Cultural Policy workshop: The Geography of Stardom

The Geography of Stardom: An Empirical Network Analysis of Human Capital Mobility in the Cultural Industries

 

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Associate Professor, University of Southern California, Price School of Public Policy

 

Tuesday, November 13, 12:00-1:20 p.m.

Harris School of Public Policy

1155 East 60th St.

Room 289B

 

The cultural industries have long operated under a winner-take-all market. Why does Hollywood remain intact despite runaway film production? Will fashion ever leave New York City? Is it even worth it for other cities to try to compete with London, Paris or Los Angeles? This paper seeks to explain the mechanisms behind such uneven economic development and what it might mean for cultural policy. First, using Getty Images photographs of the arts and entertainment industries the movement of cultural industry human capital is tracked across a network of 187 locations around the world. Tracking 6,754 individuals and 12,777 industry social milieus and events and the people in attendance, e.g. "stars" and using social network analysis, this photographic data is analyzed to study whether empirical social connections could tell us something meaningful about cultural industry human capital mobility and its impact on the places in which it locates. Using the case of the film industry to look at individual mobility patterns of stars, two measures of Hollywood success are studied: talent and "famous for being famous." This research suggests that flows of specialized, highly-skilled human capital, or "stars" partially explains the success of major cultural hubs. This analysis articulates the connectivity between these places and identifying the social relations and human capital that appear to correlate with their competitive advantage.

 

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is associate professor at the University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy. She is the author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City (Princeton University Press 2007) and Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). Currid-Halkett's work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon, the Economist, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. She has contributed to a variety of academic and mainstream publications including the Journal of Economic Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geography, Economic Development Quarterly, the Journal of the American Planning Association, the New York Times, Harvard Business Review and the Times of London. Currid-Halkett received her PhD from Columbia University.