ABSTRACT
Culture is something that is actively produced and consumed. In contemporary capitalism this production of culture involves large-scale, systematic relations of the creation of image, significance, sensuousness, and tactility, with many actors involved. For producers of the sorts of commodities that communications technologies have become, this involves intense, creative labour and capital around the discourses and practices of advertising (Frith and Mueller 2003); identities of things and the corporations that marshall their production and circulation; branding; imagining audiences, users, and consumers (Cronin 2004); and the reflexive and recursive recuperation of knowledge about consumption in the production of culture. Such an enterprise was demonstrated in Doing Cultural Studies, through du Gay et al.’s analysis of the different sorts of corporate myths, brands, and advertising that were devised and deployed to make the Sony Walkman attractive for prospective buyers.
