We shall explore how the production of culture has been traditionally analysed, suggesting that cultures within organisations make the process of cultural production unstable. In the last section, we shall analyse a more contemporary approach to the production and consumption of cultural products

Traditionally, there are two approaches to the production of culture:

• a macro perspective, stressing social and organisational structures;
• a micro perspective, examining everyday interaction, human agency and independence, and the making of cultural meanings.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer used the term ‘culture industry’ to argue that cultural items (such as music, books, television and films, radio) were similar to how other industries manufactured consumer goods. All products were produced with the aim of making profit, and co-ordinated along rationalised organisational principles.

Adorno and Horkheimer linked the idea of the ‘culture industry’ to a model of ‘mass culture’. ‘Mass culture’ means that consumption is standardised and passive. This type of consumption is homogeneous and vulgar: ‘mass’ taste. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the production and distribution of homogeneous culture dominates and manipulates people. They make three points:

• economic concentration of culture production in a capitalist industry results in a standardised commercial commodity;
• in contrast to the free and autonomous art, commodity consumer culture is repetitive and unchallenging;
• drawing on Freud’s psychological theories, cultural consumption has become passive, leading to ‘obedient’ types of social behaviour.

The structures of economic ownership and control of means directly shapes the activities of creative artists and consumers.

Two additional concepts are further analysed.

• Standardisation: All products produced by the culture industry exhibit standardised features. There is nothing spontaneous about the process of cultural production, it has become like an ‘assembly-line’. Pop songs, hit films and best-sellers books are produced using strict formulae, ensuring that they are commercially successful.
• Pseudo-individuality: Cultural products, mass produced, have lost their originality. Their uniqueness lies in only very minor modifications.

By combining 1 and 2, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that cultural products provide mere distraction and prevent people from reflecting on their own social and class position in the world. This results in ‘regressive consumption’, whereby consumers become pacified and controlled. This type of consumption provides a temporary escape from the boredom of work. People become a mass and are easily manipulated by capitalist corporations and authoritarian governments.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) expressed concerns over the manipulative power of the industries. UNESCO felt that there was a tendency towards uniformity that was undermining the diversity of cultures, values and customs. It called on nation-states to develop strategies to counter the standardisation of cultural products.

Cultural production is complex, unstable and unpredictable. The production of culture is not simply imposed or administered, but has to be negotiated and struggled for. It is unwise to assume too much from the formal structures of ownership of cultural organisations. It is not possible to understand what the ‘repetition’ and ‘standardisation’ might mean by referring to the ‘assembly-lines’ of production.

Synergy: it is a strategy of connecting directly different organisations, so as to work more closely with each other. For Sony, it meant bringing different parts of the company together, and to create new ways of marketing and making products that took full advantage of the merger between, hardware manufacturer, and Columbia/Tri Star and CBS Records, software specialists. The idea was that monopolising the ownership of technical processes would lead to a decisive control over, and ability to shape, processes of cultural production.

However, in reality, drawing staff from different occupations and different corporate locations does not necessarily lead to harmonious collaborative relations, or to the most imaginative ideas. These ‘synergies’ bring together people who have quite different experiences of working life, contrasting ideas and outlooks on what they are doing, and little or no experience of working together on projects. An engineer involved in developing televisions and tape recorders inhabits a different working culture to the producer of film movies and rock music. They talk a different language, dress differently, work according to different temporal logics and have contrasting outlooks.

Synergy is based on acquiring particular productions and then bringing these together within one corporation. However, the people in the organisation do not necessarily fit together homogeneously simply because everyone is working for the same company. Rather, such a company should be viewed as having distinct ‘occupational communities’ that provide employees with a range of distinct and differentiated senses of identity.

In Sony’s synergy, two distinct occupational communities (engineers and movie producers) were brought together. However, they had different perspectives and ways of acting, thinking and feeling. This difference was as a result of their different social positions within the same company, and as a result of their different geographical locations – engineers were in Tokyo and movie producers in Hollywood. The division here is part of a broader divide that can often be found within the culture industries between the software divisions and the hardware divisions.

Pierre Bourdieu has argued that such occupational divisions are not simply the result of what goes on within organisations but are at the same time part of boarder social divisions that are expressed in different lifestyles, values and beliefs. Bourdieu argues that when these contrasting ways of life and cultural beliefs are bought into close proximity, this can result in what he has called ‘classification struggles’. He has suggested that this can involve ‘a struggle for supremacy’ between staff working in such occupations.

