“{This]... review article... brings together and systematizes a wide range of research findings and speculations on the “production of culture,”

It is a review article that brings together and systematizes a wide range of research findings and speculations on the "production of culture," a topic currently of great interest in sociology, institutional economics, management theory, and cultural policy issues, from the regulation of intellectual property to the making of markets.

The discovery of the utility of the production of culture perspective is new to all those outside of the relatively narrow group of perhaps 200 researchers who have had a part in developing it since the 1970s.

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

The production of culture perspective is based on the premise that the ways in which cultural elements are produced will influence their content. Thus, for example, the music produced in a large record company is likely to be different from that produced by a small company. The former is more likely to be music that is predictable and enjoyed by many, while the latter is more likely to be innovative and loved by some while hated or shunned by most others. The major factors in the system of production include technology, law/regulation, industrial structure, organizational structure, occupational careers, and markets. Changes in technology and law/regulation destabilize the other elements leading to major changes in culture.

Peterson: The theories deployed by sociologists and economists in the 1970s to explain the rise of rock music led to predictions that had no relationship to the empirical situation, but I found ideas deriving from industrial, organizational, and occupational sociology useful in understanding the production of culture.

Anand: I was interested in the influence of the Billboard charts on the music industry, and found my way to the production of culture perspective. I then discovered that insights from this perspective could be applied to a whole range of problems in organization theory.

The production perspective helps illuminate the important cultural factors in a wide range of social and political policy areas. For example, it is vital to the debates over the deregulation of the radio industry, the content of newspapers, TV news, and the scope of intellectual property.