the Routledge Companion to Cultural Industries

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries takes a distinct and critical ‘cultural industries’ approach to the subject of mass cultural production, focusing on the production and consumption of goods and services whose economic value are drawn primarily from their cultural or symbolic value. The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries is collection of contemporary scholarship that seeks to re-assert the importance of cultural production and consumption against the purely economic imperatives of the ‘creative industries’. Across 43 chapters drawn from a wide range of geographic and disciplinary perspectives, this comprehensive volume offers a critical and empirically informed examination of the contemporary cultural industries. A range of industries are explored, from video games to art galleries, all the time focussing on the culture that is being produced and its wider symbolic and socio-cultural meaning. Individual chapters consider their industrial structure, the policy that governs them, their geography, the labour that produces them, and the meaning they offer to consumers and participants. The collection also explores the historical dimension of cultural industry debates, providing context for new readers, as well as critical orientation for those more familiar with the subject. Questions of industry structure, labour, place, international development, consumption, and regulation are all explored in terms of their historical trajectory and potential future direction. By assessing the current challenges facing the cultural industries, this collection provides students and researchers with an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts, and debates in the field.