INTRODuCTIGN

Introduction
-• The chapters in this book all deal, in their different ways, with the question
,q of cultural production. This is one of the central processes and practices
Cut fuít /C4-1 4 (A-r, 1,«,
through which meaning is made and a key moment in what-has been termed
'the circuit of culture' (see du Gay, 11: 2.11 et al., 1997). But what does
production, industry, and the economic more generally, have to do with •
culture? What is the connection between them, and how are we to
1\;¿7,,,A) understand and conceive of this relation?

Economy and culture

If you were asked to list some of the key thernes that had come to dominate
discussion about wealth creation and successful business organization in the
last decade or so, what would spring to mind? Terms like 'efficiency' and
'economy', almost certainly, 'flexibility' and `de-regulation', quite probably,
but what about 'culture'?
If this suggestion leaves you somewhat confused, try taking a quic,‹ flick
idencity through some of those popular management texts that seern to appear with
such alarrning regularity. Chances are a brief examination of their contents
would soon revea' the primacy accorded to 'culture' in the battle to make
enterprises more successful. In this literature, 'culture' is allotted such
importance because it is seen to structure the way people think, feel and act
in organizations. 'Culture' has thus come to be seen as a crucial means of
ensuring organizacional success because it is held that if you can effectively
y manage `meaning' at work, so that people come to conceive of and conduct
regulation themselves in such a way as to maximize their involvement in, and hence
their contribution to, the organization for which they work, you are more
likely to have a profitable, effective and successful firm.
Perhaps one reason why we are somewhat surprised to hear that 'culture' has
The circuir of culture emerged as a crucial concept in the world of business organization is
because we have come to think of thes é' two terms — 'business' and 'culture'
— as somehow mutually incompatible. Certainly there is a powerful tradition
of thought which holds that 'culture' — and this ñormally means 'high'
culture — is an autonomous realm of existence dedicated to the pursuit of
particular values 'beauty', 'authenticity' and 'truth' which are the
very antithesis of those assumed to hold sway in the banal world of the
economy — the rational pursuit of profit, unbounded 'instrumentalism' and
so on. Seen from this position any blurring of the boundaries between these
two spheres is held to be potentially dangerous. The presumed 'higher'
values of 'culture' are bound to be tainted if they come into contact with the
brutal rationalities of the economic.

* A reference in bold indicates another book. or another chapter in another book. in the series.
 2 PRODUCTION OF CULTURE/CULTURES OF PRODUCTION
You are probably aware of the basic tropes of this argument. They are
invariably deployed when, for example, the government announces
reductions in state funding for the arts and demands that arts organizations
become more enterprising in their search for alternativa sources of finance.
In a somewhat different context, similar trames of reference are utilized
when fans accuse 'indie' pop and rock bands of `selling out' when they sign
to major record labels. What these two examples share is a belief that
`economv' . and 'culture' are absolutely autonomous entities and any merging
of them is bound to demean and debase the latter.
A rather different approach to the relationship between 'culture' and
`economy', but one which nonetheless establishes an absolute hierarchv of
values in which one term is privileged over the other, can be found within
certain materialist and economistic traditions of thought within the social
and human sciences. In these approaches, the language of the 'economy' is
heid to provide us with the possibility of 'hard', 'objective' knowledge of the
world because it deals with seemingly `transparent', 'factual' material
processes. In contrast, the language of 'culture' is seen to deal with the 'soft',
seemingly less tangible elements of life meanings, representations and
values, for example — and these are assumed to be incapable of generating
unambiguous,and hence 'true'‹knowledge: For a long time. these
approaches tended to view the 'cultural' dimensions of life as largely
'superstructuraP phenomena -- that is, as `second order' processes and
practices dependent 'upon and reflective of the material base. In this sense,
the economy was assumed to completely domínate and determine the
cultural domain.
These two approaches have come in for considerable criticism over time and
it is fair to say thatfew people espouse the of simple 'ideal typical'
versions outlined abo ye. Nonetheless, it is also fair to say that traces of both
continue to haunt contemporary academic debates about the relationship
between 'economy' and 'culture* as well as everyday discussions concerning
the relativo merits of different cultural preferences and products.
