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Mediation of Lady Gaga

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Mediation of Lady Gaga
STUDENT NUMBER: 33198474

Mediation of Lady Gaga
Global Culture Industry
CU71015A Theories of the Cultural Industry: Work, Creativity and Precariousness
Alvina Azaria MA Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship Media and Communication Pathway 1/17/2011

Question: Do objects in the culture industry have a life of their own? Discuss the 'mediation of things ' argument from Lash and Lury by following the life of a particular object. Test the method by evaluating it in relationship to other theoretical approaches to the object.

Introduction
This essay unpacks the life of cultural objects based on Scott Lash and Celia Lury’s argument in the book of Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things. It draws on a set of case studies of a current phenomenon in music and culture, Lady Gaga, using the framework of The Global Culture Industry. Lady Gaga has only been in the spotlight since she first appeared on the television in 2008. Since then, she has been gaining her fans from all over the world. She is seen as a brand that has a global flow of movement. The theory is tested by being compared to other writers’ view on social objects, which includes Karin-Knorr Cetina (2002), Appandurai (1986), Deleuze (1994),

World Industry of Information

Culture industry was the term that first mentioned by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightment (1947), which has been the main reference to the critical theories. However, in the glorious era of ‘dot.com’ and social network such as blogs, twitter and facebook, the relevance of the theory is questioned by contemporary theorists. One of the critiques is elaborated in Lash and Lury’s Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things. The book is driven by the concern of the implementation of Adorno and Horkheimers’ Cultural Industries in the global media age. The main argument of the book is culture has taken on another different logic with the transition from culture industry, ‘that globalization has given culture industry a


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