Sociology,Sociology and the Cultural and Creative Industries

Abstract

Cultural and creative industries are now an established area of academic research. Yet, the welcome innovations that are associated with the development of a new field of study are also matched by confusions and conjectures. The term itself, ‘cultural and creative industries’, is the subject of extensive debate. It goes hand in hand with closely related concepts such as ‘creative economy’, as well as reflecting definitional struggles aimed at conjoining or demarcating the creative and the cultural. Many of these debates have been the subject of sociological research and research in Sociology. This collection considers that specific role of sociology, and Sociology, to the study of cultural and creative industries. The e-special issue collects articles ranging from early empirical and theoretical precursors to the formal establishment of cultural and creative industries as a field of study, to more recent work considering the coherence and usefulness of the category itself.

Keywords

creative industries cultural and creative industries cultural industries cultural studies Raymond Williams

The most successful economies and societies in the twenty-first century will be creative ones. Creativity will make the difference – to businesses seeking a competitive edge, to societies looking for new ways to tackle issues and improve the quality of life. (Lord Smith, DCMS, 2001: 3)

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) are now an established area of academic research. Journals, books, under- and post-graduate courses, along with research programmes and cross-national funding streams are all testament to the interest in this subject. The academic apparatus that has emerged over the last 20 years is matched by governmental activity, with various policies engaged with creating and sustaining CCIs. Our opening comment from Chris (now Lord) Smith, former Secretary of State at the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), shows the seductiveness of CCIs to policymakers, as they promised new forms of social and economic benefits. Smith’s DCMS was central to the creation and emergence of CCIs as a distinct object, both of government policy and of academic scrutiny.

Yet, the welcome innovations that are associated with the development of a new field of study are also matched by confusions and conjectures. The term itself, cultural and creative industries, is the subject of extensive debate, going hand in hand with closely related concepts such as ‘creative economy’, as well as reflecting definitional struggles aimed at conjoining or demarcating the creative and the cultural. Indeed, much of these definitional debates have been the subject of sociological research and research in Sociology. At the same time, the rich potential of sociology for analysing CCIs, as well as the problems posed by CCIs for sociological research, remains underdeveloped, particularly in terms of methodological innovations; sociology’s particular insights around raced and gendered identity practices, and the sociological concern with broader inequalities.

Partially this reflects the academic division of labour around the disciplines that have generated most interest in CCIs. Recent summaries of the emergence and development of research on CCIs (Cho et al., 2018) suggested business studies, economics and geography have been the key contributors to the over 1000 peer reviewed articles on CCIs that had been published by 2013. Yet sociology was still important, with just under 12 per cent of total articles published adopting distinctively sociological concerns (Cho et al., 2018).

Looking at the most cited articles, Cho et al. identify three distinct phases of CCI research. In the first stage, CCI studies explore the economics and production of culture, for example studies of the music and film industries. During the second stage, we see discussions that shift to regional development and the relationship between CCIs and the economy as a whole. Third, studies that turn to regional variations, ‘peripheral’ places, urban regeneration and the globalized nature of cultural production are also crucial, along with the rise of work analysing the idea of a ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002) of cultural and creative workers. Notably, all of the articles in this collection address the topic via UK case studies, yet the overall study of CCIs is highly international. In some ways the UK focus of the collection reflects Sociology’s role in British sociology. Yet it also suggests a challenge to Sociology to better reflect the global interest in CCIs and the potential of the journal and the discipline to engage and to reflect this. This is a deficit that we will return to later on in the article where we make the case for a broader, international perspective on CCIs.

Many of these areas of study are represented in this collection. At the same time, it is important to consider more broadly the specific role of sociology, and Sociology, to the study of CCIs. Thus, our e-special issue represents a useful, though inevitably partial, contribution to a conversation about sociology’s relationship to CCIs.

Sociology as a Problem for Cultural and Creative Industries

The history of CCIs as a concept, and subsequently as an object of study, is well covered elsewhere (e.g. Campbell, 2018; Comunian et al., 2015; Flew, 2013; Hesmondhalgh, 2019; Jones et al., 2015; Luckman, 2017; McRobbie, 2015; O’Brien, 2013; O’Connor and Oakley, 2018; Pratt, 1997) but it is worth making two points to connect sociology to CCIs. In the first instance the discipline of sociology has long been interested in demonstrating how seemingly natural or taken-for-granted categories are contingent and constructed. CCIs are a good example of a category and a concept that has been deployed in various ways, both by governments and by other social actors, including universities. Recent sociological research, and indeed Sociology, has demonstrated these uses.

