International Mass Communication analyse

HardyCh.71.pdf

Home >Reading homework help >International Mass Communication analyse

Chapter 7

Globalisation, media transnationalisation and culture

Introduction

Critical political economy is closely associated with a critique of imbalances and inequality in the global flow of media and cultural goods. This cultural imperi- alism thesis was advanced by prominent CPE scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. It was challenged and lost ground in the 1980s as various critiques coalesced around a cultural globalisation thesis (Tomlinson 1991, 1999). In the conven- tional version told, crude, neo-Marxist accounts of cultural imposition, American hegemony and ‘one-way’ cultural flows have given way to an appreciation of multidirectional cultural flows. Yet such framing offers a misleading account of the analysis and contribution of critical scholarship: past and present. Both theory and analysis have developed to try to match the ever more complex patterns and implications of media globalisation. Critical political economy is not char- acterised by adherence to formulations of cultural imperialism from the 1970s but rather to exploring problems of power in communications that belie more benign accounts of reciprocation and cultural exchange.

Rival perspectives on cultural domination have structured debates on media transnationalisation and so reviewing these serves as a good way into making sense of contemporary analysis. Yet approaching these debates through media and cultural studies literature alone makes it all too easy to disconnect them from their historical and political economic contexts and their relevance to interventions in policy arenas. This chapter seeks to place contemporary debates on globalisation and media in a wider framework, encompassing the geopolitical shifts to neoliberalism and the political challenges to inequalities in media and cultural flows. Rival polarities of cultural imperialism and cultural globalisation still influence debates but, after reassessing their legacy, this chapter goes on to examine divisions (not least amongst radical scholars themselves) between ‘strong’ globalisation theories and those emphasising the continuing importance and influence of the state and ‘national’ media systems. The chapter also assesses current developments in the transnational political economy of media.

Hardy, Jonathan. Critical Political Economy of the Media : An Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1715800. Created from pitt-ebooks on 2020-09-11 06:57:53.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Modernisation theory

A loosely affiliated group of scholars in North America promoted an account of social and economic transformation in which the advanced capitalist economies would lead the development of market economies in other nations by non-coercive means. This account assigned a key role to communications and to the diffusion of communications technologies, media content and media models derived from the West. For Daniel Lerner (1969, quoted in Schiller 1989: 139)

The long era of imperialism (subordination) is recently ended: the campaign for international development (equalisation) has just begun.

[ … ]

Under the new conditions of globalism, [international communication] has largely replaced the coercive means by which colonial territories were seized and held.

[ … ]

The persuasive transmission of enlightenment is the modern paradigm of international communication.

Modernisation theorists such as Lerner, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Wilbur Schramm, argued that the phase of imperialism was ending with the creation of newly independent nation-states and that communication had a vital role in ‘training for self management’ and promoting the aspirations of a modernised market economy to both citizens and elites. Capital would have rich new seams of cheaper labour and emergent consumer markets. Transformation would be aided by the benign diffusion of enlightened values. ‘Backward’ and particularist forms of thought would be replaced by more ‘universalistic’ values of enterprise and possessive individualism. In reality, the media systems in many developing nations supported authoritarian power rather than popular emancipation and education and on this the US modernisers were ambivalent, paying little attention to how media pluralism could be secured (Curran and Park 2000b).

Cultural imperialism

Radical scholars advanced the concept of cultural imperialism in the 1960s and 1970s. Its major achievement, argues Nordenstreng (2001) was to challenge the then dominant, benign account of Western modernisation; radical scholars argued instead that ‘Western culture’ was being imposed on newly independent states in the ‘third world’, eroding cultural autonomy. Their core claim was that the imperialism had not ended with decolonisation; rather colonial powers had found other means to sustain relations of dominance, including the unequal exchange of cultural products, technologies, skills and resources (Said 1993;

158 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Boyd-Barrett 1977). Scholars drew on dependency theory, grounded in neo-Marxist political economy, which argued that core nations maintained peripheral nations in relations of economic and political dependence. Transnational corporations, mostly based in the North, exercised control over developing countries in the South through setting the terms of global trade and exchange, aided by the active support of their respective governments. Dependency theories were developed by Latin American scholars in particular but influenced and joined a broader swathe of subaltern and anti-imperialist work. These analyses also informed the work of CPE scholars in North America (Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Hamid Mowlana) and Europe (Karle Nordenstreng, Peter Golding).

Leading authors of modern critical economy such as Herbert Schiller and Dallas Smythe were trailblazers for international media analysis. They set out to understand global geopolitical and economic forces and their relationship to communications and cultural exchange. They also made efforts to understand the increasingly complex relations between transnational and national cultural production. However, to reduce their work to the stock features of what is labelled, and critiqued, as the cultural imperialism thesis is misleading. Criticisms can certainly be made of their analysis but they invariably engaged in more sophisticated ways than the standard critique allows with the patterns of an emerging transnational political economy and its cultural implications. Schiller’s work, in particular, examined the growth of transnational media corporations in the period after 1945 and the transformation of US national firms into ‘huge, integrated, cultural combines’, that controlled the means of producing and distributing ‘film, TV, publishing, recording, theme parks, and even data banks’ (Schiller 1991: 14). Such concerns were supported by studies of global television markets showing that programming flows were dominated by US production. A UNESCO report found that more than half the countries studied imported over 50 per cent of their television, mostly entertainment and most imported from the US (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974; Straubhaar 2002: 194). Calculating an ‘index of dependence’ based on the proportion of imported television programmes, one UNESCO study in 1972 found that 40 per cent of Latin America television broadcasts came from the US; Guatemala had an index of dependence on US television of 80 per cent.1 Another focus was the ideological encodings of internationally distributed (mainly Western) media and advertising, and the importation of forms, models and practices derived from Western commercial media and advertising. In How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart (1975) argued that Disney texts promote Western capitalism, caricature and denigrate ‘third world’ cultures and consistently carry messages of how such people should aspire to live.

