An investigation of the cultural practices and belief systems of Los Angelesbased film and video production workers.

The contributors examine the emergence of truly global cultural products and the strategies of global cultural players, analyse how culture is circulated, and consider why culture has become a crucial concern in business and organisations.

In Production Culture, John Thornton Caldwell investigates the cultural practices and belief systems of Los Angeles–based film and video production workers: not only those in prestigious positions such as producers and directors but also many “below-the-line” laborers, including gaffers, editors, and camera operators. Caldwell analyzes the narratives and rituals through which workers make sense of their labor and critique the film and TV industry as well as the culture writ large. As a self-reflexive industry, Hollywood constantly exposes itself and its production processes to the public; workers’ ideas about the industry are embedded in their daily practices and the media they create. Caldwell suggests ways that scholars might learn from the industry’s habitual self-scrutiny. Drawing on interviews, observations of sets and workplaces, and analyses of TV shows, industry documents, economic data, and promotional materials, Caldwell shows how film and video workers function in a transformed, post-network industry. He chronicles how workers have responded to changes including media convergence, labor outsourcing, increasingly unstable labor and business relations, new production technologies, corporate conglomeration, and the proliferation of user-generated content. He explores new struggles over “authorship” within collective creative endeavors, the way that branding and syndication have become central business strategies for networks, and the “viral” use of industrial self-reflexivity to motivate consumers through DVD bonus tracks, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and “making-ofs.” A significant, on-the-ground analysis of an industry in flux, Production Culture offers new ways of thinking about media production as a cultural activity.

The Production of Culture is timely and relevant. . . . Diana Crane introduces the reader to this busy field of scholarly activity, organizes the strands of theory and empirical research in an orderly fashion, and advances some bold notions about the relationship between organizational ′contexts′ and innovation. --Contemporary Sociology "Crane melds numerous sources concisely and clearly in her argument that cultural forms cannot be understood ′apart from the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.′ . . . looks like a good start to a useful series." --Communication Booknotes "Crane′s overview is clearly written and does an effective job of incorporating concepts and theories from communication, cultural studies, economics, and literature, as well as her home territory, sociology." --Communication Booknotes How does the media shape and frame culture? How does media entertainment vary under different conditions of production and consumption? What types of meanings and ideologies do these modes of production convey, and how do they change over time? How does media culture differ from other forms of recorded culture produced in nonindustrial settings? In The Production of Culture, the inaugural volume in the new Foundations of Popular Culture series, Diana Crane argues that these are the kinds of questions social scientists should concern themselves with. She contends that recorded cultures simply cannot be understood apart from the contexts in which they are produced and consumed. A review and synthesis of the current media literature, Crane′s work examines both the popular and elite levels of media production. This investigation allows readers to understand how the notion of production can change depending on the size of the audience and/or the structure of the cultural industry. A systematic and accessible approach to a complex topic, The Production of Culture will have appeal not only to professors and students of cultural studies, but will also interest those studying sociology and art history.

The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.

Cutting-edge perspectives on the functioning of cultural industries are offered in this volume, which explores the media, entertainment and artistic sectors. Contributors place these industries in the new economy and suggest ways in which they can contribute to urban and regional economic and social development.

Between the two world wars, a distinct and vibrant film culture emerged in Europe. Film festivals and schools were established; film theory and history was written that took cinema seriously as an art form; and critical writing that created the film canon flourished. This scene was decidedly transnational and creative, overcoming traditional boundaries between theory and practice, and between national and linguistic borders. This new European film culture established film as a valid form of social expression, as an art form, and as a political force to be reckoned with. By examining the extraordinarily rich and creative uses of cinema in the interwar period, we can examine the roots of film culture as we know it today.

Rules regulating access to knowledge are no longer the exclusive province of lawyers and policymakers and instead command the attention of anthropologists, economists, literary theorists, political scientists, artists, historians, and cultural critics. This burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in “intellectual property” has also expanded beyond the conventional categories of patent, copyright, and trademark to encompass a diverse array of topics ranging from traditional knowledge to international trade. Though recognition of the central role played by “knowledge economies” has increased, there is a special urgency associated with present-day inquiries into where rights to information come from, how they are justified, and the ways in which they are deployed. Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property, edited by Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi, and Martha Woodmansee, presents a range of diverse—and even conflicting—contemporary perspectives on intellectual property rights and the contested sources of authority associated with them. Examining fundamental concepts and challenging conventional narratives—including those centered around authorship, invention, and the public domain—this book provides a rich introduction to an important intersection of law, culture, and material production.

The computer and particularly the Internet have been represented as enabling technologies, turning consumers into users and users into producers. The unfolding online cultural production by users has been framed enthusiastically as participatory culture. But while many studies of user activities and the use of the Internet tend to romanticize emerging media practices, this book steps beyond the usual framework and analyzes user participation in the context of accompanying popular and scholarly discourse, as well as the material aspects of design, and their relation to the practices of design and appropriation.

This book is a large extent to show concern with the way such images have resonated in and with American culture and history during the last twenty or thirty years.Clint Eastwood and his films are in part because of their popularity and their significance role in this cultural discourse.