The issue of cultural production and regulation of culture has become a dominant theme in business management schools and sociology department. We shall discuss the reasons for this cultural turn.

Several approaches to economy and culture:

• ‘Culture’ and ‘Economy’ are incompatible (so that art becomes corrupted if tainted with commerce).
• ‘Economy’ is privileged over ‘Culture’ (materialist and Marxist viewpoints).
• Relatively autonomous, but interdependent spheres.
• There is no ‘purely’ economic and cultural processes, rather they are mixed.

The term ‘cultural economy’ breaks away from ‘political economy’ discourse.

The term ‘cultural economy’ has two possible meanings:

• It indicates that economic activities are embedded in cultural meanings. Meaning is manipulated through language, representation and discourse so that economic practices carry particular meanings and construct certain identities; e.g. students are not using education, but consuming it.
• It refers to how ‘culture’ is important to doing business. For instance, fashion, music, and film have become significant industrial sectors. Interestingly, more goods and services as seen as ‘cultural goods’ in that they are deliberately written with particular meanings and associations – aestheticisation of products. Advertising, design and marketing are cultural intermediaries. Importantly, culture structures the way people think, feel and act in organisations – cultures of production.

There is evidence of increasing ‘culturalisation’ of economic life.

Alongside economic moves towards free trade, market liberalisation de-regulation, and privatisation, there have been regulations to protect customers, national citizens, national heritage and culture, and national sovereignty and autonomy.

The production and consumption of cultural representations affect the construction of identities. Furthermore, meanings regulate and organise conduct and practices; they help to set the rules, norms and conventions by which social life is ordered and governed. There are struggles over representations, meanings and interpretations between vested interest groups (minority groups, feminists and corporate businesses)

Regulation has two meanings:

• regulation refers to specific government policies;
• regulation highlights the reproduction of particular pattern and order of signifying practices (i.e. representation).

Need to defend the tradition of ‘political economy’. There are moral issues in cultural production. The model of ‘cultural economy’ has limitations:

• It uncritically accepts the market as a central mechanism in the economy: the public becomes the market, and citizens as consumers. Yet, while cultural goods are mediated through the market, what are the implications for what is produced and who has access to it (destruction of culture and market inequalities).
• It fails to provide a reasonable criterion for judging a successful cultural economy. It seems that a successful cultural economy maximises cultural meanings, lifestyles and identities. Yet this moral suspect. Cultural practices may be culturally meaningful, but immoral (e.g. cigarettes and pornographic materials).

We need a moral framework.

Economy - One definition of economy emphasises scarcity and choice of means to get the most from our limited means. It approximates to the popular notion of ‘economising’ or being economical with our resources.

However, the approach to economy obscures the nature of society in relation to the economy. There are three responses:

• No such thing as a society, only individuals.
• Economy is concerned with rational functions, whereas society deals with sub- and non-rationality and unconsciousness.
• Economic imperialism – applying economic principles to cultural practices.

Critics of the economistic approach emphasise the way in which the economy is embedded in the wider social relations of reciprocity, redistribution and the household. Extra-economic influences contribute in constituting and reproducing economic relationships.

Culture – One sense of the term refers to a broadly anthropological or sociological framework to describes a set of attitudes, beliefs, mores, customs, values and practices that are common to or shared by any group. Another sense has a more functional orientation, and relates to activities drawing upon the enlightenment and education of the mind.

Cultural activities have certain definable characteristics. Activities:

• involve some form of creativity in their production;
• are concerned with the generation and communication of symbolic meaning;
• embodies some form of intellectual property.

The arts (music, drama and media) easily qualify as cultural activities. Sports are in a somewhat ambiguous position, as sports involve a element of technical skill as rather creativity. But scientific innovation cannot be regarded as a cultural undertaking.

Importantly, culture has to adapt to, and is explicable through, its material environment. Culture’s evolution is determined not only by ideas, but by its success in dealing with the challenges of the material world.