Table Of ContentCULTURAL RIGHTS
Cultural Rights aims to combine sociology of culture and cultural
studies approaches to provide an innovative interpretation of
contemporary culture. It develops Walter Benjamin’s arguments
on the effects of mechanical reproduction to see what has
happened to ‘originality’ and ‘authenticity’ in postmodern culture.
One aspect of this culture is that reproduction and simulation have
become limitless, so that distinguishing what is real from what is
fabricated is a problem of daily life for everyone.
Celia Lury establishes a clear framework for studying these
matters by comparing a regime of cultural rights ordered by
copyright, authorship and originality with one defined by
trademark, branding and simulation. This move is illustrated
through concise and accessible histories of three major cultural
technologies—print, broadcasting and information technology—
and the presentation of research into the contemporary culture
industry. The gendered dimensions of this transformation are
explored by looking at the significance of the category of ‘women’
in the process of cultural reproduction. Cultural Rights will be of
interest to students in the sociology of culture, cultural studies and
women’s studies.
Celia Lury lectures in Women’s Studies and Cultural Studies in the
sociology department of Lancaster University.
INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF SOCIOLOGY
Founded by Karl Mannheim
Editor: John Urry
University of Lancaster
CULTURAL RIGHTS
Technology, legality and personality
Celia Lury
London and New York
First published in 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1993 Celia Lury
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lury, Celia.
Cultural Rights: technology, legality, and personality/Celia Lury
P. cm.—(The International Library of Sociology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Culture. 2. Intellectual property. 3. Copyright.
4. Trademarks. 5. Printing. 6. Broadcasting. 7. Information
technology. I. Title. II. Series.
HM101.L87 1993 92–37656
306–dc 20 CIP
ISBN 0-203-42289-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-73113-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-03155-9 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-415-09578-6 (pbk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
1 INTRODUCTION 1
Part I Regimes of rights
2 FROM REPETITION TO REPLICATION 13
3 REPLICATION, NOVELTY AND REACTIVATION 39
4 BRANDING, TRADEMARK AND THE
VIRTUAL AUDIENCE 62
Part II Technologies of reproduction
5 MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION: PRINT,
LITERACY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE 97
6 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION:
BROADCASTING, WATCHING AND
PUBLIC SERVICE 121
7 MICRO-ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION:
COMMUNICATION, THE FLOW OF
INFORMATION AND USERS 152
8 TECHNOLOGIES OF CULTURE AND GENDER 177
9 SIMULATION, GENDER AND
CONTEMPORARY CULTURE 207
Bibliography 217
Name index 230
Subject index 234
v
Acknowledgements
Many friends and colleagues have contributed to the ideas and
arguments expressed in this book. I would like to acknowledge the
enthusiasm and encouragement of Nick Abercrombie, Lisa
Adkins, Sarah Franklin, Liz Greenhalgh, Geoff Hurd, Scott Lash,
Karen Lury, Janet Newman, Stephen Pope, Chris Rojek, Dan
Shapiro and Jackie Stacey. I would especially like to thank John
Urry for inviting me to contribute to the International Library in
Sociology series, his sound editiorial advice and his patience in
waiting for the appearance of this contribution.
vi
1
INTRODUCTION
There has been much debate in recent years about the significance
and impact of cultural studies (Hall, 1987; Turner, 1990; Franklin
et al., 1991; Grossberg et al., 1992): its prospects, its potential
relation to the academy and to politics are all uncertain. Whatever
its future as a free-standing field of intellectual enquiry, however,
there is little doubt that its emergence in Britain in the 1970s
contributed to a radical rethinking of approaches to the study of
culture in a range of disciplines. This book seeks to develop a
conceptual framework within what might be called the sociology
of culture, but a sociology which has been disturbed by the insights
offered by cultural studies. It thus draws on both institutional
analyses of the culture industry (DiMaggio, 1977; Coser et al.,
1982; Garnham, 1979; Wolff, 1990) and cultural studies (Hall and
Jefferson, 1976; Johnson, 1983; CCCS, 1982a; CCCS, 1982b;
Women’s Studies Group, 1978).
This hybrid framework employs a number of terms which have
been chosen to avoid a priori privileging of particular processes,
including ‘cultural value’ which is used to refer to meaning or
symbolic content. The model of value implied is not a
representational one: value here is not intrinsically a derivative or
metonymic property; it is not finite, determinate or distributable.
