Making Power, Doing Politics • • The Film Industry and Economic Development in Aotearoa/New Zealand Eva Neitzert A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology London School of Economics and Political Science November 2007 UMI Number: U615519 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615519 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 11 CTlOd 'xlbb d 5 9 S ^ I hereby declare that the work presented within this thesis is solely my own except where explicitly acknowledged according to standard academic referencing conventions. Eva Neitzert Date The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without prior written consent of the author. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I understand that in the event of my thesis not being approved by the examiners, this declaration will become void. 2 Abstract Over the last decade creative industries, such as film and fashion, have become increasingly commonplace items on economic development agendas at urban, regional, and national scales. A sizeable academic literature has emerged to document this ‘creative turn’ in economic policy. The existing literature often locates the widespread adoption of creative industry policies within either a capitalist system that increasingly demands creativity if accumulation is to be secured or a series of powerful travelling policy discourses which impose themselves on local landscapes irrespective of fit. These explanations are, however, rarely substantiated empirically to show how, in very material ways, capitalism or travelling policy discourses make demands of a particular locality. In this thesis, Actor- Network Theory (ANT) is used to argue for a less ‘determined’ approach to the study of creative industries in economic development: the assumptions about macro phenomena structuring the local are put aside in order to tell the story of one situated case of creative industries-based economic development. The specific case that is examined is the film industry of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In the period from 1999 to 2005, the Aotearoa/New Zealand film industry went from being almost entirely absent from economic development policy to playing a central role. The thesis draws on extensive documentary analysis and 58 interviews to construct a description of the practices, devices, techniques, and knowledges that were deployed to constitute, shape, contest, and stabilise the role of the film industry within economic development. What emerges from this description is that contingency and opportunism, rather than capitalist demands or global travelling policy discourses, are key to explaining the prioritisation of the film industry. This suggests that ANT makes visible political processes that often remain hidden from view but are crucial to understanding the way that power is made and politics is done. 3 Table of Contents A bstract.............................................................................................................................................3 Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ 4 List of Figures ...................................................................................................................................6 List of Images...................................................................................................................................7 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... 8 Abbreviations...................................................................................................................................9 Chapter 1: Introduction...............................................................................................................10 Chapter 2: Why ANT? Explaining the Rise of Creative Industries within Economic Development...................................................................................................................................19 Beginnings: The Existing Literature...................................................................................... 20 Rupture: Latour’s ‘Powers of Association’...........................................................................35 Stabilisation: Becoming an ANT........................................................................................... 40 Introducing the Case: The Film Industry of Aotearoa/New Zealand................................. 47 Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: Methodology and Method....................................................................................... 51 Doing a Sociology of Associations....................................................................................... 51 Data Analysis and Writing Up................................................................................................70 Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 73 Chapter 4: Cultural, Economic, or Something Else? Filmmaking and Government, 1896-1990s.......................................................................................................................................74 The Arrival of Film in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1896-1920s..............................................75 Government Filmmaking from the ‘Tin Shed’ to the National Film Unit, 1920s-1950s..87 The (Re)Birth of the Independents, 1950s-1970s................................................................. 95 Establishing and Stabilising the New Zealand Film Commission, 1970s-1990s............ 100 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 113 4 Chapter 5: Making and Stabilising the ‘New Moment’.......................................................115 The Turn to Creative Industries: Following the ‘Paper Trail’........................................... 116 The Turn to Creative Industries (or Film?): The Interview Accounts.............................. 123 Making Politics Possible: On Power, Enrolment, and Framing........................................129 Stabilising through Framing: Two Cases of Quantification.............................................. 141 Conclusion..............................................................................................................................162 Chapter 6: Whose Film Industry? What Future? Industrial and Non-Governmental Actors Making and Contesting Film Projects........................................................................164 The Screen Production Industry Taskforce: Competing Future-Visions......................... 165 Unions and Guilds: Claiming a Voice, Becoming a Political Participant........................191 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 211 Chapter 7: On the Usefulness of ANT..................................................................................... 213 ANT and Political Stabilisation........................................................................................... 214 ANT and a ‘Better’ World....................................................................................................222 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 229 Chapter 8: Returning to the Creative Industries and Economic Development.............. 231 Macroeconomic Explanations............................................................................................. 232 The Pressures of Globalisation............................................................................................ 239 Travelling Policy...................................................................................................................243 A Different Theoretical Frame?.......................................................................................... 244 Conclusion: Moving Forward with ‘Weak’ ANT?.............................................................252 References.....................................................................................................................................257 5 List of Figures Figure 1: ‘Taking on the World’ Future-Vision..........................................................................165 Figure 2: ‘Strong Aotearoa/New Zealand’ Future-Vision.........................................................166 Figure 3: SPIT