Cultural imperialism (CI) emerged in the context of the wider struggles crystal- lised in demands for a new world information and communication order, which arose against a background of decolonisation (Mattelart and Mattelart 1998: 137–38; Mosco 1996: 75–76). Pressure to remedy inequality in information and communication flows was an important but always relatively minor aspect of

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 159

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

contestation over a new world economic order. These debates occurred in the 1970s when the so-called non-aligned states, including many newly formed nations, could exert pressure at a moment of heightened influence. The two Cold War superpowers, the US and the USSR, vied for their support while capitalist crises that followed in the wake of the OPEC oil price rise in 1973 shifted the bargaining power to resource-rich regions. The United Nations had been established as a for- mally inclusive body with voting equality between member nations. While largely deemed unworkable by US leaders, as the ‘executive’ powers of the Security Council remained locked in Cold War antagonists, the UN provided a platform and forum for debate. UNESCO began to promote the international circulation of media, the protection of journalists, and promotion of Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948). By the 1970s the ranks of the UN had swelled as former colonies gained independence and many were unsurprisingly vocal in opposing Western efforts to retain or reimpose arrangements of dependency (Schiller 1996: 99). A UNESCO meeting of experts 1969 concluded:

At the present time, communication takes place in one direction … the image given of developing countries is often false, deformed, and what is more serious, this image is the one presented in these countries themselves. The participants in the Montreal meeting believe that the exchange of information and of other cultural products, particularly in developing countries, is in danger of modifying or displacing cultural values and of causing problems for the mutual understanding among nations.

(cited in Mattelart 1994: 180)

Amidst broad-ranging concern about inequality in cultural flows from North to South and from core to periphery a key target was news and news agencies. According to Masmoudi (1979) five Western news agencies were responsible for 80 per cent of the world’s news – only a quarter of which was about developing countries. At a UNESCO meeting in Montreal in 1976 the proposal for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) was launched by non- aligned countries and in 1977 UNESCO established an International Commission for the study of communications problems. The Commission, backed by some hundred studies, papers and submissions, was presided over by Sean MacBride, a former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army who went on to become an Irish Government Minister and human rights campaigner. The MacBride Commission report (1980) produced eighty-two recommendations for action set out under the following themes: strengthening independence and self-reliance; social consequences and new tasks; journalistic professional integrity and standards; democratising communication; and fostering international co-operation. It called for guaranteed pluralism, a more just world communication order, support for third world development, limits on the activities of transnational corporations, measures to tackle media concentration, better conditions for journalists, and democratisation of communications, including the abolition of censorship. It

160 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

called for equal distribution of the electronic spectrum as well as national protection against cross-border satellite communications. The report was fiercely attacked by corporate media in their own news outlets, in publications (Righter 1978), and in lobbying, serving as a foretaste of the mobilisations carried out since by TNMCs such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation against politicians threatening their interests in Australia and Britain. The United States left UNESCO in 1984, unhappy at the turn of debate and maintaining its doctrine of ‘free flow of infor- mation’ which for its critics advanced free speech claims while buttressing the existing dominance in US exports and influence. Britain left too in 1985 but the exit of the US, UNESCO’s major funder, was a significant blow and the body has not regained the same resources or influence since, even though the US rejoined in 2003 in time to intervene in debates on what became the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO 2005).

The MacBride report marked an end point; its conclusions were worthy but woolly and it failed to provide a guide for action in a hostile environment. The report ‘failed to galvanize private and public sector participants into action to promote the massive investment … needed’ argue Mansell and Nordenstreng (2007), who draw parallels with the influence of civil society organisations in the World Summit on the Information Society 2003–5. Yet, there were some posi- tive outcomes, notably regional initiatives to support cultural production and the expansion of the Inter Press Service news agency (originally founded in Argentina 1964) across Latin American and Africa.

The new world communication order sought by non-aligned countries of the South did not just fail because of Western neoliberalism. Third Worldism became discredited because of the practice of reactionary states. Contradictions were exposed between the authoritarian, statist demands to control commu- nication inside national borders and pleas to democratise communications and deepen cultural diversity. Calls for a new world order were used as an alibi for failures of domestic action. Internal inequalities were exacerbated between elites welcoming new circuits of modernisation and large sections of society (Iran under the Shah; Kenya under Moi). Internal state attacks on popular culture (such as reggae and Rastafarianism in Jamaica) exposed contradictions, as did the high levels of internal political censorship, state repression and media control. There were ongoing efforts by some states to erect barriers to foreign media influence. The Soviet Union moved to block satellite transmissions. In 1996, the Taliban shut down Afghanistan’s only TV station when it took control of Kabul, banning televisions, videocassette recorders and satellite dishes.

Cultural imperialism was invoked to support authoritarian controls in the developing world. ‘Defence of Asian values and eastern essentialism against Western imperialism is even now a standard pretext used by conservatives and communists alike to legitimate illiberal controls against their own people’ (Curran and Park 2000b: 5). NWICO, argues Miller et al. (2005: 76), offered an inadequate theorisation of capitalism, class relations and postcolonialism; it ‘risked cloaking the interests of emergent bourgeoisies seeking to advance their

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 161

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

own market power under the sign of national cultural self-determination, national capital over transnational capital’ (Miller et al. 2005: 80).

