Paul du Gay is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University
Examining cultural goods and services, the cultural industries, and the cultural aspects of organization and work, this innovative text offers a novel understanding of relations between the economic and the cultural. This book shows how cultural products are produced, marketed, and sold in an increasingly global economy. Chapters examine the emergence of truly global cultural products and the strategies of global cultural players, such as Sony. They analyze how culture is circulated through the activities of the cultural intermediaries of design, marketing, and advertising, and explore cultural production in practice through an examination of the contemporary fashion industry. The book also looks at why culture has become a crucial concern in business and organizations, and how the construction of particular corporate cultures has implications for the creation of identities that blur the boundaries between work and leisure. Throughout, the book illustrates that contemporary cultural goods and services are inextricably bound upb with economic processes of production, circulation, and exchange, and shows how "economic" processes and practices are in an important sense "cultural" phenomena depending on meaning for their effects. With unique coverage of a range of hotly debated topics, presented in an accessible form with questions, activities, and selected readings, this book will be essential reading for lecturers and students in cultural studies and a range of related fields.
