Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 338-369). Also available in print.

The links between national identity and the music industry in Canada are too diverse to be understood with any simplistic model of the nation. In early twentieth century Italy Ahtonio Gramsci examined the consumption of serialized stories written by foreigners. He developed a view of popular culture which focussed upon the role of the State in maintaining national unity. Since the federal State in Canada has intervened in the country's music business in recent years, Gramsci's schema provides us with a useful framework for that case. Moreover, his work avoids an orchestrated view of the nation or a narrow specification of the contents of culture. It allows us to take a view that Canadian culture is whatever Canadian's choose to write. Due to its inductive beginnings and theoretical shortcomings, the schema is not applied rigidly to music made by Canadians. Rather it has been kept on the sidelines to explore representations of Canadian music, the broadcasting, sound recording and concert promotion industries, and finally the future of music made in Canada. Gramsci's schema is one way to distinguish between the cause and uses of the nation in particular arguments. His ideas also explain why popular culture matters, without specifying its content or giving it artificial coherence. A framework is provided which admits that, in a society based upon exchange, the nation is fully implicated within a wider social fabric, so frequently cultural differences cannot be simplistically aligned with national borders. It allows us to reject essentialist nationalism and therefore the possibility of using the nation as a reason to suggest Canadian musicians are falling short, by not doing something different from their foreign counterparts. In its place the schema enables us to celebrate Canadian artists for what they have done in contributing to a wider sphere, and allows us to praise environments in which Canadian talent can be recognized and allowed to grow, whatever forms it takes.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

The links between national identity and the music industry in Canada are too diverse to be understood with any simplistic model of the nation. In early twentieth century Italy Ahtonio Gramsci examined the consumption of serialized stories written by foreigners. He developed a view of popular culture which focussed upon the role of the State in maintaining national unity. Since the federal State in Canada has intervened in the country's music business in recent years, Gramsci's schema provides us with a useful framework for that case. Moreover, his work avoids an orchestrated view of the nation or a narrow specification of the contents of culture. It allows us to take a view that Canadian culture is whatever Canadian's choose to write. Due to its inductive beginnings and theoretical shortcomings, the schema is not applied rigidly to music made by Canadians. Rather it has been kept on the sidelines to explore representations of Canadian music, the broadcasting, sound recording and concert promotion industries, and finally the future of music made in Canada. Gramsci's schema is one way to distinguish between the cause and uses of the nation in particular arguments. His ideas also explain why popular culture matters, without specifying its content or giving it artificial coherence. A framework is provided which admits that, in a society based upon exchange, the nation is fully implicated within a wider social fabric, so frequently cultural differences cannot be simplistically aligned with national borders. It allows us to reject essentialist nationalism and therefore the possibility of using the nation as a reason to suggest Canadian musicians are falling short, by not doing something different from their foreign counterparts. In its place the schema enables us to celebrate Canadian artists for what they have done in contributing to a wider sphere, and allows us to praise environments in which Canadian talent can be recognized and allowed to grow, whatever forms it takes. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Much of what we know about workplace inequality, we know from studies on work in industrial and information-based economies. There has been less interrogation into how processes of inequality are formed and sustained in creative work and cultural industries. Given the growing trend away from traditional work rooted in formal organizations and toward cultural industries, how can we understand the relationship between work and inequality in non-standard, creative labour? To answer this question I explore the world of stand-up comedy by drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with stand-up comedians and over one hundred hours of observational data. My analysis reveals that comedy work is organized around the image of an ‘ideal worker,’ an ideal maintained by intersubjective mechanisms of rule: diversity logics, compulsory networking, and creative license. The existence of the ‘ideal worker’ influences how, when, and under what conditions work happens in stand-up comedy for those who fall outside of that ideal. Specifically, workers’ social locations shape how they self-manage, marginalized workers must self-regulate in relation to the work (like everyone else) and the ‘ideal worker.’ Finally, the analysis reveals that workers in stand-up comedy use various strategies to negotiate consent and resistance in their work arrangements in terms of where and under what circumstances they work. Overall, this research highlights how the micro politics of capital are informed by larger power relations that sustain inequality in cultural work settings. Specifically, this work demonstrates the need to address how ‘ideal workers’ are maintained in cultural work, as well as how social location shapes processes of self-management and strategic engagement within unequal work environments. / Dissertation / Doctor of Social Science

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters in Arts, Culture and Heritage Management / The music industry as a sector of cultural industries provides an environment for musicians to engage with the business of music. Churches, as religious and social environments, provide a platform for musical activity and development for musicians. While the church has provided musical development, the music industry has been looked to for sustaining musical careers. Using the adaptation of the Landry value chain model, this research highlights difficulties and successes that No Limits, a South African music group, has encountered in pursuing a professional career in sacred and marketplace contexts. In turn, this has revealed management and general administrative issues that independent musicians commonly face in their pursuit of a professional career. The study observes how professional gospel musicians handle the tension between the sacred and market contexts based on the assumption that these contexts have varying operating systems and thus present a difficulty for professional musicians seeking to operate in both contexts. The introductory chapter and the literature review provide the background and context for the study, the relevant historical information and the Seventh-day Adventist church context. A detailed narrative of the development of No Limits is provided in the fourth chapter leading to the analysis presented in the fifth chapter, which expands on specific moments and issues discussed in the narrative within Charles Landry’s framework of a value chain. His model suggests an integration of all the activities in the value chain in order to succeed in cultural pursuits. These entail beginnings, production, circulation, delivery mechanisms and audience reception (with feedback). No Limits was, therefore, analysed in terms of this model. Key findings point to the difficulty associated with the professionalisation of the music occupation, of seeking to be altruistic and sustainable at the same time. Also, that social and cultural value of devotional content from the sacred context and the material economic demands from the marketplace characterise the fundamental tensions for musicians pursuing existence in these contexts. The Seventh-day Adventist church, in which No Limits was incubated, provided the immediate context for this study and the data was collected through an analysis of archives, discography and interviews with different individuals in the No Limits value chain. Key words: marketplace,

