The Production of Culture: Media and the Urban Arts

211 Pages·1992·9.383 MB·English

by  Diana Crane

The
Production
of Culture
FOUNDATIONS OF

POPULAR CULTURE

Series Editor: GARTH S. JOWETT
University of Houston
The study of popular culture has now become a widely accepted
part of the modern academic curriculum. This increasing interest
has spawned a great deal of important research in recent years, and
the field of "cultural studies" in its many forms is now one of the
most dynamic and exciting in modern academia. Each volume in
the Foundations of Popular Culture Series will introduce a spe­
cific issue fundamental to the study of popular culture, and the
authors have been given the charge to write with clarity and
precision and to examine the subject systematically. The editorial
objective is to provide an important series of "building block"
volumes that can stand by themselves or be used in combination
to provide a thorough and accessible grounding in the field of
cultural studies.
1. The Production of Culture: Media and the Urban Arts
by Diana Crane
2. Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts
by Arthur Asa Berger
3. Rock Formation: Music, Technology, and Mass
Communication
by Steve Jones
4. Cultural Criticism: A Primer of Key Concepts
by Arthur Asa Berger
5. Advertising and Popular Culture
by Jib Fowles
The

Production

of Culture

Media and the Urban Arts
Diana Crane
Foundations of Popular Culture Vol.
SAGE
Publications
International Educational and Professional Publisher
Newbury Park London New Delhi
Copyright © 1992 by Sage Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechani­
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the publisher.
For information address:
®
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crane, Diana, 1933­
The production of culture : media and the urban arts / Diana
Crane.
p. cm. — (Foundations of popular culture; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-3693-1. — ISBN 0-8039-3694-X (pbk.)
1. Mass media and the arts—United States. 2. United States—
Popular culture. 3. Mass media and the arts—Europe. 4. Europe—
Popular culture. I. Title. II. Series.
NX180.M3C7 1992
700'.1'05—dc20 92-10050
96 97 98 99 00 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Sage Production Editor: Astrid Virding
Contents
Series Editor's Introduction vii

Preface ix

1. Introduction 1

2. The Media Culture Paradigm 13

3. Social Stratification and the Media:

Audiences in Media-Saturated Societies 33

4. The Production of Culture

in National Culture Industries 49

5. Approaches to the Analysis

of Meaning in Media Culture 77

6. Class Cultures in the City:

Culture Organizations and Urban Arts Culture 109

7. Media Culture, Urban Arts Culture,

and Government Policy 143

8. Conclusion: Toward Global Culture 161

References 174

Name Index 187

Subject Index 191

About the Author 198

Series Editor's Introduction
The complexities of human cultural activities and the significant
insights to be gained from understanding their role in modem
society has spawned a variety of analytical approaches to the
subject. One of the most formidable and yet necessary tasks in
cultural analysis is to provide a description of the context within
which modern popular culture is produced. In this book, Diana
Crane uses clear, precise language and examples to describe and
analyze the central issues which have framed the "production of
culture" argument within cultural studies. Her main thesis is that
we cannot understand such cultural forms apart from the contexts
in which they are produced and consumed.
Crane draws upon a wide range of sources and disciplines to
examine the shift in the nature of the production of culture in the
period since 1945. In this post World War II period there was an
enormous growth in public participation in media culture, due in
large part to the increasing use of television. But the other media
forms—movies, radio, popular music, newspapers, and maga­
zines—also underwent fundamental alterations in their industrial
structure and demographic profiles. The author also traces the
increasingly complex ways that types of social differentiation affect
cultural consumption, and how these no longer correspond to the
traditional notions of high culture and popular culture. The book
also contains an overview of the major theories of the interpretation
vii
viii THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE
of "meaning" in media culture which are models of clarity, and
therefore should be of great use to teachers and students alike.
The concluding chapters of the book examine the specific urban
nature of modern popular culture, and the different production
styles of elite and non-elite cultural forms such as jazz, rock, and
live theater. Crane concludes with an important chapter on the
increasingly global nature of culture production, and why this will
be an increasingly significant factor in the future of popular culture.
The reader will be struck not only by the clarity of Diana Crane's
presentation, but also by the seamless manner in which she has
integrated her wide variety of source material to successfully lay
out the central "production of culture" issues.
—GARTH S. JOWETT
Series Editor
Preface
This book is intended as a review and a synthesis of the literature
on the social organization and interpretation of media culture and
the arts. I argue that a major objective of a social science approach
to cultural products should be to develop theories that use the
characteristics of the media to explain the nature of the cultural
products they disseminate. How do the media shape and frame
culture? What are the effects of the contexts, broadly defined, in
which these products are created and disseminated? By contrast,
how do urban environments foster or inhibit urban arts cultures?
Building on studies in the sociology of culture during the past
decade that indicate that the distinctions between high culture and
popular culture are socially constructed, this book discusses new
and more meaningful ways of distinguishing between different
types of recorded cultures and their audiences. Specifically, I will
be concerned with cultural products, other than news and infor­
mation, that exist either as artifacts (in the form of celluloid, tape,
or type) or have been performed or exhibited for an audience or
spectators, such as film, television, literature, drama, music, and
the plastic arts. This book is based on the premise that recorded
cultures cannot be understood apart from the contexts in which
they are produced and consumed. Because of space limitations , I
will restrict my attention to the role of the media and other types
ix