This book is centrally coricerned with exploring and analysing the
relationship between economy and culture in the present. However, it
attempts to sidestep posítions which assume either an essential opposition
between these twó spheres of existence or an essentially deterministic
relationship between them, where one side completely dominates the other.
Instbd, the contributors to this volume all acknowledge the mutually
constitutive relationship between 'culture' and 'economy'.
In their different ways and in relationship to different objects of analvsis
they argue that in late modern societies such as our own the 'economic' and
the 'cultural' are irrevocably 'hybrid' categories; that what we think of as
purely 'economic' processes and practices are, in an important sense,
'cultural' phenornena — managers of business enterprises, as we sa • earlier,
are busv attempting to create appropriate organizational 'cultures' because
they have come to see the very stuff of culture — meanings, norms and values
-- as crucial elements of economic success.
Similarly, contemporary material culture is predominantly `manufactured'.
After all, what films would we watch, what televisions would we view them
on, what music would we listen to and so forth, if we were determined to
enforce an absolute division between culture and economy? Our everyday
cultural lives are bound up with mass-produced material cultural artefacts to
such an extent that a principled opposition between the economic and
industrial, on the one hand, and the cultural, on the other, is simply
untenable.
If such principled'oppositions have little practical or theoretical utility then
the question arises as to how we can more productively conceptualize the
relationship between the economic and the cultural in the present dav. In
this book, an attempt at reconstruction is conducted through the notion of
`cultural economy'
`Cultural economy'
cultural economy This phrase — cultural economy may strike you as a little strange. So what
does it mean; what is it meant to signify? One of the main reasons for using
this term is to suggest both continuity and rupture with deterministic
approaches to the study of 'economic On the one hand, there are echoes
in this phrase of the approach to analysing economic. life commonly termed
`political economy', particularly in relation to the latter's opposition to the
ahistoric and asocial tenets of neo-classical economics and its emphasis on a
multi-paradigm analysis of the economy.
On the other hand, 'cultural economy' is also meant to signify a break with
`political economy' in one ke y respect — concerning the importance allocated
to meaning in the cónduct of economic life. For whereas 'political economy'
has tended to emphasize features such as the distribution of income, patterns
of corporate ownership and control, the dynamic nature of market
econornies, capital accumulation and the generation and uses of económic
surplus, it has had rather less to say about the meanings these processes
come to have for those involved in them. Because political economy
approaches tend to represent economic processes and practices as `things in
themselves' — with certain 'objective' meanings — people are seen mainly as
the 'bearers' of these. As a result of this process of 'objectification', the
`cultural' dimensions of economic activities — the meanings and values these
activities hold for people — are evacuated.
As Stuart Hall has argued, however, 'culture is involved in all those practices
which carry meaning and value for us. which need to be meaningfully
interpreted by others, or which depend on meaning for their effective
operation. Culture, in this sense, permeates all of society' (Hall, 1997, p. 3).
The economic is a crucial domain of existence in modern societies, and it
 4 PRODUCTION OF CULTURE/CULTURES OF PRODUCTION
too is thoroughly saturated with culture. Indeed, this is precisely what the
term 'cultural economy' is meant to signify. 'Economic' processes and
practices — in all their plurality, whether we refer to management techniques
for re-organizing the conduct of business, contemporary stritegies for
advertising goods and services, or everyday interactions between service
employees and their customers — depend on meaning for their effects and
have particular cultural 'conditions of existence'. Meaning is produced at
`economic' sites (at work, in shops) and circulated through economic
processes and practices (through economists' models of how 'economies' or
`organizations' work, through adverts, marketing materials and the very
design of products) no less than in other domains of existence in modem
societies.
