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IS CULTURE AN INDUSTRY?
Does it make any sense to talk of the arts as "cultural industry"? What sort of relationships does this imply between the world of industry and management and the world of arts and culture? Traditionally the two words came from quite separate domains and have been sharply distinguished from one another from the sixteenth century onwards. In writings of the Romantic and Victorian periods, culture (particularly in the sense of artistic activity) and industry (seen as rational and material) were consistently opposed. How is it, then, that the two words have now come to be married as "cultural industry"? Certainly the term is gaining currency. A search on the Internet suggests that there are over twelve hundred pages referring to it. It is frequently in the mouths of those in power. The British Secretary of State for Culture, in a brief 1998 message, managed to use it approvingly three times while defending cuts in the finances of the Arts Council. All of this suggests that for many people the term must have some meaning and significance. And yet three nagging worries remain. First, the coinage has any point only if it significantly expands rather than contracting the meanings that the two terms have built up separately over centuries, and many of those professionally involved in the arts fear that it is being used in senses that distort and narrow their work. Second, despite all this repetition, nothing resembling a single agreed definition for "cultural industry" or about what it involves has emerged. Third, although this term was originally coined with a quite specific pejorative meaning, virtually all the current usages seem to have ignored that sense and to have reversed its highly critical emphasis.
It was more than fifty years ago, in 1944, that the Marxist theorists Adorno and Horkheimer created it to describe how the traditional arts come to be shouldered out by mass, industrialized culture in a capitalist society. They maintained that what they called "cultural industry" is deliberately fostered for profit by those seeking to maintain power. While appearing to offer people choice and entertainment, it actually produces uniformity and predictability. The authors saw its existence as a deliberate bid to organize leisure time in the same way...