Concept and classification of cultural industries
The concept of “cultural industry” originated from the controversy and criticism of “mass culture” by Theodor Adono and Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in 1947. Ever since they included “cultural industries” into the scope of research, the theoretical and practical research of cultural industries has received great attention from academics and governments of various countries, and the changes and development of cultural industries have contributed to the rapid development of the economies of various countries.
1.Differentiation of the concept of cultural industry
The definition of cultural industry should mostly include radio and television broadcasting, book and newspaper publishing, advertisement and performing arts. The primary goal of all these cultural activities is to communicate with the audience and create texts, which are eventually presented to the audience in the form of cultural products.
2. Cultural industries and cultural undertakings
Cultural industries and cultural undertakings are relative concepts. Generally speaking, cultural industries are dominated by the market and are operational, mainly using the market to allocate resources, while cultural undertakings are dominated by the government and are of public interest, satisfying people’s cultural needs by providing undifferentiated public cultural products and services.
The characteristics of cultural undertakings are mainly reflected in three aspects:
The first is social public welfare. The vast majority of cultural institutions of public interest, such as libraries, museums, cultural centres and art galleries, are invested in and managed by the State with daily funding, and are rightly owned by all citizens of society.
The second is social sharing, whereby cultural programmes of public interest are owned and shared by society.
Thirdly, social utility.
2.Classification of cultural industry
At present, among the various international industrial classification standards, the three major industrial classifications proposed by the famous British economist Fisher in his book “The Conflict of Security and Progress” published in 1935 are the most widely known.
According to the order of historical development of social production activities, all economic activities are classified into primary, secondary and tertiary industries: the primary industry is agriculture, the secondary industry is industry and construction, and the tertiary industry mainly refers to the “service industry”, the sector that serves for both production and consumption, including other related industries other than the primary and secondary industries. Besides, some international organisations have also formulated their own industrial classification standards according to their internal industrial classification principles.
Reference:
文化产业 (2023) 维基百科. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry (Accessed: 24 October 2023).
‘A study into effect the terminological definition of cultural industry has on creativity of cultural contents – based on comparative study between Korean cultural industry, US Entertainment Industry and UK creative industry -’ (2010) Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship, 5(1), pp. 1–18. doi:10.16972/apjbve.5.1.201003.1.
‘重视文化产业’ (2015) 文化产业的Routledge伴侣, pp. 51–60. doi:10.4324/9781315725437-10.
Cultural Industries: A challenge for the future of culture (1982). Paris: Unesco.
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