Since 2002 Taiwan has transformed its cultural policy, following the lead of the UK's creative industry discourse in particular and neoliberal policy regimes in general. This thesis investigates the processes through which neoliberal thinking shaped changing cultural policy and the impact this has had on cultural workers and practices in Taiwan s cultural landscape. I examined policy making documents and interviewed a range of involved actors, including government officials and cultural workers to learn more about the policy process and its impact. The research argues that the creative economy has heavily influenced the development of cultural policy discourse and generally failed to promote the public interest in Taiwan. The results of neoliberalisation have been embodied in several salient characteristics such as the privatisation of public space, marketisation of public subsidy and investment, commercialisation of higher education, and flexibilisation of cultural labour market. I argue that cultural policy needs to be reshaped to represent the public interests and diversity of our cultural landscape.

Cultural policy theory operates on a division between producers and the public. Dualisms, such as producer/consumer – or, in more nuanced circles, the triadic relationship of consumer/producer/owner – have had a structuring effect on the way in which we envision cultural policy theories. At its core, the producer/consumer dualism implies subjectivities – that is to say that it defines positions in relationships between socio-political actors/actresses. At the governmental level, such clear-cut subject positions are perceptible beyond theories, entering into the actual practice of policy-making to the point where certain policies structure the notion of the public (or consumers), and the producers and/or owners. Copyright law, for instance, represents a good example of such an ideational construct. As a form of cultural policy, copyright law seeks to define the rights of producers with regards to their productions. Consequently, this thesis aims at exploring the forms of agency that develop and challenge both the practice and theoretical constructs of cultural policy. Two aspects command us to question anew these boundaries, one based on contemporary social and technical transformations (the rise of the digital age), and one based on cultural practice (in this case, those of fans and fandoms).Borrowing from theories of cultural studies and Foucauldian approaches to discourse analysis, this thesis explored the emerging discourses surrounding fans and their use of copyrighted material via the internet. Putting emphasis on three fandoms that have had marked histories of fan activism and fan production via the use of copyrighted material – Star Trek, Firefly, and Harry Potter – this paper investigated fans’ use of copyrighted material in developing fan cultures and as a vehicle for their discursive practices. These cases illustrate how fans have challenged the established repertoires of subjects in cultural policy (making and theory), and how their form of agency represents an interesting case of resistance to the rise of the cultural industries conception of cultural policy.

Cultural policy theory operates on a division between producers and the public. Dualisms, such as producer/consumer – or, in more nuanced circles, the triadic relationship of consumer/producer/owner – have had a structuring effect on the way in which we envision cultural policy theories. At its core, the producer/consumer dualism implies subjectivities – that is to say that it defines positions in relationships between socio-political actors/actresses. At the governmental level, such clear-cut subject positions are perceptible beyond theories, entering into the actual practice of policy-making to the point where certain policies structure the notion of the public (or consumers), and the producers and/or owners. Copyright law, for instance, represents a good example of such an ideational construct. As a form of cultural policy, copyright law seeks to define the rights of producers with regards to their productions. Consequently, this thesis aims at exploring the forms of agency that develop and challenge both the practice and theoretical constructs of cultural policy. Two aspects command us to question anew these boundaries, one based on contemporary social and technical transformations (the rise of the digital age), and one based on cultural practice (in this case, those of fans and fandoms).Borrowing from theories of cultural studies and Foucauldian approaches to discourse analysis, this thesis explored the emerging discourses surrounding fans and their use of copyrighted material via the internet. Putting emphasis on three fandoms that have had marked histories of fan activism and fan production via the use of copyrighted material – Star Trek, Firefly, and Harry Potter – this paper investigated fans’ use of copyrighted material in developing fan cultures and as a vehicle for their discursive practices. These cases illustrate how fans have challenged the established repertoires of subjects in cultural policy (making and theory), and how their form of agency represents an interesting case of resistance to the rise of the cultural industries conception of cultural policy.

The combination of brand and art provides people unlimited imagination. The idea of the fashion industry cooperating with artists started from the 19th century in Europe. The combination of luxury merchandise and art can enhance the personal sense of beauty seen within a product and the brand image ascends through the pursuit of aesthetic perfection as well. Taiwan cultural and creative brands produce high-value recognized products, bring the related art and culture into everyone¡¦s life and promote the further development of Taiwan¡¦s cultural and creative industries. Such is the value of culture by branding. Examples like Franz, Jimmy and Tittot, all introduce Taiwanese and Chinese culture to the world through the promotion of commodities to the international market. The various elements of branding, including: the establishment of the brand core value, brand strategy development and brand marketing strategy development, are all decisive factors of the brand advantage. This study combines Aaker, Keller and Urde¡¦s concept of branding. Through multiple cases, analyzing secondary data and interviewing with GP DEVA¡¦s brand managers of their branding strategy, the study has reached several conclusions and can be summarized as follows: (1) The founder plays an important role in the development of the artistic brand¡¦s core value. (2) The conception of artistic luxury derives itself from inherent cultural values. (3) The key elements of the brand are a result of original concepts and creation. (4) Successful marketing must connect to the spiritual and emotional beliefs held by customers. (5) To strengthen and leverage a product brand, brand associations are made using ideas associated with the art form and brand knowledge. (6) Franz's business model shifted from being product-oriented to brand-oriented.