The relationship between radical critics of cultural imperialism and these outcomes is an important but complex one. One key charge is that the CI thesis framed the problem as the erosion of authentic culture whereby ‘culture is defined in national terms, within which it is reasonably integrated and homo- geneous’ (McKay 2004: 71). On the contrary, Dan Schiller, Herbert Schiller’s son, argues, persuasively in my view, that the radical critics of cultural imperialism saw culture as in formation; far from assuming an affinity between statist and popular perspectives they saw the struggle for cultural self-determination as part of a struggle for revolutionary social change. In Communication and Cultural Domination (1976: 96), Herbert Schiller draws on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Amilcar Cabral’s writings to advocate a cultural revolution, not through nativist traditionalism but communications policy reform: ‘National communications policy making is a generic term for the struggle against cultural and social domination in all its forms, old and new, exercised from within or outside the nation’. An appreciation of these tensions is certainly evident too in Herbert Schiller’s (1976: 9) statement that:

The concept of cultural imperialism today best describes the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system.

Yet, Dan Schiller also rightly acknowledges that the response to these contra- dictions was inadequate; faith in the triumph of popular communication was exposed as naïve.

Various critiques are bundled together as the ‘cultural imperialism thesis’ often to dispatch them more swiftly, but each needs to be assessed on its merits. One such is analysis of the links between the ‘military-industrial complex’ and the media, developed by Hans Enzenberger, Schiller and others, examining the growth of state-sponsored information and propaganda as part of wider military and covert operations to secure compliant states. As well as producing commu- nications directly, the State–Military complex financed and participated in Hollywood production; President J.F. Kennedy instructed the US Information Agency to use film and television to propagandise, establishing funding for 226 film centres in 106 countries (Miller et al. 2005: 106–7). More contemporary links between Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the US military and government across information management and imagery are explored by Rampton and Stauber (2003). The various forms of US government support for the interests of TNMCs have also been examined, showing how film and other cultural exports were regarded as vital as key economic sectors, for their role in encouraging the consumption of other goods and services, and in contributing to ‘soft

162 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

power’ (Nye 2005) promoting strategic and popular support for US-led global capitalism.

What is labelled the ‘cultural imperialism thesis’, was in reality a short-lived formulation which was criticised ‘from within’ by critical scholars such as Tunstall (1977) and Mattelart et al. (1984), within a revising tradition of critical political economy. Armand Mattelart argued for recognition of growing complexity in cultural flows (Mattelart et al. 1984: 22):

One could easily continue to accumulate evidence of the dominant position of American firms. But in so doing we run the risk of enclosing ourselves within a condemnation without perspective.

[ … ]

For just a few illustrations will … show that there are nuances to the map of global ‘one-way traffic’.

Tunstall (1977: 40) both confirmed and challenged the CI thesis; focusing on TV exports, the ‘television imperialism thesis ignores the much earlier pattern of the press and news agencies which quite unambiguously did have an imperial character’.

Cultural globalisation

Three kinds of criticism, in particular, informed what became the ‘revisionist orthodoxy’ of cultural globalisation theory in the 1990s and beyond (Curran 2002: 171). Multiple flows: the notion of predominantly ‘one-way’ flows from the West to the rest, was challenged by evidence that global flows were always but increasingly ‘multidirectional’ and so, it was argued, not reducible to a dependency model that conceived influence emanating from ‘core’ nations to ‘peripheral’ ones (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1996). Media audiences: the second main area of critique focused on the failure to analyse and appreciate audience reception and meaning making. While much can be said about media and cultural flows, the implications for those who consume them remained largely obscure. Early studies assumed that the transnationalisation of cultural production led to transnationalisation of reception (Madger 1993). In his nuanced critique, Thompson (1995: 171) argues that Herbert Schiller ‘tries to infer, from an analysis of the social organization of the media industries, what the consequences of media messages are likely to be for the individuals who receive them’. Such inferences are speculative and ‘dis- regard the complex, varied and contextually specific ways in which messages are interpreted by individuals and incorporated into their day-to-day lives’. Media consumers are active and creative in selecting and appropriating meanings, argued Liebes and Katz in their reception study of Dallas, the global TV export phenomenon of the 1970s (Gripsrud 1995). The affective as well as inter- pretative relationship of audiences had been neglected (Ang 1991). Cultural

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 163

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

domination: the third main challenge concerned the notion of imposition of culture, usually conceived as Americanisation or Westernisation. By contrast, it was argued that cultural imports, whether products or ideas, are indigenised, hybri- dised and appropriated in various ways that transform their meaning (Tomlinson 1991). Where cultural imperialism had feared growing cultural homogenisation, it was now argued that more complex processes of differentiation were taking place. Insofar as there was a predominant flow of ‘cultural discourse’ from the West (or North) this should not be regarded as a form of domination but as a multiply directed transition to global modernities.

According to cultural globalisation theories, the global and transnational is eroding the national. Above all, this constitutes a shift from the dominance of national media, such as national broadcasting, to a new media order whereby ‘[a]udiovisual geographies are thus becoming detached from the symbolic spaces of national culture, and realigned on the basis of the more “universal” principles of international consumer culture’ (Morley and Robins 1995: 11). For García Canclini (1995), migration and modernity have broadened cultural territory beyond the traditional nation-state. According to Thompson (1995: 175), ‘As symbolic materials circulate on an ever-greater scale, locales become sites where, to an ever-increasing extent, globalized media products are received, interpreted and incorporated into the daily lives of individuals’.

