E-Book Overview
The book addresses the mechanisms of culture in the digital age. Its author, professor at Higher School of Economics, tackles a number of highly relevant issues: the modus operandi of culture in a market environment, the role of money in the process and some methods intended to help consumers in the choice of cultural goods which best meet their tastes in a situation of ever increasing commercial cultural output.
The economics of symbolic exchange is a branch of economic science dealing with "personality resources" such as free time, attention, emotions, etc. At present, these assets are virtually unaccounted for, nor used, due to the inherent impossibility of their measurement. As a result, more often than not, the economic thought entering the field of culture proves quite helpless.
The book provides ample factual evidence relating to a whole range of cultural markets: record industry, book publishing, fashion, network resources and others. Special mention is made of the "grey" segments of the economy, such as the role of pirates and illicit dealers, or the activities of semi-legal file sharing services enabling free downloads of music and video material in the cyberspace. These glimpses into the "grey" territory expose holes in the "white" markets and contest certain myths. The material collected in the book comes down to quite a novel outlook on numerous phenomena of contemporary culture.
The key purpose of this work is to introduce into practice some new management tools which are essential for the success of any economic changes in the field of culture, including recommendatory services operating as a social institution of expert consumer analysis of cultural goods and services.
E-Book Content
Alexander Dolgin The Economics of Symbolic Exchange Professor Alexander Dolgin Fund for Scientific Studies Bolshaya Akademicheskaya Str. 5, Bldg. 1 Moscow Russia 127299
[email protected] ISBN 978-3-540-79882-8 e-ISBN 978-3-540-79883-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008927235 © Alexander Dolgin and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License Subject to the exception immediately following, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission of the publisher. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. Noncommercial uses are thus permitted without any further permission from the copyright owner. Commercial duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provision of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for such use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: WMX-Design Edited by: Elena Lebedeva Translated by: Arch Tait Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com Foreword Alexander Dolgin’s Economics of Symbolic Exchange is in reality not one but three books, and although these semantic layers are interlinked, the reader will need to choose between the different vectors and modalities. One clearly evident dimension is research. Certain authors introduce quite new intellectual approaches into scientific debate. This requires a special frame of mind and a searching curiosity about social reality. Carl Gustav Jung identified a phenomenon which he called systematic