Cultural Studies and the Cultural Industry

Cultural Studies from the Viewpoint of Cultural Policy

Stuart Cunningham

As might be expected of any newish field, a been so clearly dispelled as might have been once growing array of questions has begun to be imagined, she suggests. asked of cultural studies as it moves into a phase There is a position on the right emerging from of consolidation and some respectability. Ithink the social sciences that identifies the recent sea there are three global positions from whence this changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the questioning comes. In placing these on a left-to- longer-term global shifts toward international- right continuum, Iam mindful that amongst isation and the collapse of movement politics of other things at stake in the current climate is the various kinds as calling into question the con- viability of just such a political set. Wemight well tinuing relevance of the neo-Marxist `motor' of remember Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie cultural studies. From this perspective, the reflex Mieville's caveat in NumeÂro Deux: `this is not a anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism and romanti- film of the left or right, but a film of before and cisation of sub-cultural resistance embodied in behind'. the classical texts of cultural studies are no longer Feeding from the humanities is a position to adequate responses to the big questions con- the left of an increasingly academicised cultural fronting the articulation of politics and culture studies that seeks to question its orthodoxies in in modern Western societies. the name of a more authentic critical and polit- With these political re-assessments has come a ical practice, or in the name of a more thorough- concomitant revaluation of empirical detail, going deconstruction or postmodernism. This aligned with a piecemeal approach to the articu- position can invoke the powerful trope of lation of ideology and culture. There is a recalling cultural studies to its origins as a `beyond ideology' flavour about much of this brave intervention in established literary and work. John Kelly's discussion2 of Stuart Hall's social science orthodoxies. key text on left renewal in Britain, The Hard Meaghan Morris `Banality in Cultural Stud- Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of ies',1 for example, attacks the installation of a the Left is a frontal attack on a politics of grand profoundly banal set of protocols in cultural theory that lacks credible empirics. Kelly poses studies centring on the wilful calling-into- with rhetorical naivete the ultimate empirical being of progressiveness in texts, resistance in question: `How does Hall know any of these audiences, and a cheerful populism in criticism things [about the roots of the success of that too often collapses into little more than a Thatcher]?' (emphasis added). simulacrum of fandom. The critical stances of The swelling ranks of apostates from the the traditional humanities disciplines have not charmed circle of neo-Marxist orthodoxies, 14 especially in Britain (in the United States cul- good! Liz Jacka wrote recently of the `ever tural studies is still on a growth surge, and sub- widening gap between cultural critique and cul- stantial questioning of the assumptions of the tural policy.'5 Taking my cue from this, Iwant to field from within will not come very soon or canvass some recent issues in Australian cultural very readily), suggests that something more and communications policy where practical op- than a faddish search for The Next Thing is portunities for cultural analysis have been fore- afoot.3 gone, or worse. There is also a `centrist' policy orientation. This approach seeks to position the perspectives of cultural studies within fields of public policy Australian Content on Television where academic critical protocols don't have priority. Like the `left-humanities' position, it is An exhaustive inquiry into Australian Content aware of the limits of academic discourse. While on Commercial Television, conducted by the seeking to respond to the same global concerns Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, concluded as the `right-social science' position, it is not as its main considerations in December 1989 with concerned to discredit the foundational posture the introduction of a new Television Program of cultural studies, if that posture is distilled Standard. The inquiry ran, with a break of three down to the central Enlightenment values of years in the mid-1980s, for about five years.6 Liberty, Equality and Solidarity.4 Indeed, it One of the then members of the Tribunal, seeks to revivify these core values as the central Julie James Bailey, commented that there was motor of reformism that can be appealed to in virtually no input during the several years of the public sphere of contemporary Western so- the inquiry from academic cultural critics and cieties. This is the position that Iwish to advance analysts.7 However, there was one major contri- as a way forward for cultural studies. bution, from cultural critic John Docker, and it employed an array of contemporary theory to What relations should exist between cultural attack the legitimacy of regulation for Austra- studies and cultural policy? Iemploy the term lian content on television.8 cultural