Making Capital from Culture: The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural Production 311012548X, 9783110125481

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de Gruyter Studies in Organization 35 Ryan: Making Capital from Culture

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G regard, this study ~~ heavily influenced by the work of Stewart Clegg (1975; Clegg and DunkerI'ey-'I9S-0rCregg'ifgeneral argument is that the study of organisation and hence of domination has to move beyond naturalistic accounts of the surface level of power and the-diversity of objects and issues experienced in the everyday workplac~~ structure of domination within which power is or can be exercised. Analysis should search out the rules w1)ich link power and domin~tion. In fact, he argues, the three concepts of(power, rule and domination\provide the key to understanding an organisation's mode of rationality add the structure of relations which constitute it. The essential points of his arguments are summarised in (-- Figure 1.1. From Weberian premises, Clegg argues that individual social actions are motivated by collectively recognised and publicly available social rules which orient individual social actions in rationally structured ways, where the rules themselves are profoundly influenced by the underlying structur'esoT3!o~~!?-!l:!i~,n. The exercise o{E.?wer, therefore, is constructed and acted out by individuals as ruled enactment. Individuals or members of an organisational stratum as social beings should be regarded as bearers of the particular rationality associated with an organisation or type of organisation, within which an objective principle is regarded as a concrete object which governs the domination. In particular, economic power in business organisations is embedded, displayed and It may also be that Marx' method is founded on ~anscendental realism, a ~ . ------'~.-.---'"- ... .. -,~,~~.~...... label whlch mlght also apply to this work. Since it has a substantlve and not methodological focus, I do not wish to contribute to the debate over a realist philosophy of science - even though I regard it as particularly interesting preferring instead to adopt a conventional materialist methodology and allowing the results to stand for themselves. Sayer (e.g. 1979, 1983) has made imp ortanlcgntributions on Marx' method (see also Mepham 1979, Nicolaus 1973) . .:::, -c'B1;ask~~ work on realism (e.g. 1978, 1979) is particularly important; see also Kea-Cand Urry (1975). Andrew Sayer (1984) takes a realist approach to method in social science; Erik Olin Wright (e.g. 1985,1987) explicitly attempts to resuscitate a scientific Marxism using realist assumptions but based on a more positivist methodology than that used here.

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Methodological Considerations Structure Surface _ structure

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Source: Clegg (1975: 78)

Figure 1.1 The Structure Of Power In Organisations

articulated through different types of rules~hich constitute the day-to-day '--._realities of the capitalist labour process apiL~l1ich mediate and enable the range of strategies from which actors may select (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 444-456, for an extended discussion of the embeddedness of economic action and social structure see also Granovetter 1985). Organisations, accordingly, need to be conceptualised as political units of structured selectivity rules organised around issues which are crucial or significant for the modes of rationality through which the organisation operates (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 480A81). Moreover, rule combinations are shaped by the one or several hegemonic forms of life which underpin an organisation. Each form of life represents deeply embedded, specific, historical human practices, reproduced through the dominance of unreflected, reified conventions. Combined, they make up a specific, situated mode of production. The theorising power of a hegemonic form of life (expressed through the organisation's 'organic intellectuals', the administrative and managerial strata), reflexively reconstitutes the mode of production of its own practice independently of the conscious know-

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Towards a Sociology of Culture

ledge of particular agents located in production (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 499-500). For researchers of organisation: This conception of visible, diverse structure being underlain by rules offers us a form of reductionism which Clegg (1975) [has termed] a mode of rationality ... Action remains, as it is, on the surface. What one is doing is to construct a possible ~bstract model (a mode, Ilota determinant logic) not of action but of the rationality whiCh- can be demonstrated through deconstructing that action. The abstraction 'mode of rationality' is itself conceptualised within the abstraction of the mode of production. The mode of rationality is the analytical formulation of sedimented selection rules. These rules are the means by which owners and controllers of the means of production orient their practice towards the hegemonic domination of some objective principie;-·which, in the last instance, will tend to be conditioned economically by the mode of production (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 502).

