Theory Of Cultural Production Research Articles

China as data coloniser? rethinking cultural production, cultural mediation, and consumer agency on Kenyan and Chinese e-commerce platforms

Has China become a neo-colonizer, exporting its cultural and economic power to the world based on its agenda of building soft power? Existing scholarship on neocolonialism and data colonialism largely focuses on how China's infrastructural expansion and increasingly platformised cultural sectors can achieve its ambitious platformised cultural sectors overseas. Yet, how China's cultural power is manifested, negotiated, or resisted in people's daily lives in a South–South setting remains under-researched and under-theorised. This article uses everyday fashion in Kenya as a case study to investigate China's cultural and economic power expansion in the Global South. We examined how cultural differences are negotiated and mediated on two Chinese(-invested) e-commerce platforms. Through focus groups and platform walkthrough method, our findings serve to enrich existing theories of cultural production–platform relationships applicable in the study of various cultural and creative sectors, to offer new understandings of how symbolic, sociopolitical and cultural meanings of fashion are constructed through divergent platform affordances, and to reveal the various forms of cultural negotiations and resistance in different contexts, multiplying our frames of reference.

Arena and (Re)Stabilization of Reog Bulkiyo Dance Cultural Production

Contestation among traditional art performances, in the technology and information era, creates complex and diverse challenge to the dance of Reog Bulkiyo. In 1999, the dance had to be stopped following the regeneration and economical problem. Although Reog Bulkiyo has been performed again since 2009, the conditions which makes this dance can be produced is still inexplicable. This article attempts to explain why dance experiencing production and activity stagnation. Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural production theory is used to analyze this problem, while ethnographic qualitative is used as the method. This study found that Reog Bulkiyo dance is in the arena of traditional dance art which has a double-tiered structure. The first structure leads to popular culture, while the second structure leads to art culture. In the first structure, Reog Bulkiyo dance group uses relational capital with relatives, social and Islamic groups to survive in the midst of competition with other popular arts. The dance then gains a relationship with the academy and the state which provides relational, cultural, and symbolic capital in the form of granting intangible cultural heritage status. These two relations give Reog Bulkiyo dance group the opportunity to maintain its cultural production.

A Matter of Style: Community Building between Seduction and Indirect Communication

Diverging from studies that categorize influencers solely as advertising figures subject to interpretation within marketing frameworks, this research employs an extensive netnography to examine influencers through the lens of cultural production theory. It views them as creators and creative individuals who adeptly cultivate communities around themselves using communicative techniques akin to literary narration. On digital platforms, social connections are reshaped into a seductive game, unfolding on both aesthetic and communicative planes. This process yields influence indirectly, gradually reshaping the community imaginary, over time. Users become immersed in a realm of objects, each bearing the distinctive mark of the influencer who has imbued them with their unique style, “like that of the potter cradling a clay cup”. Influencers’ ability to invent and inhabit digital platforms effectively positions them as key figures in shaping the dynamics of these new environments.

Distinction and alternative tech: Exploring the techno-critical disposition

How should we understand alternative social media and open-source technologies that seek to challenge the dominance of Big Tech? Are these ethical substitutes for monopolistic platforms and technological infrastructures, or “alternative” in the sense we might talk of alternative forms of culture? Here we offer new perspective on these questions by conceptualizing alternative tech through Bourdieu’s theories of cultural production and distinctive consumption. Building on the work of Holm, Coleman and others, we explore the “techno-critical disposition” through a case study of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS), arguing this is manifested primarily as “critical craftiness,” or hacker aesthetics in a critical register. Finally, we consider how ATNOFS represents a “distinctive” path to the wider adoption of alternative platforms, as well as how the techno-critical disposition may be reconfiguring legitimacy in the broader field of technology production.

