The early school of cultural industries

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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics

Cultural and creative industries

4 ratings

National Research University Higher School of Economics

Cultural and creative industries

4 ratings

Main objective of this course is to trace the development of the Cultural and Creative Industries as an idea and as concept and to identify the key points of changes within it in relations with contemporary digital connected world. Another important task of this course is to provide the deep understanding of the difference between cultural and symbolic meaning products (such as films, recorded music, book and periodicals, online media content etc) and other kind of goods. This course will help you to: - Identify main peculiarities of cultural and symbolic goods in their difference with other branches of economy in terms of production chain, risks, relationship between different stages of production. - Be able to analyze cultural products and symbolic goods from the organizational, economic, business model point of view. - Be able to invent new business models and analyze cultural products in terms of their productions risk. - Be able to analyze cultural policies and creative industries/clusters policies. Main prerequisite to this course is to be able to produce analytical texts in humanities. Normally the course addresses all students of master level interested in peculiarities of media and cultural economy and management. This course is strongly not recommended for those who: - Analyse any market or industry only in microeconomic terms (supply and demand, level of competitions etc). This course is not about market but about peculiarities of symbolic goods; - Try to interpret culture only in terms of marketing and management (i.e. culture is considered like a simple good to be sold to the consumer). This course considers it more broadly like a human agency to produce meanings of everyday life. That’s why cultural goods are different and can not be interpreted exclusively in terms of consuming and need more or less state support; - Try to interpret culture like pure “art” and consequently are absolutely not preoccupied by organizational aspect of its working. This course uses a large number of concepts coming from different fields of science: political economy of communications, cultural studies, sociology etc. Some aspects of the course are commented by known scholars in this field such as David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds), Phillipe Bouquillion (University Paris 13 Nord), Bernard Miege (Grenoble Alpes University).

From the lesson

Theory of cultural industries

This module gives an overview of main theories of cultural industries. We'll also talk about theories of creative industries and notion of creativity in general. You will get “research optics” to analyze cultural goods.

Main theoretical foundations of cultural industry theories4:12

Frankfurt school view on industrialization of culture7:45

Political economy view on industrialization of culture6:16

Information and knowledge economy5:44

Main periods in contemporary theories of cultural industries7:34

The early school of cultural industries8:48

From cultural industries to content industries5:52

Contemporary challenges in digital world16:47

Creative industries and its origins9:07

Meet the Instructors

Iliya Kiria
Professor
Department of Media

Now, we'll speak about the early school of

cultural industries sold in huge cultural industries,

the second half of the 20th century and it's starting with the work which has been

published as a book under

the title capitalism and cultural industries in French language;

"Captalisme et Industries Culturelles" by few French scholars and in this book,

they define main peculiarities of cultural industries and we will trace it next week.

So first of all,

they proposed the idea of cultural industries in plural because according to them,

they could have different logics and different types of products

inside and they are just defining such kind of products.

Then the second main probably idea is the idea of random exchange value.

The idea that the exchange value of cultural industries in great extent is a

random so unpredictable you cannot- before launching a particular television series,

for example, predict the result of the series or commercial result of the series.

Just because it depends on the nonmeasurability of the collective tastes.

And as you know the cultural products are dependent on collective ecstatic tastes.

Then so, from this point of view,

the researchers are arguing then non-applicability of the supply marketing.

You can do a demand marketing,

you can try to incite people to go to watch the movie but you cannot

measure the popularity of particular plots of movie and then doing this movie,

you should do that movie before and then try to commercialize it,

try to distribute it.

You can not do a kind of

marketing research and then according to this marketing research,

provide a product just because this product is based on collective tastes,

which are much more complicated,

you cannot measure such tastes by classic marketing tools.

Then another peculiarity coming from

non-elasticity of the demand for cultural products means that the price

for cultural products doesn't

necessarily bring to the growth

of demand or vice versa.

Just because if I would like to buy a book of Dostoevsky I will buy a book of

Dostoevsky even if the price will be higher than

the book of Tolstoy because I would like Dostoevsky.

So, and the same is

working in the majority of cultural industries such as film, music, et cetera.

And the final point is the editorial function and

probably one of the most important thing which Huet,

Ion, Lefebvre, Miege & Peron proposed is the idea of the editorial function.

Editorial function is the function which is performed by so-called editor,

which could be present in any branch of creative industries.

The title of this editor could be different.

Sometimes we call it producer,

sometimes we call it major,

sometimes we call it publishing house, et cetera,

but the function is the same,

the editing function brings together

the artistic elements or creative side of production and commercial reproduction,

so the technical production.

So, it means that the editor brings together the creative income,

the creative process, which is personally driven idea,

immeasurable immaterial, et cetera.

and brings it together with a technical reproduction,

technical preparation we'll say of

this product to be distributed across different platforms.

We'll speak right now about Patrice Filchy's contribution

and his probably most important book is,

"Les Industries de I'imaginaire" (the industries of the

Imaginary) published at the beginning of 1980s.

So, he's trying to map the way the cultural products

historically become industrially and massively reproduced goods.

So, from this point of view for him,

it's not only the production,

which is important but also the consumption.

According to Filchy, such industries democratize the culture and make it more visible,

more massive and this idea Filchy will say use

reproduced from the works of Benjamin even because Benjamin said in his works that,

"Yes the technical reproducibility makes the culture more massive,

more visible for the big mass of people."

And of course stole the core thing for Filchy,

the question of practice.

How people use different media technologies in particular period of time.

So, it means that the practice could be not evolving during few dozen years,

but the technical devices and types of content could be different inside

these few dozen years but the function for

which such kind of technology will be used will be the same.

So, Filchy is mainly the sociologist of

the usage of the media and contemporary form of communication.

He's mainly interested in practices in the cultural practices.

Then British school.

The British schools are coming from

Marxist cultural studies and the Marxist cultural studies was

focused mainly on the idea how culture is

related to more general phenomena such as power, capital, et cetera.

And here if we will take a look on the work of Nicholas Garnham,

"Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and The Economics of

Information," which is influenced by cultural studies,

we cannot say that Nicholas Garnham was a part of

cultural studies but he was at a great extent influenced by.

So, he's trying to rethink the basic Marxist paradigm of the relationship between

base and superstructure model in a way that defines

media and culture as products of the industrial base of capitalism.

So, he's trying to say that the culture was

industrialized to the point that it dissolved into the base.

So, according to Garnham,

both production and dissemination of mass culture are related in the material world.

So from this point of view,

if for Marx the base is the labor relations and

the superstructure is other spheres of

the human activities for cultural studies approach,

the base is the culture,

which is structuring particular labor relations and this superstructure will be

either spheres of human activity including economy even including labor relations.

So it means that the labor relations dependent in some extent from culture.

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