Justin O’Connor, "Culture is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common" (Manchester UP, 2024)

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May 1, 2024

Dr. Justin O'Connor believes culture is essential to humanity, not just an industry. He challenges the commodification of culture, calling for a return to its radical roots. The discussion covers the evolution of culture, art as human expression, cultural consumption shifts, infrastructural challenges, loss of public control, and the importance of culture as a collective conversation.

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INSIGHT

Defining Culture

Culture has a broad anthropological definition encompassing anything beyond nature.
It also has a narrower definition related to symbolic products and practices, like arts.

INSIGHT

Culture in Modernity

The concept of culture as a distinct sphere emerged in Western modernity.
It separated from areas like the economy and administration.

INSIGHT

Industrialization of Culture

The industrialization of culture began when profit-seeking companies started dominating it.
This shift occurred as mass production technology enabled greater commercialization.

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According to Dr. Justin O’Connor, culture is at the heart of what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded art and culture as 'creative industries', valued for their economic contribution, and set out to launch the UK as the creative workshop of a globalised world.

Where does that leave art and culture now? Facing exhausted workers and a lack of funding and vision, culture finds itself in the grip of accountancy firms, creativity gurus and Ted Talkers. At a time of sweeping geo-political turmoil, culture has been de-politicised, its radical energies reduced to factors of industrial production. Culture is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common (Manchester UP, 2024) is about what happens when an essential part of our democratic citizenship, fundamental to our human rights, is reduced to an industry.

Culture is not an industry argues that art and culture need to renew their social contract and re-align with the radical agenda for a more equitable future. Bold and uncompromising, the book offers a powerful vision for change.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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