Trading Cultures

An ethnography of international trade fairs for television programs, music and books

The main purpose of international trade fairs is to bring sellers and buyers from different parts of the world together. It is the place to socialize, to communicate and to contract. Simultaneously trade fairs also serve a crucial function in forming and spreading the industry’s cultural, i.e. cognitive basis: What is this business about, how can we tell good products from poor and which business practices are most appropriate?

The project aims at an ethnographic account of trading cultures in its twofold meaning: the trade in cultural goods and the cultures of trading. Picking up insights from new institutionalism and field theory we assume that selling and buying decisions by cultural intermediaries rest on shared beliefs, routines and rules. That is to say, a taken-for-granted trading culture which diffuses throughout global organizational fields.

Especially in the cultural industries where future success is hardly to predict and the costs of failure are high, people tend to imitate highly legitimate models of dealing with and in cultural goods. Trade fairs are places where we can observe this process of imitation and negotiation at work. Using ethnographic research methods such as participant observation we will thoroughly explore annual trade fairs in three different cultural industries (the TV content market MIPCOM in Cannes and the European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin; the music show midem in Cannes and the showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen; Frankfurt Book Fair and the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna) in order to reveal the culture of global trade in cultural goods.

By combining applied with basic research, results of the project will also contribute to the education of media managers especially in courses on global cultural trade. In addition, industry partners can benefit from project results: Although the project does not aim at providing recipes for business strategies and success it will help managers in the cultural industries to question taken-for-granted beliefs and routines and consider new strategies.

Publications

Download Bibtex for all results
Gebesmair, A. (2023). Lassen sich Content-Messen virtualisieren? MedienWirtschaft. Perspektiven Der Digitalen Transformation, 20. Jahrgang(3), 8–18. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.15358/1613-0669-2023-3
Gebesmair, A. (2022). The Global Music Business, and the Globalization of Culture. In S. Krüger Bridge (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Popular Music (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190081379.013.3
Gebesmair, A., & Musik, C. (2022). Interaction Rituals at Content Trade Fairs: A Microfoundation of Cultural Markets. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221113370
Gebesmair, A., Ebner-Zarl, A., & Musik, C. (2022). Symbolic representations of cultural industries at content trade fairs: Bourdieu’s „economic world reversed“ revisited. Poetics, 92(Part B), 101614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101614
Gebesmair, A. (2021). Das Ende der Globalisierung? POP. Kultur und Kritik, 19(2), 8–15. https://doi.org/10.14361/pop-2021-100202
Ebner-Zarl, A. (2020). Trading Books. Internationale Buchmärkte und Buchmessen im Überblick. Nomos.
Musik, C., Ebner-Zarl, A., & Gebesmair, A. (Eds.). (2018). Eine BürgerInnen-Ethnographie der Frankfurter Buchmesse. Ein Experiment. ikon VerlagsGesmbH. https://phaidra.fhstp.ac.at/open/o:3274
Musik, C. (2017, August). Relationship management in a personal business. Content trade markets as coordinators of transnational intermediary networks in the TV industry. 13th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Athen, Griechenland.
Musik, C. (2016, March 30). Die Ethnographie als reflexive Praxisforschung. Tagungsband FH-Forschungsforum 2016. http://ffhoarep.fh-ooe.at/handle/123456789/749
Musik, C. (2016). Das nächste große Ding - Messen und Märkte als Orte der Ausverhandlung von Innovationen. Bridges Over Troubled Water Die Konstitution von Netzwerken im Innovationsprozess, Berlin. http://konstitution-von-netzwerken.de/slides/Musik.pdf
Musik, C. (2016). An Ethnography of Trade Fairs as Field-Configuring Events [Konferenzbeitrag]. 9th International Conference on Social Science Methodology, Leicester.
Musik, C. (2015, October 11). Interview in der Sendung Campus Talk zum Projekt „Trading Cultures“ [Broadcast]. https://soundcloud.com/fhstp/campus-talk-mit-christoph-musik-zum-projekt-trading-cultures?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook
Gebesmair, A., & Musik, C. (2015, October 17). Zur Ethnographie von Medienindustrien [Refereed conference presentation]. Jahrestagung der Fachgruppe Medienökonomie (DGPuK), Universität Zürich.
Musik, C., & Gebesmair, A. (2015, February 10). Wie kulturelle Globalisierung passiert. Methodische Überlegungen einer Ethnographie von Content Handelsmessen. Österreichischer Soziologie Kongress, Panel "Die Globalisierung und ihre Empirie," Universität Innsbruck.
Project manager
Staff
External Staff
Christoph Musik
Partners
  • Dr. Sarah Baker, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities at Griffith University
  • Dr. Andrea Bogad-Radatz (Head of „Film & Series“ at the Austrian Public Broadcasting Corporation ORF)
  • Prof. Paul DiMaggio (A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University)
  • Prof. David Hesmondhalgh, Head of the Institute of Communications Studies; Director of the Media Industries Research Centre at University of Leeds
  • Prof. Susanne Janssen, Professor of Sociology of Media and Culture and Chair of the Department of Media and Communication in the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Prof. Keith Negus, Professor of Musicology at Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Rainer Praschak (Head of Music Business at music information center austria)
  • Claudia Romeder, MA (CEO of Residenz Verlag, the largest Austrian book publishing corporation)
Funding
FWF
Runtime
02/28/2015 – 12/30/2018
Status
finished
Involved Institutes, Groups and Centers
Research Group Media Business