Frontiers of Creative Industries : Exploring Structural and Categorical Dynamics

Creative industries are a growing and globallyimportant area for both economic vitality and cultural expression ofindustrialized nations.  The growth anddynamism of creative industries depends on “continuous innovation” that mustmanage inherent tensions such as novelty to attract consumers and sustainartistic expression and familiarity to aid comprehension and stabilize demandfor cultural products.  In this volume, the macro-structuralconditions that shape creative industries – their institutional, categoricaland structural dynamics- are examined to provide an overview of new trends andemerging issues in scholarship on this topic.  Creative industries offer products andservices that range from the prosaic to the sublime and provide meaning to ourlives, and this volume features a wide range of examples, from advertising, toarchitecture, art markets, Champagne wine, fashion and music.  Contributors examine topics such as the micro-interactionsof brokerage relations; how actors transform a brokerage role from control toco-production to enact creative leadership; how investors provide legitimacy tothe new categories such as abstract art; how technological disintermediationcreates alternative category processes such as authenticity; how socialrelations shape social evaluation; how prototypical producers can trespasscategories and avert negative evaluation; how personal styles enable socialevaluation; and how the ambiguity of a category, such as Swing music,facilitated its adaptability and longevity.

The volume concludes with an Afterword examining research on creativeindustries as a form of cultural product and a category in itself.