The ‘origin’ of CCIs is usually taken to be the DCMS Mapping Documents of 1998 and 2001 (DCMS, 1998, 2001), although this point of genesis obscures broader trends in policymaking beyond the UK and academic understandings of culture and economy. The original definition focused on Intellectual Property as the basis for CCIs, indicating 13 economic sectors for inclusion in what counts as a CCI, including: advertising; architecture; art and antiques markets; crafts; design; designer fashion; film & video; interactive leisure software; music; performing arts; publishing; software and computer services; television and radio. The 13 were seen by the DCMS Mapping Documents as: ‘Those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent which have a potential for job and wealth creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’ (DCMS, 2001: 4).

This approach generated extensive engagement and criticism (summarized by Campbell, 2018), and the definition has seen several iterations (Bakhshi et al., 2012; Throsby, 2008). The current DCMS understanding is based on levels of creative jobs in a given industry, an approach building on academic and think tank work, as well as policy consultation.¹ This, current, approach suggests nine clusters of industries and occupations as CCIs: advertising and marketing; architecture; crafts; design: product, graphic and fashion design; film, TV, video, radio and photography; IT, software and computer services; museums, galleries and libraries; music, performing and visual arts; publishing.

This definition has had a controversial ‘social life’, being both part of the state and also the intellectual apparatus that now supports the existence of CCIs as a ‘natural’ and taken-for-granted object. At the same time the development of the definition asks us to be attentive to the constituent parts, in particular those elements of the cultural production of the CCI category.

Even this very partial and descriptive account of how the UK government defines CCIs indicates the constructed and contingent nature of the category. This is a long running theoretical problem, and presents a dilemma for editing an e-special issue! CCIs, as a category, have a history, meaning we should be cautious when associating specific thinkers, research programmes and individual articles to research on or about CCIs. We should also be attentive to the ongoing contingency associated with the category, as well as the methods underpinning its construction and dissemination. The most recent articles we have included (Campbell et al., McRobbie and Prince) are all concerned with this central question of the stability, or otherwise, of the category of CCIs. The stability of the category influences policy activity, particularly the perception of CCIs as a booming part of the economy, creating wealth and jobs; it shapes academic agendas, including teaching and research; and it shapes perceptions of arts, cultural and creative activity within relevant (and sometimes less relevant) sectors of society. The question of the contours of CCIs is not just one of better or worse, more or less effective, policy interventions; rather it is the reshaping of conceptions of social activity grounded in what does, and what does not, count as a CCI.

This question about categories suggests a second point for sociology and CCIs. As our selection demonstrates, Sociology has long published articles examining the occupations and industries that we would now consider as constituting CCIs. We can thus draw on the tradition of studying work, whether in terms of changing patterns and conditions of employment, or in terms of new sorts of occupations, to help us understand the importance of CCIs to our current economy and society. Our earliest articles, looking at computer programming (Sheldrake, 1971) and media (Kumar, 1975), show how what would become the constitutive parts of CCIs are a longstanding concern for sociology; moreover, later articles, looking at film (Blair, 2003) and architecture (Fowler and Wilson, 2004), show the ways in which sociological research can offer analysis of specific occupations and industries that highlight broader social trends, such as changing employment relationships and gender inequalities.

Cultural and Creative Industries as a Problem for Sociology

Outside of the pages of Sociology, at the intersections of sociology, geography and cultural and media studies, the attention to new forms of work and labour, in ‘new’ occupations, was crucial in the formation of CCIs as a category and as an object of study. Some of the key theorists we have mentioned earlier in the introduction are under-represented in the Sociology archive, yet the foundational thinkers setting the context for the work that would prove influential in demarcating CCIs are present.

Here we can see ideas about the relationship between culture and economy, as well as the possibility, whether progressive or problematic, of culture as an industry in two pieces from Thompson (1988) and Williams (1976). Yet it would be wrong to think of them directly as master theorists or foundational to CCIs, writing many years (in Williams’ case decades) before the coherent category emerges. Rather, they offer important clues as to the previous and ongoing concerns, for example the relationship to specific critical traditions, such as Frankfurt School’s account of the ‘culture industry’; the importance of studying the organization of cultural production to general sociological work; and the potential relevance of ideologies of culture.

Both of these older articles offer insights that suggest CCIs may offer potential for sociology, as much as sociology helps to both contextualize and critique CCIs. Indeed, we can see in the more recent articles on reality TV (Allen and Mendick, 2012), journalism (Munnik, 2018), urban regeneration (Miles, 2005) and zine culture (Kempson, 2015) how sociology’s longstanding relationship with cultural and media studies is productive for analysing both the formal and informal elements of contemporary CCIs.

There is also, in the inclusion of Thompson and Williams, an indication of the importance of the cultural to CCIs. Sociology has a rich tradition of analysing how cultural consumption and participation is patterned; Pierre Bourdieu’s influence on the sociology of education and contemporary social theory, for example, suggests that the sociology of culture can produce insights that can become central to how we understand the social world. Articles from Hanquinet et al. (2013) and Reeves (2014) reflect the importance of sociological methods and a sociological understanding of culture and how it is patterned. The continued demonstration of the uneven social distribution of tastes and practices, along with changes within ‘legitimate’ and elite tastes and practices is important to our knowledge of culture. It is also crucial in thinking through the social inequalities associated with CCIs, as well as posing a challenge for how sociology’s analysis of culture will relate to the creative industries aspects of CCIs.

