Introduction: making culture

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book investigates the transformation of Australian cultural fields over the last two decades. It discusses individual case studies of the internal dynamics of the selected cultural fields – literature, art, music, sport, heritage and the media. The book examines 'cross-field' capacities, where a particular domain or technology exercises such a pervasive influence upon other fields as to play a significant, perhaps even determining, role in their definition and development. Indeed, cultural policy in Australia has now become a subset of economic and industry policy, eliciting calls in some quarters for remedial strategies such as the development of a policy framework for a 'cultural economy'. The commercialization of the signification of nation is one of the key influences on the progress of change in Australian culture over the decades since the release of Creative Nation