Overcooking Neoliberalism: Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy

I have observed that the term neoliberalism is in my view over-used, and has lost much descriptive clarity as it has become something of an omnibus term of abuse for anything or anyone who you happen to disagree with. Increasingly, the term functions in much the same way as the word "bourgeois" did for radicals in the 1970s.

In order to clarify with an example, I have provided a link to a review I have undertaken of Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy (Polity Press, 2008). An edited version of this review of Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy appeared in Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 30 No. 2, December 2008, pp. 127-129. This journal, however, which can be hard to find online, as the Web site is four years out of date (NB: this link may not be accessible to you - I got it from the Informit database which QUT subscribes to).

My conclusion on Freedman's book was:

The Politics of Media Policy opens with a highly insightful analysis of how to do media policy studies in original and significant ways. Unfortunately, by anchoring its empirical analysis closely to a desire to expose the hidden machinations of neo-liberal ideology, it loses focus the more that it moves out of the dominant terrain of political economy in the study of media ownership. Des Freedman has pointed to important new directions in media policy studies, but has unfortunately only got half way to developing a new synthesis for understanding the relationship between policy institutions and broader ideas.

For more read here.

Britain's Tories take to creative industries?

Hmm. Not sure what to think here. There will be a change of government in Britain in 2010, so knowing where the Tories are on the creative industries is of interest. At the same time, interestign to see where the Britart generation are ending up.

Are the Tories having their Cool Britannia moment?

5 May 2009: The Guardian

Reports that Tracey Emin may declare her support for the Conservatives could finally give them the cultural credibility they crave.

For more see here.

Creative Industries after a decade

This is a presentation I will be giving to QUT students in the Creative Industries: Theory and Policy unit on Thursday 14 August. It draws upon a presentation that I gave to staff and students at Indiana University in the US in May. It aims to outline the complex labour market dynamics of the creative industries, both in term of how they differ from other economic sectors, and how they differ from one another. It draws upon both Australian and UK data, and upon the work undertaken by Stuart Cunningham and Peter Higgs at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Ci Theory And Policy Guest Lecture 14 Aug 08

View SlideShare presentation (tags: states united australia workforce)

SlideShare Link

Creative Industries, Culture and Policy

My reason for being on leave from QUT at present is to complete a book for Sage. The book will be called Creative Industries, Culture and Policy, and is to be published in 2009.

In order to solicit feedback in advance of publication, I am making draft chapters available for comment. These are not to be reproduced, and only to be quoted with permission. I would, however, welcome comment on the blog.

Chapter One deals with the development of creative industries policy in Britain from the mid 1990s to the present. I argue that it has its origin in the 'local socialism' initiatives of various UK local councils in the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the question of what may constitute a 'post-industrial' Britain after the economic changes of the Thatcher-Major years.

The chapter look at the original Department of Culture, Media and Sport 'list-based' approach to the creative industries and the criticisms of it. It look at further issues arising, such as regionalisation, the role of the arts, and the significance attached to design in the 2006 Cox Report.

It concludes with a consideration of the approaches taken by NESTA and The Work foundation to capacity building in the creative industries sectors.

If you are interested in downloading the draft chapter, it can be found here.

I would welcome feedback on the chapter. In particular, it does not at this stage have a conclusion, as I am thinking through the relationship of creative industries policy to the current, and seemingly terminal, electoral malaise of Gordon Brown's Labour government, and the question of whether this would continue to be a priority policy area under a future Conservative government.

White Heat

Readers of this blog would know that I have made the trip from Australia to the United States. That means a 13 hour flight (16 hours of flying if you count the connecting domestic flight), and that means you need a big book.

Last time I did this flight I read Bill Clinton's autobiography. As you might have gathered, that wasn't going to be my book of choice this time. This time I picked Dominic Sandbrook's White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties.

At 800 pages it was the right length, and it was indeed the right book. Sandbrook was born in 1974, so he is writing about a historical period that he didn't live through, but that is the point. It is the second book in a history of post-WWII Britain that are part of what he calls 'narrative history', or a tightly argued, event by event, approach that draws on the full range of secondary sources available.

It has a heady mix of politics, popular culture, and various vignettes from the lives of ordinary Britons during what was a pretty compelling period. It has some great chapter titles ('Introducing the Turds', 'The Day It All Stopped', 'Carry On England', 'I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet!' and 'Why Lucky Jim Turned Right') using titles from newspaper articles books, movies, TV shows, speeches and, indeed, shops from the period ('I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet!' was a fashion shop in London).

Two things caught my eye in particular about the book. The first is the level of detail it goes into about the minutae of Harold Wilson's Labour government and its decision making processes. As the first government to govern over a period of decline in Britain, where the economic situation started badly and got worse, it is intriguing to understand the personalities, the conflict, and the sense of malaise that frequently struck this government, which started with high hopes and ended in disarray.

The other thing is that he debunks a lot of myths about the period that are told by those who lived through it. The idea that Britain in the 60s was all Swinging London, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and political radicalism is pretty effectively skewered through Sandbrook's approach, which reads the newspapers, the magazines, the statistics and the personal testimonies of the era very closely, and which tells history from the bottom up and from through out the country (i.e. from Hull and not just London).

Well worth a read, particularly if you are looking for a long historical work and have some time to settle back with it.