Surrendering the Space

This essay tests the claims made by some versions of convergence culture to be the next step forward for Cultural Studies. It does this by examining the teaching programmes that have been generated by various formations of convergence culture: programmes in new media studies, creative industries and digital media studies. The results of this examination are cause for concern: most of these programmes appear to have surrendered the space won for Cultural Studies in the university curriculum in favour of an instrumentalist focus on the training, rather than the education, of personnel to work in the emerging media industries. The essay argues therefore that while such developments may represent themselves as emerging from within Cultural Studies, in practice they have turned out to have very little to do with Cultural Studies at all. Keywords: teaching Cultural Studiescurriculumnew media studiescreative industriesdigital media studies Notes 1. This refers to the inflation of the price of tulips shortly after their introduction to Western Europe in the seventeenth century, when tulips became, briefly, the flimsy foundation for a new speculative economy. 2. Henry Jenkins (2006 Jenkins, H. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide, New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]) book is a reference point for this phrase, of course, but as the editors’ framing of this issue indicates, convergence culture is more widespread, influential and a little more diverse than an exclusive focus on Jenkins’ nonetheless significant book would allow. 3. Why notice this? One of the interesting distinctions between the adjacent fields of communications studies and Cultural Studies is that until recently it was seen as virtually impossible to conceive of Cultural Studies being located within a business programme. While it is not unusual for communications to be housed there, Cultural Studies was regarded as antithetical to the professional orientation of a business programme. 4. The content of these can vary quite widely, from the Media Studies 2.0 advanced by David Gauntlett (2007 Gauntlett , D. 2007 ‘ Media Studies 2.0 ’, Theory.org , 24 February. Available at: http://www.theory.org.uk/mediastudies2-print.htm (accessed 16 December 2008) . [Google Scholar]) to the ‘cultural science’ model proposed by John Hartley (2008 Hartley, J. 2008. The future is an open future: cultural studies at the end of the “long twentieth century” and the beginning of the “Chinese century”. Cultural Science, 1(1): 1–21. [Google Scholar]). The politics of these two examples are also very different. 5. Due to the range of nomenclature used, and to the fact that while a school or department might call itself creative industries without actually offering a degree programme of that name, it is quite hard to be confident that one's search for these programmes is comprehensive. However, I have looked at all the programmes I could locate in both countries and so I am confident that they constitute at least a representative sample. 6. Tony Bennett's contribution to the Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler anthology (1992) is arguably the point at which this becomes a paradigm of international significance. 7. Stuart Cunningham's (1992) Framing Culture was particularly contentious in its claims to replace the critical tradition in Cultural Studies; debates about this book and indeed what came to be called ‘the policy moment’, were sufficiently important that there was an issue of the journal Media Information Australia devoted to discussing it (Flew et al. 1994 Flew , T. , Hawkins , G. , & Jacka , E. 1994 ‘The policy moment’ , a special issue of Media Information Australia, no. 73, August . [Google Scholar]). 8. This was the UK Government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport's policy framework, The Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS 1998); there does also seem to be a link with the Australian government's Creative Nation (1994) policy but this was very much a cultural industries rather than a creative industries approach. 9. I do not want to get involved in a discussion of this research agenda as part of this essay; my critique of it is complicated and demands more space than I could give it here. It will, however, be part of a book that is currently in progress, with the working title of What's Become of Cultural Studies? to be published by Sage in late 2011. In the meantime, there is Justin O'Connor's (2009) extremely thoughtful and useful critique of the QUT Creative Industries research agenda. 10. That is, if we think of this as encompassing both the traditional disciplines such as history and philosophy as well as the so-called ‘new humanities’, such as Cultural Studies, gender studies and media studies. 11. This was the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). 12. Success rates for these are more than double those for the ‘basic research’ programme, the Discovery grants. It is, therefore, the place for early career researchers to go, and those with a limited track record, with some hope for success. Concentrating efforts here, then, certainly increases income if that is all one wants to do. For those with strong industry connections, such as the creative industries, it has proven a successful approach. 13. These are the Universities of Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Western Australia, Monash and the University of New South Wales. 14. I should acknowledge that this formulation was raised in a conversation with me by my colleague Mark Andrejevic.