Profound transformations in the ways media products are produced, distributed and consumed caused by digital technologies that have 'disrupted' established business models, markets and relationships, has led to a renewed interest in the industry's spatial patterning and hence the importance of place in which locality, paradoxically in an era of globalisation, has been seen as having heightened significance. This renewed interest in space and location - sometimes characterised as the 'spatial turn' in media studies - has become a particularly pressing and urgent issue across Europe over the last decade as the effects of digital disruption become more pervasive. In an era of the increasing internationalisation of media production and an orientation to global markets, policy makers have recognised the importance of preserving, even enhancing this spatial plurality. As many studies have shown, the strength and influence of Public Service Media, - which have traditionally embraced this role of cultural identity-building, albeit with mixed results - has weakened in the face of increasingly powerful alternative providers: satellite channels or streaming platforms. These competitors, such as Sky or Netflix, operate to a global commercial logic in which 'territories' - not defined by either established national or regional boundaries - are conceived as markets not cultures. This new logic does not entirely displace or supersede the older logics of analogue broadcasting but introduces new layers of spatial complexity that need to be investigated and analysed.
This wide-ranging collection seeks to address these 'layers of spatial complexity' through a series of interconnected chapters investigating and analysing the importance of place, space and locality across the breadth of Europe from Greenland to Romania. Although the collection attends to the paradoxes and contradictions of space, place and locality revealed by detailed investigation, it is inspiredby the desire to identify, and find ways of valuing, the various strategies, practices and specific productions that resist homogenisation, ones that encourage plurality and sustainable growth and which contribute to the European cultural ideal of unity in diversity.
This is an open access book.
"This wide-ranging collection centers on analysis and reflection about the cultural and political significance of place-making. It demonstrates the importance of analysing sites of production and how the growing use of place-making in drama production risks disrupting the authentic identity of a place by turning it into a commodity. This excellent work is a book that we greatly needed."
- Milly Buonanno, former Professor of Television Studies, La Sapienza University of Roma, author of The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories
"The Politics of Place thoroughly demonstrates the ongoing and growing importance of locality for the production and distribution of film and television in Europe. The book's editors have assembled a range of geographically and methodologically diverse chapters that collectively combine theoretical meditations on space and place with detailed national and regional case studies."
Christopher Meir, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, author of Mass Producing European Cinema: Studiocanal and Its Works and co-editor of European Cinema in the Streaming Era
This open access book focuses, for the first time, on the ways in which film and television industries have shaped and been shaped by the places in which they are situated across Europe, from Greenland to Romania. Its thirteen chapters analyse contrasting examples but all focus on issues of identity, creative labour, representation, regulation, and the politics of location and production. They show the impact of globalisation and digitisation - via streaming platforms such as Netflix - but also through national public service broadcasters such as the BBC. An extended Introduction sets out the major theoretical questions of place and space in the European context. The conclusion reflects on what the chapters demonstrate about the continued centrality of place to the film and television industries.
Andrew Spicer is Professor of Cultural Production at the University of the West of England Bristol.
Ruth Barton is Professor in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin.
Amy Genders is Senior Lecturer in Screen Business and Creative Enterprise at the University of the West of England Bristol.
