1. CULTURAL INDUSTRY
INTRODUCTION:
Cultural Industries are defined as those industries which produce tangible or intangible
artistic and creative outputs, and which have a potential for wealth creation and income
generation through the exploitation of cultural assets and production of knowledge-based
goods and services (both traditional and contemporary). What cultural industries have in
common is that they all use creativity, cultural knowledge, and intellectual property to produce
products and services with social and cultural meaning.
The cultural industries include: advertising; architecture; crafts; designer furniture;
fashion clothing; film, video and other audiovisual production; graphic design; educational and
leisure software; live and recorded music; performing arts and entertainment; television, radio
and internet broadcasting; visual arts and antiques; and writing and publishing. The term
“cultural industries” is almost interchangeable with the concept of “creative industries.”
Whereas the notion of “cultural industries” emphasizes those industries whose inspiration
derives from heritage, traditional knowledge, and the artistic elements of creativity, the notion
of “creative industries” places emphasis on the individual and his or her creativity, innovation,
skill and talent in the exploitation of intellectual property. The notion of ‘cultural industries’ is
also closely linked to but, again, slightly different from a categorization based strictly on the
notion of “intellectual property,” which is closely linked to the concept of information-driven
economies, and which includes such activities as scientific and technological innovation,
software and database development, telecommunication services, and the production of
hardware and electronic equipment.
DISCUSSION:
1. DEFINITION:
Cultural industry refers to businesses that produce, distribute, market or sell cultural
products that belong categorically in creative arts. Such products could include clothing,
decorative material for homes, books, movies, television programs, or music. Cultural
industry is a very large category for certain types of businesses.
The Culture Industry is one in and of itself that focuses on the media and mass
marketing. However due to extensive publicity and advertising, all cultural products, including
human beings, have become supplies that share little to no meaning.

2. European cultural industry is one of the top industries which include notably
architecture, collections and libraries, artistic crafts, audiovisual (such as film, television, video
games and multimedia), cultural heritage, design, festivals, publishing, music, performing arts,
and radio and visual arts. All of these are one of Europe's most dynamic economic sectors.
2. ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER – CULTURAL INDUSTRY:
The term culture industry was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer , wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing
standardized cultural goods — films, radio programmes, magazines, etc. — that are used to
manipulate mass society into passivity. Originating from the 1940's the Cultural Industries was
known as 'The cultural Industry' taken from a book written by Adorno and Horkheimer called '
Dialektik der Aufklarung' from the chapter 'Dialect of Enlightenment'. By the late 1960's the
Cultural Industry became co-modified and was intertwining with other industries such as film,
television and music as these were socially popular, the cultural Industry was re-named 'The
Cultural Industries'. Through new service industry growth and new labor, the Cultural Industries
was turned into 'The Creative Industries' in the 1990's and is still known as this in current
society.
3. CREATIVE INDUSTRIES:
More recently, there has been a push to associate culture with technology, novelty and
innovation, in line with discourses related to the knowledge economy and the information
society, and alongside digitalization, trade liberalization, deregulation and the promulgation of
an intellectual property regime. The result marks a shift away from the cultural industries and a
move towards the more fashionably labeled “creative industries”. The creative industries refer
to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of
knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries.
Creative industries increasingly serve as the advance guard of developed economies, from
which new organizational structures and routines ripple outward to other changing industries.
There is often a question about the boundaries between creative industries and the
similar term of cultural industries. Cultural industries are best described as an adjunct-sector of
the creative industries. Cultural industries include industries that focus on cultural
tourism and heritage, museums and libraries, sports and outdoor activities, and a variety of
'way of life' activities that arguably range from local pet shows to a host of hobbyist concerns.
Thus cultural industries are more concerned about delivering other kinds of value—including
cultural wealth and social wealth—rather than primarily providing monetary value.

3. 4. GLOBALIZATION – CULTURAL INDUSTRY:
Globalization is the process of international integration arising from the interchange
of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture.
Advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of
the Internet, are major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of
economic and cultural activities.
Internationally, the political currency of the cultural industries is gaining increasing
attention with the advent of globalization and its effect on and relationship to that which is
deemed or labeled “cultural.” Cultural Globalization refers to the transmission of ideas,
meanings and values across national borders. Through technological advancement, culture has
been moving beyond borders and boundaries, transforming through locations the shared
meanings of culture. Through the process of sharing the ideas and values of one culture to
another ultimately leads to interconnectedness between various populations from diverse
cultures. Cultural globalization has increased cross-cultural contacts but may be accompanied
by a decrease in the uniqueness of once-isolated communities.
Cultural industry has been one very essential part of globalization. Globalization is the
historical process in which human beings communicates mutually, mixes together and reaches
into some agreement in the end across space boundaries and institutional barriers, marked as
globalization. The internet and digital technology have been widely used in the cultural
industries, while brought new momentum of development to traditional cultural industries, for
example, the electric books, cell phones cartoons enrich the traditional cultural industry
products system. Cultural industry has been divided into 4 large groups, including heritage, arts,
media and functional creation. Since the end of the 1990s, international organizations and
every country have provided their respective concepts and classifications of the cultural
industry.
It is fair to say that the impact of globalization in the cultural sphere has, most generally,
been viewed in a pessimistic light. Typically, it has been associated with the destruction of
cultural identities, victims of the accelerating encroachment of a homogenized, westernized,
consumer culture. One of the dominant perspectives of globalization asserts that this is a
process of the transfiguration of worldwide diversity into a pandemic westernized consumer
culture. Many critics argue that through the dominance of American culture influencing the
entire world, this will ultimately result in the end of cultural diversity. This has been associated
with the destruction of cultural identities, dominated by a homogenized and westernized,
consumer culture. The global influence of American products, businesses and culture upon
other countries around the world has been referred to as Americanization. This influence is

