“世界矾都”苍南矾山之变

正2016年9月1日,苍南县矾山镇福德湾村获联合国教科文组织2016年度"亚太地区文化遗产保护奖"。矾山镇曾经因采炼矾石而盛衰,如今随着工业文化遗产保护工作的日渐完善,崭新的活力逐渐注入到这个古老的矿区。矾都没落,小镇如何寻出路明矾,与我们生活息息相关,广泛用于食品加工、制药、净水、造纸等。温州市西南部山区蕴藏着储量丰富的矾矿。640年前,小镇因矾而生,因矾而兴,因矾而名。据探测,矾山镇周     

Cross-border circulation of films and cultural diversity in the EU

This paper explores new data sources on multilateral trade in films among EU countries and with the USA in offline cinema and in online video-on-demand distribution. We observe variations in trade patterns across countries and films and explore how they affect cultural diversity. We find that the EU film market is highly fragmented and cross-border film availability in cinema is low. We explore different aspects of the cultural discount hypothesis by means of a standard Helpman and Krugman (Market structure and foreign trade. Increasing returns, imperfect competition, and the international economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985) trade model with economies of scale and a two-stage Heckman (Econometrica 47(1):153–161, 1979) estimation procedure. Our results show that cultural distance, success in the home market and the size of the film budget influence trade of films between countries. US films have a lower propensity to get into export markets, relative to their success in the home market. Consumer demand for imported films is relatively smaller in large EU economies, except for films imported from the USA that are only marginally affected. We also show that trade patterns in online film distribution are not fundamentally different. As online distribution occurs downstream from theatrical release, online distributors can benefit from cinema market experience to make a better selection of films. This results in a lower impact of domestic market shares on online trade patterns.     

The craft of urgency: performing prosperity,running capital,and the making of a buying crowd in home presales in Nanjing,China

ABSTRACT

This article examines home presales – the selling of future residential properties – at the urban fringe of Nanjing, China. It argues for an analytical focus on urgency as a temporal quality that creates the local housing market and facilitates urban accumulation. I examine how urgency, grounded in a linear imagination of urban development, motivates home presales for developers, estate agents, and homebuyers. In particular, to speed up the turnaround time of investment, developers conjure up a vision of prosperity by building extravagant sales centers to organize home presales. Estate agents working at the sales center organize promotional events to attract, register, and manage a buying crowd. If properly managed, the buying crowd could reach the size of a festival-like presale, whereby hundreds of apartments are sold within one day. Capital at the urban fringe accumulates through the synchronization of these activities in which the sales center crafts an affective temporality of transaction by cultivating and managing an exuberant buying crowd. The craft of urgency emphasizes the performative agencement that assembles the condition for urgency to come into being.     

Cultural intermediaries in the making of branded music events: digital cultural capital in tension

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have overlooked how intermediaries and their digital cultural capital enhance the relationship between brand values and consumer identities; their specific uses of digital technologies; and how those uses are displayed in activities where intermediaries create consumer experiences. This paper thus explores the role that cultural intermediaries (music bloggers and an advertising agency) and their digital cultural capital play in making and communicating a branded music event. Briefly, intermediaries used a set of digital technologies (social media, guest lists, blogs, and websites) to create and orchestrate an authentic and exclusive experience between brands and consumers. We draw on empirical material from interviews and ethnographic work conducted in Santiago, Chile. Our study identifies digital technologies used by cultural intermediaries in communicating branded music events, including as: promotional tools; advertising campaign efficacy evaluation mechanisms; and relational objects that connect advertising agencies, music bloggers, brands, and consumers. By exploring the tensions and conflicts that arise among bloggers and advertising executives, we shed light on the uses and exchanges of digital cultural capital for commercial purposes, resulting from the connections between intermediaries that come from different fields of cultural production.     

Communicating across difference: Co-cultural theory,capital and multicultural families in Korea*

Utilizing Orbe’s co-cultural theory and Bourdieu’s theories of capital, this study examines the lived experiences and the communicative interactions employed by members of seven multicultural families in South Korea. Findings show the intertwined roles of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital with co-cultural communication orientations, when interacting with members of the majority group. Particularly, findings reveal differences between Korean husbands and immigrant wives. For Korean husbands, economic and social capital are the most critical influential factors in their choices of communication orientations, while for immigrant wives, cultural and symbolic capital are most significant. Additionally, contrary to previous research, Confucianism and patriarchy played key roles in the marginalization of Korean men in multicultural families and influenced their co-cultural communication orientations.     

Cultural goods creation, cultural capital formation, provision of cultural services and cultural atmosphere accumulation

The cultural atmosphere in a society is accumulated over time through the consumption of cultural services and is diminished through depreciation. Using cultural capital (e.g., cultural heritage, paintings, music scores), cultural services are provided by the cultural-services industry (e.g., museums, opera houses); cultural capital is enlarged by new cultural goods created by individuals. Individuals’ utilities are positively affected by the cultural services they consume, by the cultural goods they create and by the cultural atmosphere and the cultural capital accumulated in society. In a laissez-faire economy, individuals tend to ignore the positive external effects of their cultural-services consumption and creation of cultural goods on other individuals via accumulating cultural atmosphere and cultural capital. Consequently, suboptimally little cultural atmosphere and cultural capital will be accumulated. The efficient intertemporal allocation can be restored by introducing an appropriate subsidy that not only stimulates consumers’ demand for cultural services and the creation of new cultural goods but also enhances the accumulation of cultural atmosphere and cultural capital.

How effective are international copyright conventions in the music industry?

The paper is concerned with the issue of whether international copyright legislation is effective in curbing audio software counterfeiting. The paper finds that copyright conventions have not been effective in reducing audio counterfeiting to comparatively low levels. This result holds even when allowances are made for the duration of copyright convention membership and the specificity of the articles of the convention. Economic development is found to be the main determinant of low counterfeit levels. This would tend to support anecdotal evidence which indicates that economic development is a necessary condition for the active recognition of audio property rights by the general public, judiciary and police. It is also consistent with a view that pirate audio software, being an inferior good, has a more buoyant market in less developed economies. From a policy perspective the research would seem to suggest that the extensive efforts and copious attention to detail by legal experts has made little impact on counterfeit activity and is secondary in importance to the socio-economic environment in which these laws are being applied.