Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

paper finishes with an engagement with how this framing is and is not compatible with a conventional
Marxian conception of value.
Jeremy Valentine
social network markets
Subaltern Economics: The regime of rent and the model of extraction of cultural value in
This paper is a critique of models of the economy of culture which propose that value is created in social
networks understood as markets through entrepreneurial valorisation. The model is grounded in
evolutionary economics which is based on the work of Veblen and Schumpeter, amongst others. There are
three components to the critique. Firstly, the model actually describes a process of revenue extraction
through the creation of rents, where rent is understood as the ability to occupy positions exterior to markets
in order to appropriate value. Therefore, value is not created and the notion of market does not apply. The
entrepreneur is actually a rentier and the creation of rents is a political activity. Secondly, the model is
contextualised with reference to an emerging rental regime within global capitalism which is based on the
accumulation of value without either production or market competition. Thirdly, the enunciative position of
the model, the pragmatic business facing University subject to state centred network governance, is
categorised in terms of Gramsci’s notion of the action of the subaltern which creates ‘new parties of the
dominant groups, intended to conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and to maintain control over
them’. This is because ‘Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they
rebel and rise up: only “permanent” victory breaks their subordination, and that not immediately. In reality,
even when they appear triumphant, the subaltern groups are merely anxious to defend themselves…’ In
short, the model of the economy of culture is a response which seeks accommaodation with a project to restructure
the conditions for the production of science in order to establish a new hegemonic formation on
behalf of existing dominant groups.
4E
Inclusions and Exclusions: Girls in Girls Studies (Chair, Kathleen Williams)
Mary Celeste Kearney
Only Extras? Black Girlhood and U.S. Cultural Studies
One of the first images of black girlhood in fictional U.S. television appeared on The Patty Duke Show in
1964. But the girl appears only briefly as an extra during a rock performance dominated by white bodies.
Skip forward decades to the burgeoning scholarly interest in girls’ culture following the publication of Angela
McRobbie’s Feminism and Youth Culture, and we see a similar inattention to racial difference. Today we are
still largely in the same place: Black girls appear infrequently in contemporary U.S. cultural studies. This
presentation uses the exclusion of black girls from media culture to understand their symbolic annihilation
within cultural studies and to offer possible solutions for recalibrating perspectives that keep too many of us
from seeing the black girls in the crowd.
Victoria Cann
Classing Girls: (Re)considering the role of class in British girls’ lives
Of the work that emerged from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK, much was
concerned with class (consider the work of Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams for example),
and a considerable proportion of this work also engaged with youth culture but not necessarily girls culture
(with the notable exception of Chris Griffin and Angela McRobbie’s work). Of the girls studies work that has
emerged from the buoyant field in the past twenty years, class has remained somewhat on the periphery,
with class and its role in girls’ lives instead the preserve of social scientists. In this paper I explore the work
that has examined the role of class in British girls’ lives and draw on my own empirical research to
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