studies (or cultural criticism) as a con- Such regulation, in Docker's view, actually venient shorthand for work driven by the major means the imposition of (British) high cultural strands of neo-Marxist, structuralist, poststruc- values onto popular cultural forms whose appeal turalist and postmodernist thought, which treat is indifferent to national variations and registra- film, the arts, media and communications, as tions. What viewers actively embrace in televi- well as lived, everyday culture. Cultural policy sion culture, according to Docker, is the embraces that broad field of public processes carnivalesque overturning of statist official cul- involved in formulating, implementing, and ture and the celebration of working class values contesting governmental intervention in, and andinterests. Thesevaluesandinterestsaretrans- support of, cultural activity. national and are inherently subversive of state The commonsense reaction to my question, interventions to preserve national registrations one likely to be offered by the majority of those of popular cultural forms. outside the academy who might be inclined to It is not surprising that Docker's arguments consider it, would be that the former serves as a had no effect on the outcomes of the Inquiry. kind of `handmaiden', developing rationales for But that should not in itself be cause for good those at the coalface of public policy. Theory, feeling, as Docker's was the only significant con- analysis and commentary should undergird tribution to the Inquiry that presented any of the practice; practice implements theory. On closer theoretical issues that have concerned theorists, inspection, however, the relations are far less critics and historians for decades. Docker's view harmonious than this model suggests. Indeed, of popular television and its audiences may be in many ways, contemporary practices of theory one idiosyncratic extrapolation of current and policy flatly contradict received wisdom. strands of cultural theory, but it is, in Turner's Cultural studies, from the viewpoint of cul- words, `directly licensed' by them.9 To applaud tural policy, might be like the curate's egg ± good Docker's irrelevance could be tantamount to in part, but even the good parts mightn't be that applauding, from the viewpoint of policy 15 making process, the irrelevance of critical and is clear that drama production could not have theoretical input in general. developed its scope and depth without the in- dustrial infrastructure of the Australian adver- tising industry. Evidence for this link is widely Advertising and National Culture accepted and pieces of it are often cited in film and television histories.11 For this reason, if for This Tribunal inquiry addressed itself to Austra- no other, deregulating television advertising lian content provisions covering all television would have major cultural consequences. The programming, including advertising. The regu- central argument, however, has to grasp the lations for television advertising are different nettle ± the positive contribution advertising from those for other program material. They itself may make to national culture. To this are directed at prohibiting more than 20 per task, cultural studies, in its present forms, is cent of any advertising being produced overseas, spectacularly unsuited. unless Australian crews travel overseas to obtain Two main patterns of criticism have remained the footage. They constitute a very high level of foundational to the cultural critique of advertis- protection for local content, and, because they ing. The first is diachronic, focusing on the his- have been in place for thirty years, they have tory of advertising as a main agent of American been extremely influential in underwriting the cultural imperialism. The MacBride Report for television advertising industry in Australia. UNESCO established the parameters of this pat- The inquiry into Foreign Content in Adver- tern, and Jeremy Tunstall's The Media are tising has operated virtually as a sidelight to the American and Mattelart and Dorfman's How to main act. It is not hard to see why. Advertising is Read Donald Duck continued it, and the general truly the unworthy discourse, as far as both critical perspective on advertising has never ser- criticism and policy are concerned. If there has iously diverted from it. The other pattern is syn- been an outstanding consensus amongst critical chronic ± informed by the early semiotic methods of various persuasions, it is that adver- guerrilla tactics of Roland Barthes' Mythologies, tising panders to patriarchal and consumerist it focuses on the cultural reproduction of dom- mentalities. In the wider scheme of things, this inant ideological values embedded through ad- consensus sits comfortably with moves to de- vertising in bourgeois culture. Its classic regulate a blatantly protected industry. Regula- statement is Judith Williamson's Decoding Ad- tion against foreign advertising content has been vertisements. There have been developments, in the subject of concerted attack from industry ± particular an increasingly strong emphasis on primarily transnational advertisers ± as well as feminist inflections of semiotic guerrilla warfare. high-level economic rationalist sources of advice Generally speaking, however, the cultural stud- to government. A recent