In Praise of Commercial Culture
- ISBN-10
- 0674029933
- ISBN-13
- 9780674029934
- Category
- Business & Economics
- Pages
- 288
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-06-30
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Author
- Tyler Cowen
Description
Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures
By Tyler CowenNew York: Russell and Russell. Farnie, D. A. 1979. The English Cotton Industry and the World Market 1815– 1896. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feder, Norman. 1971. Two Hundred Years of North American Indian Art. New York: Praeger Publishers.
-
What Price Fame?
By Tyler CowenRussell , Gordon W. 1993. The Social Psychology of Sport . New York : Springer - Verlag Ryle , John . 1996. " Gaze of Power . " Guardian , Jan. 12 , sect . 2 , p . 3 , col . 4 . Sabato , Larry J. 1991. Feeding Frenzy : How Attack ...
-
Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
By Tyler CowenIn Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions.
-
Markets and Cultural Voices: Liberty vs. Power in the Lives of Mexican Amate Painters
By Tyler CowenThis intriguing work explores the world of three amate artists.
-
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better:...
By Tyler CowenThis is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.
-
Brand New China
By Jing WangYu Hong and Deng Zhengqiang. 2000. Zhongguo dangdai guanggao shi (The History of Contemporary Chinese Advertising). Changsha, Hunan: Kexue jishu chubanshe. Yu Jianqiang. 2004. Meijie zhanlue guangli anli fenxi (Media Management ...
-
An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies
By Tyler CowenJust as The Great Stagnation was Cowen's response to all the fashionable thinking about the economic crisis, An Economist Gets Lunch is his response to all the fashionable thinking about food.
-
Selling Paris
By Alexia M. YatesSelling Paris chronicles the people, practices, and politics that spurred the largest building boom of the nineteenth century, turning city-making into big business in the French capital.
-
German Pop Culture: How "American" is It?
By Agnes C. MuellerAn incisive study of the impact of American culture on modern German society
-
Culture in Economics: History, Methodological Reflections and Contemporary Applications
By Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Robbert MaselandIn our view, the key challenge for experimental economists will be to go beyond the by now well-established insight that culture matters and move on to the question of how culture matters precisely (as we have argued in Chapter 8 in the ...