A useful way of illustrating this challenge is found in the articles on urban regeneration. CCIs, and the associated practices of culture-led urban regeneration and the idea of an urban ‘creative class’, were, in the 1980s and 1990s, new developments for sociologists to analyse and explain. Here again, the challenge of ‘new’ social developments saw the renewed relevance of sociological approaches, thinking about inequality, power and social justice against the backdrop of celebratory discourses associated with CCIs and gentrification.

Again though, we see the need for caution. Zukin, writing in 1990, is almost a decade before the formalization of CCIs as a policy category in Britain and, as Prince (2013) illustrates, the operation of the ‘assemblage’ of ‘calculative cultural expertise’ linking culture, policy and economy. Alongside the caution at imputing a CCI theme onto work written before the concept took root, we can also see the fluctuating relationship between sociology and CCIs at the point where governments were doing definitional and demarcation work. In Sociology in the 1990s there is much less of a direct focus on CCIs, although the sorts of social changes, and associated debates, underpinning the rise of CCIs are well represented (see Skinner et al.’s e-special issue of Sociology in the 1990s).

In some ways the absence of CCI-related research in the 1990s is surprising, given a number of factors that mark this decade as a pivotal moment of major significance for CCIs, not least of which is the DCMS Mapping Documents of 1998. This absence allows us to make an important closing point. Much of the key groundwork for studying CCIs was done outside of sociology (and Sociology), albeit with important relations to and with the discipline and the journal. Although it is important to stress that this initial ground clearing is, at best, partial, these remarks, along with the selection of articles that follows, should show the value and importance of sociology to the CCIs, along with the same for the CCIs to sociology. The relationship is particularly important around areas of class, taste, inclusion and exclusion, and studies of social mobility. As the record of publications, to which we could have added several more occupational case studies and theoretical interventions, shows, Sociology has been important to discussions of CCIs, and we are hopeful that this productive relationship may long continue.

The Articles

The ‘New’ Creative Industries

The first article in the collection is Sheldrake’s article published in 1971 exploring orientations towards work among computer programmers. It is the first article in Sociology to identify this distinct, new group of workers and to examine the sociological significance of their work, in particular how they are ‘affected by automation’. The article offers new advances in organizational theory, drawing attention to distinctions among workers between those who invested a ‘technical’ orientation to their work and those who identified with an ‘organizational’ viewpoint. The article predates by some time the entrenchment of corporate industrial relations, neoliberal consumer shifts and also the establishment of branding as synonymous with distinct technological organizations. Sheldrake notes how these differing orientations are also geographical, with more workers in the north of England likely to adopt a technical orientation and those in London identifying more often with an organizational viewpoint. Workplaces in the latter locations tending to lean towards more ‘commercialized’ rather than purely technical objectives.

In his 1975 article, Kumar offers further nuance to the emerging organizational orientations towards CCI work as originally developed in Sheldrake’s article. In his article, Kumar (1975: 71) examines the unique role of the BBC as autonomous from both state and commerce, with the BBC Charter intended to ‘inform, educate and entertain’, and holding a unique cultural significance as both non-profitmaking and non-governmental. Recognizing the precarity of this role, Kumar (1975: 85) identifies a variety of BBC ‘strategies for survival’. These debates, we feel, resound today. The supposed impartiality of the BBC and its various duties of care as public service broadcaster, separate from both state and commerce, seek ways of fostering inclusivity and diversity,² political impartiality and freedom from commercial sponsorship. In 1975, Kumar focuses on the breakup of the post-war consensus as part of the wider political context of the time and the increasing ‘politicization of issues previously regarded as safe’ (1975: 67). These observations represent the first signs that we can see in Sociology of the development of new ideas around the entrenchment of particular political ideals in the creation of CCIs. Kumar foreshadows the importance of a shifting socio-cultural landscape, changing modes of funding and the explicit politicization of CCIs. These developments are at odds with the established principles of the BBC, as both impartial and appealing primarily to the ‘middle ground’.

The article goes on to explore the difficulties of maintaining and holding onto the ‘middle ground’ as politics begins to permeate into every area of everyday life, particularly in terms of the commodification of everyday life and the rise of notions of individualism. The BBC, in common with other public agencies, thus began to adopt a new role as public mediator of private life. Kumar shows that in the mid-1970s, as political consensus began to break down, broadcasters’ roles changed from purveyors of the ‘middle ground’, to adopting the role of ‘us’; the public/viewer.

