ABSTRACT

In Chapter 3 I looked at cultural movements in context of large cities, and in Chapter 4 at the rebranding of a city through its cultural infrastructure. The demise of manufacturing in the affluent world means that the cultural sector now has a key role in the economies of many cities. In this chapter I examine the culture industries, borrowing the term from Sharon Zukin (1995) and finding that definitions vary (Evans, 2001; Scott, 2000; Landry and Bianchini, 1995; Myerscough, 1988) as well as ideological perspectives. I ask whether the rise of the culture industries represents a culturation of the economy (Warde, 2002) or an economisation of culture, and link today’s use of the terms culture industries, or cultural and creative industries, to that of the culture industry in critical theory in the 1940s. I turn next to Disney, critiqued by Michael Sorkin (1992) and Sharon Zukin (1995), looking at its venture into real estate at Celebration, Florida (MacCannell, 1999; Wood, 2002). Finally, I ask whether state support for culture mirrors Disney’s instrumentalism. In case studies I cite a news report of an art project at Abu Graib in Iraq, and a text on Polish factory film clubs by Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings; I illustrate a billboard work by Sheffieldbased artists Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt exhibited at the Guangzhou triennale in 2005.