of policy making and unmaking. It has been part and parcel of governance techniques. Culture is a medium of regulation too be it of democratic or authoritarian. The rationality of both government and governance relies upon culture and its constitutive powers for retaining and gaining legitimacy. The resistance to the 'powers that be' also use culture as a means for effectively raising political challenge. There is a close relationship between culture and politics across the political regimes of various types. The contents, prices, standards, distribution networks in cultural and creative industries are considerably controlled and regulated even in the democratic countries of the West. The increasing cross-border trade on media culture not only commodifies culture but also reinvents culture as commodities constructed in terms of the prevailing market logic. Delimiting or opening the national cultural market is a political issue, which in turn substantially influence the character of cultural and creative industries. Culture is essentially related to many of the policy areas of modern governance ranging from media campaigns against HIV to election campaigns. It is closely linked with trade and economy. It is important to note that culture, as commodities are essentially different from other goods. On the one side of the media globalization debate, "[m]ainstream economists and liberal communications theorists have emphasized the relationship between new technologies and markets, and argued that media globalization promotes opportunities for shared information, borderless communication and global commerce. Further, they believe that global media encourage the spread of liberal democratic ideas and empower citizens worldwide against unjust forms of local authority, by allowing the 'whole world to watch' and witness such injustices" (Flew and McElhinney, 2006). On the other hand, "the political economy tradition has long drawn attention to the adverse political and cultural implications of the unequal distribution of international communications power and resources, and how they intersect with broader structures of dominance and Western hegemony in the international political economy" (Flew and McElhinney, 2006). From a different platform, theorists of new world information and communication order such as Kaarle Nordenstreng, Cees Hamelink have pointed out "the importance of the internationalization and commercialization of global communications to the status of United States as the world's dominant capitalist economy" (Flew and McElhinney, 2006). The contemporary era of globalization has marked by the emergence of a global market for what is commonly known as cultural commodities. However, this global market of cultural commodities too is characterized by unevenness and lopsidedness. "The deregulation and liberalization of broadcasting systems in Asia have thrown open the floodgates of media and cultural flows in the region" (Banerjee, 2002). The structural adjustment plan and other neoliberal policies followed by a number of governments in the developing countries are instrumental in initiating this shift in the media sector. It is worthwhile to notice that the expansion of the big media conglomerates "has not been primarily the result of technological change or market competition, but is indicative of the extent of transnational corporate influence over national policy-makers and the hegemonic role that has been played by global media in the international dissemination of ideas" (Flew and McElhinney, 2006). While analyzing the media and its impact on culture, it is possible to see that cultural change take place in dialectical relationship between the forces at the local and global levels. No culture is simply paving way for its own death since cultures have their own inherent capacity to reproduce themselves. It has been widely observed that there is a significant growth in the regional production of television programmes and other cultural products in competition with the global media. In twentieth century, the mass media played a vital role in the export of cultural values from the imperialist metropolises to the developing world. However, as the organizing logic of capitalism has undergone mutations in the twenty first century, the form and content of cultural imperialism too have changed. The resistance from the new anti-colonial subjects created by the unprecedented unleashing of the global market forces itself is challenging the remnants of cultural imperialism that are embedded in the new mode of capitalist advancement in the contemporary era. On the other hand, nothing like a global media culture exist in reality. The media culture in itself is multiple and varied even from genre to genre. At present, it is possible to see that forces of hetrogenization are actively countering homogenizing forces, both are the products of a one and same culturally colonializing capitalism, although in a lopsided manner. Nevertheless, the dominant cultural discourse originating from the United States and other imperialist metropolises and spreading through the new media has a significant role in shaping the cultural outlook of the rest of the world directly or indirectly and the same time, being confronted actively by the forces from below. Many a theorists have noted that contemporary media globalization ensures the one-way flow of cultural commodities from the Western backgrounds. The domination of the West is being reproduced through the hegemony of its cultural formations. Capitalism is not only a political or economic force. It is a cultural force too, capable of changing the cultural life of millions and millions from around the world in accordance with its need to reproduce its values and norms which are happened to be deeply embedded in the social cultures of the dominant countries. Cultural imperialism thesis was so influential even for to shapes the debates on media for two or three decades. However, there have been criticisms which try to shake the very intellectual foundations of cultural imperialism perspective. Basing on such criticisms, the cultural globalization perspective challenges the validity of cultural imperialism thesis. In an increasingly globalized world, the processes and patterns of cultural interactions and integration are not linear or one-dimensional. It has been noted that the theorists of cultural imperialism overstate the centrality of media in