In other words, a mode of rationality and the organisational form through which it is realised is analytically available through deconstruction of the routine practices of everyday organisational life. The research task is to ~.-L sJfCtlu;_ough the empirical reality of a vast diversity of visible structures, :~some resIdual, some mature and others emerging, and from these manifest contents and patterns, work out the inherent conditions which would . ____ make them possible. This can be achieved, in Sayer's terms,_ via..SI:!t.iqu5 "I t beginning with empirical data taken from the phenomenal foiiTiS of so-Cial life, retroductively formulating an abstract account of the underlying real relations and the mechanisms of their realisation, their institutional orders and their dynamics, and elucidating the underlying forms of life: "postulating mechanisms which should they exist would explain how the phenomena under investigation come to assume the forms in which they are experienced" (Sayer 1983: 40). From this perspective, the focus of enquiry must be the sets of embedded selection rules which constitute a particular form of organisation. This is its enacted environment, its mode of rationality, the constituent elements of which can be identified and modelled. . \ In this study, I takl art apd capita~} to be the forms of life which underpin the corporations of (cultur¢, and the. art/capital relation" as the foundation of the culture industry. I show progressIvely hbw its particular forms of expression - for example, in the contradictions of the artist/capitalist relation - generate particular logics which incline development in particular directions (this is the tendential sense in which the notion of necessity is employed throughout this analysis). In their modern, complex, capitalist form, the mechanisms for realising the fundamental relations of artist and capitalist under present-day conditions of capital accumulation appear as corporate conditions of production; in particular, they take the form of the project team and its characteristic structure of relations,

Methodological Considerations

21

formatting as a system of control, the necessity of publicity relations and the associated orientations of professionalism and commercialism, and so on. These provide structural explanations for the apparent~ultiplicity of stars and styles which comprise the myriadsuifaces"of Hie'ciiltural marketplace and the tendency towards formula and cliche which marks so much cultural production. Not that this analytical approach entails simply making deductions from the fundamental relations underpining the culture industry. Data and concepts are brought together in the gradual delineation of the historical forms through which the industry is constituted. Facts relating to organisations, activities and individuals are. analysed by bringing macro-historical, epochal categories to bear. These include those devised by Marx in his critique of capital, and some from within the world of art (art, artist, artistry, creativity, originality) which I use in the same abstract sense as capitalist, wage-labour, use-value, exchange-value, and so on. Throughout / the analysis, as the interplay of data and concep~proceeds, I gradually construct t_~L9L hist~!1~.2LS:_9:!yg,QIi~s includingLJhe project team, pro- d ,;) ducer, director, executants, stars, styles, creatives, formatting, commercialism, professionalism, the pUblicity complex and so o~ These specify the principal characteristics of the corporate form of capItalist cultural commodity production. In doing so, my argument constantly shifts from the empirical level to its structuring principles and back again. Other movements also enter the analysis. On the one hand, it moves progressively from the general, the abstract and the epochal (chapter 2 and 3) to the particular, the historical, the concrete (chapter 4 to 8) - so to speak, from ~ sq.,ne..ar..-Simultaneously, it moves laterally from production to ci~a- " hon (as one would expect from an historical materialist analysis) and back again (which one might not), gradually broadening the field of vision to show how the rules which constitute the creative stage of production are mediated not only by the rules of value production but also by the demands of market realisation. These movements give the analysis an unfolding character. The early chapters construct a series of concepts which are examined initially from a produGtion perspective and later from a circulation perspective. A good example is, 'the~!~, discussed in (I different contexts as 'th~9~!ra~ted.artist', 'l~E~~X~Cl!t?l}t', 'anart~~!.. ) of signifi,caJ!.tr:epgtation', and 'an artist s)J.bj~ct t.o-.c.Q!pmercialism'. None ""( of ' are equiv,i!lencrePresentati6risof thesime object"bUt more like synonyms highlighting different dimensions of a multi-faceted object, each taking the specificity of their meaning from the context in which each is discussed. The shape of the corporate form is progressively delineated in its full complexity: though not as a complete and comprehensive unity, for social life is not that ordered (which is why I avoid offering a consolidated

these

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Towards a Sociology of Culture

