Social network markets: a new definition of the creative industries

We propose a new definition of the creative industries in terms of social network markets. The extant definition of the creative industries is based on an industrial classification that proceeds in terms of the creative nature of inputs and the intellectual property nature of outputs. We propose, instead, a new market-based definition in terms of the extent to which both demand and supply operate in complex social networks. We review and critique the standard creative industries definitions and explain why we believe a market-based social network definition offers analytic advance. We discuss some empirical, analytic and policy implications of this new definition.

Do museums foster innovation through engagement with the cultural and creative industries?

The recent narrative on museums as catalysts of innovation and growth considers their relations with other cultural and creative industries (CCIs) to be very important. We argue that most relations museums establish with CCI firms and institutions are unlikely to produce strong positive externalities that make the latter more innovative. To prove this claim, we propose a conceptual framework qualifying project-based and supply chain relations between museums and CCIs as either strong, moderate, or weak links, according to their potential in terms of knowledge spillovers from museums to CCIs. We apply this taxonomy to data collected from 261 Polish museums. Our findings indicate that strong links are outnumbered by moderate and weak ones. We then suggest that the traditional missions of museums, in particular education and conservation, need to be more thoroughly assessed in terms of their direct and indirect contributions in order to fully capture the impact of museums on innovation in the wider economy.

     

Confronting Precarity in the Warhol Economy

Normative cultural economy discourse on New York City embraces the creative industries as engines of job creation but neglects the quality of employment within them. This article sets out to both illuminate the precarious conditions of nonstandard workers in New York's vaunted creative sectors and identify emerging collective responses to precarity in this city. Three areas of labour activity are focused upon: fashion industry frictions, art world agitations, and independent worker initiatives. Under each of these headings, the article profiles two organizations that are variously exposing, resisting, and mitigating precarity among flexible labour forces in the arts, the media, cultural industries, and beyond. The discussion of these organizations is informed by interviews with some of their protagonists, by documents produced by the organizations, and/or by media coverage of them. Challenging the assumption that getting by in informal cultural labour markets obliges individual coping strategies, this article reveals scenes from a metropolitan laboratory of precarious labour politics. These initiatives are inklings of a recomposition of labour politics in which flexible workforces in creative industries are important participants.     

The cultural entrepreneur and the creative industries: beginning in Vienna

In this paper on the creative industries and cultural entrepreneurship I take my point of departure in Richard Caves’ Creative Industries [Caves, R. (2000). Creative industries: Contacts between art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. While Caves draws heavily on economic analysis and contemporary sociology in his excellent analysis of these two topics, he does not use the sociological classics at all. The main purpose of the paper is an attempt to remedy this, by drawing attention to the possible contribution that the works of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel can make to our understanding of the creative industries and cultural entrepreneurship. Since this paper was prepared as a keynote address for the 2006 conference of the Association for Cultural Economics International in Vienna, I also discuss Schumpeter’s ideas on art and entrepreneurship, ideas which grew out of Viennese culture.

Innovation and diversity in the digital cultural and creative industries

Journal of Cultural Economics - The cultural and creative industries (CCIs) are increasingly being recognised in South Africa, as in other countries, as wealth-creating, given appropriate...     

‘Stars’ and places: exploring the spatial organization of media and entertainment industries in China

ABSTRACT

Drawing on an innovative ‘big data’ method, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the geography of media and entertainment industries (MEIs) in China, by examining the specific activities that are performed by celebrities, the key actors in these industries. Compared to previous research on cultural and creative industries, which primarily rely on more traditional statistical data, our study demonstrates a new approach to systemically investigate the spatial organization of the dynamic production process in MEIs. The outcomes reveal that activities focusing on the different value segments of MEIs display rather diverse geographical patterns. Depending on the availability and combination of specific local assets, different locations perform varying functions in the production networks of MEIs. Therefore, the agglomeration of MEIs only partially overlaps with the existing urban hierarchy. In addition, celebrities catering to different media and entertainment markets also exhibit distinct activity patterns, indicating a close and reciprocal relationship between the popularity of celebrities, the activities they perform, the platforms that are chosen, and the commercial value that can be generated as a result. This study contributes to our understanding of the complex development patterns and consequences of MEIs in emerging economies.     