The Unanticipated Pleasures of the Future : Degrowth, Post -growth and Popular Cultural Economies

A renewed theory of 'degrowth' has recently emerged from different streams of political economy, ecological economics and environmental activism. Yet contemporary degrowth (and post-growth) has yet to develop any credible or inclusive theory of cultural production, art or aesthetics. A key challenge, as I see it, is to generate a progressive degrowth project that can not only more equitably share and sustain scarce resources, but also retain some sense of organised cultural production as a source of different aesthetic, symbolic and communicative needs and desires. This, I would argue, must include tastes and preferences that are rooted in shared and globally extensive forms of popular culture. The aim here, therefore, is to conceive of a degrowth perspective that might begin to imagine forms of genuinely sustainable and organised cultural economy that strive to accommodate and expand (rather than deny or frustrate) the widest array of human needs and desires in any ecologically-challenged future.

Intermediaries in the age of platformized gatekeeping: The case of YouTube “creators” and MCNs in the U.S.

How do intermediaries affect cultural production in the age of platformized gatekeeping? Cultural production increasingly depends upon digital infrastructures known as platforms (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, et al.) for distribution. These infrastructures supposedly diminish the importance of conventional, non-infrastructural intermediaries, yet cultural production's platformization occurred alongside the emergence of new downstream intermediaries. Here, I show how the practices of YouTube content creators reflect direct instructions from both the platform (primary gatekeeper) and a downstream intermediary (an MCN). Producers no longer require non-platform intermediaries for access to markets, and so, rather than acting as gatekeeper, non-platform intermediaries support the platform. The MCN aids the platform by propagating platform conventions and an orientation toward metrics and algorithms among content producers. This differs markedly from conventional sociological theories of cultural production which presume intermediaries as autonomous organizations that reproduce and mediate social conventions of cultural production (i.e., genre, roles, etc.). Thus, under conditions of platformization, both intermediaries and producers appear subordinate to infrastructure.

A Post-Critical Theory of Cultural Production? A Review of the Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business

A Post-Critical Theory of Cultural Production? A Review of the Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business

Applying the Theory of Cultural Production: Authorship in the Literary Communities of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Since the fall of the New Order in 1998, which began an era of political reform in which freedom of speech and association were guaranteed, literary communities have mushroomed in Indonesia; Yogyakarta is no exception. This city, through its literary communities, has played an important role in the development of Indonesian literature. Employing a Bourdieuan perspective, in which authors are understood as emerging within the field of cultural production, this paper explores the phenomenon of authorship in the literary communities of Yogyakarta. It finds that the field of cultural production in Yogyakarta has been influenced by the existence of literary communities, including the rise of new writers within said communities.

Mural Art as a Media for Social Criticism: Perspective Structuralist-Constructivism

The phenomenon of delivering messages through mural art occurs in the social life of the Indonesian people, and is used as a medium for social criticism in the public sphere. The purpose of this study is to find the meaning of social criticism that is carried out through the media of mural art and to find the shift in values that occurs in mural art. Based on the research objectives, this research is a qualitative research with a structuralist-constructivism approach from Pierre Bourdieu. Data were collected through observation and in-depth interviews with mural artists community. The theories used to understand, criticize, find meaning and find shifts in the value of mural art are the Habitus Theory and the Cultural Production Theory. This study found that social criticism conveyed through the media of mural art has an economic meaning, a meaning of community popularity, and a meaning of freedom. While the shift that occurred, this study found that mural art, which was originally an artist's expression as a monumental work, shifted to a commodified and contemporary work.

