‘Culture Industry’ and Cultural Work

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to outline various critical theories1 of cultural work as undertaken within cultural industries. It first provides a review of Adorno and Horkheimer’s account of the ‘culture industry’, before demonstrating how its insights have come to underpin more recent (‘post-Adornian’) accounts of the industrialization and commodification of culture (e.g., Bourdieu, 1998; Garnham, 1987, 1990, 2005; Hesmondhalgh, 2007; Jameson, 1984; McRobbie, 2002a, b; Miège, 1979, 1987, 1989; Miller et al., 2003; Rifkin, 2000; Ryan, 1992; Scherzinger, 2005; Steinert, 2003 I then discuss how, for ‘critical theorists’, the social relations of cultural work are closely tied to this dystopian industrial vision. As is shown, while early critical theorists had little to say about labour, an assumption that the relative freedoms of pre-industrial ‘craft’ forms of cultural work were being displaced by controlled systems of industrial production was tacit. Following Marx, it was generally assumed that workers would become alienated and estranged from some natural human essence (or the ‘species-being’), as autonomous labour became shackled by private interests and directed towards standardized production for commercial ends. However, conversely, post-Adornian observers have more strongly suggested that cultural work is partly distinctive and non-standardized, in so far as elements of creative craft production continue to persist in industrialized societies, and, indeed, remain essential as a source of innovation in the cultural industry production process (Garnham, 2005; Miège, 1979, 1987; Ryan, 1992).KeywordsCritical TheoristCultural ProductionCultural WorkCultural GoodCultural IndustryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.