Beyond cultural imperialism and cultural globalisation

Globalisation theory challenged and helped to discredit the cultural imperialism thesis. In place of what were regarded as crude domination theories, cultural globalisation emphasised popular agency, yet downplayed the problems of power, inequality and imposition that gave rise to the original CI thesis. There are ongoing efforts to move beyond the limitations of both paradigms and to integrate cultural theory into critical media scholarship more effectively. We will examine these perspectives below but first it is helpful to identify some key responses from critical political economy and key areas of divisions.

Imbalances in cultural flows

That cultural flows are diverse and multidirectional is uncontested; what is challenged is the claim that significant imbalances no longer remain as problems to tackle. While US cultural hegemony is declining, the US remains the world’s leading exporter of audiovisual content. There was a fivefold increase in US film and TV exports between 1992 and 2004, largely serving the massive expansion of private TV channels worldwide. There are contra-flows, ‘subaltern’ flows such as films from the global South and East. There is increasing global circulation of products from a much wider range of creative hubs such as Mumbai challenging US cultural hegemony, yet no cultural exports match the global reach and influence of US-led Western media, which represent the dominant media flows.

164 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Western TNMCs have regionalised and localised their content, with many Southern media organisations involved in this production and cultural glocali- sation. Against tendencies to valorise the rise of non-Western media, Thussu (2007: 11) cautions this ‘may reflect a refiguring of hegemony in more complex ways’. A ‘global popular’ is being created with ‘media content and services being tailored to specific cultural consumers not so much because of any particular regard for national cultures but as a commercial imperative’ (Thussu 2007: 21). Much of the contra-flow highlighted in accounts of increased cultural diversity is commercial and interlocks into a global corporate system. The diversity of multiple flows advanced within cultural globalisation masks the global extension of a commercial system. This does not produce homogenisation of cultural output; commercial dynamics respond to a diversity of local tastes and interests. However, it does mean that there is sameness arising from the commercial dynamics towards privileging entertainment and other content that does not mount sustained challenges to governing interests and values.

The neglect of economic power

Cultural globalisation theory conceives globalisation as a decentred process. In doing so it ‘[f]ails to capture the agency of large profit making corporations in affecting, but not completely determining the new cultural world order’ (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 238). It reflects what Curran describes as a ‘blind spot’ in cultural globalisation theory, a reluctance to critically address economic power (Curran 2002: 174). Instead we must begin with an analysis of corporate capitalism.

The critical discourse of cultural imperialism has been challenged for its inadequate account of cultural processes (how culture makes us, individually and collectively, and how we make use of culture). Its continuing relevance is in foregrounding questions of inequalities in the distribution of cultural resources and the organisation of cultural markets. It is primarily concerned with cultural resources: who has access to the resources to produce, circulate, consume and use cultural forms (Hardy 2008)? Yet, cultural imperialism has always been an ‘evocative metaphor’ (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1997: 49) rather than a distinct analytical concept and cumulative critiques have prompted efforts to revise and reformulate the problem.

From American cultural imperialism to transnational corporate domination

Throughout the twentieth century, especially after Europe was ravaged by two world wars, American industries grew to become the dominant cultural exporters. The variety of factors explaining American cultural dominance makes the case for a synthesis of strictly political economic and broader cultural explanations. We must account for both the push and pull of American culture (Gitlin 2002; Morley and Robins 1995), for the influences that honed cultural forms and formats

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 165

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

valued by audiences worldwide (Tunstall 1977). American popular culture has become the ‘central bank of international mythologies, circulating two major dreams: the dream of freedom and the dream of wealth’ (Gitlin 2002: 22–23). Key political economic factors have been the size and wealth of the domestic market in the US, allowing products to be sold to other markets at lower prices. In the 1980s the cost of acquiring one hour of Dallas would pay for approximately one minute of original Danish drama production (Gitlin 2002: 25). Economic resources also helped to create the formats, production values that cultivated audience tastes and expectations.

Another key factor was the active role of the US state in promoting its cultural industries abroad (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 271–72). Yet the notion of American cultural exports has always been vulnerable on empirical and theoretical grounds. What is ‘American’ about them? For some critics of domination theories, part of the attraction of US productions is that they are oriented to appeal to a culturally rich and diverse audience at home, qualities that help explain their wider global appeal (Hoskins et al. 2004). Large-scale film and television productions engage international teams of cultural workers so that locating ‘Americanness’ is problematic. In response, for Schiller (1996), the critical charge is not the export of American culture but ‘transnational corporate cultural domination’. An essentialist notion of ‘Americanisation’ has been replaced by an emphasis on the reach and influence of commercially driven transnational corporations.

Radical accounts such as Herman and McChesney (1997) examine ‘a world communication order led by transnational businesses and supported by their respective national states, increasingly linked in continental and global structures’ Thussu (2006: 64). This is not an Americanisation thesis; McChesney (2002: 157) writes, ‘the notion that media are merely purveyors of US culture is ever less plausible as the media system becomes increasingly concentrated, commercialised and globalised’. Instead, the global system is better understood as ‘advancing corporate and commercial interests and values and denigrating or ignoring that which cannot be incorporated into its mission’ (McChesney 2002: 157). Globa- lisation here is largely conceived as a process driven ‘from above’, by the activ- ities of transnational communication conglomerates supported by neoliberal states and supranational institutions such as the WTO and the EC. Herman and McChesney (1997: 9):

regard the primary effect of the globalization process … to be the implan- tation of the commercial model of communication, its extension to broad- casting and the ‘new media,’ and its gradual intensification under the force of competition and bottom-line pressures.