In common with Sheldrake’s slightly earlier article, Kumar also notes the relationship between wider political shifts and the emergence of new, more commodified, CCIs and the impact that this had on workers’ experiences of employment in these sectors. Kumar’s article establishes CCIs as an ‘elite’ profession during this historical period. In 2019, jobs in media are highly sought after, lucrative and often influential roles, with access limited to a small section of a relatively privileged elite. As Kumar points out, in the post-war years, media work and especially broadcasting was often seen as a low, intellectually un-stimulating career choice. However, in the shifting economic and cultural climate of the 1970s:

It is thought of . . . in the terms usually reserved for the venerable institutions of British society – Parliament, the Civil Service, the Law Courts, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge . . . a career within the BBC has come to seem as attractive and worthwhile as a career in any of these other institutions . . . a situation that has seemed remarkable in the eyes of foreign broadcasters. (1975: 72)

A notable absence in both Sheldrake’s and Kumar’s work is a focus on the particular experiences of workers within CCI professions. Although Kumar recognizes the emerging privilege of CCI roles, there is little reflexive account of the ‘men broadcasters’ of his research. As we shall see, work on inequalities and diversity (or lack of) in the profession came in later Sociology articles.

As Sheldrake’s and Kumar’s articles begin to demonstrate, early CCI research developed alongside wider social, economic and political transformations and analyses. The third article in this collection, by Raymond Williams (1976) reminds us of the importance of integrating culture and ‘cultural science’ alongside history and wider analyses of economic and political systems. Writing during the beginnings of the cultural studies tradition, Williams’ seminal work anticipates significant developments in work around the materiality of signs and advocates a new ‘cultural sociology’ that will develop Marxist accounts of class and social ‘processes’. This is done by advocating an alternative focus on practices and institutions of meaning and value, rather than, as with Sheldrake and Kumar, organizations per se. Williams thus predicts a future direction for work on culture by CCI researchers that focuses on cultural process, cultural formation and, significantly, the ways in which cultural producers are organized. Interestingly, bearing in mind the subsequent growth and popularity of mass communications as a research area and degree subject, Williams argues that a focus on the vocabulary of ‘mass’ (culture, market, communications, etc.) is unhelpful since it obliterates the possibility of any focus on serial and multiple identities crucial to developing any meaningful sociology of culture. For Williams, the subsequent, inevitable focus on cultural structuralism has been at the expense of ‘excluding, as contingent, all other real practice’ (1976: 505).

The Rise of ‘Mass’ Culture

Williams’ account of sign-systems, as an alternative theoretical model to previous neo-Marxist approaches to cultural sociology, has been influential in the study of culture, albeit as part of a suite of influences on CCI research. Thompson, in our next article, appears to argue conversely to Williams’ insistence on multiple rather than ‘mass’ identities and cultures, that ‘the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory’ (1988: 359). It is 1988 and mass communication as a discipline and research area is thriving. Perhaps this is not surprising given the importance of the 1980s for the rapid and dramatic rise in media cultures, particularly the shift from radio to TV as the new, most popular cultural medium. Thompson’s article firmly places mass communication as central to studies of contemporary culture and to sociology more generally, arguing that:

The study of mass communication belongs to the core concerns of sociology; it is an approach which is informed by social theory, and by the writings of critical social theorists, but which seeks to move beyond the restricted view of many theoretical approaches. (1988: 360)

In order to work towards an analysis of mass communication which is firmly situated within sociological theory, Thompson advocates a new ‘depth-hermeneutical’ methodological framework adapted from the earlier work of the philosopher Ricoeur (1981). This methodological approach would have three distinct phases. The first would be a ‘social-historical analysis’ focusing on the ways in which objects are received, produced and transmitted, which in turn occur within a clear social-historical context. Thompson is sensitive to the fact that individuals will have varying degrees of resources available to produce, transmit and interpret cultural objects and artefacts, and we will return to this point in a moment. The second methodological phase would be a ‘formal or discursive analysis’ that would work to uncover structural features and relations of objects, and would offer an analysis of the structural features of mass communication discourse. Readers familiar with recent developments in sociological accounts of, for example, reality television, will recognize the parallels here with contemporary attempts to offer accounts of the structural features of popular reality TV discourse and narratives. The third and final phase of Thompson’s methodology would be ‘interpretation’. Here he refers to the interpretation of mass communication as creative, imaginative, multiple and at times characterized by conflict as subjects interpret symbolic constructions differently and make sense of them by incorporating these into other aspects of their life.

