Cultural Commodity Chains, Cultural Clusters, or Cultural Production Chains?

The paper begins with a discussion of the definition of cultural industries. The paper’s three main themes are concerned with, first: 1) a contestation of the generic application of the global commodity chain concept, 2) the need for a unique focus on cultural industries associated with the particular nature of its production process, and 3) the role of embedded judgments of quality is an integral part of this process. Second, the paper suggests that a restyled focus on production chains (involving the full cycle of production to use) might be more appropriate than “commodity chains” for this application. Finally, issues of spatiality and scale are discussed: it is argued that although global commodity chain debates explore linkages at a regional and national scale, they downplay linkages at the local level. Introduction T his thematic section of the journal has been stimulated by a general theoretical debate within economic geography, which is how to engage with culture. Some existing responses have ranged from those that seek to conceptualise the process as lying on a dualism from the culturalisation of economic life, to those that view this as the economisation of cultural life (Amin and Thrift 2007; Scott 2000). Arguably, both underplay the potential specificity of cultural production. Increasingly, analysts and policy makers have pointed to the fact that cultural production is itself a major sector of the economy and that it is growing at a rate beyond that of the rest of the economy (Siwek 2002). Within the existing dualisms of culture and economy there seems to be little space to debate the nuanced specifics of the cultural industries, aside from “it’s all cultural now.” This is a lost opportunity. Arguably, the study of the cultural industries presents the best opportunity for a case study in the “eye of the storm” of economic–cultural change. Thus, the justification for the concern in this collection is not that production is becoming more cultural, but what Andy C. Pratt, the organiser of the special theme articles, is a Reader in Urban Cultural Economy in the Department of Geography and Environment, and Director, Centre for Urban Research at the London School of Economics. His e-mail address is: [email protected]. Growth and Change Vol. 39 No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 95–103 Submitted April 2007; revised November 2007; accepted November 2007 © 2008 Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148 US and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4, 2DQ, UK. the specificities are of cultural production. If, as some assume, the economy is being “culturalised,” then changes in the cultural industries might serve as an interesting weathervane that could mark the future of the whole economy, or it may be that the cultural industries are different, in particular ways, from other parts of the economy. Another stimulus for this theme was the frustration at culture being used too widely and generally as a way of defining a non-economic context, or as a means of deploying instrumental policy. What we wanted to highlight was that as well as culture being used in an instrumental manner, there was also a relatively unexplored role of culture playing a role in its own right. Properly founded polices and evaluation strategies should be alert to, and able to distinguish between, the instrumental and the uses of culture “for itself ” (this may be an “arts” objective, or one to develop the cultural industries). Finally, there is the observation that cultural production does have a distinct and focused spatial form. It has been noted that cultural production—and consumption (see Mommaas (2004))—has a tendency to cluster or co-locate. Certainly, there is a dominant discourse in value chain analyses, notably by Porter (1998), that clustering is a key to competitive advantage, although this remains a rather uncertain proposition (Martin and Sunley 2003). The jury is still out on the nature, cause, or consequence of such inter-relationships. However, it is clear from production chain analyses that such clusters are not “stand-alone” but are nodes within multiple production chains. Those interested in organisational analysis have argued that the network, cluster, or node is a more relevant analytical object than the firm in these circumstances (Grabher 2001). Once again, this suggests that there may be some exceptionalism in the case of cultural industries. The theme of this overview essay is the value of a global commodity chain (GCC) approach, and the importance of specificity and uniqueness of production processes in the cultural industries. In recent years, the notion of GCC has gained significant attention in the economic development literature (e.g., Gereffi, Korzeniewicz, and Korzeniewicz 1994; Gereffi et al. 2001; Kaplinsky 2000). Regardless of interpretation and use, it is commonly assumed that GCC analysis, and associated strategies, have a generic character and can be applied across all industries and places. Historically, research on GCC grew out of analyses of agricultural commodity chains (Daviron and Ponte 2005; Gereffi, Korzeniewicz, and Korzeniewicz 1994; Raikes, Jensen, and Ponte 2000) and has been notably extended into textiles, footwear, and semiconductors (Bazan and Navas-Aleman 2001; Blair and Gereffi 2001). Little research has been carried out specifically on the cultural industries (but see Leslie and Reimer 2003; Leslie and Reimer 2006). This paper explores the case for a specific inflection of the GCC concept, termed here “production chains,” to the case of the cultural industries. This paper and the contributions to the special theme section more generally resolve on three issues. First, the paper argues against a generic application of the GCC concept, the need for a unique focus on cultural industries associated with the particular nature of its production process, and the role of embedded judgments of quality is an integral part of this process. Second, the paper considers that a restyled focus on production chains (involving the full cycle of production to use) might be more appropriate than “commodity chains” for this application. Finally, issues of spatiality and scale are 96 GROWTH AND CHANGE, MARCH 2008