The Cultural Industries

The Cultural Industries is justly celebrated for many reasons, but what I find most compelling is the civic and moral passion that infuses every page. While never polemical, Hesmondhalgh makes clear why the making of culture matters and what’s at stake. With each new much-awaited edition, it is this quality that ensures the book’s timeless relevance. 

-- Rodney Benson
This new edition is both a classic - guiding research on the cultural industries over the past decades - and the most comprehensive, up-to-date study of these industries today. Written in an intelligent, personal voice, the book not only provides sharp definitions and insightful discussions, but also offers a deep and sustained reflection on the continuities and changes in power, technologies, culture, and production. -- Thomas Poell

The Cultural Industries is a monumental achievement. A mighty work of intellectual synthesis and field leadership, it brilliantly lays out what the cultural industries are, how they work, how they’re changing, and why they matter. Hesmondhalgh has done us all a great service by writing it in the first place, and by taking the time to make meaningful and substantial revisions, including this latest edition, with its incorporation of newly important issues such as AI. 

-- Jean Burgess

Critical, cosmopolitan, and timely, the fifth edition of Hesmondhalgh’s magnum opus offers the most coherent and comprehensive introduction to cultural industries to date. It systematically identifies the pitfalls and pathways for socio-cultural change. Drawing on and advancing cultural studies as well as political economy frameworks, this volume is theoretically innovative, self-reflexive, and rich in case studies. This indispensable resource is essential for all students and scholars examining cultural industries, whether traditional or emergent, problematic or progressive.

-- Jack Linchuan Qiu

In this far-reaching and comprehensive new edition of Cultural Industries, David Hesmondhalgh has done it again: he has expertly traced the rapidly changing cultural industries landscape through a variety of elements, from government to big tech to ordinary people and beyond.  Unlike many other books on the cultural industries, this volume is not solely focused on the ever-changing present; rather, it crucially asks readers to consider the past as a way to understand what is happening now.  Against the naïve optimism of so much commentary on the digital landscape and what it offers, Hesmondhalgh gives us a thoughtful, historical understanding of the cultural industries so many of us attempt to comprehend in our everyday lives, from generative AI to the increasing power of "influencers" to the various ways the cultural industries continue to be a powerful platform for activism.  In so doing, he offers readers not only a brilliant analysis of why cultural industries matter, but for whom they matter.  

-- Sarah Banet-We