This threefold methodology presents an interesting precursor to later work exploring demographics around engagement and participation in CCIs. Thompson (1988: 371) notes the ‘systematically asymmetrical’ relations of power whereby different agents and groups of people are facilitated with more power than others, rendering certain forms of mass communication inaccessible to other groups; including divisions of class, gender, race and nation-state. Thompson’s article thus firmly cements mass communication as a key cultural phenomenon ‘recognising that the production and transmission of these objects and expressions are socially situated and institutionally mediated processes’ (1988: 361). This, alongside the assertion that there is difference in the reception and appropriation of mass communication according to socially differentiated groups, is a theme picked up in recent CCI research, as we explore later on. Interestingly, considering the overlaps between Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Thompson’s account of interpretation of cultural objects and the asymmetry of this among different social groups, the concept of ‘field’ is only very briefly mentioned in Thompson’s article, alongside a single endnote that references Bourdieu.

By the early 1990s, increasing numbers of researchers interested in producing sociological accounts of topics that would become central to CCI research, were beginning to make use of Bourdieusian concepts of ‘cultural capital’. This was in order to help make sense of the asymmetries and inequalities of opportunities of access and engagement. Thus, Zukin’s (1990) article focuses on new spaces of consumption and geographies of culture in order to explore cultural capital as real and not merely symbolic. Drawing on the proliferation of consumption-orientated spaces of consumer gentrification (such as shopping malls and Disney World), Zukin examines the transformation of space as consequence both of financial capital and new processes of production and investment, along with the new demands of affluent consumers for authenticity and security via new spaces of consumption. In the article, Zukin seeks to move on from Bourdieusian techniques of cataloguing consumption tastes, preferences and styles. Instead she draws on the importance of external (political, economic and spatial) factors as well as internal motivations for exploring change and crucially, the interplay between the two. Here we might see parallels with Williams’ critique of cultural structuralism and a turn to the materiality of signs. Indeed, Zukin’s account of regeneration as a socially constructed quest for authenticity reflects this, as does her reflection of Disney World as a popular homogenizing of economic, social, political events which are re-presented via a mythically created ‘historical enclave’ of signs which consumers literally have to buy into (1990: 43). Arguing that cultural capital is not merely symbolic, Zukin calls for a new sociological vocabulary that pays due attention to experiences of gender, race and class, but also explores spatial contexts alongside material uses of symbolic capital. She writes:

Cultural capital plays a real, ie. material role in moving financial capital through both economic and cultural circuits . . . it creates real economic value . . . exerts an influence on physical infrastructures . . . and it shapes new forms of labour and occupations. (1990: 53, emphasis in original)

Participants as ‘Agents’ of Culture

The integration of economic and cultural analysis is very much reflected in contemporary CCI research. In Blair’s (2003) article, this is reinterpreted within the context of agency within structures. Utilizing Elias’ ‘figuration’ and ‘networked agency’ concepts, Blair explores UK film freelancers’ responses to uncertainties in the labour market. Emphasizing the power relations operating within labour processes, Blair unpicks the subjective experiences of ‘project-based’ work in the film industry and everyday experiences of uncertainty. Returning to the theme of power asymmetries and inequalities, she challenges conventional notions of top–down power relations, examining instead the interdependencies and shifting balances of power between workers. Making use of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, she identifies ‘semi-permanent work groups’ (SPWG) as a ‘figuration’ (2003: 684) of interdependent individuals forming project teams.

The emphasis on power, and how individuals operating in CCIs manage it, is by 2003 firmly established. Yet the exploration of wider classed, raced and gendered experiences of inequalities within CCIs remains under-developed. One article that does link class to individuals’ experiences of access and participation in CCIs is Miles’s (2005) article exploring cultural regeneration in NewcastleGateshead. The article mirrors Zukin’s earlier attempts to integrate gentrification and regeneration alongside associated uses of the consumption and production of culture. Miles’s article expands on this earlier work by exploring how class identities are played out, reflected and reproduced via cultural regeneration schemes, particularly in northern, post-industrial British cities.

As we described in the opening sections to our Editors Introduction, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw much discussion and debate around the use of public money (or the ‘lottery tax’, see Casey, 2019) for cultural projects that supposedly improved the lives and opportunities of citizens living in these areas. Miles explores the extent to which regeneration might actually exclude rather than improve the lives of working class people living in de-industrialized areas set for regeneration. His article explores the ‘cultural case’ for millennium redevelopment and regeneration projects, pointing out that historically the north-east of England has experienced low levels of arts participation. Echoing earlier CCI research that emphasizes the importance of materiality of signs and a more subjective account of different, unequal individual experiences of accessing CCIs, Miles examines the symbolic impact of the NewcastleGateshead Quayside redevelopment, explaining how local people express a sense of belonging, well-being and shared, collective culture in these areas. NewcastleGateshead thus offers a celebration and echoes of the Tyne’s industrial legacy via a variety of new hyper visible spectacles or focal points and sense of belonging (e.g. the Angel of the North, the Sage music centre, the Baltic Art Gallery and the Millennium Bridge).

