Global Cultural Economy

Global Cultural Economy critically interrogates the role cultural and creative industries play in societies. By locating these industries in their broader cultural and economic contexts, Christiaan De Beukelaer and Kim-Marie Spence combine their repertoires of empirical work across four continents to define the ‘cultural economy’ as the system of production, distribution, and consumption of cultural goods and services, as well as the cultural, economic, social, and political contexts in which it operates.

Each chapter introduces and discusses a different theme, such as inclusion, diversity, sustainability, and ownership, highlighting the tensions around them to elicit an active engagement with possible and provisional solutions. The themes are explored through case studies including Bollywood, Ghanaian music, the Korean Wave, Jamaican Reggae, and the UN Creative Economy Reports.

Written with students, researchers, and policy-makers in mind, Global Cultural Economy is ideal for anyone interested in the creative and cultural industries, media and cultural studies, cultural policy, and development studies.

Christiaan De Beukelaer is a Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Developing Cultural Industries: Learning from the Palimpsest of Practice (2015), and the editor of Culture, Globalization, and Development: The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity (2015, with Miikka Pyykkonen and JP Singh) as well as Cultural Policies for Sustainable Development (2018, with Anita Kangas and Nancy Duxbury).

Kim-Marie Spence is a PhD scholar at the Australian National University. She has done significant research comparing the popular culture industries of Jamaica, India, and South Korea, that is, reggae, Bollywood, K-pop, and K-drama. She is a Rhodes Scholar and former Jamaica Film Commissioner/Head of Creative Industries in Jamaica and also worked with UNESCO on Oral and Intangible Heritage projects.