model in the final chapter), but more like a symphony which develops themes through different moods, tempos and instrumentation. Before moving on, an associated device employed in the analysis should be briefly noted. In constructing a model of the corporate form, I piece together the fundamental structure of relations if which it is comprised, by identifying its constituent positions (my structure of relations provides some specific contents of Clegg's forms of life). As Marx developed his analysis outwards from the core capitalist/wage labourer relation, this analysis does much the same. The corporations of culture, however, cannot be reduced to unmediated figures such as capitalist and worker. Corporate capital is intersected by institutions such as management as distinct from ownership, marketing as distinct from financial and general management, as so on. Most importantly, the worker in the creative st.age of production is a particular form of labour: thearhst:·-Ralher"·· than focusing on the diverse and highly specialised technical division of labour found in the corporations of culture, I deal with various organisational or occupational strata as given by a common historical function, employment and authority relations (see also Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 470-475, Crompton and Gubbay 1977: 94), defining each as a specific position in the corporate structure of relations. Hence, for example, within the creative stage of production, the artist (epochal category), when understood as the collective labourer, appears as the project team (historical category), comprising a producer, director, leading and supporting executant, and so on. The project team as an historically specific form of organisationalHfe in the culture industry becomes the leading edge of my ongoing analysis. To return to conceptual and methodological issues raised by Clegg and Dunkerley's approach to the study of organisation, they note that: This model of organisation derives from an earlier analysis of language-in-use which treated conversational materials collected in an organisation as the surface manifestation of a deeper underlying mode of rationality (see Clegg 1975). In the context being developed here, the organisation structures can be conceived in terms of the selection rules which can be analytically constructed as an explanation of its social and practice (its surface detail, what it does). These rules, collected together, may be conceived of as a mode of rationality (1980: 504).

In his earlier study, Clegg had investigated the social structures operating in a construction site by prising open the talk between members of different organisational strata and the accounts they gave of their actions, to reveal the conditions which made them possible. In doing so, he was able to reveal the contextual, operative face of power, to demonstrate how relations of power, rule and domination constituted the workplace and relations within and between workers and managers. I have used this

Methodological Considerations

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approach in this study, although across a wider range of empirical materials. Underlying structures can be inferred retroductively through deconstruction of surface appearances which, if they exist in the form postulated, would explain their form of appearance. Form can be abstracted from empirical materials such as actors talk and actions, accounts of their actions, spatial and cultural aspects of the setting, the iconisised objects which regulate issues within the labour process, and so on. This approach raises certain methodological issues concerning the ._".y"'alidity of using actors themselves to gain insight into the institutional oidei-s-'within which and through which they work, and the analytical methods to be employed in prising open empirical materials such as actors' accounts. In the final chapter of Giddens' The Constitution of Society (1984), he discusses 'Structuration Theory, Empirical Research and Social Critique' by comparing the demands of structuration theory with examples of r.l already-existing research. His focus is tne-iwo"poIa'rlffes of research: the analysis of strategic conduct through hermeneutic elucidation of frames of ~; / meaning, and the examination and specification of institutional orders, where, among other points, he challenges the conventional view that the former demands so-called qualitative methodologies and quantitative methodologies for the latter. These claims derive from arguments sustained throughout all his recent works on the nature of society and hence sociology: in particular, his understanding of structure and its duality and the relationship between structure and agency. At one point he quotes from the transcript of a moment of interaction in a courtroom, where a judge, a public defender (PD) and a district attorney (DA) are bargaining over the sentence for a prisoner ;Vho has pleaded guilty to a second-degree ' burglary charge: PD: Your Honour, we request immediate sentencing and waive the probation report. Judge: What's his record? \/ PD: He has a prior drunk and a GTA [grand theft, auto]. Nothing serious. This is just a shoplifting case. He did enter the K-Mart with intent to steal. But really all we have here is petty theft. Judge: What do the people have? DA: Nothing either way. Judge: Any objection to immediate sentencing? DA:No. Judge: How long has he been in?

PD: Eighty-three days, Judge: I make this a misdemeanour by PC article 17 and sentence you to ninety days in County Jail, with credit for time served (Giddens 1984: 330).

