Media Giants, Political Economics, and Cultural Studies

In Lawrence Grossberg’s work“Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy: Is anybody else bored with this debate?,” he in many ways wishes to defend and finalize the continuous debates surrounding cultural studies and political economy. In this work Grossberg uses the works and arguments of political economist, Nicholas Garnham in order to prove his ideas regarding the connection between political economics and cultural studies. For sometime cultural studies and the political economy have been divided over the make-up of what would be considered an adequate theory of culture and power.(626) For example, in general , those like Garnham who study political economics, believe that cultural studies are too concentrated on “consumption, leisure and everyday practices rather than production work and institutions.” Thus, they believe that cultural studies are incapable of developing an adequate theory on culture and power. (628) Grossberg however, make the argument that this belief is in fact not accurate. According to Grossberg, cultural studies comply with the idea of “articulation.” “’Articulation,’ is the way in which the relations between production, consumption, politics and ideology are theorized into cultural studies.” (627) Therefore, contrary to Garnham’s argument that cultural studies do not take into account class, politics, economy, etc. and as a result are inadequate, cultural studies does in fact incorporate all of these aspects.

In relation to Grossberg’s work debating the political economy and cultural studies, an article written by David Croteau and William Hoynes called “The New Media Giants,” in some ways exemplifies this connection. In Croteau and Hoynes’ article they study and discuss the major, media company, conversions of the 1990’s and the changing industry that is media. Specifically, this article exemplifies the 1999 merging of Viacom and CBS, the single biggest media conversion of all time. This and many other media conversions exemplify articulation and the connection between cultural studies and political economics. The merging of these major companies represent the influence of both politics and the economy, while the changing media industry represents the influence of culture that is leisure, consumption and everyday practices. In turn, these connections between media and economics would, according to Grossberg, easily fall under the umbrella of cultural studies.