The Limits of Diversity: How Publishing Industries Make Race

Authors

  • Anamik Saha Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Sandra van Lente Independent Researcher

Keywords:

diversity, race and racism, cultural industries, publishing, media industry studies, production studies, Whiteness

Abstract

This article is a critical account of how diversity is understood and mobilized within cultural industries, based on an empirical study of the UK publishing industry. Drawing from 113 qualitative interviews, we examine how diversity discourse shapes the acquisition, promotion, and sale of authors of color. We highlight the limitations of the industry’s quantitative approaches to the diversity “problem” and suggest an alternative approach that focuses on how cultural production reflects and reproduces existing racial inequalities. 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 media industry research, the article demonstrates how the unraced dominant culture profits the most from the commodification of culture.

Author Biographies

Anamik Saha, Goldsmiths, University of London

Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications

Sandra van Lente, Independent Researcher

Sandra van Lente has a background in literary and cultural studies (English and Spanish) as well as in business studies and economics. In her PhD thesis on cultural exchange and contemporary British novels she bridges the gap between literary studies, publishing studies and communication studies. Sandra van Lente has worked at the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt University Berlin as a lecturer, researcher and PR officer.

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Published

2022-03-14

Issue

Section

Articles