Industries Assistance ies approach to advertising, both in critical Commission (now Industry Commission) writing and in curricula, has not advanced sig- report attacked the `virtual embargo' on for- nificantly beyond the 1950s and 1960s work eign-produced ads: `the sector enjoys an ex- of Barthes, MacBride and Mattelart and Dorf- tremely privileged position relative to nearly all man. other economic activity in Australia'.10 Under the umbrella of the Tribunal's content The Foreign Content in Advertising segment regulation, Australian television advertising has of the inquiry, therefore, called up the need for a developed a strong grammar of national imaging wide-ranging account of the role advertising has that parallels film and television fiction, but rep- played in the formation of national cultural resents a considerably greater permeation, by identity, as this has been put forward as the volume and by mode and degree of penetration, prime rationale for continued regulation. of themass market. Advertising occupiesan aver- The argument for making a positive connec- age of some three and a half hours a day on each tion between advertising and national culture commercial metropolitan television station com- has to be mounted in two basic areas. From the pared to recent Australian drama content levels viewpoint of policy, the weaker argument is the of around two hours a week. By dint of repeti- appeal to the effects of deregulation in the area of tion, saturation coverage across the most popular advertising on the drama production industry. It networks, and sophisticated textual strategies 16 that increasingly link programs with their com- tropes. The fact that this repertoire is used for merical `environment', advertising must be seen evidently contradictory purposes, from promot- as having considerable cultural valence. ing health to flogging beer and tobacco, and util- Suchindicators of cultural permeation, though ises everything from unacceptably sexist to crude and problematic from a critical perspec- innovative, even progressive, imaging, simply tive, are important in policy formulation. The registers the embeddedness and modularity of real issue is to what extent can a positive character advertising's nationalism. be imputed tothem? Thisis not aquestion simply Whatcriticalappraisalthereisofthisenormous of inverting cultural studies' negativity, putting portfolio of material, and there is very little that is the Mister Sheen gloss on what the critic has substantial, is unhelpful in articulating a position regarded as a tawdry business. It is a matter of sensitive to the policy issues. Stephen Alomes' evaluating the contribution of television adver- less-then-trenchant put-down of the course of tising in terms other than marking ideological Australian nationalism `from jingoism to jingle- ticks and crosses. It is to describe the impress ism'inANationatLast?,TimRowse'scritique of and influence of advertising in terms that accept television populism in the `humanity' ads, and that its ideologically regressive elements ± its othersengageincriticalexercisesofthetraditional sexism, its chauvinism, its rowdy populism ± are kind.14 bracketed within a more neutral, descriptive cul- The kind of `sophisticated theory of consump- tural and audiovisual history. tion' called for by Kathy Myers in Britain15 and Such a history would focus on the central role the magisterial descriptivist account of `advertis- advertising has played in the development of a ing as social communication' given by William popular audiovisual `grammar' of national iden- Leiss, Stephen Kline and Sut Jhally in North tity during the 1970s and 1980s. The so-called America16 should be applied to the question of `new' nationalism of this period was most visibly Australian national identity in advertising if we expressed in advertising campaigns, despite the are to advance beyond reflex ideological critique large claims made for the contribution of film and begin to address urgent and practical policy and television drama. These campaigns were at issues embodied in such inquiries as the key moments explicit attempts at social engin- Tribunal's. eering ± for instance, the Life. Be In It campaign and the Advance Australia campaign of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The published aims of Feminist Cultural Theory and Advance Australia make this clear: Bureaucratic Reformism

To heighten community and public awareness Of course, all need not be sweetness and light for and pride in Australian skills, achievements and the reconstructed cultural critic in relation to potential. To highlight the role of individual advertising. Turning to questions of sexism, it enterprise in the economy. To encourage im- is notable that Australia lags behind such coun- provements in quality, design, marketing and tries as Canada and some Scandinavian nations other characteristics of Australian identity.12 in implementing strategies to modify sexist representations in the mass media. Over the This advertising campaign, and others that came last few years, however, there have been signifi- in the wake of its high profile (and state-funded cant initiatives in Australia. The Office of the cash flow) sought to redress what attitudinal re- Status of Women has acted as the co-ordinating search had identified as a widespread lack of secretariat