The Racial Barriers in U.S. Independent Filmmaking

This study explores the mechanisms of racial discrimination in U.S. independent filmmaking. To answer this question, I combine the theoretical toolkits on Hollywood discrimination and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production. I employ in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with 30 U.S.‐based independent filmmakers of color, and observations of public discussions at film festivals in the greater Los Angeles area. I find that despite independent film’s inclusive and non‐commercial discourses, many of the mechanisms of racial exclusion that underlie Hollywood’s lack of diversity also exist in independent film: the economic uncertainty of creative labor, racialized market logics, the economic stigmatization of artists of color, and the reliance on closed social networks for career advancement. Furthermore, I also find that non‐commercial factors in the field of independent film also constrain the ability for filmmakers of color to make art reflective of their experiences, form mutually beneficial collaborations with other artists of color, or invest their time in projects that are culturally innovative. These findings suggest that even at the margins of mainstream cultural production, mechanisms of racialization can still operate where racial prejudice and racialized economics outweigh artistic independence.

Reading Between the Institutions, Reading Between the Genres, Reading Between the Lines: Jeffrey Brooks’ The Firebird and the Fox

Abstract Jeffrey Brooks’ new book, The Firebird and the Fox, draws on an unsurpassed knowledge of Russian literature and culture of all levels, from the folk and popular to the canonical and avant-garde. It divides the “age of genius” (1855–1953) into three periods: the emancipation of the arts (1850–1889), politics and the arts (1890–1916), the Bolshevik Revolution and the arts (1917–1950), each with its own configurations of popular and high culture and construction of creative artists, media, and readers. But three core themes overarch the periods and the exceptionally broad range of phenomena the book discusses: freedom and order, boundaries, art and reality. Throughout Brooks analyzes crossovers and intersections between cultural institutions, between genres and media, and – especially for the Soviet period – between the lines. His categories are at times sociological, historical, and literary. The book implies a theory of cultural production that gives unusual weight to the agency of creative artists. In conclusion readings of three works Brooks does not analyze (Dostoevsky’s Demons, Bely’s Petersburg, and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky) illustrate the productivity of Brooks’ broad and humane approach to Russian artistic culture.

WIJI THUKUL'S TEXTUAL STRATEGY IN ITS SYMBOLIC CONTESTATION IN INDONESIAN LITERATURE ARENA: PIERRE BOURDIEU'S CULTURAL PRODUCTION ARENA STUDY (STRATEGI TEKSTUAL WIJI THUKUL DALAM KONTESTASI SIMBOLIKNYA DI ARENA SASTRA INDONESIA: STUDI ARENA PRODUKSI KULTURAL PIERRE BOURDIEU)

Poetry is a means of conveying ideas. Wiji Thukul is a poet who was allegedly lost because of his poetry. This study describes the textual strategy or strategy of writing poetry that Wiji Thukul took in his symbolic contestation in the Indonesian literary arena during the New Order era. This research uses Pierre Bourdieu's cultural production theory to describe and explain Wiji Thukul's literary problems, both intrinsic and extrinsic, simultaneously. The data source of this research is the poetry anthology written by Wiji Thukul. The research data is in texts related to the textual strategy of writing Wiji Thukul's poetry on his symbolic contestation during the New Order era. Data were collected through document study and interviews. Data were analyzed with content analysis based on the mechanism of Krippendrof, including a) identifying Wiji Thukul's textual strategy in his symbolic contestation, which was used as material for analysis, b) classifying analysis units according to the problem in the study, c) conducting unit analysis to explore the findings that have identified, and d) determine aspects of the findings to make inferences and draw conclusions. The results of this study: 1) Wiji Thukul used a textual strategy by writing romantic-religious poetry from 1980-1985, 2) Wiji Thukul used a textual strategy by writing critical social poetry from 1985-1990, and 3) Wiji Thukul used a strategy textual by writing party poetry in the period 1990-1998.