Miles’s article is, along with Kempson’s, McRobbie’s and Prince’s, attentive to the role of methodology in researching CCIs. It points to problems of cultural sector research that have tended to over-rely on quantitative data. Instead, he advocates new methodological approaches that would help reveal the everyday impact of CCI regeneration on local working class communities as they struggle with rapid post-industrial transformations and economic decline.

Miles’s account of inclusion and exclusion in participation in public arts and regeneration projects is developed within the themes of the later articles in this collection, as the focus from the early 2000s onwards continues to develop towards further accounts of subjective experiences of inequalities of access in CCIs. Fowler and Wilson’s (2004) article explores gender differentials in architecture careers, including in course completion rates and considers the particular difficulties faced by women architects as practitioners combining architecture with parenting responsibilities. The authors point out that across the western world, there are far fewer registered and practising women architects than men, and cite Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) data showing that in 2001 34 per cent of trainee architects were women and that although there are similar numbers of women and men entrants onto architecture training courses, women have significantly lower completion rates. Fowler and Wilson note that even in countries with generous maternity provision, men continue to vastly dominate the creation of high-profile architect projects and large-scale buildings.

In common with an increasing number of CCI researchers at this time, the authors turn to Bourdieu’s theory of practice in order to explore how gender divisions are experienced in the everyday working lives of women architects. Importantly, they also draw attention to the classed origins of a so called ‘love of art’ arguing that ‘recruits have high levels of cultural capital, which in turn are linked to their privileged social origins’ (2004: 105). Thus, although similar numbers of men and women enter architecture courses, entrants are more likely to have parents in management and associated professions and a higher than average likelihood of being educated at private school. To help explain this, Fowler and Wilson draw on Bourdieu’s notions of ‘recognition’ and ‘aura’ pointing to the ‘physical dispositions of being-in-the world’ (2004: 105) that is manifested in ‘bodily assurance’ (2004: 105), particularly those who occupy elite positions and who have the highest levels of cultural capital. While the elite choose architectural schools and courses, the schools simultaneously choose the elite. Women architects, particularly those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, are thus faced with the dual burden of class and gender. Fowler and Wilson advocate an instrumental rationality approach as solution via the implementation of assertiveness techniques to increase management and entrepreneurial power. They point out that as an addition to demographic disadvantage, women are also more likely to experience intimidation and prohibitive parental responsibilities. The habitus of women architects is thus frequently one of ‘resigned endurance’ rather than one of ‘love of domination’ more likely to be enjoyed by their male counterparts.

The notion of CCI participation being at odds with everyday identity practices is picked up in the next article by Netto (2008) which explores multiculturalism and engagement in the arts in Scotland. Netto notes age differentials rather that multiculturalism that appear to determine differentials in preference for arts and describes how multiculturalism in Scotland is also entangled with national identity politics. This is particularly relevant when one considers public arts engagement organizations which have a tendency to project ‘collective identities’. Inevitably, Netto argues, this will mean that there is a predisposition towards expressing and affirming majority and dominant perceptions of identities. Indeed, multiculturalism in the arts has tended to involve recognition of the minority by the majority population rather than the other way round. For Netto, this is a key factor in reducing opportunities for engagement and incorporation into the arts.

Authenticity, Aesthetics and Cultural Participation

The focus on arts participation and in ‘high’ cultural and creative engagement, is one of the overarching themes in the sociology of culture. The next article in the collection, by Allen and Mendick (2013) is, therefore, an important moment for the expansion of the field of cultural industries research in that it advocates incorporating popular genres into the sociology of CCIs. The focus of their 2013 article is on the reality TV genre and discourses of ‘authenticity’. Retaining a focus on class, the authors explore the ways in which this intersects with age in identity work and social distinction within the popular reality TV genre. The research demonstrates a multitude of responses, specifically that working class viewers frequently reject pathologizing representations of working class contestants while at times valuing their ‘authenticity’ and lack of pretentiousness. The article thus offers a fascinating depiction of young working class people operating within a climate of austerity who are remaking class via judgements of authenticity around class identity. Regulation of classed self-hoods becomes possible via the intense surveillance of working class contestants.

What counts as legitimate tastes is crucial to both ‘authenticity’ and acts of distinction through culture. In Hanquinet et al.’s (2013) article, which uses data on museums visitors in Belgium, we see the way that aesthetic hierarchies are changing over time, albeit still within the familiar Bourdieusian opposition between the high and the popular. There is, of course, a longstanding debate over the exact patterning of cultural tastes, along with the implications of those patterns (Bennett et al., 2009; Bourdieu, 1984; Bryson, 1996; Miles and Leguina, 2017; Peterson and Kern, 1996), and Hanquinet et al., along with Reeves (2014) are good examples of the continued importance of sociological perspectives, and sociological approaches, to the cultural aspects of CCIs.