A crucial feature of this book, then, is the way it treats economic processes
and practices as cultural phenomena, as depending on meaning for their
effective operation. Just think, for a moment, about the entity we refer to as
`the economy'. How do we go about managing this entity? Well, one of the
first things we need to do is to build a clear picture of what an economy
looks like. We need to ask ourselves what its main cornponents are, and how
they work. In other words, before one can even seek to manage something
called an 'economy', it is first necessary to conceptualize or represent a set
of processes and relations as an 'economy' which is amenable to
management. We need, in other words, a discourse of the economy, and this discourse
discourse, like any other, will depend on a particular mode of representation:
the elaboration of a language for conceiving of and hence constructing an
object in a certain way so that that object can then be deliberated about and
acted upon. In this way, economics can be seen to be a cultural phenomenon
because it works through language and representation. Discourses of the
economy, like those of sexuality, `race' or nationality, carry meaning.
In the same vein, processes of production and sy-stems of organization can be
seen to be more than simply 'objective' structures that people inhabit and
reproduce. Through a cultural lens they become assemblages of meaningful
practices that construct certain ways for people to conceive of and conduct
themselves at work. As indicated abo y e, businesses have spent enormous
time and money in recent years trying consciously and deliberately to
change their organizational 'cultures'. Through the introduction of seemingly
banal mechanisrns and practices such as cost centres, performance appraisal
and team-working, employers have sought to create new meanings for the
work people do and thus to construct new forms of work-based identity
amongst employees. In so doing they have indicated precisely how working
practices are 'cultural' phenomena — how they are `meaningful'.
Organizational practices carry particular meanings and construct certain
forms of conduct amongst people subjected to them.
The most important point to note about our term economy' is
therefore the crucial importance it allots to language, representation and
INTRODUCTION 5
meaning — to 'culture' — for understanding the conduct of economic life and
the construction of economic identities.
However. the explanatory reach of the term does not end there, for 'cultural
economy' carnes another register of meaning. It doesn't simply suggest that
economic phenomena are inherently 'cultural', that economic processes and
practices are always meaningful practices; it also indicates something about
the contemporary nature of economic life, namely that , we live in an era 1:1
which the economic has become thoroughly 'culturailied'. So what does in
mean to talk about a 'cultural economy' in this latter sense?
In this second manifestation, 'cultural economy' refers:to the increasing
importance of 'culture' to doing business in the contemporary would. Thisls
evidenced at a number of differen.t levels. First, and perhaps most obviously,
by the wayin which global entertainment corporations, such as Sony, Time-
Warner, Bertelsmann,.Disney and News Corporation, whose business is the
production and distribution of 'culturar,hardware and software — such as
music, film, television, print media and computer games — have become
amongst the most powerful economic actors in the world. Today, 'culture' is
a truly global business.
representation Secondly, more and more of the goods and services produced for consumers
across a range of sectors can be conceived of as 'cultural' goods, in that they
are deliberately inscribed with particular meanings and associations as they
are produced and circulated in a conscious attempt to generate desire for
them amongst end users. The growing aestheticization or lashioning' of
seemingly banal products — from instara coffee to bank accounts whereby
these are sold to consumers in ter= of particular clusters of meaning
indicates-the increased importance of `culture' to the prod.uction and
circulation of a multitude of goods and services.
This process has been accompanied by the increased ifilluence of what are
often termed the cultural intermediary occupations ofdvertising, design
11:11:ai ¿rrnecliary
and marketing (see section 3 of du Gay, Hall et al., ág Z). These practitioners
play a pivotal role in articulating production with conSUMption by
attempting to associate.goods and services with particular cultural meanings
and to address these values to prospective buyers. In other words, they are
concerned to create an identification between producers and consumers
through their expertise in certain signifying practices.
The increased influence of these signifying practices to processes of
production is closely linked to significant changes in manufacturing
techniques. In contrast to mass production techniques, where particular
products were manufactured in large batches on assembly lines that required
great investment in inflexible plant, novel forms of flexible, electronics-based
automation technologies, often referred to as 'flexible specialization
technologies', make small batch production possible. So whereas in the past
a company like Sony would produce one model of the Walkman, nowadays
Sony uses computer-based technologies and a functionally flexible labour
force to produce many different versions of the Walkman, each designed and
marketed or lifestyled — with a particular niche consumer grouping in
mirad (see du Gay, Hall et al., 1997, section 3). In other words, flexible
specialization and the increased culturalization of products go hand in hand.