for a body called the National `pride in country' and support for Australian Working Party on the Portrayal of Women in manufacturing.13 This kind of public service ad- the Media, a body consisting of representatives vertising has had its counterparts in purely com- of the advertising industry, community groups mercial campaigns, which have increasingly over and government departments. the last fifteen years invented a populist audio- To my knowledge, little or nothing arising visual grammar of nationalism. Prestige national from that contemporary feminist scholarship advertising campaigns now routinely incorpor- utilising a sophisticated repertoire of theories ate this established repertoire of Australianist of representation has been brought to bear on 17 questions of bureaucratic reformism. Indeed, greater diversity and less concentration of media the most willing and effective advocates of insti- ownership. The calls of a David Bowman, a Paul tutional change to public representation of Chadwick, or an Eric Beecher appear hackneyed women use `outdated', reflectionist and empiri- and predictable because they are voiced within cist research to derive evidence for change, and a very narrow terms of cultural debate,and partake liberal humanist feminism to ground their cam- in what Walter Benjamin memorably called `left- paigns. wing melancholy'. This miserabilism, this It is not hard to see why advanced feminist prophetic nay-saying, cultural studies is now theories of representation have weighed so resolutely setting itself against. lightly, despite the considerable body of litera- However, political and cultural power exer- ture that has been developed around exactly the cised through media control remains one of the sorts of questions that animate reformist policy key blind spots of public policy in Australia. initiatives. As Leiss, Kline and Jhally argue, There is considerable evidence that the issue cuts `representation' critiques of advertising have through established party and factional alle- been subjective, non-quantitative, and have re- giances and will beginto createintolerable anom- duced the specificity of advertising to a general- alies for public policy. The traditional regulatory ised social critique. rationale for distinguishing between the elec- From the viewpoint of policy,they are subject- tronic media and the press will begin to break ive because they depend to an unacceptable down through convergence, narrowcasting and degree on methods that are difficult to replicate internationalisation. without a high degree of interpretative training. Itake the view that this issue will certainly not In the hands of a Barthes or a Williamson, semi- go away in a postmodernist flush of audience otic method is powerful and convincing, but sovereignty, and indeed will increase in central- there has been a lot of obfuscated and redundant ity as media converge and narrow their focus `normal science' in the area. Representation cri- ever more powerfully toward precise demo- tiques depend on extrapolated pertinence to an graphic and psychographic fine-tuning. Not equally unacceptable degree ± the findings are only that, but the current theoretical fashion not underwritten by content analysis based on for championing the active audience finds an accepted sampling techniques. And they are ironic echo in the rhetoric of consumer sover- guilty of simply using advertising, because it is eignty that is offered by the media owners and arguably the most visible and most insistent form the deregulators. of commercialism, as a springboard into a gener- Unambiguous economic and political power alised social critique that is unhelpful within the will increasingly be translatable into unambigu- protocols of piecemeal reformism. ous cultural power. Those who are best pos- For all these reasons, representation accounts itioned to benefit from enhanced technologies have been of little value in policy calculation, of audience targeting, from the convergence of even for those predisposed to accept the assump- media of carriage, and from pro-competitive tions from which they stem. public policy parameters, are precisely those whonowexerciseenormouspowerthroughcon- trol of the traditional media. Alliances with social Media Ownership and democratic advocates of media reform are set to Cultural Power become a crucial defining mark of the relevance of cultural studies in the near future. Cultural studies has increasingly moved away from the orthodox political economy model which centres great concern on questions of Now, Just Wait a Minute! ownership and control of the mass media. The cultural power that is interesting now resides Of course, the `handmaiden' model is easy pick- with audiences and, to a lesser extent, producers ings for those inside the academy. Most people of media content itself. Set over against these trained in the politics of cultural studies would interests are what appear to cultural theorists as view their primary role as critics of the dominant rather hackneyed and predictable arguments for political, economic and social order. When 18 cultural theorists do turn their hand to questions able, participatory, cultural order? What meas- of policy, our command metaphors of resistance, ures are cultural theorists and analysts taking to refusal and oppositionalism predispose us to have