Konstruksi dan Kontestasi Kuasa Perempuan pada Naskah Drama Les Bonnes Karya Jean Genet

This research aims to portray the social categories such as social class and gender that construct the oppression experienced by women in the drama script Les Bonnes written by Jean Genet. This contestation appears as a result of an interaction between three main characters in the drama: Claire and Solange, as maids and Madame as their employer. Madame is a rich woman who treats them badly because of their social background as poor women. As a result of her treatment, Claire and Solange aim to kill their employer as the way out to be free from Madame’s oppression. They create an assassination simulation to obtain their objective. To analyze this problem, this research uses the concept of habitus, capital, and arena from the theory of cultural production of Pierre Bourdieu. The method used in this article is a textual analysis method. The material objects are the drama script, Les Bonnes. The corpus data is taken from the words, sentences, and paragraphs containing the expression correlated with the contestations of power. The data is then analyzed using the lenses from the concept of habitus and cultural arena by Pierre Bourdieu. The finding shows that the habitus forms a constant and repetitive interaction among the subjects. It is influenced by the subjects’ position based on the social capital they possess. The position is characterized by two classes: the dominant and the worker that contribute to the form of contestations in Les Bonnes.

Rethinking ‘quality’ cinema

ABSTRACT This article takes the Miró Law as a case study in order to analyse what type of cinema was regarded suitable to depict the values of the new Spain at the end of the Transition period (1975–1982) and the consolidation of the democracy in Spain when the Socialist Party won the general elections in 1982. The Miró Law has been one of the most discussed pieces of legislation by scholars in the field. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, this article revises the notion of ‘quality cinema’ fostered by the Miró Law to propose a different reading of the film policies carried out by the Socialist Party to foster a cinema that could embody the values of the new democratic Spain.

Do more experienced critics review differently?

PurposeCultural intermediaries define the standards many consumers use when evaluating cultural products. Yet, little research has focused on whether cultural intermediaries may systematically differ from each other with regard to the standards they emphasize. The purpose of this paper is to build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to examine how the type of subfield reviewed and/or the cultural intermediary’s expertise (or “field-specific cultural capital”) affect the standards an intermediary uses.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employed a computer-aided content analysis of the full corpus of “Rolling Stone” music album reviews (1967-2014).FindingsCritics with lower field-specific cultural capital reflect the same logic as the subfield they are critiquing. Critics with higher field-specific cultural capital reflect the opposite logic.Research limitations/implicationsBourdieu was ambivalent about whether cultural intermediaries will reflect the logic of a subfield. Results show that the answer depends on the intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital. The results also reinforce previous findings that individuals with high field-specific cultural capital are more likely to break with the logic of a field.Practical implicationsNot all intermediaries are created equal. Producers and consumers who rely on cultural intermediaries should understand the intermediary’s critical analysis within the context of his/her experience.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to examine how a cultural intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital impacts his or her work. The findings are based on a large review sample and include reviewers’ analyses as they developed from having lower to higher field-specific cultural capital.

Network and Cooperation in the Field of Cultural Production: Naguib Mahfouz in Translation

Translation is a social practice and cultural product practiced by agents and produced by institutions in different subjects; hence, it can be studied from various sociological perspectives. This study explores translation activity through a network of various human and non-human agents by adopting two sociological theories: Bourdieu’s (1993) theory of cultural production and Latour’s (1996) Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The study demonstrates how these two theories reveal the effect of agent networks on the field of cultural production and that the more agents are involved in these networks, the stronger their impact will be on the field of cultural production. The impact of networks and the cooperation of agents in the field of cultural production in relation to the translation of the works of Naguib Mahfouz are examined as a case study. The study concludes that high numbers of linkages between agents in networks strongly influence the field of cultural production. This can be seen in the case of Mahfouz’s translated works after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988, at which point there was a flood of Arabic to English translations. Finally, the study highlights the value of synthesizing Bourdieu’s theory and ANT in the field of translation studies..