In the case of Hanquinet et al. we see the way that aesthetic value has changed, as new demands from art for social engagement and critique, playfulness and conceptual contributions, emerge around new symbolic boundaries that go beyond just a homology with social position. Moreover, the presence of more eclectic tastes, at least in the visual arts museum, may not signal the end, but rather the reconfiguration, of social divisions in relation to culture.

Hanquinet et al. remind us of the need to go beyond the British context in cultural, and in CCI, research. They also show the continuing, and profound, influence of Bourdieu’s work on British sociology. Their article is usefully read in tandem with Reeves’s analysis of English Taking Part survey data. The value of placing both together means we will depart slightly from our chronological approach to introducing the articles in the collection.

Reeves looks at participation, an element of sociology of culture that can sometimes be neglected in favour of studies on consumption. Moreover, the use of government survey data from England offers another method of thinking about patterns of cultural engagement alongside more bespoke survey data analysed by Hanquinet et al.

What is most fascinating about Reeves’s findings is that two ways sociologists often think about social structure – social class and social status – are not the core explanations for patterns of participation in the arts. The personal practice of arts making, rather than attendance at cultural events, is stratified by education. While the importance of education in stratifying culture is not an unfamiliar finding for those immersed in the sociology of culture, the relationship between education and participation is an important reminder for current policy debates over the place of arts practice in the education system. Moreover, as Reeves reminds us, entry into elite positions, such as educational institutions and professions, use cultural participation as a proxy for institutional and organizational fit. Thus, broader social inequalities take on an important cultural dimension, just as cultural inequalities have social consequences. When we juxtapose these findings on participation with Hanquinet et al.’s research on consumption, we see two forms of cultural inequality that have important relations to each other, and to social inequality more generally. These cultural inequalities are reinforced by Campbell et al.’s (2019) article that closes the collection.

Four of our five remaining articles reflect sociology’s relationship with the cultural studies tradition of Williams and the media studies links suggested in Thompson’s article. Most crucially, three of the five are formally engaged with CCIs as a category, albeit in differing ways.

Prince (2013) explores the link between the sociology of culture articles of Hanquinet et al. and Reeves, and the organizational practices of cultural institutions and cultural policy. Prince offers a critique of the calculative reason based on the proliferation (and misuse) of data in the cultural sector. Both the calculative reason, along with the role of specific experts, gives numeric data a particular status as a resource for both organizations and for policymaking. The ability to speak to policy through the resource of numerical data risks marginalizing the activities that cultural organizations are most committed to, in favour of only that which can be measured and quantified.

Prince’s research reflects a much broader and longer standing debate within both cultural policy studies and CCI research, as to the ‘instrumentalization’ of culture for economic and social policy ends, as well as the absorption of the cultural sector into the category of CCIs (Hesmondhalgh and Pratt, 2005). Again, we see the importance and usefulness of sociology to these discussions, both through the ethnographic approach, and through the theoretical framework deployed as the basis for Prince’s analysis.

Similar methods are the starting point for Kempson’s (2015) work on zines and zine culture. At the same time, Kempson’s focus on zines reminds us of the breadth of creative activity beyond the ‘industries’ of film, television, music and performing arts. Combining DIY traditions, as well as creative practices that cross the boundaries of many formal creative industries, the zines, and the associated community, have a complex relationship to commerce and commercial success. Kempson illustrates these complex relationships, as well as thinking through the way networks and communities are experienced and negotiated.

DIY zine making has echoes of some of the starting points for the study of CCIs, for example studies of the fashion and music industries (McRobbie, 2002; Negus, 1998), and the concerns over authenticity, selling out to commercial publishing and status within a scene are reminders of some of the very earliest and most famous works in cultural studies (Hebdidge, 1979). Yet Kempson is also important because of her focus on space and spatial dimensions of cultural production. The insider/outsider dynamics are picked up in McRobbie’s (2016) article, along with the consideration that CCIs, in whatever form, are constituted by networks that go beyond physical space and single locations. At the same time, specific locations shape production in profound ways.

Participation, Policy and the (re)Production of Cultural Knowledge

McRobbie’s (2016) article is both a defence of sociology as a discipline to understand and rethink creative industries, as well as a call for a substantive reassessment of the CCI category. She focuses on the fashion industry in three key sites – London, Berlin and Milan – reflecting on the difficulties of researching those with prominent media profiles through the traditional interview or ethnographic methods. Researching this section of CCIs allows reflection on the way that working life is mediated and the self has become a brand. These are trends discussed in other parts of economic and social life, and indeed were crucial to Allen and Mendick’s article included in this collection.

