Towards a Bourdieusian analysis of the social composition of the UK film and television workforce

This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).The social composition of the workforce of the UK film and television industries does not reflect the diversity of the population and the industries have been described as white, male and middle class. While the lack of specific demographic representation in employment (for example gender or ethnicity) has been highlighted by both industry and academic commentators, its broader social composition has rarely been addressed by research. This article draws on the work of Bourdieu, particularly the concepts of field, habitus and capitals, to explore perceptions of the barriers to entry into these industries and the way in which individuals negotiate these by drawing on the various capitals to which they have access.Peer reviewe

Discourse, justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?

Digitization and the internet have posed an acute economic challenge to rights holders in the cultural industries. Faced with a threat to their form of capital accumulation from copyright infringement, rights holders have used discourse strategically in order to try and legitimate and strengthen their position in the digital copyright debate with governments and media users. In so doing, they have appealed to general justificatory principles – about what is good, right, and just – that provide some scope for opposition and critique, as other groups contest their interpretation of these principles and the evidence used to support them. In this article, we address the relative lack of academic attention paid to the role of discourse in copyright debates by analysing user-directed marketing campaigns and submissions to UK government policy consultations. We show how legitimacy claims are justified and critiqued, and conclude that amid these debates rests some hope of achieving a more legitimate policy resolution to the copyright wars – or at least the possibility of beginning a more constructive dialogue

The ‘wolves’ and ‘lambs’ of the creative city: the sustainability of film and television producers in London

The paper shows that creative producers (businesses and individuals) are sensitive to the externalities of the urban environment, such as the state of public places and the street in particular. However, relation to the street differs for creative producers with different power positions and levels of embeddedness in street life. This suggests attention needs to move beyond the simplistic approaches of “mixed–use” and “vitality” ideals to an understanding of the complexity and continuity inherent in the production of creative spaces with respect to the multiple transactions of both the strong and weak stakeholders involved – the “wolfs” and “lambs.” The example used is the film and television industry in Camden Town, London, in relation to the “experience” economy, drawing on evidence from interviews with producers