The focus is on the nature and influence of corporate transnationalisation and links to commercialisation of culture. Commercialisation of media systems around the world has created new private networks that are primarily interested

166 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

in markets and advertising revenues. There is cultural critique here but it is not founded on essentialising American culture but on arguing that there are values promoted within a system driven by profits from sales and commercial advertising. Yet such reformulations do not entirely evade problems of cultural definition. For Thompson (1995: 169), Schiller’s ‘transnational corporate cultural domination’ ‘still presents too uniform a view of American media culture (albeit a culture which is no longer exclusively at the disposal of American capital) and of its global dominance’.

Measuring exports does not resolve the problems. Transnational co-production, co-ownership, as well as ‘translation, franchising, reversioning, and piracy’ make the task of distinguishing the originating sources, much less linking these to ‘national’ cultural characteristics, increasingly difficult (Tunstall 2008: 251). Other analysts highlight the complexity and contradictions within cultural texts. As Mirrlees (2013) shows, Avatar can be read as engaging counter-hegemonic discourses as well as hegemonic ones of imperialism and orientalism. Avatar is a form of global popular culture whose transnational creative production, mainly across the US and New Zealand, problematises national cultural frames, as do the diverse interpretations of the film including the appropriation of the Na’vi as symbols of the people and groups oppressed by neoliberalism and militarism worldwide. Produced by News Corporation, Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time, the top selling cinema release in China and with some 70 per cent of revenue generated outside the United States. Critical political economy rightly highlights the structural imbalances in cultural flows and points to detri- mental consequences, but this must be allied to analysis of the influences shaping specific cultural production, circulation and reception, and considerations of the ideological boundaries and polyvalency of texts.

Another set of problems concerning ‘transnational corporate domination’ concerns the articulation of relationships between capitalist enterprises, states and imperialism. Boyd-Barrett advocates a ‘reformulation’ of media imperialism, replacing the international, territorially based concept of imperialism with one of ‘colonization of communications space’, the latter taking greater account of the increasing hybridity of media systems (Boyd-Barrett 1998: 167). McPhail (2006) proposes electronic colonialism. Yet such reformulations are challenged for their conflation of economic, cultural and political power. For Pieterse (2004: 34) the idea of ‘corporate imperialism’ ‘is a step too far and a contradiction in terms, for it implies non-state actors undertaking principally political (not just economic) projects’. This is certainly not to argue that corporations do not support political regimes or ‘projects’, or that political power is not used instrumentally to further corporate interests. Rather, different kinds of power and agency, while interlocking, still need to be distinguished analytically. Most transnational corporations, Pieterse argues (2004: 34) ‘can achieve their objectives without control over sovereignty; economic influence of the type provided by the IMF, World Bank, and WTO regulations suffices, along with lobbying and sponsoring political actors’. This debate raises an important set of issues addressed in theories of imperialism,

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 167

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

capitalism and empire. Harvey’s concept of ‘capitalist imperialism’ serves as a rejoinder to Pieterse. Capitalist imperialism refers to a shared system of capital accumulation and power that aims to create worldwide conditions favourable for ‘economic power to flow across and through continuous space’ (Harvey 2003: 26).

As we have seen, in some Marxist accounts the state is regarded as an agent for capitalism. In crude versions imperialism is undertaken by the state on behalf of capital to meet its expansionist needs and to overcome crises of accumulation. However, most critical theorists advance a more complex account. One entry point is historical analysis. The pursuit of state interests through territorial imperialism and the advancements of capitalist economic interests took multiple forms. For instance, the Dutch East India Company ruled territories in Java with its own apparatus of sovereignty. Winseck and Pike (2008) show that state and private agencies were complexly interlocked in providing the telegraphic cable networks on which imperialism depended. Global media evolved as part of a project of creating a worldwide system of accumulation and modernisation, they argue. Yet, if imperialism contributed to capital’s survival and expansion, it also conflicted with capital; ‘imperialism created and reinforced rigid boundaries among the various global spaces that blocked the free flow of capital, labor and goods precluding the full realization of the world market’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 305). The second entry point is theoretical elaboration based on analytical distinctions between economic and political processes and actors. As Jessop (2008) argues, there is no determinate relationship between processes of accumulation, institutional orders and forms of consciousness. Capitalist dynamics of the profit-oriented, market-mediated process of accumulation may be supported by different forms of state and supranational governance. Capital accumulation depends upon extra-economic factors and so cannot be regarded as the cause of these.

Capitalist development

To understand fully the problems of global cultural exchange requires an understanding of the development and management of capitalism. A key process has been capital becoming freer of controls exercised by states and state systems. The organisation of economic life around nation-states emerged gradually but was the dominant form by the time of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. In the period from around 1870 to 1914 businesses in advanced economies were subject to increased state oversight. Capital mobility was restricted by imperial networks and trade protectionism, while industrial pro- duction tended to be organised territorially under state jurisdiction. Increased public scrutiny with the rise of electoral democracy and public criticisms of ‘irresponsible’ capitalism also contributed to efforts to make businesses more publicly accountable and regulated (Curran 2002: 175). The period from the 1940s to the 1970s saw further attempts to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism responding to the scarring crises of global depression in the 1930s and the unresolved crises of imperialist expansionism that had led to a second world war.

