Beyond the Great Divide

Abstract

The term ‘creative industries’ has different patterns of deployment. The main fault lines have traditionally appeared between the US, where the marketplace and consumer rule, and much of the rest of the world, where notions of the cultural public sphere and citizenship remain relevant (if under siege). But peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and open source software communities may offer an unexpected challenge to these two constructions. The realignment of the citizen/consumer divide, brought about by the blurring of producer/consumer relations and the requirements of citizenship in digitally enabled communities, holds the possibility for a redefined notion of creative industries.