McRobbie shows the need for a ‘re-differentiation’ of fashion within CCIs, to understand the specific issues of the global networks and the identities and embodied presentation, of fashion workers. These identities are alongside the specifics of the industrial and occupational organization of fashion. Here McRobbie links directly to studies of work, and institutions of work that have been important to influential research on CCIs (e.g. Born, 2005; Neff, 2012). Most notable, and linking directly with Prince’s article, is the consideration of the role of universities and institutions of knowledge production on the continued existence and importance of CCIs, showing the category is as much a product of academic industry as it is government policy.

We might read McRobbie’s article as the culmination of some of the trends we have noted in CCI research in Sociology – the relation to work and occupations; to other disciplines and fields; and the discussion of methods, social science and the overall category of CCIs.

Munnik’s (2018) article, offering a sociology of news production that draws on Bourdieu’s work, continues some of these themes. The article is in dialogue with key parts of media studies (Schlesinger, 1987) which have themselves been influenced by sociology, in this case Bourdieu’s work on fields. Munnik uses Bourdieu to see journalism as a field, asking how key figures are positioned and constrained. The article is also attentive to the changing landscape of news production, notably the influence and importance of social media.

We can see Munnik’s work as a compliment to Allen and Mendick’s focus on how specific forms of media are received, with the focus on production rather than reception or consumption. Crucially, Munnik gives an insight into the rules of the game for journalists, showing the need for nuanced readings of the relationship between journalists and media representations, in this case of Muslims and Muslim communities. These more detailed understandings suggest ways that media production may be developed and improved to create better and more accurate journalism for marginalized groups within Britain’s current ‘hostile environment’.

The final article, by Campbell et al. (2019), summarizes many of the debates touched on in this introductory overview, as well as continuing to demonstrate the importance and relevance of sociology to the study of CCIs. They argue that the economic performance of CCIs, which has driven so much of policy and practitioner interest in the category, is unevenly distributed between specific industries and occupations. Moreover, those parts of the CCIs that are most closely associated with cultural production, for example the performing arts occupations, seem to have very different occupational cultures from those parts of the CCIs associated with impressive economic performance. Here the article uses sociological approaches to studying cultural taste, in this case analysing data from England, to show how different some of the CCI occupations are from one another. It is not only that different parts of the CCIs have different levels of economic performance that may mean we should be cautious about the coherence of the category; it is also that, in terms of tastes, we have very different occupational cultures, both as the CCIs are contrasted with each other, and in contrast to the rest of English society.

By concluding with an article that is both cautious about CCIs and is embedded in sociological methods and modes of thought, we are left in mind as to the relationship between sociology, Sociology and CCIs. We are hopeful that this relationship has been fruitful, and in highlighting the longstanding points of connection we have reinforced the value of this relationship for future research.

Moreover, as sociology and Sociology engage with questions as to their own patterns of power relationships, inequalities of race, gender, class and other forms of demographic marginalization (Banks, 2017), and the relation to other academic disciplines, we are hopeful to see a greater diversity of authors and research topics in future articles. At present CCIs, and the wider ‘creative economy’ are the subject of major governmental and research support in the UK (AHRC, 2018; BEIS, 2018). They are also the subject of widespread global interest. This is partly because CCIs are seen as offering high financial returns as well as ‘soft power’ benefits, but also because discourses surrounding the benefits of CCIs have travelled between nation-states without the requisite levels of critical interrogation travelling with them.

As a result, a greater breadth of international perspectives is needed from sociology and Sociology, to fully address the almost hegemonic status of the global CCIs. In the first instance, the various articles collected together here have demonstrated that sociology is well placed to offer critical engagements at exactly the moment when governments and funders are most in need of the analysis. The potential for sociological work, hosted by a key journal within the discipline, is, we hope, clear, even if that potential must be developed in dialogue with perspectives from beyond the UK, as we have seen in geography and cultural studies’ analysis of CCIs (Cho et al., 2018). If this potential can be realized, there is much to look forward to with regards the continued, and expanded, relationship between Sociology and the CCIs.

Footnotes

Funding

Part of this work was supported by AHRC Grant AH/S001298/1 ‘Centre of Excellence for Policy and Evidence in the Creative Industries’.

Notes

Dave O’Brien is Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh. He did a PhD in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, looking at European Capital of Culture. He has a BA in History and Politics and an MA in Philosophy, both from Liverpool. He has published widely on all areas of Cultural and Creative industries, including cultural policy, urban regeneration, cultural work, public policy, and cultural consumption. He was an AHRC/ESRC placement fellow at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, writing the Measuring the Value of Culture report. He is currently an ESRC IAA fellow seconded to Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and is also working with the APPG on Creative Diversity. He is the author and editor of five books including Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries to be published by Manchester University Press in June 2020.

Emma Casey is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Northumbria University, UK. She has written widely on class, gender and everyday consumption practices and is the author of Women, Pleasure and the Gambling Experience (reprinted in paperback 2016). Her work is at the forefront of gambling research, developing methodological innovations for the study of gambling in everyday life, and exploring the relationships between gambling and social inequalities.

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