Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production

Abstract

This article seeks to develop an approach to cultural production which takes racism seriously. We suggest that there has been a lack of attention to race and ethnicity in the booming research field of cultural production studies, and that the few good studies of race, ethnicity, and cultural production have been somewhat marginalized. Following a section that outlines our understandings of “race” and ethnicity, we outline the development of research on cultural production, differentiating various approaches according to the degree of attention that they afford to questions of power, inequality, and social justice. We then survey the main themes that have emerged from cultural production studies regarding race and ethnicity, and outline some of the problems associated with such research. We argue that a theory of cultural production that adequately integrates race and ethnicity needs to combine analysis of micro and macro factors, structure and agency, and change and continuity.

Notes

¹To challenge racism and racialization does not mean objecting to identifications by groups of people with the racial categories to which they have been assigned. The shared experiences that derive from such categorizations can be the basis of valuable solidarities among oppressed groups.

²Cultural production is used here as a shorthand term to refer to industrialized or semi-industrialized symbol making and circulation in modern societies. The term culture is of course sometimes used to refer to a very general set of activities involving symbols and meaning, including religion and education. We use it in a more specific way. In some uses, the term refers to the production of art and entertainment, as opposed to news journalism and related activities. We mean “cultural production” here to include studies of journalism and news production, though we should acknowledge that our own specialisms are on the art/entertainment side of this divide.

³A much more extended summary of the sub-field and of various approaches can be found in chapter 1 of Hesmondalgh (2013) which analyses the development of the cultural industries since the 1980s.

⁴David Hesmondhalgh would acknowledge that his own book on the cultural industries (2013) in its various editions has not paid sufficient attention to race and ethnicity.

⁵This cultural studies perspective has had a considerable influence on our own approach.

⁶See, among other sources, the valuable work of Sarah Banet-Weiser (2007).

⁷By focusing on the press and broadcasting, Downing and Husband in fact slightly understate the amount of relevant research that has been done, and overlook some significant studies of the music and film industries.

⁸See Dwyer and Crang (2002) for an overview.

⁹See Quinn (2005) for a convincing argument about this in relation to gangsta rap.

¹⁰In this respect our approach follows that of, among others, Nancy Fraser's multiperspectival approach (Fraser, 1997).

¹¹Our account has tended to emphasize macro factors, as a necessary but not sufficient way of explaining recurring racial and ethnic dynamics in cultural production—a consequence of the synthesizing overview we aim to provide here. But micro factors are already implicit in what we have written and we, along with many others, have sought to address micro factors in other research we have conducted (see Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011, and the discussion of Saha's work below).