To summarise, there is a lack of fit between the rational, macro structures of ownership, and the messier informal world of human actions, working relationships and cultural meanings. In other words, there is a ‘cultures of production’ within which the ‘production of culture’ takes place.

Many critics of capitalism suggest that there is a fundamental defect in the market. Market economies are consumer economies: they tend to prioritise consumer-satisfactions over producer (worker)-satisfactions (‘the priority thesis’). In doing so, such economies sacrifice greater goods (producer(worker)-satisfaction) for lesser ones (consumer-satisfaction). It is argued that work-related activities provide a better way to achieve well-being and human development (the importance of self-directed, challenging and intellectual work for human development).

Ironically, however, the market economies fails to deliver subjective well-being and human development; for instance, people value non-market relationships over market ones, and find modernisation and industrialisation as enslaving their human and social skills. As well, the market economies produce and sustain a highly unequal distribution of benefits and costs; e.g. the privileged class.

We shall investigate the nature of the production and consumption of cultural products, according to consumer-friendly production, producer-friendly consumption, and productive use of consumer goods. We shall suggest that production within market economies need not always harm the welfare of the producers (workers).

According to the priority thesis, the market will necessarily sacrifice the well-being of producers (workers) to that of consumers if some conflict between the two occurs. The thesis argues that it is inherent in the market that it gives consumer welfare priority over worker welfare because consumers are the source of profits and workers are costs. For example, suppose a firm promotes the workers’ welfare by reorganising its production processes, it will face actual or potential competition from other firms that fail to implement changes. The well-being of workers does not and cannot ‘register’ as such in the decisions taken by firms in a market economy; unlike the benefits to consumers, which are registered through the prices they are willing to pay, and hence the profitability of meeting their demands.

In addition, there are cases where the market reduces producer-beneficial work. For example, artists and professionals being ‘paid by results’, stifling creativity and pride in work.

There are ‘producer (worker)-friendly’ goods, whose production enables those involved in this process to experience work-related benefits to a significant extent. We can say more about the nature of producer-friendly consumption.

We can classify commodities into two groups: defensive and creative products. Defensive products reduce pains, injury or distress, and contribute to the personal comfort of their consumers. Examples include food, clothes and washing-machines. Creative products generate excitement, and intend to supply some positive gratification or satisfaction. Examples include sports, humour, entertainment, literature and intellectual pursuits. Market economies have been relatively successful in providing defensive products, but have failed to provide creative products.

An interesting aspect of creative products is that producers engage in them for intrinsic value of the activities, the activities are undertaken for their own sake. Thus, greater the demand for creative products, the greater the well-being both of their producers and their consumers. For example. in the case of a theatre performance, consumers appreciate the stage performance that actors and actresses enjoy performing. Or, in the case of a football game, consumers (i.e. spectators) enjoy watching a match, in which players are dedicated to this activity.

We can compare the distinctive character of this producer-friendly consumption to another form of producer-friendly consumption. Consumers, who purchase only ‘environmentally-friendly’ products’, or who boycott goods produced under politically repressive conditions, engage in a certain kind of ethical consumption. Here, consumers are prepared to sacrifice or limit their own well-being for the sake of something they regard as more important: the well-being of the producers (workers).

Unlike ethically motivated consumers, however, it is not the aim of consumers of creative goods to contribute to their producers’ well-being. In ethical consumption, the producer beneficial effects are intentional. In the consumption of the creative product, what consumers enjoy and value about creative products is something which is inherently requires their producers to act in ways which are also beneficial for them (witness the performances of comedy, ballet and concerts).

However, the benefits of the creative products cannot become widespread because defensive products are crucial, and many workers (cleaners, ticket-sellers, etc) involved in the production of creative products perform menial tasks.

A quite different class of consumer goods exists that are used by consumers to engage in their own ‘own sake’ activities – intrinsic value activities. This requires consumers to purchase goods which enable them to engage in own-sake activities. These are called equipment goods. Examples include seeds and tools for gardening, electronic keyboards for playing music, and so on.

To sum up, while we are less concerned than market critics by the market’s tendency to prioritise consumer over producer well-being, this does not mean that the latter should be happily sacrificed for the former. Rather measures should be taken to reduce the likelihood of conflicts between consumers and producers.