2nd Call For Papers 2010 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting Washington, D.C., April 14-18, 2010 (Please excuse cross-posting) Standing Out In The Crowd: Competing in the dynamic marketplace of cultural products Atle Hauge: Eastern Norway Research Institute Brian J. Hracs: University of Toronto Doreen Jakob: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Geographers have been endeavoring to understand the complex relationships between cultural production, consumption, society and space for some time. In particular, they consider the ways in which cultural products generate and trade on symbolic value and how cultural producers draw from and alter the meaning of place. Recently, however, new technologies, social practices and consumer behavior are changing these relationships. MP3s, digital cameras, creative software and online communities, which facilitate collaboration, file sharing and consumption, for example, allow an unprecedented volume of cultural goods and services to be produced and consumed in a marketplace which is becoming increasingly global. This expansion has also been accompanied by the general oversupply of cultural products and the widespread practice of downloading MP3s, movies and video games over the Internet illegally. Together these conditions serve to lower the monetary value of cultural products. As a result of these market dynamics and intensifying competition cultural producers are searching for ways to stand out in the crowd. Contemporary examples demonstrate the innovative and diverse nature of these competitive strategies. The U.K. band Radiohead, for example, altered the production process by incorporating input from consumers into the content and pricing structure of their 2008 album In Rainbows. Other strategies feature branding and marketing techniques based on place, collaborations between producers in different industries such as music, film and fashion, tapping into digital markets through virtual spaces such as MySpace and YouTube and a host of experience driven promotional strategies designed to enhance the symbolic value of cultural products. Despite this dynamic experimentation the goal of differentiating and selling products is universal. While geographers have started to explore some of these strategies, there is still much work to be done in this area. Therefore, the goal of this session is to examine the strategies cultural producers are developing and implementing to compete in the contemporary marketplace in more detail, while paying particular attention to their spatial dynamics and implications. We welcome papers from diverse conceptual and empirical perspectives that address the following and related themes; Analysis of the relationship between technology and space and its influence on cultural production and consumption Critical studies on the role of marketing and branding within society in general and cultural industries in particular The economics and spatial dynamics of competition within cultural industries Structures and outcomes of inter and intra sectoral collaborations Comparative studies which look at the ways in which competitive strategies are different and similar across space, industry and scale. Those of global firms and indie producers operating in different countries or markets or cultural and non-cultural industries, for example. Above all, this session aims to not only stimulate a forum to investigate these themes but to establish a basis for future exchange and collaboration as well. If interested, please send a title and abstract (250 words) by Friday, October 23rd 2009 to Doreen Jakob ([log in to unmask]). ___________________________________ Doreen Jakob Visiting Professor University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Communication Studies Chapel Hill, NC, USA Research Associate German Research Foundation (DFG) Emmy Noether Research Group Urban Renaissance Mega-Projects Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, Germany