Saha, Anamik and van Lente, Sandra. 2022. The limits of diversity: how publishing industries make race. International Journal of Communication, 16, pp. 1804-1822. ISSN 1932-8036 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article is a critical account of how diversity is understood and mobilized within cultural industries, based upon an empirical study of the UK publish-ing industry. Drawing from 113 qualitative interviews with people who work in trade fiction, we examine how diversity discourse shapes the acquisition, promotion and sale of authors of color. The article opens with a discussion of the limitations of the quantitative approaches that frame industry responses to the diversity “problem.” We then make the case for an alternative approach that focuses on how cultural production reflects and reproduces existing racial inequalities. In applying this approach, we demonstrate how diversity acts as a form of racial governance that commodifies authors of color while simultaneously devaluing them. Contributing to the project of 'race-ing' critical media industry research, the article argues that the publish-ing industry is characterized by the operation of whiteness as much as it is by its commercial imperatives, ensuring that the unraced dominant culture continue to profit the most from the commodification of culture.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is based on the research project “Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing: A Cultural Industries Perspective” funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Project reference: AH/R01454X/1.)
Keywords:	diversity, race and racism, cultural industries, publishing, critical media industry studies, production studies, whiteness
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 21 January 2022 Accepted 14 March 2022 Published
Item ID:	31240
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2022 11:41
Last Modified:	16 Mar 2022 22:28
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/31240

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