Rather value is seen as a regulative medium of preference (Fekete,
1987); and the organisation of value is explicated as a function of
the force field of value, a network of strategic evaluations, or a
circulation process of a collective system of value relations and
practices. Rather than seeking to develop a ‘grand’ theory of value
then, as might have been the aim of some sociologies of culture,
the intention here is to investigate some of the ways in which what
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CULTURAL RIGHTS
Fekete calls the medium of ‘alternativity’ has historically been
realised in variable forms in social life.
Perhaps the most important term in this exploration is that of
reproduction or, more specifically, the processes of cultural
reproduction. It is a term which is used widely in cultural and
social theory, and its everyday meanings are diverse, ranging from
procreation through propagation and multiplication to making a
copy, or simply a copy itself. Its significance for a sociology of
culture has been lucidly captured by Raymond Williams, whose
book Culture (1981) and other writings have been an inspiration
for this work. In a chapter in Culture, Williams points out that
reproduction is inherent in the very concept of culture. However,
he also notes that while reproduction shows up the temporal
dimension of culture, in the sense of continuity in the transmission
of meaning, its use has not always been historical; furthermore, as
a term it can obscure the processes of change, struggle and
competition. However, it is in these two respects, most
particularly, that the attention within cultural studies to the
specificity of the processes of meaning making has been
particularly illuminating.
Bearing these problems in mind, this introduction will provide a
preliminary outline of the meanings of the term reproduction as it
is used in this book. At an abstract level, it refers to the complex
cycle of the production, distribution and reception of cultural
works, that is, works (objects, performances or services) whose
primary purpose is the making of meaning. However, it is the
relations between these moments in a cycle or mode of
reproduction which are of particular concern here (Johnson,
1983); the advantages of such an approach having been thrown
into relief in the light of the recent pendulum swing from an
emphasis on text to audience in cultural studies. Clearly, however,
these relations are not fixed at an abstract level, but, rather, are
historically specific: each moment in a cycle is both variously
determined, and stands in various relations of determination to
each other. Such modes of reproduction can be seen in terms of
power, or as fields of forces, and the relations between each
moment are subject to change.
The concept of reproduction can be used to analyse such
changes in the cycle of production, distribution and reception in
(at least) two inter-related senses. The first concerns the ways in
which this cycle involves, literally, some form of reproduction or
2
INTRODUCTION
copying as part of the moment of production. As Williams notes,
reproduction in this sense operates along a continuum from the
uniform, in the sense of the production of exact, accurate copies,
to the generative, that is, the creation of intrinsically variable
individual examples of a type. Walter Benjamin, in his well-known
essay, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’
(1970), identified the significance of technologies of culture for
changes in the functioning of this continuum within cultural
practice through an investigation of the impact and implications of
what he called mechanical (or technical) reproduction.
As Chapter 2 suggests, one of the strengths of Benjamin’s
analysis in this respect is that he does not take a narrow,
technically determinist view of the role of technology, but rather
explores the conditions in which a technology is realised as a
cultural apparatus. This book takes up this approach, and extends
the historical range of Benjamin’s analysis through a consideration
of not only mechanical, but also electronic and micro-electronic
technologies of culture, and explores their implications for the
regimes of copying which characterise particular modes of cultural
reproduction. In each case, the aim is not only to explore a key
moment in the historical emergence of a particular technology, but
also to look at their characteristic modes of address, cultural forms
and accessibility.
The introduction of these technologies of culture made possible
the separation of cultural works from their context of production,
resulting in a new mobility for cultural goods. This is seen to
produce a decisive transformation in cultural reproduction,
described in Chapter 2 as a shift from a mode of repetition to one
of replication, terms which refer to different kinds of copying or
reproduction in this first sense. It is argued that it is only with the
emergence of the mode of replication that the asymmetry or
divergence between cultural and social reproduction associated
with the modernisation process arises (Williams, 1981; Lash,
1990).
Linked with this sense of reproduction as copying, the first
section of the book (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) adopts a framework to
explore the rights of copying existing in relation to cultural works.
At the heart of the argument in this section is the view that the
modern technologies of culture provided the potential for
unlimited copying of cultural works, and that this potential has
been regulated (that is, both realised and limited, or rather given a
3
