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A 'Third Way' for the creative industries? Hybrid cultures: the role of bytes and atoms in locating the new cultural economy and society
Jens Cavallin
1. Introduction
This paper was written more as a stimulus for debate amongst policy makers at the local, national and regional level. It is more or less the text of a spoken paper. Nevertheless the paper is based upon, and rooted in, a substantial academic debate. The paper also draws upon ongoing empirical research on the development of new media, innovation, and the urban context that the author is currently engaged in. More detailed analysis will shortly be available. It is interesting to add that one of the difficulties, not mentioned in this paper but implied by it, is the hybrid academic theorising and empirical work that is also required in this area.
2. Aim and outline
The aim of this paper is to consider the impact of new or electronic communications media on places. i have three key points. first, that a new and strong relationship is being forged between economics and culture. second, that despite what many futurologists and economists have suggested about electronic mediascapes and their aspatiality, i argue that space and place will have more significance than ever in the digital cultural economy. finally, i argue that this new situation requires new ways of thinking about policy that is hybrid in its approach to culture and economy; especially the role of new institutions that will embed the cultural industries in places.
3. Context: changing culture-economy relations
The aim of this section is to make a few introductory points about the changing relationships that exist between 'culture' and the 'economy'. The overall point is that they are becoming more inter-related. Thus it makes less sense to talk in either/or terms, and more to explore the hybrid culture-economy.
First, we can see divisions within culture (between high and low culture). Traditionally such divisions have been mapped onto policy agendas such that state has concerned itself with high culture and left low culture to the market. This is not satisfactory. First, the division of high and low culture is arbitrary. If we just look across Europe we can see how different cultural forms are differently valued (e.g. Opera). Second, the divisions between high and low culture are very permeable. In fact, it would be better to see them as feeding off one another. It's not a question of either/or, but both.
Second, we can elaborate this in discussion of the relationship between not-for-profit and market driven activities. If we consider them both under the heading of cultural activities we have to acknowledge the huge growth in the economic status of these activities in recent years. The cultural or creative industries are significant employers and contributors to economic wealth, as well as to our cultural experience. Accordingly, we might consider asking for an according degree of resources and concern from both state and civil society.
Third, the production of culture needs re-examining. First, we need to remind ourselves that culture is not simply about intellectual or aesthetic speculation. Like any other human activity, it requires mental and physical work, individually and collectively. There are artists in any cultural field that we can imagine, but there are also people making tools and materials, others involved in the distribution, sale and exhibition of work 1 . Although we may place cultural value on the artist, the art would not exist were it not for these other actors. Second, in the electronic era the divisions between the material and the immaterial, and the producer and the consumer are becoming less distinct: they too are interdependent.
Fourth, in the past the inter-relationships between cultural intermediaries was limited and they created a small group because cultural events were live or only viewable by limited numbers. Today, with the possibilities of electronic media reproduction and distribution, many more people are involved in the production of, and have access to, a single performance. Three consequences flow from this. First, more money is generated. Second, more jobs are created 2 . Third, the electronic media have made art and culture big business and drawn them much closer together than they previously were.
So, we can see the growing interweaving, and hopefully new hybridisation of, culture and economy. This is creating a new agenda. Without a doubt, one of the key forces of change is digitalisation.
4. The Digital economy: bits and bytes, and the weightless economy
One of the most significant impacts upon culture, particularly electronically mediated culture, has been the computer, more specifically digitalisation. Digitalisation allows the conversion of a wide variety of different images, texts and sounds into one language, that of binary code. Once in this form the code can be infinitely manipulated, interwoven, reproduced and transmitted, at little or no cost 3 . Some commentators have seized upon this aspect of technological change and seen it as determinate of economic relations. These authors have highlighted the potential for infinite and cost-free reproducibility of commodities. Under such conditions, transport costs fall to zero.
This state of affairs has been termed the 'weightless economy' 4 . Just how important the cultural industries have become is perhaps a surprise. Although unravelling the data is rather difficult, we can note for example that the cultural industries in the US are the second greatest export earners after aircraft 5 . In the UK, unlike much of the manufacturing sector, the cultural industries turn in a positive balance of trade 6 . So far so good. However, what the advocates of the weightless economy seem to ignore is the material nature of immaterial goods. They still require manufacture either as items or for reproduction. This invariably involves employment fixed in a particular place.