transforming the cultural lives of the people. The fact is that the cultural production even in the West is not a monolithic process but plural. Apparently, there are wide varieties of counter media initiatives such as independent media centres which consciously try to break the mould of stereotypical western programmes. Advantages and Disadvantage of Political Economy Approach The political economy thought in itself is much diverse than its critiques supposition. Mosco (1996) is of the opinion that it is capable of taking "an explicitly non-reductionist and over-determined or multiply determined approach to research". Furthermore, for instance, "it declines to reduce any apparent complexity in person , relationship, or historical occurrence to a core essentiality or simplicity, e.g. that the economic or the cultural provides the essential causal impetus for historical change and that others are non-essential" (Mosco, 1996). It is the strength of the political economy approach that "following on the work of Gramsci, Lukcs, Althusser, and Williams, it holds that definitions of theory and society are overdetermined or multiply determined" (Mosco, 1996). In other words, there are different types constitutive processes that shape the very existence of individuals, social institutions and knowledge and ideas. Here, determination does not mean absolute fixing or deciding on the other but , in William's terms, "setting limits and exerting pressures" or, in Ahmad's words, "to the givenness of the circumstance within which individuals make their choices, their lives, their histories" (Mosco, 1996). Since multiple determination or overdetermination is an essential feature of political economy approach, it "more easily avoids the tendency to isolate practices in autonomous categories and permits emphasis on both relatively autonomous and interactive practices" ( Mosco, 1996). There are vigorous internal debates taking place with political economy approach, which is its one of the projected strengths. In addition, this fact allows a significant variety of viewpoints under the umbrella term of political economy approach. Critical paradigms to the study of culture and creative industries try to overcome the lopsided emphasis political economy tradition gives to politics and economics pertaining to cultural and creative industries. The Marxian economic determinism that leads ultimately to economic reductionism is a defining characteristic of the political economy approach. As a matter of fact, the realm of culture has its own internal logic of functioning. It is not simply working in accordance with the principles of market or the crude laws of economics. Culture is discursive; it constitutes discourses with cultural contents. The political economy approach, however, has been criticised as "an encyclopaedic or 'textbook approach', particularly the tendency to present elements of a map without a sense of structure, process, relationship, or outcome" (Mosco, 1996). These kinds of criticisms have emerged from many corners against political economy approach since it exclusively emphasises on social totality. Political economy approach to the study of cultural and creative industries have been criticised from pure aesthetic points of view too. Theorists such as Paul De Man argues that the emphasis on external factors by the crass materialism of political economy approach leads to the missing out of focus on internal factors of cultural and creative products such as the quality of content and the attractiveness of cultural and creative themes. Conclusion The modern world is equally characterised by integration and disintegration. The crises in the realms of culture, politics and economy are not isolated. The overarching social crisis of both modernity and late modernity are closely related, or even entwined. Such crises, in their various manifestations and multiple dimensions, are the expressions of a one and same historical process. It is the advantage of the political economy approach that it studies the very historical process that overlaps the crises of various types in our era, without overlooking its structural and functional complexities. "The analysis based on mutual constitution remains open to specifying the nature, strength, direction, and duration of a relationship between processes" (Mosco, 1996). Certainly, there are differences within the political economy approach to the study of cultural and creative industries based on linearity and non-linearity. While the traditional approaches of political economy are considered to be linear because of their one dimensional view of social processes and relations, new turns within political economy emphasises on non-linearity and multiplicity because they try to characterise the multidimensional post modern life in its given complexity. For Mosco (1996), "Mattelart and Mattelart offer one of the few published accounts of the need to approach the political economy of communication from a non-linear perspective". To conclude, it is possible to argue that the political economy approach to the study of creative and creative industries, apart from its limitations, is constantly advancing itself and able to comprehend wider social and cultural phenomena. References Adorno, T. W. (1991). The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge. Curran, J., Morley, D. and Walkerdine, V. (eds) (1996) Cultural Studies and Communications, London: Arnold. During, S., (1999). The Cultural Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Flew,T. and McElhinney, S. (2006) Globalization and the Structure of New Media Industries in Lievrouw, L. A. and Livingstone, S. M. (Ed.) Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs, London: Sage. Hall, S. (1997) 'The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity' in A. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World-system: Contemporary Conditions for the Representaion of Identity. (pp.19-39). London: Macmillan. Lievrouw, L. A. and Livingstone, S. M. (2006) (Ed.) Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs, London: Sage. Mige, B., (1989). The Capitalization of Cultural Production. New York: International General. Mosco, V., (1996). The Political Economy of Communication. London: Sage. Schiller, H. (1976). Communication and Cultural Domination. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Tomlinson, J. (1991) Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter. Read More