168 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Western European social democracies sought to secure welfare states, by sup- porting macroeconomic intervention including state-run industries to provide ‘full employment’, social and health provision for all. In advanced capitalist economies the period from the 1950s to the early 1970s had been marked by economic growth and rising living standards. Western liberal democracies established welfare systems providing unemployment and other benefits, free or heavily subsidised healthcare and state pensions. Such policies drew on the organised strength of the labour movement and the support of the industrial working class. Europe had fascist and authoritarian states during this period but in democratic systems even mainstream conservative parties, such as the Christian Democrats, supported key tenets of welfare state provision. Demand for labour- saving consumer electronic goods helped to create a ‘golden age’ for Western capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as fuel the expansion of East Asian economies.

A global financial regulatory system was established following the Bretton Woods reforms of 1944–46. This organised an international system to manage cross-border capital flows, fix exchange rates (to the dollar standard), gradually reduce protectionism by removing trade tariffs, and make credit available to countries facing economic difficulty. This system of global governance was organised primarily through national governments. The influence of sovereign states was highly unequal, but the system ‘enabled the governments of developed economies to give precedence to employment and social welfare over those of global financial interests’ (Curran 2002: 176). From the late 1960s this system was strained and gradually undermined. In what Brenner (1998) calls the ‘long down- turn’, the advanced capitalist economies suffered a series of shocks, such as the OPEC oil price rise of 1973, and severe recessions, in 1974–75, 1979–82 and 1991–95. Profit rates fell across all sectors but especially in manufacturing, causing waves of unemployment. Growing competition to US manufacturing output from Germany, Japan and the newly industrialised ‘tiger’ economies in East Asia, led to a crisis of overproduction in the automobile and other industries.

Capitalist states responded by attacking the labour movement with states and private businesses reducing pay levels for the majority of workers, although wage cuts and increased labour productivity proved insufficient to sustain growth (Harvey 2011). At a domestic level this encouraged a shift away from forms of state intervention that had prevailed since the 1950s. Keynesian policies to maintain growth through state spending failed in recessionary conditions and were repudiated by an increasingly assertive ‘new right’, who advocated deep cuts in public spending. Within international financial governance, the fixed exchange rate system was abandoned in 1971–73, capital controls were relaxed or abandoned amongst OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s, financial deregulation increased in the European Union and in other ‘free trade’ areas. Where the earlier settlement had broadly reflected the strengths of social democracy in curbing market liberals, the latter regained their ascendency with the rise of a neoliberal agenda. During the 1970s multinational corporations

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 169

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

expanded their size and operations. Increasingly able to relocate production, operations and finance they gained leverage over governments forced to compete for their patronage under terms that favoured transnational capital at the expense of labour and frequently of national capital too.

In the 1980s and 1990s the financialisation of capitalism increased with the growth in private banking, currency and derivative trading (including by multinational cor- porations). International transactions were facilitated by new technology, notably satellite and fibre optic cable communications and computing. Market pressures and government liberalisation produced an increasingly unregulated flow of capital between countries on an unprecedented scale. The main features have been a weakening of state-centred economic sovereignty, and the emergence and consolidation of a neoliberal global order formed from the second half of the 1980s. The transformation to a neoliberal governance system was precipitated by the collapse of bureaucratic party-states in the communist East. The welfare states in the capitalist West were weakened. Post-war settlements based on institu- tionalised compromise between capital and labour shifted to neoliberal economic policies based on liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, market proxies in the residual public sector, internationalisation and reduced direct taxation – a set of policies intended to alter the balance of forces in favour of capital. The inter- national financial and trading system was reshaped. The implications for media and cultural policy are examined further in the next chapter.

Since the ascendency of neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s there have been a series of crises in global capitalism, with a major global recession in 2007–8. As the rise of the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) illustrates, some economies have been relatively insulated from or aided by crises affecting the older advanced economies. China was insulated from the crises afflicting Western capital in the 1970s and grew its economy in the 1990s with China’s telecommunications market, the world’s largest, developed by national capital and the party-state (D. Schiller 2007: 180, 177–97). US hegemony, including cultural hegemony, has been weakened, although the US remains the world’s geopolitical superpower (Tunstall 2008).

The consequence of the global reorganisation of capital has been a significant net loss for democratic governance. The consequence of an adverse reaction from financial markets has disciplined governments into maintaining a raft of policies favoured by private capital interests from privatisation and deregulation, cuts to welfare programmes and tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. Multinational corporations have used diverse means to extract market-friendly policies from huge investment in lobbying to regulatory and industrial arbitrage. The second main consequence has been to strengthen capital and weaken labour.

Globalisation, states and culture

Informing the clash between cultural globalisation enthusiasts and radical political economy’s critique of neoliberal ascendancy are differences in conceiving the state.

170 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Where both agree that the powers of the nation-state are being eroded, the cultural globalisation literature associates the nation with ‘invented tradition, manipulative ideology, hierarchical control, intolerance, conformism and nationalism’ (Curran 2002: 178). Globalisation is thus seen as a largely emanci- patory force allowing new identities and solidarities to be forged that enable a new progressive politics to come into being. Global capitalism is viewed as an enabling force for cultural pluralisation.

A central concern in radical analysis is the weakening of democratic controls and oversight as a consequence of power shifting from national electorates and organised labour to global capital. Within CPE there are strong anti-statist, libertarian and anti-nationalist strands, but most share a general conception of the democratic state as a key agency in the realisation of social and economic objectives. More narrowly, the state remains the principal agency in commu- nications policy and central to prospects for greater democratic oversight of media and cultural provision. The internationalisation of communications systems and ownership makes it more, not less, imperative to assess how states use their actual powers of imperium (law and regulation) and dominium (use of resources, subsidies and support mechanisms) over communications and cultural activities.