Why culture attracts and resists economic analysis

The realm of arts and culture can be seen as ephemeral and ill-suited to the ‘intrusion’ of quantitative analysis. Yet, demand amongst end-users for economic research into cultural and creative industries is stronger today than ever it has been in the past. Oddly, culture seems to both attract and resist economic analysis. Drawing on an analysis of recent research findings related to multi-platform strategies in the television industry, this article examines what is distinctive about economics of culture, and it assesses the appeals but also the challenges associated with conducting scholarly research work in this particular area.     

Representing creative labour and identity in Singaporean graphic novels: Sonny Liew and Troy Chin

ABSTRACT

This essay analyses two Singaporean graphic novels which represent the motivations and processes of creating and marketing cartoons, Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015), a retrospective of the life and work of a fictional artist, and Troy Chin's ongoing autobiographical series, The Resident Tourist (begun in 2007). The analysis focuses on how Liew and Chin represent creative work and its relationship to Singaporean identity, focusing on how each negotiates one of the central contradictions of the creative industries in Singapore, the problem of how creativity can be conceptualised and practised within a society in which, for decades, pragmatism has been systematically valued and imagination devalued. There are three main ways in which both Liew and Chin construct, in very different ways, new creative worker and Singaporean identities which resonate with readers around the post-industrial world. The first is through subtle challenges to the Western, individualised ‘genius’ model of the creative worker. The second is through the creation of modes of address that encompass both Singaporean and non-Singaporean readers, and make all readers complicit in the project of constructing Singaporean identity. Third, both Liew and Chin reimagine the relationship between Singaporean and creative worker identities through simultaneously using and subverting the idea of national allegory.     

Economics of music publishing: copyright and the market

The paper argues that the paradigmatic shift from the sale of printed music to exploiting and managing musical rights that took place in music publishing during the early years of the twentieth century was due to the changing market rather than to changes in copyright law. On the one hand, copyright law was ineffectual in controlling piracy throughout the nineteenth century, and on the other hand, performing rights were ignored by music publishers for over 70 years; these points suggest that copyright was not the main reason behind the success of the industry. Rather than leading entrepreneurially (the current view of dynamism in the creative industries), publishers ‘followed the money’ and adapted their business models only when new streams of income from new forms of exploitation through sound recording, broadcasting and film became available as a result of exogenous technical progress. Publishers were locked-in to sales revenue as their business model, though when switching to the new business model of rights management took place, the costs seem not to have been greatly significant. The paper takes an historical approach to the development of music publishing viewed through the lens of present-day issues. The research has resonance for the transition from sales to licensing digital works that is taking place in the creative industries today and puts into perspective the relative significance of market forces and copyright law in the process.     

The effects of having more than one good reputation on distributor investments in the film industry

Reputations of organizations and its individual members are valuable resources that help new organizations to get access to investment capital. Reputations, however, can have different dimensions. In this paper, we argue that an individual??s reputation along a particular dimension will have a positive effect on the behavior of investors when it is role congruent. In addition, we argue that also scoring favorably on the role-incongruent dimension at the same time??or, in other words, engaging in reputational category spanning??will weaken the positive effect of the role-congruent reputation. Our empirical setting is the film industry where we study the effect of the two main dimensions of reputation in cultural industries, artistic and commercial, of both directors and producers on the size of the investment by distributors. In this study, artistic reputation is based on professional critics?? reviews and commercial reputation on box office performance of the films in which individuals were involved in the past. We find that the commercial reputation of a film producer based on past box office performance has a positive effect on the size of the investment by film distributors. In addition, we find that directors who at the same time combine both a favorable commercial as well as an artistic reputation actually receive a lower investment from film distributors.     

