Contenu du sommaire : Industries cutlurelles et "société de l'information"

The theory of cultural industries faced with numerization and convergency In this paper, the author argues that the theory of cultural industries still offers one of the most promising approaches for analysing current issues in the communication and cultural fields. But recent developments in the process of commodification and industrialization call for a reassessment. Two themes are proposed for discussion. The first one refers to a necessary enlargement of the object under scrutiny to encompass growing intersections between informational, cultural and communicational fields. The second one puts forward the definition of a new logic, called the "club logic", as an emergent institutional form which combines direct and indirect processes of commodification.

Networks economics and the structuring of space. For a politization of the economics of culture and communication. Starting from an economic approach, this paper tries to seize the main mutations which have occurred in the cultural and communication field. It is a question of studying on the one hand, the nature and dynamics of the new network system and on the other hand, of analysing the resulting social and cultural applications, notably where they concern the redefinition of the separation between public and private and the structuring of space.

Information highways and the transition to a "discussion-programation" mode of regulation. A key question raised by information highways is that of the qualitative leap that they create in the process of the computerization of society, this phenomenon raising in a most fundamental manner the risks for society. Their development could represent a decisive moment in the emergence of new modes of regulation. The object of this paper is to explain this process in as much as it creates the possibility and the necessity of a move towards a form of regulation which we call "discussion-programation".

Information highways and structural transformation of cultural and communication industries. In the actual turmoil that characterises the setting-up of information highways, one can easily predicts a major transformation in the cultural and communication industries. Thus, this paper first propose some thoughts about the notion of industry and the French concept of "filières" and their application to the field of culture and communication. Then, from a suggested structural map and the first transformations that one can already see in the actual structures, we analyze the enlargement of the supply of goods and services linked to the information highways, proposing a classification and grading according to their potential of structural transformation.

The cultural industries and public concern. The perspective of partnership Cultural industries have experienced deep changes during the last twenty-five years and the attention paid to them by the public authorities, in particular in fields of culture, has considerably developed. The public support policies that were implemented in the various cultural sectors were in the first place formulated as a whole body. But later, due to the first shocks undergone by the cultural industries and their environment, the public authorities were led to take a more heterogeneous line. Culture industries, when considered together, go to make up a field with durably blurred outlines, which calls for a particular, culture-oriented attention from the public authorities, taking into account their specific relation to creation as well as the applying of the legislation regarding copyright and neighbouring rights which enable a measure of redistribution through collective action.

The evolution of the work process and the form of valorization in cultural industries This paper analyses, from the point of view of the cultural industries, changes which have come about recently in the realms of culture and communication. Starting from such axes as the work process and valorization, we examine the effects on the cultural structuration of society of technical transformations, deregulation and new forms of business management. We maintain discriminating and contrasted analyses which will enable us to avoid the mystification of technical discourse.

Strategies of French media groups. Unprecedented configurations. This article seeks to surround, in the framework of an network's economy, the competitive market structure of the French media sector by retracing financial actor, manufacturers and policies games that compose and structure this sector are developed. Independence and neutrality strategies developed by medias groups disappear to the inescapable configuration. These configurations, aim to construct a new strategic autonomy at the price of relationships dependence's generated by a multiplicity of alliances. The most ended of these configurations seems to be "the French media pole".

The financial "constitutions" of medias. About original configurations. Issued from industrial economic studies, the research about the ownership and control of the firms finds an interest in its application to the media area (in this study, publishing, press, radio and television). The analysis shows that there are many different patterns of ownership -called "constitutions" -corresponding to different kinds of behaviour in economic activity. This allows to sense the change of lines from categories of holders with unequal power and growth, besides differently distributed depending to each media. Such a tool allows to take on account the recent activities of control of structures and to draw some perspectives of development.

Information highways. The discourse concerning competition and regulation of the market. The north American research on communication and Bangemann's Report take the same point of view about the information industry. The market is the only way to reach economic efficiency, to develop technological innovation and to promote the cultural diversity. As a result state intervention has to be reduced. However a contradiction must be noticed. On the one hand, regulation has only to maintain competition while on the other hand regulation has to help the emergence of big industrial groups.

Patrimony on line. Memory as an industrial object. The notion of heritage is currently undergoing a profound reworking by the extension, both ecological and localist, of the objects of which it has traditionally been composed. Over and above the national and highly diverse public policies that have been focused on matters of heritage, the process itself of hybridization has generated tensions between the classical conception of heritage as preservation and transmission, and a more recent conception of creation and mass diffusion of this newly created heritage. Multimedia has taken a lead within this context as a solution to these tensions. It is currently transforming the status of the ensemble of our heritage, creating a whole new potential public for it, and radically transforming the classical hierarchy of its objects. It is transforming heritage into an industrial object.

Cultural industries against copyright. The economical integration of multimedia technologies has a tendency to downgrade the authors and to make the originality of the cultural works disappear. The cultural industries reduce the public access to culture, being only concerned to benefit the commercial services.

Constructivist epistemologies. A new beginning. 1 ) Proceeding against constructivism. Epistemology is defined as "the study of the constitution of valuable knowledge" (J. Piaget). That is to say, as the study of the "foundations" of scientific knowledge ; a definition which leads to an infinite recursion, those foundations being themselves knowledge. To interrupt this infinite recursion, one adopt the collective affirmation of a "convention". During the least hundred years, the epistemic convention of positivism and of realism were the basis on which were established the value and validity of scientific knowledge. When, thirty years ago, the epistemic convention of constructivism reappeared, it provoked an understandable perplexity amongst the supporters of the positivist and realist convention who believed that its monopolistic position was legitimate. Also they proposed a "proceeding against constructivism", discussion of which will reveal the content of the thesis. This epistemological proceeding constitutes for us an introduction to the discussion of the genesis and of the organization of the constructivist (epistemological) convention, in its formulation at the end of the XXth century.