They are, in effect, mutually constitutive.
Finally, the growing importance accorded to signification in doing business
is not only evident in the production, design and marketing of goods and
services, for as we have already seen, the internal life of organizations is also
the subject of cultural reconstruction. The turn to 'culture' within the world
of business and oiganization is premised in part upon the belief that, in
order to compete effectively in the turbulent. increasingly global markets of
the present, a foremost necessity for organizations is to change they way they
conduct their business and the ways people conduct themselves within
organizations. 'Culture' is deemed to be crucial here because it is seen to
structure the way people think, feel and act in organizations. The aim of
inanaging organizational culture is to prdduce new sets of meanings through
which people will come to identify with their employing organization in a
way which enables them to make the right and necessary contribution to its
success.
This focus on 'culture' as a means of changing the way people conceive of
and relate to the work they perforrn and to their own sense of self indicates
that its deployment as a managerial technique is intimately bound up with
questions of identity.'
In this second sense of the term, then, 'cultural economy' refers to the
increasing 'culturalization' of economic life. From 'macro' level processes of
`economic globalization' to 'micro' level processes of individual work-based
identity-formation, cultural practices have come to play a crucial role in the
conduct ofmany different forms of economic life in the modern world.
The structure of the book
As we have indicated, this book is structured by the notion of 'cultural
economy'. Given the antipathy that has been held to exist between the terms
`culture' and 'economics', the notion of 'cultural economy' is designed to
strike you as a little strange. However, we hope by now that you have begun
to see why we are attaching such importance to it.
It is worth quickly re-capping the main themes and issues which we are
gathering together under the rubric of 'cultural economy' before moving on to
look at the content of each individual chapter.
The first thing to note is that the term draws attention to the ways in which
forms of economic life are cultural phenomena; they depend on `meaning'
for their effects and have particular discursive conditions of existence.
Secondly, the term suggests that the production of 'cultural' artefacts in their
contemporary manifestations cannot be divorced from economic processes
and forms of organization. At the same time as making this point, however,
production of culture we have also been keen to indicate that the production of culture cannot be
reduced to a question of 'economics' alone. Processes of production are
themselves cultural phenomena in that they are assemblages of meariingful
practices that construct certain ways for people to conceive of and conduct
themselves in an organizational context. Theie are the cultures of
cultures of production production referred to in the títle of this book.
Thirdly, it indicates the growing importance of 'culture' to doing business in
the contemporary world. As we have seen, increasing numbers of goods and
services across a range of sectors are 'cultural' goods in that they are
inscribed with particular meanings and associations in the process of their
production and circulation, in a deliberate attempt to generate desire for
them amongst consumers. The growing importance of culture doesn't end
here, though, as we have seen, for the internal life of organizations and their
members is increasingly the subject of cultural reconstruction as well.
While each of the individual chapters in the vblume focuses on different
elements of 'cultural ebonomy' they combine to present a distinctive analysis
of the relationship between 'the economic' and 'the cultural' in the present
day. The chapters are also ordered in a particular way to assist in this
endeavour. Beginning with a macro-level focus on questions oLcultural
globalization and the emergence of global cultural industries, they move.
steadily towards a more micro-level focus at the end of the book where the
cultural reconstruction of organizational life and the experience and identitv
of work are the main topics of analysis.
In Chapter 1, 'What in the world's going on?', Kevin Robins explores the
relationship between culture and economy in the context of increasing
globalization.. He begins by considering the economic expressions of global
change, focusing on the emergence of a 'global economy', on the nature of
global corporations and on the significance of global markets. In analysing
the forces and relations shaping the emerging global economic order, Robins
is particularly concerned with the growing significance of media,
communications, information, and cultural products and markets.