When communities are wired, it is often argued, they have no reason to group either close to one another, or to markets. This is the age, as Alvin Toffler 7 argued long ago, of the telecottage worker. As a result, it is argued, cities will loose their significance and simply become places for socialising. I think that this is a poor argument, one which may have an attractive abstract economic logic, but one that does not stand up to the cold facts of social and cultural life. The social and the cultural matter, not as secondary or subsidiary aspects, but as primary and constitutive elements. In the next section I explain why.
5. The Embedded cultural economy: the material and the spatial still matter
I will not argue now for a Luddite anti-technology position nor from a culturalist, idealist position. Rather I aruge that policy needs to acknowledge, engage with, and actively shape this new hybrid culture-economy. This new 'economy' is made of bytes and atoms, economy and culture, technology and people.
For this reason, I argue that the salient point is not so much weightlessness as that of 'embeddedness'. The point is, as we have noted already, that cultural activity and employment is growing and it is becoming more tied to places, especially cities.
Consider employment. Something like 5% of those employed in Europe work in the cultural industries, and in the US the figure is more like 20%. The point here is not the exact numbers but the scale. The cultural industries are major components of the economies of developed nations. Significantly, we can note that employment tends to be concentrated in particular locations, mainly cities. So, the impact is emphasised there. In my work on the cultural industries in the UK, I include many manufacturing activities, as necessary to secure the artistic performance. What is interesting is that manufacturing employment is dispersing to the fringes, and 'artistic' activities are concentrating in cities 8 .
Take a case in point: multimedia. This is perhaps the most extreme example of a 'wired community': if any industry was to disperse, they would. Result: we see significant concentrations in New York, London and San Francisco.
Why is this? The point is that electronic mediation of culture is doing what cultural activities have always been noted for: enabling people to work across boundaries. People with different skills are being bought together. Of course, this is "networking". But, in the jargon, people need 'face time'. Also they have to go home to a place to live, go out to eat, meet friends, bring up families etc. Despite the bit and bytes that we produce, we are still comprised of atoms. Such patterns of repeated interactions are the pre-requisite for social networks. I would hypothesise that these social networks are far stronger than those of on-line communities. We know from other work that social networks are important generally for recruitment and employment: in the cultural industries this is also the case.
It is not only social networks that embed people and firms into places; it is also organisations and institutions. Consider the web of networks and institutions that create the milieu which firms work in, especially in the cultural industries. We must add, importantly, that part of this milieu is 'the market', or as it is otherwise known, 'the street'. Cultural industries innovate by keeping close to markets as well as close to suppliers and contractors. For many firms it is the milieu and the social networks that bind them to a place as much as the economic relations.
Finally, before I move to some implications, let me mention two more brief examples that demonstrate other aspects of the materiality and cultural embeddedness of the weightless economy. First, the film Star Wars: the global box office and video profits for Star Wars were equalled by those of merchandising 9 . Manufacturing still matters, as do all those people who work in film production and cinemas. Secondly, consider the cultural significance of everyday life. I interviewed a games developer in San Francisco recently, talking about the potential of online delivery of computer games - the cutting edge of the weightless economy. He responded: 'you can't put a web page under the Christmas Tree: you still need the packaging and the physical objects'.
What we have to remember is that whilst there is a 'weightless' dimension to the new economy, materiality and corporeality will still play a crucial, though transformed, role 10 . We inhabit bodies and spaces and presence or absence matters. Likewise, the software maybe 'disembodied', but computers are needed to run it, as are the products that give material form to the ideas.
6. A third way: Hybrid policy agendas for the creative industries
What are the consequences for thinking about creative industries in the digital era? What is the nature of responses to these trends, given what we know about the scale, character and past of the cultural industries?
First, debates about the funding and support of culture will continue; different nations and regions will continue to debate priorities. These are increasingly subject to challenge by the (economic) power of the cultural industries. Culture is no longer an autonomous sphere, it is part of the economic. Thus cultural aspirations must at least begin to take cognisance of the economic agenda. A case in point here is the debate over the rights of public broadcasters to televise 'national/heritage sporting events'. Debates over arts and cultural funding are going to get more difficult. A 'flash point' is likely to be access.
