The Cultural Industries [Paperback]

David Hesmondhalgh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0761954538 | ISBN-13: 978-0761954538 | Edition: 1st

The Cultural Industries combines a political economy approach with the best aspects of cultural studies, sociology, communication studies and social theory to provide an overview of the key debates surrounding cultural production. The book:

• Considers both the entertainment and the information sectors
• Combines analysis of the contemporary scene with a long-range historical perspective

• Draws on an range of examples from North America, the UK, Europe and elsewhere

Editorial Reviews

Review

`This is both a smashing textbook and also an impressive contribution to thinking in a range of subjects. This book should influence the way we construct the undergraduate curriculum as well as rethink the polarizaton between political economy and cultural studies'- Frank Webster, City University

`A wonderfully clear, insightful and original synthesis of work on the cultural industries, representing the perspectives of the new generation of researchers' - James Curran, Goldsmiths College, University of London

`The Cultural Industries is an indispensable guide to the main forces at work in the production of media today. This lucid, careful, and sophisticated book orders the entire field, for the US as well as Europe, and at one stroke becomes the state of the art, the standard' - Todd Gitlin, New York University

`David Hesmondhalgh offers us a valuable resource and a timely provocation... [A] very well organised and clearly written introduction to this increasingly important area of study. Students and teachers wanting a comprehensive and accessible guide to what we know and where we might be heading will welcome it with open arms... His book deserves to be required reading on every media and cultural studies course' - Graham Murdock, University of Loughborough

' The arguments within [this book] provide both a timely overview of current scholarship and offer a unique multidisciplinary approach to the topic in a clear and concise manner' - TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd; 1st edition (May 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761954538
• ISBN-13: 978-0761954538
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,079,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Hesmondhalgh was born in Accrington, England in 1963. He studied at the University of Oxford, Northwestern University, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he gained his PhD. He has a Chair in Media Industries at the University of Leeds, where he is Head of the Institute of Communications Studies. His main research interests include music, and the making of cultural goods.

He lives in a small town in the Yorkshire hills, near enough to Blackburn Rovers Football Club to be a season ticket holder, and near enough to Leeds and Bradford to enjoy live music and good food there. He is a fairly active member of the UK Green Party. His partner is Helen Steward, a philosopher, and they have two children, Rosa Hesmondhalgh and Joe Hesmondhalgh. His sister is the actor Julie Hesmondhalgh.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very refined analysis, not for those who want a quick, simple, or unrealistic analysis of cultural industries today, July 13, 2010

By 

Cheung Chi Wai (Leeds & Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cultural Industries (Paperback)

I was a bit shocked by the previous review, which says the book is a chore to read and doesn't have any answer to the questions it raises. I think the author offers an answer - cultural industries are extremely complex, and a wide range of social, cultural, and political forces are constantly shaping the cultural industries. His strategy of analysis is to broadly outline some historical trends of cultural industries; but he also adds more complexity in analyzing these trends, warning us not to reify those trends. There is no XXX-determinism in this book. Rather, it calls for more refined analysis of the cultural industries around the world. Many scholars have praised the book, and I don't think they're lying. If one wants to hold on to simplistic approaches like some hard-core versions of the political economy approach, which tend to downplay the complexity of things, s/he should avoid reading this book. But if you believe in Gramsci and the idea that culture (production, text and reception) is always in a state of struggle, this book is for you.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid if you can help it!, January 7, 2009

By 

Goldom - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Cultural Industries (Paperback)

David Hesmondhalgh's The Cultural Industries purports to be a guide to the changes in the popular media (TV, movies, music, books, etc.) over the last several decades, in particular how their ownership by conglomerates is affecting their quality. Yet if there is a substantial part of this book, I can't find it.
The first half of the book, nearly every page seems to reference that the important details will be dealt with in the later chapters. Once there, I was being referred back to the first half. Hesmondhalgh's entire content consists of summaries of a wide variety of existing writing on the topic, most of which is prefaced by calling it out as wrong and invalid. Yet a new counter-idea is never presented.
Even for this derivative style, The Cultural Industries manages to fail. For example, Hesmondhalgh sounds extremely out of place when writing about technology and the Internet (though this does not stop him from devoting a chapter to the subject). In a section trying to explain Web 2.0, he claims, "So the concept applies to software such as Linux, Apache and Perl and to applications such as Google, eBay and Amazon..." Linux is an operating system. Perl isn't even software - it's a programming language. And if calling websites "applications" isn't bizarre enough, you could not pick a worse example of Web 2.0 than Google: It's a white page with one (practical) item on it.
Overall, The Cultural Industries is a chore to read, and utterly devoid of information that couldn't be found in a dozen other, better written books.