this vision articulated widely, including in view the policy making process as inevitably the public sphere? What alliances are we compromised, ad hoc, and always incomplete forming with cultural activists and policy agents and inadequate, peopled with those inexpert and players, and to what extent are we informing and ungrounded in theory and history or those ourselves thoroughly about the historical, wielding gross forms of political power for short existing and emergent policy agenda, and iden- term ends. These people and processes are then tifying where we might fit? called to the bar of an abstrusely formulated In an interesting interchange between John cultural idealism. This critical idealism would Fiske and an unnamed interlocutor, published retort that mine is the mealy-mouthed voice of in Fiske's Reading the Popular, the politics of liberal bourgeois compromise. Fiske's influential model of resistive populism A more reflective critique of the position Iam are brought to the fore. The resistive strategies advancing would raise the issue of the long term, imputed to consumers of popular culture are leavening effect of critical idealism. From where ones which, by definition, are never mobilised does tomorrow's public debate and potential into organisations that might seek to influence consensus issue? From today's utopian, abstruse, change in any institutional arrangement or pro- left-of-field thinking, that, at the time of its for- fessional practice by which cultural meaning is mulation, might appear counterindicated by the produced and delivered. While Fiske might realitiesofthepublicworld.Theclearestexample assert that `internal or semiotic resistance . . . is of this is the `sourcing' of femocrat reformism by an essential prerequisite of social change',17 the feminist movement politics. Similar sourcing re- resistance he champions actually undermines the lationships hold between the environmental strategies of organised reform movements be- movement and green politics, or between ethnic cause it sets itself against ideal standards of pro- advocacy and official discourses of multicul- fessional media practice and against empirical turalism. A more pragmatic variant of the same audience measurement. Both are essential if re- objection is that, if cultural studies doesn't hold formism is to gain some purchase in public policy to the humanities' traditional critical vocation, processes. who will, particularly in the wake of the break- The missing link is a social democratic view of down of more broadly-based social movements? citizenship and the trainings necessary to acti- These objections seem reasonable, so Iwant vate and motivate it. A renewed concept of citi- to respond to them carefully. zenship should be becoming increasingly central First, the model of the lone critic prophesying to cultural studies as it moves into the 1990s. is one Ido not wish to discount at all, indeed Like many developments in one disciplinary such a role is the sine qua non of critical practice. area, this development might easily look like However, it is rather disingenuous for the acad- the wheel is being re-invented. Political science, emy to don this mantle, when a great deal of the government, sociology, journalism, organisation critical work performed within the academy studies, to say nothing of traditional profes- could not plausibly claim such prophetic status. sional trainings such as law: each of these have The most effective public intellectuals on issues particular mobilisations of citizenship em- of culture in the Australian polity are not van- bodied in their curriculum profiles. Despite guard theorists, but those who work within the this, the emerging evidence for an attention to terms of a given (and, one might readily concede, citizenship in cultural studies signifies an im- narrow) set of public interest, liberal democratic portant advance in emphasis and direction. It and social democratic norms. Vanguard theory, demonstrates that it is coming to terms with its on the evidence we have to date, is less than neo-Marxist heritage as it realises that other pol- likely to translate into prophetic criticism. itical postures can be as radically reformist as The second response proceeds from the first. neo-Marxism without being automatically mar- To get to the nub of the problem, what is cultural ginalised in the public arena through the latter's studies' understanding of its political vocation? dependence on a totalistic and confrontational What is its vision of a better, more just, equit- rhetoric. For this reason, the perspectives of 19

