Cultural industries: pluralization and institutionalization of the concept (UNESCO, Council of Europe)

Abstract

The concept of cultural industries is one of the fundamental theoretical axis of communication research, which roots remain in the classical theory of communication through its original form “culture industry”. However, up to this date there is not any study of the change from the singular to the plural form; even nowadays both forms are used, implicitly or explicitly, as interchangeable synonyms, depending of the grammatical needs of the speech. By means of a wide bibliographical and documental exploration, this essay has the objective of an analysis of the pluralization and the institutional consolidation (UNESCO, Council of Europe) of the culture industry into different cultural industries. With this we intend a systematic summary of the main traces that explain the process that begins at the First International Conference on Institutional, Administrative and Financial Aspects of Cultural Policies (UNESCO: Venice, 1970) and that culminate with the MacBride Report (1980). As a result, we propose a chronological map of the institutional development of the concept of cultural industries that takes into account the objectives that guided this process and the main actors who carried it out. With this we intend to start filling the analytical gap that exists in nowadays Spanish communication research.