Monthly Archives: December 2005

Higher education, finally

MitWe have a problem in higher education.  Students must now choose between cultural studies and professional studies (specifically, business school).

If they choose the former, they swear off real engagement (and full employment) in the world.  If they choose latter, they swear off a deeper knowledge of the culture in which they will compete.

This is a long standing problem.  It plays out that distinction between the "world renouncing" liberal arts and the "world embracng" professional studies.  But it is a problem that has been made more grevious by two things: the continual retreat from the world performed by cultural studies and the continual interpenetration of culture and commerce in the marketplace.  The rapproachment of the two fields is, in other words, both more difficult and more urgent.

Let me put this more concretely.  Most business schools do nothing to advance the cultural literacy of the MBA graduate.  This despite the fact that success in marketing, innovation, management and the capital markets now turns more and more on a mastery here.  I noticed this particularly at the Harvard Business School, where almost without exception knowledge of contemporary culture is excluded from the classroom.  Occasionally, when teaching there, I would make a contemporary culture reference (Righteous Babe Records, the early long tail experiment by Ani DiFranco, say).  Students would look at me in astonishment, either because they had never heard of Ms. DiFranco, or because they knew her music perfectly well but never "in a million years" expected to hear her name spoken at HBS.

I am on record as believing that cultural studies has  systematically removed itself not just from real world usefulness but from any intellectual vantage point that would allow us thoughtfully to examine the interactions of culture and commerce.

The question has long been who would step up and create a program in the excluded middle?  Who would establish a rapprochment between these two worlds? Who would create a program that was fully informed and fully engaged?

I wonder whether blogging might someday serve this role.  How would we turn the materials that issue from the blogging world into the stuff of a higher education?  Interesting question, one that my new colleagues at Corante may well someday answer.

In the meantime, I am happy to report that the Comparative Media Studies at MIT is making extraordinary strides.  I realised this when responding this morning to a request on the part of a Dartmouth undergraduate who asked me to recommend a graduate program.  My reply:

Dear Sarah,

Thanks for your note.  I am happy to make myself useful in the review of some of the options, but I have to say I was yesterday  (belately) getting to know the people at the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, and it’s a really impressive program (and probably your best choice).

The graduate students would be a joy to have as colleagues.  […] 

The core of the enterprise is Henry Jenkins, and he is the odds-on-bet for the most gifted/prolific/seminal/formative guy in the field of contemporary culture.  He is well published which gives you a chance to have a look and decide if his approach works for you. 

Finally, the program appears to be breaking out of that world renouncing reflex of the academic world and is now working with some of the cultural producers in contemporary culture (e.g., MTV) in the creation of a real partnership.  This effectively collapses the distance between cultural studies and the business schools, using one to make up the deficit of the other.

All in all, it’s a pretty good choice for graduate study, equally useful as preparation for further academic study or a career in the world.  Hope this helps.  Let’s talk if there is anything I’ve left out or can elaborate on.  Best, Grant

References

McCracken, Grant. 2005. Culture studies and capital markets: parallel or converging?
November 08, 2005. here.  (for more on my unhappiness with Cultural Studies)

McCracken, Grant. 2005. Professor Quelch and the marketing manager
October 11, 2005. here.  (for more on my unhappiness with the b-school world)

Hooray for Hollywood

OprahGood news from Saudi Arabia today.  Oprah is a star there, too. 

According to the WSJ, The Oprah Winfrey Show now airs in Saudi Arabia twice a day, five days a week.  And it turns out she is a smash hit with young women.  Conversation now apparently often begins with a hushed and eager "Did you see Oprah last night?"

Actually, Oprah is being smuggled into Saudi Arabia and the lives of these young women.  Saudi TV is controlled but more than nine out of 10 households have a satellite dish.  This gives the Saudis access to MBC4, a pan-Arab satellite station based in Dubai and the Oprah show.

Naturally, Saudi elites are not happy about it.  The WSJ quotes Maha Akeel, a Saudi journalist.

"Weekly, there are critics who say [Oprah and other Western programs] are a cultural invasion and inappropriate to society, but [because of satellite transmission from Dubai] there’s really nothing they nor the government can do."

Some of you will remember that Charlotte Beers was appointed by then Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11 to change the way people in the Middle East thought about the US.

Beers said that she would tackle this problem by treating America as a "brand" and informed Businessweek, that "the whole idea of building a brand is to create a relationship between the product and its user." 

Well, maybe.  A simple reconnaissance  would have told us that there were at least two groups in Saudi Arabia who would respond with special force to the idea of liberty and the meme called choice.  Feminism had created a potent ideology that would speak to one of these.  What was needed was a Trojan horse to get the this message in.  Bless the Oprah Winfrey Show and satellite technology. 

Hana Balaa, director of the TNS Female Research Center in Saudi Arabia says, "Women are increasingly seeking ways to express themselves and their individuality. […]  Saudi women are also looking at their neighbors, like Dubai, or Kuwait, where women recently got the right to vote."

I guess this is where political philosophy and marketing (strange bed partners!) begin to look a lot alike. 

References

El-Rashidi, Yasmine.  2005.  ‘Oprah’ Is Attracting Young, Female Viewers To TV in Saudi Arabia
The Wall Street Journal.  December 1, 2005; Page B1. (Sorry, WSJ isn’t giving me an URL.  Go to http://www.wsj.com and search for "Oprah."  Subscription required.)

McCracken, Grant. 2004.  America in the Middle East.  This Blog Sits At… March 31, 2004. here.