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Presentation on media globalization arguing for more insights from cultural and economic geography.
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cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Beyond Globalization: Rethinking the Scalar and Relational in
Global Media StudiesPresentation to International and Intercultural Communication in the Age of
Global Media, Monash University, Melbourne, 11-13 April, 2008
Professor Terry Flew
Creative Industries Faculty,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
As the 20th century entered its closing decade, the concept of globalization became ever more seen and heard as “a key idea by which we understand the transition of human society into the third millennium” (Waters, 1995: 1), but with ever-decreasing precision of meaning (Sinclair, 2004: 65).
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Globalization as Scalar Shift
‒ Globalization of modernity (Giddens)‒ Transformational globalization (Held et. al.)‒ Irresistable and irreversible globalization …
Empire (Hardt and Negri)‒ Spread of an increasingly unfettered global
capitalism (Herman and McChesney)
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
The informational economy is global. A global economy is a historically new reality, distinct from a world economy. A world economy, that is an economy in which capital accumulation proceeds throughout the world, has existed in the West since at least the sixteenth century … A global economy is something different: it is an economy with the capacity to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale. While the capitalist mode of production is characterized by it relentless expansion, always trying to overcome limits of time and pace, it is only in the late twentieth century that the world economy was able to become truly global on the basis of the new infrastructure provided by information and communication technologies (Castells, 1996: 92-93 (author’s emphasis)).
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Strong globalization Thesis1. Markets are global, and dominated by transnational corporations
(TNCs)2. TNCs operate on a global scale, and are less constrained by
nation-states3. Power of nation-states is in decline4. Globalization generates a ‘global media culture’5. Globalization is central to separation of place and space6. Leads to a ‘race to the bottom’ among nations for TNC investment
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Counter-propositions1. Majority of world’s largest corporations are not truly transnational2. ‘Home base’ remains vitally significant3. Limits to power of supra-national organisations/ shifting of nation-state
priorities and capacities4. Technological determinist reading of culture (culture = media
technologies)5. Relativization of scale generates a ‘spatial ontology of social
organaization’ (Amin)6. Two tendencies of globalization: cost-driven deterritorialization of
production, and quality-driven search for value-adding resources (Storper)
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Types of globalization (Michael Storper, The Regional World, 1997)
‒ DETERRITORIALIZED• Flow-based production models• Cost-based ‘off-shoring’ of production• Standardized commodities• Non-specialzed labor and other inputs
‒ TERRITORIALIZED• Concentrations and clusters• Locationally-specific knowledge (‘untraded interdependencies’)• Destandardized commodities
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Two types of product/service globalization
Factor Cost-driven globalization
Quality-driven globalization
Nature of product Generic and substitutable; highly price-sensitive demand
De-standardization and variety as drivers of non-price-driven demand
Labour inputs Generic; unskilled and semi-skilled labour
Skilled and specialist; unique bundle of skills often sought
Significance of territory Low; few location-specific resource or knowledge requirements
High; tendency for specialist knowledge to cluster in particular regions
Consumer demand More sensitivity to price than other factors
Rising consumer expectations about product/service quality; rising average consumer incomes
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Geographical theory … has been concerned with the spatiality of the contemporary world, and is interested in understanding whether places – cities, regions, and nations – are perforating as geographically contained spaces, how the insertion of places into geographically stretched relations matters, and how new geographical scales of organization and influence associated with globalization are challenging old scales of identification and action (Amin, 2000: 6271).
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Relational Globalization
‒ Spatial dimensions constitute social relations and processes
‒ Critiques of world systems theories‒ Cities as ‘cluster of overlapping network sites’ (Amin)‒ Online interactions and face-to-face are mutually
constituitive (Slater, Woolgar)
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
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Cultural Economic Geography of Production
‒ From vertical integration to global production networks‒ Economic advantages of geographical proximity (spatial
agglomeration)‒ Innovation through interaction - clustering, learning
regions, untraded interdependencies‒ Path dependency in technology development and design‒ Increasing returns to economic scale
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Two types of globalized production
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
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Assumptions of Global Media Studies
‒ ‘The … global media is dominated by three or four dozen large transnational corporations (Herman & McChesney)
‒ ‘the global cultural flows of our time are generated and directed by global media empires’ (Steger)
‒ ‘there can be little doubt that … a group of around 20-30 very large MNCs dominate global [media] markets’ (Held et. al.)
‒ ‘Worldwide … the mass media are controlled by between 70 and 80 first- and second-tier corporations’ (Sussman)
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Were American (2008)
‒ Five levels of media: dominant is the national level1. Global level
2. Regional level (pan-European, pan-Asian, pan-Arab)
3. National level
4. National-regional level
5. Local level
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Global Production Networks: The Latest Form of Cultural Dependency?
‒ New International Division of Cultural Labour (NICL) (Miller et. al., 2001)• Separation of ‘hand’ and ‘brain’• Global dispersal of production but not ownership and control• Core/periphery relations increasingly based on control over IPRs• Nation-states engage in ‘race to the bottom’ for footloose media
investment capital
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Drivers of foreign investment (the OLI ‘eclectic’ paradigm)
‒ Ownership advantages• derive from being multinational and vertically integrated across
the supply chain
‒ Locational advantages• availability of particular primary resources in certain markets,
access to new markets, availability of low-cost labour, or incentives offered by governments
‒ Internalization advantages• the ability to capture more localized sources of knowledge and
apply them across global markets
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Types of Global Production Network
‒ ‘Hub-and-spoke’ industrial district (outsourcing)‒ Satellite platform (export production zones)‒ Little knowledge transfer in these models‒ Global production network (GPN)‒ Considerably more scope for knowledge transfer with
variables being• Absorptive capacity of host nation• Externalization and internalization• State policy as a key variable
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
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Global Media Production
Source: Allen Scott, ‘Cultural-Products Industries and Urban Economic Development, Urban Affairs
Review 39 (4), 2004, pp. 461-490.
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
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New Production Centres of East Asia(Michael Keane, Created in China: The
New Great Leap Forward, 2007)
1. World factory/outsourcing
2. Isomorphism and cloning
3. Cultural technology transfer
4. Niche markets and global hits
5. Cultural/industrial milieux and creative clusters
cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi
creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 000213J
Although Hollywood’s supremacy is unlikely to be broken at any time in the foreseeable future, at least some of these other centres will conceivably carve out stable niches for themselves in world markets, and all the ore so as they develop more effective marketing and distribution capacities … This argument, if correct, points toward a much more polycentric and polyphonic global audiovisual production system than has been the case in the recent past (Scott, 2004a, p. 475).