现实主义,还是浪漫主义?--胡风理论和创作的浪漫主义解读

胡风是中国现代文学史上著名的理论家和诗人。他强调并实践"主观战斗精神",表现出卓异的理论和创作个性。很多人对其给予现实主义解读,其实无论理论阐释还是诗歌创作,都属于浪漫主义范畴。他的理论思考着眼于创作实践,致力于解决创作过程中作家与社会现实、与创作对象之间的关系,突出主观战斗精神,是贴着现实主义标签的浪漫主义"创作论"。《时间开始了》是他主观战斗精神燃烧、激情喷涌和勇猛搏击的结晶,是时代诗坛上雄浑豪放的浪漫主义交响乐。     

Academics,Cultural Workers and Critical Labour Studies

The aim of this paper is to locate academics within the sights of critical labour studies, and, in particular, the contemporary interest in cultural workers. Despite a growing literature about – and in response to – the transformation of the University there have been few attempts to study academics as workers. This paper argues that there are a number of parallels between academic work and the much more well-documented experiences of work in the cultural and creative industries. The paper examines the increasing experience of precariousness among academics, the intensification and extensification of work, and the new modes of surveillance in the academy and their affective impacts. The aim of the article is to build on the critical lexicon of studies of cultural labour in order to think about academic work as labour and to generate new ways of thinking about power, privilege and exploitation. It argues for the need for a psychosocial perspective that can understand the new labouring subjectivities in academia.     

Economies of scope in artists’ incubator projects

Although economies of scale are relatively well studied in the arts, economies of scope have received less attention. Yet recent trends toward freelancing and technological connectivity make scope economies especially timely in addressing structural challenges to artist-led incubators. This paper offers a conceptual framework for cooperative strategies that employ economies of scope both in the economic sense of joint production and in the financial sense of risk pooling. This framework distinguishes franchise, federation, and resource-sharing organizational structures as developed through case studies of two US-based organizations: ArtBuilt and REC (Resources for Every Creator), placed in a larger context of cooperative organizational strategy in the USA and Europe. The proposed strategies of cooperative networks (quasi-franchises, federations, or resource-sharing networks) also draw on a literature of spatial agglomeration in creative industries. The framework leads to more speculative ideas of “balance-sheet philanthropy” through credit backstopping by foundations, and of novel investment trusts that can be piloted across a range organizations including foundations, grant-makers, artist residency programs, and even for-profit companies engaged in reinsurance. The paper contributes managerial tools and strategies for the creative engagement of capacity building in arts organizations.

     

PATHWAYS TO CREATIVITY

Focusing on the ‘talent pathways’ outlined in the 2008 Department of Culture, Media and Sport Creative Britain report, this article explores how different forms of creative agency are positioned to make a ‘contribution’ to the creative economy. Drawing on Paul du Gay's concept of personhood, case studies on digital gaming explore the formation of two forms of personhood – creative consumers and creative workers. Specifically, these forms of creative agency are analysed in terms of their connections on the ‘talent pathway’, and the transitions that see creativity and talent as inherent in all individuals and in need of channelling and directing. The creative-consumer case study unpacks the digital games industry strategy of enrolling fan-creators within their commercial operations. This case study reveals the increasing importance of co-production for the creative economy, and the extent to which diverse cultural practices are facilitated and positioned. Higher education Games Design courses will then provide the case study for examining how the creative-consumer can be positioned to make a productive contribution to the creative economy as a worker. Within this context, the formation of fans/students into a creative worker or industry-ready worker is evident. Through tracing different forms of creative agency and how they are connected to make a contribution to the creative economy, this article explores the governance of creative agency and economic subjects.     

