The future is an open future: cultural studies at the end of the 'long 20th century' and the beginning of the 'Chinese century'

For analysts interested in social change the creative industries are a bellwether for the ‘open future’ predicted by Richard E Lee. Current directions in the study of the continuing encounters among culture, economy and politics do not focus so much on struggle, subject-positioning or structure, as on change, disequilibrium, and growth. It does seem to many that the current period is one of indeterminacy between two relatively stable ‘long centuries’ – the existing ‘American’ one and the coming ‘Chinese’ one (Shenkar 2004; Fishman 2004; Rees-Mogg 2005). Therefore, contemporary readers and researchers who are interested in the evolving conceptual framework gathered under the rubric of ‘cultural studies’ need to look out for the next stage, when ‘disruptive renewal’ stabilises into a new emergent order. At that point we can look forward to a ‘macro’ model of the overall dynamic knowledge system, in which cultural, economic and political values can be studied in a unified way. If emergent creative innovation is itself an ‘enabling social technology,’ then analysts will need to focus on local-global instances of popular creativity, the productivity of consumption, and the propagation (especially via the internet and other technologically enabled social networks) of the ‘means of semiotic production’ across whole populations, coordinated in hybrid ‘social network markets’ (Potts et al 2008) that allow commercial and community enterprises, corporate giants and micro-businesses, to co-exist and co-create values. In such a context it will be possible to understand the uses of creative and cultural resources for enterprise at both community and commercial levels, and to extend from ‘defensive’ cultural identity to expansive creative innovation. Cultural studies emerges not only as a philosophy of plenty but as a policy and practice too: it is a useful conceptual framework for analysing innovation systems, creative industries, and the propagation of creative productivity. At that stage, when it is part of a unified study of the growth of knowledge, it may have to change its name – to ‘cultural science.’ Certainly it will have to change its centre of gravity – from West to East.

Paper presented at the CCI/FEAST Joint Research Workshop: Creative Destruction: Lessons for Science and Innovation Policy from the Rise of the Creative Industries
, March 2008