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Towards a Sociology of Culture

Giddens makes a series of observations on this exchange which provide a concise account of the method of analysis employed in this study (Clegg 1975: 101-124, makes similar remarks). Because of their relevance here they are worth quoting at length: v/

Such a situated strip of interaction, like any other, can readily be prised open to indicate how what seems to be a trivial interchange is profoundly implicated in the reproduction of social institutions. Each turn in the talk exchanged between -participants is grasped as meaningful by them (and by the reader) only in the !clci!. . invocation of institutional features of the system of criminal justice. These are ~drawn-upon by each speaker, who (rightly) assumes them to be mutual knowledge also held by the others. Note that the content of such mutual knowledg6presumes vastly more than just awareness of the tactics of 'proper procedure' in such cases, although that is also involved. Each participant knows a vast amount about what a __ ~legal system' is, about normative procedures of law, about what prisoner$,advOc~tes, f~ciges do, etc. In order to 'bring off' the interaction, the participants make use of their knowledge of the institutional order in which they are involved in such a way as to render their interchange 'meaningful'. However, by invoking the institutional order in this way - and there is no other way for participants in interaction to render what they do intelligible and coherent to one another - they thereby contribute to reproducing it. Moreover, it is essential to see that in reproducing it they also reproduce its 'facticity' as a source of structural constraint (upon themselves and upon others). They treat the system of justice as a 'real' order of relationships within which their own interaction is situated and which it _ expresses. And it is a 'real' (i.e. structurally stable) order of relationships precisely because they and others like them in connected and similar contexts, accept it as such - not necessarily in their discursive consciousness but in the practical consciousness incorporated in what they do ... The 'facticity' of structural properties [is~ontained in the duality of structure. The point is a subtle and profound one, linking the very possibility of the mutual intelligibility and coherence of situated interaction to 'facticity' on a broadly based institutional level (1984: 330-331).

Of the points raised by Giddens, two have methodological implications worth highlighting. The first is that notwithstanding the possibility that there may be conditions of action of which they are unaware and consequences of their actions they are unable to control, since actors are bearers of detailed practical and discursive consciousness of the conditions under which they act in their everyday lives, actors themselves - or rather, the contents of their consciousness - are a valid and reliable resource to researchers concerning the institutional orders under investigation. This is particularly so if the researcher has acquired an insider's understanding of the terms through which those knowledges are sustained; if the researcher is able to share, in other words, in the mutual knowledges and collectively recognised and available social rules which link them and through which they act. The second major point is that the objective ...,.' " '.

Methodological Considerations

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outcomes (discourse, objects) of relations between situated actors, contain within them mediated traces of the rules which constitute the positions in the first place. As Giddens has demonstrated, these surface phenomena can be unpacked to reveal the facti city of their underlying structures and the mechanisms through which they are realised; that is, the form and content of the rules which instantiate the institutional orders - or in Clegg's terms, the forms of life and modes of rationality - in which situated actors are embedded and through which they must act. For these reasons, the conventional practices and issues which arise in the corporations of culture became the empirical focus of this study, from which I have abstracted their underlying groups of structural principles which are crucial for the modes of rationality through which the organisation d operates. The study had begun from the recognition that thUJJrI?gr~tL~lls_o("" ,~culture were capitalist organisations geared to profit via the production of cuTtural commodities but that they were underpined by two distinct modes of rationality - one afCaiid the other£"~pi1a.J - and that one contiadld~J'::-' ··'"·the'oth-er: This meanf that fundamenraUy, the sets ofselecilve·rules -uiiderlyiffg organisations in the sphere of commercial culture would be related to those associated with the capitalist labour process. Two fundamental issues for the culture industry became, from the outset, the principle themes of the study. The first was that ~tte production process inside these major business units is separated intd,9:.."_~!~_Cl_~l~~_..sJ:~ge Cit:l:q.l:i.. _LeJ?xgciuction and distribution stage and that th~J()rl]:er, as a workplace, is organise(faiorig11nes"quIie-"uiilikethe industrial processes which mark the latter. I knew before the commencement of this project that creation of the original is a highly structured process but not in commonplace ways, because of the unusual characteristics of artistic or creative work and the personality and talents of the individuals employed there: the artist, in other words, represents a valorisation problem in the capitalist labour process. Equally, I was aware that another of the main problems of the culture industry is the truncated product life cycle of cultural commodities: that the work of art represents an enormous problem in achieving the full realisation of value for the corporations of culture. Before beginning the fieldwork, therefore, and with the assistance of ethnographies and studies conducted by writers such as Powdermaker (1950), Moran (e.g. 1982) and Coser et al. (1982), I had already begun formulating the framework of the ideas which are presented in chapter 2 and 3 (although, because the logic of research differs from the logic of presentation, their elaboration had to wait for the deeper understanding of the labour process that came with the final stage of fieldwork). The first stage of fieldwork began as an exploration intended to gain a