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This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.
05-chap04 26/2/07 10:14 am Page 123 Independence and dependency 4 And all this talk about being an independent producer: I say there’s no such thing. I’m a dependent producer, because there are very few buyers and there are a lot of sellers. (Interview with the author, 16 January 2006) When Tony Garnett returned to Britain he did not go back to the BBC but entered the arena of independent production. He was approached by an old friend and associate, John Heyman, to become the head of a new production venture in British television, Island World Productions
, made for BBC Northern Ireland by Tony Garnett’s Island World Productions. The 1990 Broadcasting Act’s imposition on both the BBC and ITV of a quota system for independent production had introduced what Lez Cooke terms ‘a postmodern shift away from the idea of a producer-led culture . . . towards a consumer-led culture where the broadcasters were forced to compete with an increasing number of competitors for a share of the audience’ (Cooke 2003 : 162). Ballykissangel is, on the face of it, a classic product of such a shift, though Cooke goes on to identify Tony
Productions since 1990 (Island World Productions until 1993), he has overseen, and/or been executive producer for, a range of one-off films, series and mini-series (see Chapter 4). Although not a natural ‘joiner’, at his own admission, he served on the executive of his union (Association of Cinematographic and Television Technicians: ACTT) in the late 1960s and was one of the Governors of the British Film Institute and Chair of the Production Board in the early 1990s. Garnett is one of a small group of television producers who have helped to define what being a television
Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) returned to public discourse in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union imploded and globalization erupted. Best known for The Great Transformation, Polanyi’s wide-ranging thought anticipated twenty-first-century civilizational challenges of ecological collapse, social disintegration and international conflict, and warned that the unbridled domination of market capitalism would engender nationalist protective counter-movements. In Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, Radhika Desai and Kari Polanyi Levitt bring together prominent and new thinkers in the field to extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. Kari Polanyi Levitt's opening essay situates Polanyi in the past century shaped by Keynes and Hayek, and explores how and why his ideas may shape the twenty-first century. Her analysis of his Bennington Lectures, which pre-dated and anticipated The Great Transformation, demonstrates how Central European his thought and chief concerns were. The next several contributions clarify, for the first time in Polanyi scholarship, the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Other contributions resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society and socialism as freedom in a complex society. The volume culminates in explorations of how Polanyi has influenced, and can be used to develop, ideas in a number of fields, whether income inequality, world-systems theory or comparative political economy. Contributors: Fred Block, Michael Brie, Radhika Desai, Michael Hudson, Hannes Lacher, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Chikako Nakayama, Jamie Peck, Abraham Rotstein, Margaret Somers, Claus Thomasberger, Oscar Ugarteche Galarza.
This book explores the development of Robert Lepage’s distinctive approach to stage direction in the early (1984–94) and middle (1995–2008) stages of his career, arguing that globalisation had a defining effect in shaping his aesthetic and professional trajectory. It combines examination of Lepage’s theatremaking techniques with discussion of his work’s effects on audiences, calling on Lepage’s own statements as well as existing scholarship and critical response. In addition to globalisation theory, the book draws on cinema studies, queer theory, and theories of affect and reception. As such, it offers an unprecedented conceptual framework, drawing together what has previously been a scattered field of research. Each of six chapters treats a particular aspect of globalisation, using this as a means to explore one or more of Lepage’s productions. These aspects include the relationship of the local (in Lepage’s case, his background in Québec) to the global; the place of individual experience within global late modernity; the effects of screen media on human perception; the particular affect of ‘feeling global’; the place of branding in contemporary creative systems; and the relationship of creative industries to neoliberal economies. Making theatre global: Robert Lepage’s original stage productions will be of interest to scholars of contemporary theatre, advanced-level undergraduates with an interest in the application of theoretical approaches to theatrical creation and reception, and arts lovers keen for new perspectives on one of the most talked-about theatre artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
possible, both in continental Europe and in the United States, to manufacture an ever-increasing volume of watches. As for demand, it was largely stimulated by the rise of modern industrial societies. Factories, railways, schools, and the army are all institutions based on a strict discipline of time. 2 Second, Britain, which accounted for half of world production at the end of the eighteenth century, faced a collapse of its competitiveness. The level of production did not show a
based on an explosion in demand for watches, with world production rising from around 180 million pieces in 1970 to 600 million in 1984 and around 1.4 billion today. Two new organisational forms emerged: integrated multinational companies (Swatch Group, the major luxury conglomerates, and Japanese watchmakers) and global value chains (factories in China; coordination centres in Hong Kong; brand owners around the world). Mass production of watches is no longer the main source of competitiveness for watch companies. It is increasingly based on their ability to adopt
classification, some creoles rejoiced in the uniqueness and diversity of New World productions. And where Bourgoing presented the Spanish Empire as an emporium containing all known flora, Americans cast their native regions as microcosms, blessed with a staggering variety of climatic conditions and the perfect laboratories in which to conduct scientific studies. The New Granadan Caldas espoused this view when he savoured the
largest watch-exporting countries. In total, world exports of complete watches amounted to 38.5 billion US dollars in 2017. This figure is clearly higher than the value of world production, as it includes the re-export of watches (watches imported and directly re-exported). This table emphasises two elements. Table 8.1 Top 10 exporters of complete watches in terms of value, 2017