Toward a Political Economy of Culture

Several of the most important and influential political economists of communication working today explore a rich mix of topics and issues that link work, policy studies, and research and theory about the public sphere to the heritage of political economy. Familiar but still exceedingly important topics in critical political economy studies are well represented here: market structures and media concentration, regulation and policy, technological impacts on particular media sectors, information poverty, and media access. The book also features new topics for political economy study, including racism in audience research, the value and need for feminist approaches to political economy studies, and the relationship between the discourse of media finance and the behavior of markets.

The authors are to be congratualted for the clarity of their writting . . . Likely to prompt deep reflection and to establish a conceptual framework by which the political economy of communication and culture can be addressed in unison and even more aptly in the future,Toward a Political Economy of Culture should be required reading not only in specialized courses on media, communication, and discourse, but also in more general courses on political economy., This fine collection is fundamental to understanding how culture, markets, and entertainment in general are becoming more and more guided by economic logic and decisions made by just a few corporations. This valuable book should be read by academics and graduate students in political economy, media studies, and sociology of culture and film studies.

Andrew Calabrese is associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Colin Sparks is professor of media studies and director of the Communication and Media Research Institute of the University of Westminster.