Second, we are not well prepared for such a shift: whilst there is an increasing recognition of the contribution that cultural industries make to the economy and some nations are realising this and beginning to reorient policies toward making links between culture and industry. Entrenched institutional barriers in national and regional policy making organisations are likely to make this difficult in many cases.
Third, access to technologies is increasingly being decided on the basis of ability to pay. Additionally, there is a case of first-mover monopoly. These means of communication are dominated by the first world. Associated with these points there is the hugely complex 11 and important matter of intellectual property rights. 12
Fourth, the old view of culture being of indirect economic benefit ('merit goods') must change. Exhibitions, galleries, theatre and architecture may not simply be 'honey pots' to attract visitors and relieve then of their disposable income. Instead the cultural industries will become a driving force for the economy. Policy makers must wake up to this possibility.
Finally, and most importantly, whilst the cultural activities are a prime case of the 'weightless economy', nevertheless, they have to locate somewhere, and they are likely to group together. The places, societies and economies, that can embed the new media are likely to be those that benefit from the jobs, taxes, and trade surpluses, as well as the cultural life associated with the cultural industries. Policy makers and business leaders will have to explore carefully what attracts and what holds cultural agents in a place. This enquiry will require more subtle insights and policies than those of 'place marketing', if they are to make any significant difference.
What I think it opens up are opportunities to create hybrid agencies that are neither wholly public or private, that offer a bridge between market and public service. These agencies, if the are set up appropriately, could also act as a focus for strategic guidance and a means of strengthening local clusters of industries. By prioritising interaction between firms, as well as an interchange between public and private aspirations, we could create radical learning regions and economies that could act as poles of attraction in the globalised economy.
End Notes
| Note 1: | We could also add that computer software would be useless without the computers to use it and operate it. Back. |
| Note 2: | The growth in output or sales in the creative industries are NOT directly related to job creation. In fact much of the growth in the electronic creative industries is 'jobless' and moreover, it has recently led to casualisation. The real challenge to policy makers is to explore those areas that actually give rise to net, new jobs. (see Technological and Organisational Change in the European Audio-visual Industries: An Exploratory Analysis of the Consequences for Employment by Andy C Pratt, with the support of Lone Le Floch-Andersen and Jonathan Pratt.). (European Audio-visual Observatory /CEFRAC, 1998) Back. |
| Note 3: | The point is that the labour of production is significant, but reproduction is very cheap, if not free. Back. |
| Note 4: | D.Coyle (1998) The weightless economy; D.Quah (1996) The invisible hand and the weightless economy, CEP Occasional Paper No12, LSE. See also N. Negroponte's (1995) Being Digital. Back. |
| Note 5: | See D.Puttnam, LSE seminar 1998 Back. |
| Note 6: | Pratt A C (1997) The cultural industries sector: its definition and character in Britain 1984-91, from secondary sources on employment and trade, Research Papers in Environmental and Spatial analysis, No. 41, LSE, Department of Geography Back. |
| Note 7: | A.Toffler (1981) The Third Wave Back. |
| Note 8: | Pratt. A C (1997) 'Employment in the cultural industries sector: a case study of Britain, 1984-91', Environment and Planning Vol A: 29, 11, pp 1953-1976. Pratt A C (1996), 'Cultural industries in the digital age: technological convergence, globalization and innovation' in Conference Proceedings of The role of art and sport in local and regional economic development, Hardy.S, Malbon. B and Taverner. C, (Eds). Regional Studies Association, London. Back. |
| Note 9: | Star Wars grossed $4.4Billion, Toys, clothes and games grossed $2.1B, Videos $0.5B, and box office receipts $1.8B. Source: Wired Nov 1997. Back. |
| Note 10: | Most likely, more. Back. |
| Note 11: | A range of investment issues are associated with getting property rights sorted out. Back. |
| Note 12: | This will be a key topic of the round of WTO talks. Whilst this is an international issue there are regional and local concerns about access and securing copyright. Back. |