Throughout the chapter he indicates how economic and cultural aspects of
globalization interact with one another. Economic developments, he argues,
provide the basis for many of the key developments in global culture,
opening up certain cultural possibilities, and closing off others. At the same
time, he also sees cultural forces as setting the conditions and limits of
possibility for global economic and business developments. Robins shows
how this interplay between economic and cultural logics gives rise to a
globalizing process that is complex, uneven and uncertain.
In Chapter 2, 'The production of culture', Keith Negus picks up on Robins'
analysis of the complex interplay between economic and cultural logics of
globalization to explore the wavs in which culture is produced in global
 times. In studying the production of culture, he argues, it is necessary to
understand not only the technical processes and economic . pattems of
manuf4cturing, organization and distribution but also to understand the
culture — the ways of life through and within which music, films and other
forms of cultáral software and hardware are made and given meaning. In
developing this argument, Negus draws attention to an important shift in
approaches to how culture is produced: from earlier attempts to understand
the impact of specific forms of industrial production on cultural artefacts (by
applying notions of 'industry' to ` culture'), towards a perspective which
approaches 'culture' not simply as a thing which is produced but as a
meaningful 'forra of life' (by applying theories of 'culture' to 'industry'). In
particular, Negus indicates how the activities of staff working in the cultural
industries are informed by a particular set of values, meanings and working
practices — a 'culture of production' — which has a significant impact on the
`production of culture'.
This idea that there are 'cultural' limas to conceiving of production as a
i purely' economic phenomenon is developed by Peter Braham in Chapter 3,
'Fashion: unpacking a cultural production'. Through a 'case study' of one
particular cultural industry — fashion Braham indicates how practiges of
cultural production are not only shaped by an industry's 'internar culture of
production but also in relationship to the seemingly `externar activities of
cultural consumption. He argues that a comprehensive understanding of
fashion in clothing can only be approached through an exploration of the
mutually constitutive rhythms of production and consumption. In seeking to
map the multiple worlds where the meaning of fashion is produced, Braham
exposes the links that exist between production, distribution and retailing,
on the one hand, and image, advertising, lifestyle and consumption, on the
other. Focusing on the global fashion corporation, Benetton, the chapter
shows how this particular producer and retailer of fashion clothing is
involved in a constant attempt simultaneously to track and shape the
cultural tastes and predispositions of consumers.
The question of how consumers are drawn into and implicated in the
practices of cultural production also forr....s the central focus of Sean Nixon's
Chapter 4, 'Circulating culture'. In this chapter, Nixon is concerned with
exploring the increasing influence of the 'cultural intermediaries' of design,
marketing and advertising, and with analysing their role in adding cultural
value to an increasingly greater range of goods and services. He argues that
`cultural intermediaries' play a pivotal role in articulating production with
consumption through their `symbolic expertise' in making goods and
services `meaningful'. He notes that this 'culturalizing role' has increased
considerably in recent years and links this to wider economic shifts
associated with the transition from an era dominated by mass production
and mass consumption to an emergent era of flexible specialization and
market differentiation. Nixon notes that the intensified role o cultural
intermediaries in contemporary economic life is not simply reflective of
more fundamental shifts in manufacturing systems. Rather, he argues that
shifts in production methods have been, in important ways, marketing-led.
He suggests that both the dynamics of contemporary consumer culture and
the emerging organizational forms of flexible specialization ensure an
increased prominence for the expertise of the cultural intermediaries of
design, marketing and advertising. Through their strategic location at the
point of circulation between production and consumption — these forms of
symbolic expertise are able to affect the constitution both of processes of
cultural production and of practices of cultural consumption.
In Chapter 5, `Culturing production', Graeme Salaman argues that it is not
simply goods and services that have been increasingly tülturalized, for the
processes and practices of organization and production llave also become the
subject of cultural change and reconstruction. Salamarnalyses the ways
which senior managers of organizations increasingly sponsor attempts to
define, for their employees, the meaning of employment, and the
relationship they should have with their employing organization. They
attempt to do this, hwargues, because they are convinced that changing the
'culture' of organizations is an effective way of improving organizational
performance — in terms of managers' objectives. These efforts (which
Salaman refers to under the heading of 'Corporate Culture') arise from, and
are encouraged by, man.agerial discourses developed by a particular sort of
cultural intermediary — the management consultant. These discourses offer a
way of thinking about how organizations work, what affects their
performance, and how performance can be improved. However, as the
chapter demonstrates, while 'Corporate Culture' discourse insists upon the
essential reality of organizational consensus and harmony, this
representation of organizational life is often contested and challenged by the
very people at whom it is aimed ernployees.
