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in more institutionally oriented and pragmatic
directions, while nonetheless questioning this particular approach to cultural
policy studies. Miller (1994) observed that one outcome of cultural policy
studies emerging out of a dialogue with cultiiral studies, rather than policy
studies as it had developed in the social sciences, was that there was a lack of
awareness of issues surrounding the ethics of consultancy, the problem of
'capture' of researchers by clients, and the relationship between policy rhetoric
and implementation. McGuigan (1996) also noted that the capacity to
advance cultural policy initiatives is also very much dependent upon the
nature and priorities of governments, with governments of the left far more
likely to be sympathetic than those of the political right. Lewis and Miller
(2003) make the point that there is not a polarity between policy studies and
critical traditions, as one can undertake policy-oriented analyses of cultural
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50 Understanding Global Media
l
institutions from a critical perspective, as seen in Streeter's (1995) critique of
the institutional framework which governs US broadcast media policy.
These debates are ongoing, and we will identify comparable debates emerging
around the concept of creative industries (to be discussed in Chapter 5),
which has many connections to cultural policy studies. Two further points
could be added at this stage. The first is that, by demanding a more institutionally
delineated and context-sensitive understanding of state capacities in
the cultural sphere, cultural policy studies has drawn attention to the need to
recognize the agency and capacity for independent initiative on the part of
policy-makers. This points to the possibilities of what Yeatman (1998) termed
activisnz in t11c policy process, or alliances between activists and policy administrators.
The second is that the cultural policy studies perspective remains
resolutely national, and in doing so is reflective of both its roots in cultural
studies traditions that have tended to be national, and the focus of policy
studies upon the nation-state as the primary loci~so f decision-making. In its
focus upon the relationship between cultural policy and the formation of citizenship
and citizen identities, to take one example, there remains an implicit
assumption that both of these operate at the level of the nation-state. The rise
of global media raises the question of the extent to which access to and use of
I cultural resources associated with the formation of citizen identities is increasingly
drawn from transnational rather than national sources, through global
audiovisual media and the Internet in particular (Canclini, 2000). It also raises
issues concerning the micro-politics of media production, consumption and
use, which are best addressed outside of the state-driven approach to under-
I - -
standing these relationships that remains a strong feature of the cultural policy
studies approach.
Cultural and Economic Geography
The focus of geography upon the spatial dimensions of social relations, and
the spatially grounded dimensions of everyday life and social interaction,
provide an important perspective from which to analyse the scope, dimensions
and impacts of global media. The perspectives of both cultural a