Australian social democratic thinkers like Hugh An increasing series of calls to introduce a Stretton in social theory, Donald Horne, Peter policy orientation into cultural studies has been Wilenski, and H. C. `Nugget' Coombs in cul- evident in recent years.20 We hear that cultural tural and communications areas, or Francis studies remains fixated on theoretical and textual Castles in economics, should assume as great orientations which provide little purchase in an importance for rethinking the vocation of seeking to equip students with knowledge and cultural studies than the international fathers skills for citizenship and employment in the (and mothers) of the discipline. 1990s. The gap between textually-based studies Replacing shop-worn revolutionary rhetoric and policy cannot be bridged merely by further with the new command metaphor of citizenship refinements in theories of representation, in new commits cultural studies to a reformist strategy understandings of the audience or the `progres- within the terms of a social democratic politics, sive text', or in notions of sub-cultural resistance. and thus can connect it more organically to the Indeed, two of the British cultural studies well-springs of engagement with policy. Even apostates, Geoff Hurd and Ian Connell, have though, as Ham and Hill18 show, the policy argued that cultural critique, as a governing edu- process in modern capitalist states has arisen cational model, has actively deskilled students: within a liberal pluralist problematic, it need not be limited by liberalism's underdeveloped Cultural organisations, whether state or com- ideas of power and of the necessity of struggle mercial, have been regarded as targets for criti- for access to decision-making processes. cism and reconstruction in the light of certain And this concept of citizenship does not by cultural theory. While we accept there is a need any means imply a politics of the status quo ± a for cultural appraisal and reconstruction, we sort of primary school version of civics. Donald would also suggest that the predominant view Horne uses it to advance his Lockean notion of of cultural organisations within cultural studies the `cultural rights' of the citizen in modern has been misleading and that criticism has been social democracies. Graham Murdock and placed before understanding. In short, cultural Peter Golding use it to invite thinking about studies has been critical of enterprises whose information poverty in our age of increasingly modes of operation and social significance it 21 privatised communications. And it is also being does not properly comprehend. employed to pose questions about new forms of citizenship which may embrace larger units than Questions of policy do circulate at the margins the individual nation state, such as the emergent of the traditional core curricula of cultural stud- European community. Similarly, Mattelart, ies. In Trevor Barr's words, moving those mar- Delcourt and Mattelart propose a linguistic- ginal interests toward the centre of the cultural transnational community ± a `latin curriculum ultimately has to do with `political audio-visual space' ± in their 1984 report to the empowerment'.22 French Ministry of Culture.19 Such concerns And a focus on policy extended to both types have been abroad for decades in the ongoing of communications curricula ± semiotics-based debate in UNESCO concerning the New cultural studies on the one hand, and business World Information and Communications communication, journalism, public relations, Order (NWICO). marketing and advertising on the other ± offers Third, it is a fact that the substantial propor- the opportunity to bridge yawning gaps be- tion of cultural studies work is performed tween opposing traditions. Its integration into within academic arrangements that either priori- liberal arts and media production programs tise vocational trainings or seek to marry a lib- would encourage a firmer grasp of the social eral arts education with gestures toward such and vocational implications of cultural struggle training. These institutional orientations will as embodied in governmental and industrial pro- become more established, if not necessarily cesses. On the other hand, its integration into accepted, under current and any likely future industry-driven courses would draw students government policies. Pragmatically, then, there into a broader appreciation of the politics and are powerful reasons to review the current state ethics of their vocations and the reasonable le- of cultural studies. gitimacy of state intervention. 20

Finally, many of our protocols are disabling Consider the perennial issue of the nation as an because they take scant account of the local illustration of the importance of localism in in- conditions in which theory must be developed. tellectual work. The ascendent current of macro- It might seem like a truism to state that cul- level thought in cultural studies today lays to rest tural studies might appropriately develop differ- the nation state and invites linking positive op- ent emphases as it is practised in different parts portunities for internationalism with a renewed of the world. However, because Australia is a net communalism. This may be appropriate for cul- importer of ideas as much as goods and services, tural thought in a European context in the pre- it is all the more crucial for an Australian cultural sent climate, but it is wholly inappropriate in studies to be self-critical about its agenda, lest it virtually any context outside the First World, be set, by default, elsewhere. Ican't put it better including Australia. than the report of the Committee to Review There are high stakes involved in the argu- Australian Studies in Tertiary Education, when ments for internationalism and community it said that Australianising tertiary education against the nation. All the major cultural indus- would prevent the intellectual cringe that slides tries in Australia (film, television, the major arts `between a vacuous cosmopolitanism and an and the many community-based arts programs apologetic