Tristram Shandy Beyefendi’nin Hayatı ve Görüşleri Adlı Eserin İngilizceden Türkçeye Çevirisine Bourdieu’nün Sosyolojik Kuramsal Çerçevesinden Bakış

In the last three decades, interest in sociology has picked up great momentum in Translation Studies and increasing attention has been paid to the social factors that surround an act of translation. Sociologically-oriented research in Translation Studies has enabled the identification of the relation- ships between the external conditions of a text’s creation and the narrower steps of the translation process. So far, translation scholars who have attempted to explore sociological approaches in Translation Studies have often benefited from Bourdieu’s thinking. Through its involvement of different levels of analysis, Bourdieu’s perspective helps researchers discover different aspects of cultural practice, in this study, the book translation. These aspects range “from the relationship between the cultural field and the broader field of power to strategies, trajectories and works of individual agents” (Bourdieu, 1993, p.16). As Bourdieu (1993) suggests, in order to fully comprehend a given cultural work, due attention needs to be paid to all levels of analysis, each consisting of various components. In this light, this study aims at concentrating on text structures in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and translation strategies in its Turkish translation on the one hand, and, on the other, it focuses on the phenomena of translation beyond a textual level. Combining these two levels through Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, this study entails a comprehensive translation analysis by employing Bourdieu’s key concepts. As a result of the aforementioned discussion, this study concludes that, macro translational choices and strategies in the Turkish translation of Tristram Shandy are not reflected on the translation strategies at a micro level as expected. Ultimately, the translator’s choices including (i) the use of notes/footnotes, (ii) the use of Ottoman Turkish, and (iii) the use of explicitation in the Turkish version of Tristram Shandy seem to fail to fulfill the expectations of “serious literature” readers, which are structured by the field of restricted cultural production and, which largely differentiate from the expectations of “popular literature” readers.

Movement‐Based Influence: Resource Mobilization, Intense Interaction, and the Rise of Modernist Architecture

We argue that the long‐term influence of actors in fields of cultural production depends on the opportunities for resource mobilization offered by external conditions combined with intense interaction among actors. Using a unique data set of 1,143 architects active between 1890 and 1940, at a time of large‐scale socioeconomic transformations and political disruption, we find by multiple regression analysis that exposure to industrialization and political upheaval, and halo effects in an architect's network of collaborators predict greater ultimate impact, while urbanization and professional affiliations do not. Theory of social movements and theory of cultural production thus have important implications for each other.

REVEALING THE RE-TRANSFORMATION OF 9 SUMMERS 10 AUTUMNS

<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>9 Summers 10 Autumns</em> (2011) is an inspirational autobiographical novel about a young man from a small city of Batu who later succeeded in pursuing his dream by working in the United States. The novel was written according to Iwan Setyawan’s life story and it has been made into a movie by the same name in 2013. Two years later, the movie was adapted into an augmented motion picture hinted illustrative book which is said to be the first kind to appear in Indonesia that combines novel, comic, app and film together. Somehow this phenomenon has also contributed to the rising trend of films adapted into books in Indonesia, such as <em>Assalamualaikum Beijing</em> (2015), <em>What’s Up with Love?</em> (2016), and others. This study caters for Iwan Setyawan’s strategy in achieving legitimacy in the arena of Indonesian Literature and his American Dream Ideals that are depicted within the book. The discussion is carried out within the perspectives of Pierre Bourdieu’s field of cultural production theory as well as sociology of literature approach in highlighting the phenomenon of transformation from novel into film and eventually into augmented motion picture hinted illustrative book. Later, the study discovers that it has changed the image of Indonesian art and literary world in which such prestigious legitimacy can now be achieved through commercial strategies, making it seem dynamic but at the same time questionable in its most authentic sense. </span></p>

Accessing the elite figured world of science.

This review explores Jackson and Seiler's "I am smart enough to study post-secondary science: A critical discourse analysis of latecomers' identity construction in an online forum" by considering the analytic framework for figured worlds guiding this study. We consider the specific affordances of cultural production theory for examining how sociohistorical and cultural discourses of science as elite impact individuals at every level of education. We then extend this discussion by exploring how an informal learning space at a prestigious science museum was designed to explicitly tackle cultural discourses of science as elite that act as barriers to identification with science.