Circuits of Capital, Genealogy, and Television Geographies

Abstract

In this paper I draw on Marx's concept of circuits of capital, and David Harvey's work in theorizing the geographies of such circuits, to illuminate recent developments in the economic geographies of international television, as seen from a UK perspective. The paper starts from, and repeatedly returns to, the consumption of one particular programme by one viewer in order to frame and situate its arguments, which amount to a genealogy of an historically and geographically specific moment in the capital accumulation process. Writing such a genealogy, I argue, demands a different approach to the identification, description and explanation of capital circuits and their geographies than has previously been offered.