In the final Chapter 6, `Organizing identity: making up people at work', Paul
du Gay explores the ways in which attempts to change the culture of
organizations impact upon and reconstruct economic i4entities, not only
those of employees — whether workers or managers — but,also those of
consumers. Du Gay examines how contemporary changIs in ways of
representing and intervening in — what he tercos ‘goverring" organizational
life creaté new ways for people to conduct themselves, at work. In particular,
he focuses upon the ways in which coLtemporary discourses of
organizational change blur some established differences between the spheres
of production and consumption, work and leisure, creating certain
similarities in the forms of conduct and modes of self-presentation required
of people across a range of different domains. Through an examination of
contemporary organizational change in the service sector of the economy,
where economic success is perhaps most visibly premised upon the
production of meaning, du Gay delineates the emergente of novel 'hybrid'
work identities. By the term 'hybrid work identities' he refers to the ways in
which employees in contemporary service work are encouraged to tale on
both the role of worker and that of customer in the workplace. Throughout
the chapter, he indicates the pitfalls of attempting to allocate an essential
meaning te work and instead suggests that the experience and identity of
work are historically and culturally constructed. What it means to be a WHAT IN THE WORLD'S
`worker', 'manager', or any other form of economic actor, varíes across time
and context in. relationship to prevailing wavs of governing economic life.
GOING ON?
Where is meaning produced? Our 'circuit of culture' suggests that, in fact,
meanings are produced at several different sites and circulated through Kevin Robins
several different processes and practices (the cultural circuit). This volume is
primarily concerned with exploring the wavs in which cultural meanings are Contenta
made in production. However, while production, as we have seen, has its
own particular 'forms of life', it is not wholly separe from other sites on
INTRODUCTION 12
our circuit. In discussing the production of culture we have not been able to

avoid talking about consumption, representation or identity, for example. 2 GLOBAL CHANGE 13
This suggests that meaning-making processes operating in nny one site are
2.1 Encountering globalization 14.
always partially dependent upon the meaning-making processes and
19
practicés operating in other sites for their effect. In other words, meaning is 2.2 Complexities of globalization
not simpl • sent from one autonomous sphere — production, say — und
received in another autonomous sphere consumption. Meaning-making 3 ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION 22
finctions less in terms of such a ‘transmission' flow model, and more like 23
3.1 The new world information economy
the model of a dialogue. It is an ongoing process. It rarely ends at a pre-
ordained place. No doubt the producers of cultural goods and services wish 3.2 The global local nexus 28
it did and that they could permanently establish its boundaries! Why and
4 CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION 32
how such an ambition remains forever thwarted is explored by each of the
33
contributors to this volume. 4.1 New spaces of global media
38
4.2 A world of difference
Notes
43
5 CONCLUSION
1 . This term is borrowed from John Allen.
REFERENCES 45

References READINGS FOR CHAPTER ONE

DU GAY. P.. HALL, S., JANES, L., MACKAY, H. and NEGUS, K. (1997)
Doing Cultural READING A:
Ulf Hannerz, `Varieties of transnational experience' 48
Studies: the storv of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage/The Open University
(Book 1 in this series). READING B:
HALL. S. (1997) 'Introduction' in Hall, S. (ed.) Representation: cultural lan Angel!, 'Winners and losers in the Information Age' 52
representations and signifying practices, London, Sage/The Open University READING C:
(Book 2 in this series). Marc Levinson, 'It's an MTV world' 56

READING D:
Marc Levinson, 'Gut, Gut, Alles Super Gut!' 60

READING E:
Richard Wilk, 'The local
and the global in the political
economy of beauty' 6I