4. represented through that of American-based Television programs which are rebroadcast
throughout the world. Major American companies such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola have
played a major role in the spread of American culture across the globe. Terms such as Coca-
colonization have been coined to refer to the dominance of American products in foreign
countries, which some critics of globalization view as a threat to the cultural identity of such
foreign nations.
DOES GLOBALIZATION DESTROY CULTURE?
Globalization is an experimental process that produces a host of political problems because the
process of “creative destruction” continually upsets the status quo. Incentives matter: if people
can get rich by creating wealth, we are better off for it.
NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON CULTURE:
 Consumerism: The negative effect of global marketing is that local companies are edged
out of the market and the multinational companies impose American or European
consumer trends on other cultures.
 Language: Language is a key expression of cultural diversity. Globalization is
deteriorating the cultural languages.
 Poverty: Globalization increases poverty amongst young people, the old, women,
indigenous peoples and migrants, which has a cultural impact.
 Western ideals: Western nations, particularly the United States, impose their cultural
values on others through media and popular culture. This is called "cultural
imperialism," because the West promotes its culture as having more worth, or being
more correct, than other regions' cultural values.
5. UNESCO – CULTURAL INDUSTRY:
According to international organizations such as UNESCO and the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), cultural industries combine the creation, production,
and distribution of goods and services that are cultural in nature and usually protected
by intellectual property rights.
An important aspect of the cultural industries, according to UNESCO, is that they are
“central in promoting and maintaining cultural diversity and in ensuring democratic access to
culture”.

5. Within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
for example, the cultural industries has mobilized significant policy interest and corresponding
action surrounding their dual nature. While the cultural industries are recognized as
contributing to economic development, they are considered fundamental tools for cultural
development and cultural diversity, and as a result, require specific attention within
international policy debate.
The Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity is a UNESCO action programme that supports
the emergence or strengthening of cultural industries (books & publishing, cinema, recorded
music, multimedia, crafts) in developing countries and countries in transition, in order to enable
the creation or growth of local markets and access to worldwide markets, which is favorable to
sustainable development. The originality of the approach lies in the creation of a new kind of
partnership, associating the public sector, the private sector and civil society. Launched in 2002,
the Global Alliance today has a network of 500 members and many other partners. It has set up
around fifty projects and created tools (manuals, case studies) for decision-makers.
Cultural industries produce and distribute cultural goods or services ‘which, at the time
they are considered as a specific attribute, use or purpose, embody or convey cultural
expressions, irrespective of the commercial value they may have’, according to the terms of the
Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions adopted
by UNESCO in 2005. These industries include publishing, music, cinema and audiovisual
production and multimedia. Also included are crafts and design, which are not, strictly
speaking, industries, but which are very similar in their management, for example in the
creation of small & medium-sized companies. The concept has been widened to that of
‘creative’ industries, by including architecture and different artistic categories: visual arts,
performing arts, etc.
A 2005 UNESCO report showed that cultural exchange is becoming more frequent from
Eastern Asia but Western countries are still the main exporters of cultural goods. The respect of
copyright is everywhere an essential condition for the continued strengthening of cultural
industries. Conversely, piracy often nullifies the efforts made by countries, especially
developing countries. Hence the necessity of preventive measures, which concern both raising
the awareness of the public and training those professionals who are the most concerned by it.
UNESCO has always striven to support the States in their initiatives to establish efficient
sectoral cultural policies. It has provided its expertise and supplied instruments for more than
thirty years, first in the field of books and publishing, which remains its main field of activity, in
crafts, and later in other cultural industries.
Finally, it is necessary to observe that, within the United Nations, there is a constantly
increasing recognition of the importance of creative & cultural industries by a large number of

6. agencies or organizations, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), as well as UNIDO, UNDP, the Global Compact and NEPAD.
The Culture Sector and the Communication and Information Sector, through the
‘Programme for creative content’, are the main units involved in UNESCO, together with its
decentralized offices. As the measurement of international flows of cultural goods and services
is important data, cooperation with the International Institute for Statistics is also essential.
The paradox is that if creative cultural resources abound in developing countries, the
world map of cultural industries reveals a major gap between the North and the South. It is
fundamental to understand the causes of this, above all the structural ones, and attempt to
remedy them.
6. CONCLUSION:
The concept of culture industry leads a double life. On the one hand, it appears as
transparent, being used widely and freely in reference to a branch of business; on the other, it
is a notion belonging to a critical tradition that wants to preserve the tension resulting from the
juxtaposition of these two words.
The cultural industries appear to be more resistant to change; cultural tourism, heritage,
and many forms of performing, folk and traditional art essentially seek to maintain and
preserve ideologies, and the institutions of the state. This can be observed throughout history.
It is a reason why states have intervened in cultural policy, either by the architect or engineer
models.
Times have changed and globalization is no longer a force that can be ignored. In
other words, nations can no longer close themselves off from change. The Internet has created,
and continues to create massive disruption to business models. As information is disseminated
through fast speed networks consumers have more opportunities to become creators in their
own right, posting blogs, websites and making short movies. Cultural stability is disrupted as
never before.
Ironically, the greatest protection for cultural maintenance is creativity. Not only does
creativity become more important in this period of change, it brings with it new ideas and new
technologies that allow traditional forms of culture to be reinvested with value.
The producers of culture, whether this be filmmakers, documentary makers,
scriptwriters, performing artist etc have to recognize that culture is dynamic, not static. The
industries that rely on novelty and innovation require greater flexibility and digital literacy. They

7. should be supported, not resisted. These creative cultural industries will continue to play a key
role in re-converting static forms of culture into interactive forms, they will drive economic
growth, and they will promote diversity.