Abstract
The study of production cultures sets out against theories of the auteur and of broader trends towards ‘individualization’ in society seeing the products of media industries as the result of the collaborative labour of interpretive communities of media makers. Production studies primarily collect data on the ground – the experiences, observations, conversations and interactions with media workers – that is shaped by broader policy, economic and cultural contexts. In contrast, production studies are less concerned with the strategies of media firms and governments and so are in the business of producing in-depth analysis using essentially qualitative methods of the production process itself at the micro-level. This is the second volume, the wittily titled ‘sequel’, to the first volume of production studies from 2009 that helped to generate much more interest in media and cultural work across the field, although the claim that the first volume was ‘the starting point’ for making production studies visible is open to question. A significant and unresolved tension remains also between the grounded methods usually employed in production studies and the desire to embed analysis within social theories that tend towards the meso- and macro-levels and critical theories that tend towards the universal. The present volume is divided into six sections. The first looks at the use of manual and digital instruments and how they affect the finished product and the production process itself; the second looks at branding and promotional work; the third examines the pedagogies and practices of learning to make media; the fourth investigates public service production; the fifth examines intersections between local production and transnational flows; and the sixth looks at how media industries think about themselves and particularly at the boundaries between what they do. The second volume actually testifies to a growing maturity of the field with the emergence of younger scholars and the inclusion of non-Western work. There are a number of fascinating studies. Perhaps the third volume will challenge the nascent field more and be comparative in design and will address the relationship between production studies and social and critical theory?