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An introduction to a special issue on, "Cultural Production in a Digital Age," points out how digital libraries & electronic communication networks have facilitated scholarly production & changed the way scholars & academic institutions operate. The articles in this volume explore how new technologies have altered cultural production in a wide range of fields, from journalism to gambling, social movements to marketing. Some specific topics discussed by the multi-disciplinary contributors include the fate of cultural products distributed through digital channels; relationships between technological development & the political economy of media, marketing, & entertainment fields; the nature of cultural politics online; & the existence of digital clusters. The three organizing schools of thought that address, & often disagree, about the extent, pace, & character of cultural changes generated by digital technologies are identified as digital revolutionaries; cyber-skeptics; & cultural evolutionists. Key arguments of each school are explored, along with the advantages/disadvantages of the sociology of culture approach for analyzes of the role of new technologies. 61 References. J. Lindroth

Given that the production of sexual subjects is inextricably bound to language, theorists Lee Edelman and Jasbir Puar investigate the imbrication of the sexual subject in discourses of the Child (Edelman 2004) and the nation-state (Puar 2007). Through an interdisciplinary lens, this essay builds on their conceptual frameworks in its examination of homoerotics and the figure of the Child in Cuban cultural production. Of interest is how peripheral verbal and visual language challenge discourses that fold the sexual subject and the Child into the good of the nation and the coherence of the social order. In Edelman's argument (2004: 3), the Child and queerness are held apart: the Child is bound to futurity given that the "political order […] returns to the Child as the image of the future it intends" and queerness figures "the place of the social order's death drive." The queer poetics of the peripheral language examined in this essay revise the trajectory of Child to "true man," creating new space for movement of the queer subject and the Child in the political field.

Recent years have seen increased emphasis on the autonomy of human agency in creating meaning in everyday life. The institutional bias in sociology, however, and its concomitant emphasis on social reproduction rather than change favors hierarchical approaches to cultural production. This is apparent in the theorizing even of sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu who emphasize the cultural dynamism of religion and other meaning systems. This article critiques the mechanistic underpinnings of Bourdieu's perspective on religious production and his categorical differentiation between religious producers and consumers. Using data gathered from American Catholics, the author shows that interpretive autonomy allows them to recast the official discourse of the church hierarchy in ways that advance alternative interpretations. Interpretive autonomy is grounded in the Catholic tradition or habitus and is reflexively used by Catholics both to maintain the vibrancy of the church and expand the possibilities for institutional change.

This article evaluates Bourdieu's analysis of cultural production in terms of its effectiveness for understanding contemporary media production. I begin by outlining the main features of Bourdieu's work on cultural production, with an emphasis on the potential advantages of his historical account over other, competing work. In particular, I stress the importance of his historical account of 'autonomy' and of the emphasis on the interconnectedness of the field of cultural production with other social fields. I then draw attention to two major problems in the work of Bourdieu and others who have adopted his 'field theory' for the media: first, that he offered only occasional and fragmented analyses of 'large-scale', 'heteronomous' (to use his terms) commercial media production, in spite of its enormous social and cultural importance in the contemporary world; second, that Bourdieu and his key associates provide only a very limited account of the relationships between cultural production and cultural consumption. In this latter context, I briefly discuss recent debates in cultural studies about cultural intermediaries. I refer to examples from recent media production to provide evidence for my arguments. The article argues that, as practised so far, Bourdieu's field theory is only of limited value in analysing media production. However I close by discussing the potential fruitfulness of research based on a dialogue between, on the one hand, field theory's analysis of cultural production and, on the other, Anglo-American media and cultural studies work on media production.

Coexistence: Contemporary Cultural Production in South Africa. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. January 22‐June 29, 2003.

This article engages with several of the key issues raised by Georgina Born in her article in this issue. It begins with a consideration of the emphasis on 'production' in Born's piece, and argues that production studies are marked by an attentiveness to complexity that is often absent in studies of cultural reception. This response engages polemically with Born's call for a cultural analysis that includes moments of critical judgement, and argues against approaches to culture that are centrally concerned with questions of human creativity.