ABSTRACT
A common way to describe the transmission of culture is in terms of mediation (McLuhan, 1997) or re-mediation, a process in ‘which one medium is itself incorporated or represented in another medium’ (Bolter and Grusin, 1999, p 45). But what exactly is a medium? And what is the relation between a text, artwork or cultural product and a medium? This chapter draws on an empirical study of the global culture industry 1 that mapped the movements of a number of cultural objects (Lash and Lury, forthcoming), focusing on the role that the law plays in the transmission of culture. In the first half it presents an account of some of the ways in which the chosen objects moved, and then in the second half draws attention to the role of the law in creating the qualities of the objects that move, the things of mediation. The concern in both halves is to draw attention to mediation as an active, productive process, as a performance or event, and to address how it is that the (legal) mediation of things may contribute to the global flows of disjuncture and difference (Appadurai, 1996).