provincialism.'23 sponsored by the Australia Council) derive their To Australianise is not to call for a form of policy justification from their being national in intellectual tariff blockade. On the contrary, it scope. It is too early, if indeed it will ever be implies a much stronger and more perspicacious politically strategic, to pit the internationalist- engagementwithimportedtraditionsthanisgen- communalist position against the nation in Aus- erallythecase.Anditinnoway impliesanapriori tralia. defence of the status quo, rejecting out of hand Ultimately, despite Australia's byzantine tri- possible benefits flowing from greater inter- partite system of government, making it one of nationalisation of inquiry. It does suggest that the most `governed' countries in the world per an Australian cultural studies engaging with the capita, it is at the national level that debate on policy issues that impact on the future of Austra- cultural futures has to be staged. The optimum lian culture would involve, as we have seen, realistic future for local, regional, state, subcul- reconceptualising generaltheories of advertising, tural, ethnic, Aboriginal, experimental or in- considerably upgrading the focus on regulation novative futures in cultural production is as a positive underpinning of cultural produc- unavoidably bound into the future of national tion, and re-thinking the politics of culture in a cultural policies. In terms both of the intellectual non-British, non-North American setting. resourcing of policy development and in the Importing British cultural studies has meant myriad ways local, state and subcultural sites of privileging subcultural resistance to a repressive activity depend on national provision and sup- and class-defined state and state apparatus. This port, the national arena will remain the engine has much to do with the far-reaching influence room for cultural policy initiatives. For its part, of Thatcherism for over a decade as a negative cultural theory must take greater stock of its marker of the agenda for the British left, leading potential negative influence on progressive to the generally anti-statist tone of much cul- public policy outcomes and, if it is to orient itself tural studies, and the search for positive markers in a more valuable way toward policy impera- of the intrinsic subversiveness of everyday life tives,mustattendtothetasksofconsolidatingthe which is set firmly against a renewed concept of legitimacy of policy rhetorics which sustain a citizenship. The libertarianism implicit in this national cultural infrastructure. approach might find a greater echo in the United States (where the state consistently has willingly abetted rather than mollified economic and cul- Implications and Conclusions tural imperialism) than it ever should in Austra- lia, or for that matter many other countries Is it possible to regard a policy orientation where state activity has struggled to regulate within cultural studies as simply an add-on for the equitable flow of economic and cultural element, one more offering in the interdisciplin- goods and services. ary smorgasboard? Idon't think so. Ihave sug- 21 gested that the modal political rhetoric under- of cultural and communication studies in Aus- girding cultural studies would have to be re- tralia, as elsewhere. Finally, it would commit us examined, the saliency of neo-Marxist in rela- to a genuine localism, against the abstract theo- tion to social democratic language reassessed. reticism that usually passes as the currency of This alone would indicate a more thorough- international academic rates of exchange. going review of the cultural studies enterprise than the smorgasbord model would permit. There is nothing in what Ihave said that Notes should be taken to indicate a less critical vocation for cultural studies. However, what would count 1 Meaghan Morris, `Banality in Cultural Studies', in as the critical vocation would change. A cultural Patricia Mellencamp (ed.), Logics of Television studies which grasps and sustains links with (British Film Institute, London, 1990). policy will inquire across a greatly expanded 2 John Kelly, `Iron Lady in a Nanny's Uniform', Times Higher Education Supplement, No. 840 (9 field, but with methods far less totalistic and December 1988). abstract, far more modest and specific, than 3 See, for example, the British journal Screen's new those to which we are accustomed. editorial policy (in Vol. 31, No. 1), debate in that To treat policy adequately from a critical per- and other recent issues, and Richard Collins, Tele- spective, it is necessary to appreciate the coord- vision: Policy and Culture (Unwin Hyman, inated impact of economics, administrative law, London, 1990). cultural history, entertainment financing, gov- 4 As Manuel Alvarado and John O. Thompson ernment and parliamentary procedures, and so (eds), The Media Reader (British Film Institute, on, on the development of public policy. This London, 1990) do. See also Fred Inglis, Media means a more subtle and context-sensitive re- Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, Oxford, education in the roles of the state in mixed cap- 1990). 