Morris and Waisbord (2001) argue that it is premature to conclude that the state is withering away and to assume a post-state world. States remain funda- mental political units retaining significant law-making powers. Globalisation has challenged but not eliminated states as power centres, as sets of institutions where decisions are made regarding the structure and functioning of media sys- tems. For Mattelart (2002: 609):

[the nation-state] remains the place where the social contract is defined. It has by no means reached the degree of obsolescence suggested by the crusade in favour of deterritorialization through networks. It takes the nearsightedness of techno-libertarians to support this kind of globalizing populism, which avails itself of the simplistic idea of a somewhat abstract and evil state in opposition to that of an idealized civil society – an area of free exchange between fully sovereign individuals

Rather, a task for organised civil society is ‘to ensure that the state is not robbed of its regulatory function’ (Mattelart 2002: 609). Cultural (globalisation) theory addresses media processes, and theorising about and beyond ethnocentric frameworks, but has tended to neglect national organisation of communications, to overstate the decline of the nation-state and to ignore the political economic dynamics of ‘globalization’.

Media internationalisation

Two radically different perspectives, transnational corporate domination and cultural globalisation, agree that transnational media are eroding national

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 171

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

media. The first is critical, neo-Marxist, and highlights imbalances in the global flow of communications output. The second, cultural globalisation, focuses on reception and cultural identity formation and generally regards transnationalisation more favourably (in some cases akin to the modernisation paradigm). Yet, both tend towards a one-way unilinear model of change. Both ‘strong globalisation’ arguments tend to focus on processes eroding state-based media from above. An alternative perspective argues instead that we need to be more discriminating in assessing the nature and influence of transnational media flows. This might be called ‘weak globalisation’ but that is misleading since the argument does not revolve around the strength or weakness of global forces but rather on the need to attend to how these are manifested differentially within and across media systems. The objection is not to evidence of ‘strong globalisation’ but rather to its generalisation and organisation into normative narratives of change. A better term is internationalisation (Hesmondhalgh 2013).

Media internationalisation is pervasive but uneven. Globalisation is trans- forming ‘media fiction and music’ (Curran 2002: 179) while production and consumption (as opposed to gathering) of news remains largely organised around the nation-state and locality. The audience for global news channels such as CNN remains small and, with exceptions such as Al Jazeera, has remained pre- dominantly elite. While terrestrial broadcasters’ audience share has certainly eroded, this ‘has not to any significant extent been caused by the rise of a global news service taking viewers for their national products as part of the growth of a global public sphere’ (Sparks 2000a: 84). Cross-border press readership is mostly small and elite (Hafez 2007), with the important exception of minority ethnic and diasporic press readerships. Local media ownership tends to be relatively independent of the global media operators described by Herman and McChesney (Sparks 2000a: 86) and the overwhelming majority of news outlets target national or sub-national audiences. The main categories of multi-region media globalisation are:

� mass market entertainment including audiovisual, audio, computer games, music

� news and information serving business elites (CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc.) � media serving diasporic communities � media serving specialist transnational communities of interest � subaltern media flows especially in news (i.e. Al Jazeera) but also in Third

Cinema and other contra-flows.

To analyse these complex flows requires attention to all the factors shaping market supply and demand, which means political economic and cultural elements.

The analysis of television provision and cultural proximity is a good example of the need to integrate the two. Across Western media systems, US premium fiction commands the greatest share of imports, but the maturation of commercial networks in Western Europe ‘has dented the appeal of US fiction as audiences demonstrate

172 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

liking for home-grown programming’ (Iosifides et al. 2005: 6). Audiences around the world prefer to watch their own locally made programmes in their own national language (Tunstall 2008). This preference for ‘cultural proximity’ is an important corrective to ‘strong globalisation’ theories, although the pattern varies. As Straubhaar (2002: 200) argues ‘National cultures vary in their appeal to domestic audiences, although this tends to be a crucial local advantage. National media’s ability to compete with foreign imports varies depending on homogeneity and acceptance of local culture’. Cultural proximity also provides another dimension of localisation. Producer behaviour ‘follows commercial imperatives but will tend to follow the demands of the domestic market or audience when resources allow’ (Straubhaar 2002: 200).

Flows, formats, production and labour

The importance of integrating political economic and cultural analysis is espe- cially evident in tracing contemporary features of media globalisation, notably the cultural and economic dimensions of formats and the internationalisation of cultural labour. In fact, early academic formulations of cultural imperialism were attentive to the diversity of such flows, even if these were conceived within a restricted conception of interstate relations. In his ‘generic’ concept of media imperialism Boyd-Barrett (1977: 120) identified transnational flows as taking four main forms:

1 the shape of the communication vehicle 2 a set of industrial arrangements 3 a body of values 4 specific media contents.

Dissemination ranged from hardware and content to professional values as well as domination of international news reporting by Western agencies. Later scholars extended analysis of the range of cultural flows, encompassing language, religion, education and travel (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1996), and acknowledging media as only one part of broader cultural interconnectedness (Held et al. 1999). Above all, multidirectionality came to be emphasised, and by the late 1990s at least was confirmed by the growing media influence and ‘software’ exports of East Asia (Japan, South Korea), Latin America (especially Brazil and Mexico), Australia, India and China (Tunstall 2008).