Intimacy and Self-Abstraction: Radio as New Media in Aboriginal Australia

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of Indigenous radio stations around Australia began to use digital programming and digital music libraries, at times pre-programming their broadcast signal days in advance through various forms of digital audio workstation (DAW). This shift initially caused both celebration and concern, and occasioned reflection by many producers on how radio ought to work and sound. For some producers the shift to digital pre-programming seemed a threat to the intimate address that Aboriginal radio entailed. On the other hand, some of these same producers began to re-imagine the audience to which such indigenous media might now aspire and to celebrate the sheer quantity of Aboriginal programming that a smaller number of producers could now produce. In challenging radio's naturalised ‘liveness’ for Aboriginal radio producers this oscillation suggests a distinct media ideology (Gershon 2010a), a sense of what radio media ought to accomplish, that draws together forms of intimate address and public abstraction. In my analysis I re-imagine John Durham Peters' heuristic dichotomy of dialogue and dissemination as a tension between intimacy and self-abstraction in order to suggest how radio as ‘new media’ continues to animate some longstanding dynamics of Aboriginal cultural production.     

Korea's blacklist scandal: governmentality,culture, and creativity

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on the relationship between culture and governance, exploring how the practice of government has invoked conflicts and crises in the Korean culture industries. The Park Geun-Hye regime used culture as a central engine to boost Korea's national economy by adopting the new slogan, ‘Creative Korea’, to embody the country's national values within the international community. However, the regime's constant emphasis on creative economies came under attack when it was discovered that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism abused its authority by censuring 9,473 artists who were critical of the regime. Through an analysis of journalistic interviews with artists, critics and cultural practitioners, this paper examines how the relationships of governmentality, culture and creativity have been negotiated in the process of regime change. In addition, this paper explores how the Korean Wave phenomenon – the transnational expansion of Korean popular culture – during the past two decades has reshaped the society's perception of the governor–governed relationship within the cultural sphere.     

Between business and morality: cultural politics in independent bookshops in China

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how cultural businesses may facilitate contentious political activity in authoritarian contexts. Existing research in Western liberal democracies has shown the widespread political activism of actors in the cultural and creative industries. Whether such activism exists in authoritarian society, how it may differ in character and form, and what implications this will have for our understanding of relations between business, politics, and culture in authoritarian countries remain to be addressed. Drawing on data collected from 55 ‘independent bookshops’ in China, I illustrate how these organisations perform ‘cultural politics,’ a type of political participation in which actors employ mainly symbolic means to express social and political concerns. The organisations’ economic relations and conditions facilitate their efforts to create spaces in which contentious questions can be raised, sensitive topics explored, and alternative ideas expressed, despite the Chinese state’s political regulation of the cultural sphere. The finding of the economic embeddedness of cultural politics sheds new light on our understanding of the political economy of cultural businesses in contemporary China.     

“Selling less of more?” The impact of digitization on record companies

In this paper, we use data from a survey of 151 French record companies to test the “long-tail” hypothesis at the level of the firm. More specifically, we test whether, following the “selling less of more” principle coined by Anderson (2006), record companies that have adapted to digitization (at various levels: artists’ scouting, distribution, and promotion) release more new albums without having higher overall sales. We construct a production function in which the output is produced from conventional inputs of labor and capital, as well as inputs that are more specific to the recorded music industry. We consider two types of output: a commercial output (albums sales) and a creative output (number of new albums released). We show that labels that have adapted to digitization are more efficient in respect of creative output, but that there is no effect of adaptation to digitization on the commercial output, which is consistent with the predictions of the long-tail hypothesis.     

Nietzsche,Tragedy, and Liberal Moral Psychology

Abstract

This essay discusses Nietzsche's tragic moral psychology and its significance for liberal political philosophy. In the essay, I sketch out what I view to be the basic features of Nietzsche's tragic psychology, which is strongly opposed to the Socratic and Stoic traditions, and I show how this perspective can be distinguished from the moral psychology that informs liberalism's position on issues such as personhood and political history. I conclude with a few suggestions for viewing Nietzsche's thought as a necessary corrective to a certain dogmatism that still inhabits liberal theory, in this way enabling liberal thought to conceptualise human nature and the human good in more creative and complex ways.