5 Elizabeth Jacka, `Australian Cinema ± An An- italist economies, away from monolithic and achronism in the '80s?', in Susan Dermody and wooden grand theories inspired more by critical Elizabeth Jacka (eds), The Imaginary Industry: purism than by the requirements for piecemeal, Australian Film in the Late '80s (Australian Film, on-going reformism. Television and Radio School, North Ryde, 1988), Critical policy research thus implies p. 118. more, rather than less, critical understanding 6 For discussion, see my `Figuring the Australian than is found in the traditions of cultural criti- Factor', Culture & Policy, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1990. cism developed exclusively within humanities- 7 Julie James Bailey, `Communicating with the De- based disciplines, and a significantly greater sen- cision Makers: The Role of Research, Scholarship sitivity to the extra-academic contexts within and Teaching in Film and Media Studies', Staff Seminar, Griffith University, 20 October, 1989. which such research must circulate for it to ex- 8 John Docker, `Popular Culture versus the State: an ercise its potential leavening function. Argument Against Australian Content Regulation In summary, then, a policy orientation in cul- for TV', Unpublished ms., Attachment to Feder- tural studies would shift the `command meta- ation of Australian Commercial Television Sta- phors' of cultural studies away from rhetorics tions (FACTS) submission to ABT Inquiry into of resistance, progressiveness, and anti-commer- Australian Content on Commercial Television, 16 cialism on the one hand, and populism on the August 1988 (Document D020B, ABT Inquiry other, toward those of access, equity, empower- File). A shorter version is published as `Popular ment and the divination of opportunities to exer- Culture versus the State: an Argument Against cise appropriate cultural leadership. It would not Australian Content Regulation for TV', Media necessarily discount critical strategies and prior- Information Australia, No. 59, 1991. For further discussion, see Stuart Cunningham, Jennifer ities, but may indeed enhance and broaden them. Craik, Tony Bennett and Ian Hunter, `Response It is not a call simply to add another `perspective' to Docker', Media Information Australia, No. 59, to the academic sideboard, but would necessitate 1991. rethinking the component parts of the field from 9 Graeme Turner, `It Works for Me: British Cultural the ground up. It offers one major means of Studies, Australian Cultural Studies, Australian rapprochement between the critical and the vo- Film', Paper delivered to The Future of Cultural cational divide that structures the academic field Studies Conference, April 1990. 22

10 Industries Assistance Commission, Inter- 18 Christopher Ham and Michael Hill, The Policy national Trade in Services, Report No. 418 Process in the Modern Capitalist State (Harvester AGPS, 30 June 1989, p. 202. Press, Brighton, 1984). 11 Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, Australian 19 Donald Horne, `Think ± or Perish! Towards a Cinema: The First Eighty Years (Angus and confident and productive Australia', Occasional Robertson/Currency Press, Sydney, 1983) and Paper No.8, Commission for the Future, June Albert Moran, Images and Industry: Television 1988, and The Public Culture (Pluto Press, Drama Production in Australia (Currency Press, Sydney,1986), Graham Murdock and Peter Gold- Sydney, 1985). ing, `Information Poverty and Political Inequal- 12 Phillip Lynch, `Advance Australia', Bulletin 2 ity: Citizenship in the Age of Privatised February 1982, p. 72. Communications', Journal of Communication 13 See Gary Sturgess, `The Emerging New Nation- 39, No. 3, Summer 1989, pp. 180±95, Armand alism', Bulletin 2 February 1982. Mattelart, Xavier Delcourt and Michele Matte- 14 Stephen Alomes, A Nation at Last? The lart, International Image Markets (London, Changing Character of Australian Nationalism Comedia, 1984). 1880±1988 (Angus and Robertson, North Ryde, 20 For example, Toby Miller, `Film and Media Citi- 1988), p. 338, Tim Rowse and Albert Moran, zenship', Filmnews February 1990, Miller, `There ```Peculiarly Australian'' ± The Political Con- are Full Professors in this Place who Read Noth- struction of Cultural Identity', in Australian So- ing but Cereal Boxes: Australian Screen in Aca- ciety, 4th edition, eds. Sol Encel and Lois Bryson demic Print', Media Information Australia, No. (Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1984) and Noel 55, February 1990, Trevor Barr, `Reflections on King and Tim Rowse, ```Typical Aussies'': Tele- Media Education: The Myths and Realities', vision and Populism in Australia', Framework, Metro Media and Education Magazine, No. 82, Nos. 22/23, Autumn 1983. Autumn 1990, Tony Bennett, `Putting Policy into 15 Kathy Myers, Understains ± the Sense and Seduc- Cultural Studies', Paper delivered to The Future tion of Advertising (Comedia Publishing Group, of Cultural Studies Conference, April 1990. London, 1986). 21 Geoff Hurd, and Ian Connell, `Cultural Educa- 16 William Leiss, Stephen Kline and Sut Jhally, Ad- tion: A Revised Programme', Media Information vertising as Social Communication: Persons, Australia, No. 53, August 1989, pp. 23±30. Products, and Images of Well-Being (Methuen, 22 Barr, `Reflections on Media Education', p. 16. Toronto, 1986). 23 Windows onto Worlds: Studying Australia at Ter- 17 John Fiske, Reading the Popular (Unwin tiary Level (The CRASTE Report), Canberra: Hyman, Boston, 1989), p. 179. AGPS, June 1987, p. 18.