The transnationalisation of media production has long been a focus for CPE scholars but more recent work has brought renewed attention to labour. The spatial mobility of capital has been enhanced, weakening state power and weakening the power of organised labour. Capital has shifted from regarding developing countries as suppliers of raw materials to treating them as setting the price of labour. Developing countries, regions and ‘free trade zones’ within states compete to attract capital investment. Shifts in bargaining and power relations

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 173

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

between capital and labour have been facilitated by transportation and ICTs. Miller et al. (2005) propose a New International Division of Cultural Labour, adapted from the concept of a New International Division of Labour (NIDL). They examine how Hollywood has reorganised production to take advantage of labour costs and resource efficiencies. Hollywood’s proportion of productions shot overseas increased from 7 to 27 per cent in the decade to 2000 (Miller et al. 2005: 137). Production is disaggregated across space, and labour is organised across a world centre (Hollywood), intermediate zones (Western Europe, North America, Australia) with outlying regions of labour subordinate to the centre (the rest of the world).

There is a diminishing need for co-location of aspects of production and post- production. So firms can take advantage of lower studio costs in Eastern Europe and Mexico, high tech but lower costs post-production in India, tax incentives in Europe, and so on. The result has been to depress labour costs and unevenly deskill workers, whilst boosting jobs in lower-wage economies. The development of digital technologies and global transportation are factors, but Miller et al. (2005: 131) highlight corporate efforts to weaken organised labour and boost capital accumulation; ‘Hollywood’s hegemony is built upon and sustained by the internal suppression of worker rights, the exploitation of a global division of labour and the impact of colonialism on language’. The international division of cultural labour depends on a range of factors determining capital outlay including favourable exchange rates and tax regimes, the weakness of organised labour, specialist skills requirements, through which Hollywood investors seek to minimise costs and maximise revenue in the organisation of film production, manufacturing and services distributed around the globe. This approach engages a ‘political and ethical regard for labour and its alienation into a model of citizens and consumers that allows us to question the role of states and markets in extending or stemming global Hollywood’ (Miller et al. 2005: 350–51). It also contributes to necessary synthesising of political economic and culturalist studies. By examining the ‘global infrastructure of textual exchange’, the authors invite examination of the kinds of texts that get produced and circulate, the patterns of (unequal) exchange, and their consequences.

Formats

The importance of integrating political economic and cultural analysis is also illustrated by formats. To understand the growing market in formats we need to examine the capital accumulation logics, the relationships between capitalist (and PSM) firms, the trading and management of intellectual property rights as well as the drives to various forms of localisation, adaption and cultural hybridisation. While the US remains the world’s leading exporter of audiovisual programmes, the UK has become the leading exporter of TV formats. In 2004 the UK exported sixty-four formats, France fifty-six, Germany fifty, the US forty-six and the Netherlands forty-six (Ofcom 2006: 118). The format for Who Wants to be a

174 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Millionaire? has been sold to at least 106 countries, and the Pop Idol format has been shown in countries as diverse as Iceland, Kazakhstan and Lebanon. France earned ECU108 million ($136 million) in 2004 with worldwide sales of its ani- mation series Totally Spies, including to Time Warner’s Cartoon Network, as well as documentaries and dramas.

Yo Soy Betty, la Fea, a television show developed by a private channel in Colombia RCN in 1999 and later also aired on Telemundo (one of the largest Spanish-language American television networks) was licensed as a format worldwide, including as Ugly Betty in the US. It was adapted by Sony for India, where the show became hugely popular, with over twenty worldwide adaptions including in Russia, Germany, Israel and Egypt, blending elements of the Latin American telenovella, the US soap and localised features. The story of Betty, rooted in the Ugly Duckling and other fairytales, had wide cultural appeal and adaptability but also held appeal for businesses as a vehicle for brand promotion. In China, Betty returned to her original work-setting of an advertising agency, rather than magazines as in the US version, providing an ideal vehicle for brand integration. Dove (skin care products) were brand partners for a fifty minute episode in the first series in China in which Betty works on a pitch for the Dove account.2

As Arsenault and Castells (2008: 708) observe: ‘local and regional players are actively importing and/or re-appropriating foreign products and formats while corporate transnational media organizations are pursuing local partners to deliver customized content to audiences’. Transcultural adaptions are creating hybrid formats – rooted in local markets in which audiences have knowledge and expectations of different genres, visual and narrative styles. With format licensing amongst other transactions we see national firms ‘eagerly and actively enter into strategic alliances with TNMCs to serve their local profit interests. Media imperialism, which assumes the coercive domination of one national media industry by another, is not the appropriate way to describe the global-local relationship between TNMCs and NMCs’ (Mirrlees 2013: 101).

Conclusions

Cultural imperialism was too crude and vulnerable both to critique and to geo- political and cultural changes. However, the orthodoxy of cultural globalisation that supplanted it failed to address economic power and the detrimental influence of global capital on cultural diversity, labour and democracy. What is needed? Put simply, attention to economics, politics and culture. There is no need to privilege economics or overstate its explanatory value in understanding cultural texts, processes and reading. Yet efforts to explain media internationalisation without adequate regard for economic and political aspects are non-starters and should be challenged just as relentlessly as the caricature of cultural imperialism chased off the stage by neo-modernisation theories. The rejection of ‘crude’ domination theories gave way to a reluctance or refusal to acknowledge power

Globalisation, transnationalisation, culture 175

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

imbalances in cultural flows that had inspired the original critique. There is much to be done to make up deficiencies but synthesis of political economy and critical cultural analysis demonstrates ways forward.

Notes 1 Access to television schedules worldwide, for instance via www.tvguide.com, offers a useful tool for carrying out similar research today.

2 In the US the first series, shown on ABC in 2006–7, won a Golden Globe award but over four series audiences fell and in 2010 ABC announced it was ceasing production.

176 Critical investigations in political economy

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

4. T

ay lo

r &

F ra

nc is

G ro

up . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

http://www.tvguide.com