Page 220 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

SYNERGY

Links City, postmodernism, symbolic, urbanization

Symbolic order: The symbolic order is constituted by the grammar of signs and
symbols as organized into the meaningful representations that constitute culture; 197
that is, the patterned forms of significance or meaning constituted by the relations
of difference between signs. The idea of the symbolic order plays a special part in
the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan that has acquired considerable currency with
some cultural studies writers. Here the symbolic order is the overarching structure
of language and received social meaning, entry into which is the condition for the
very possibility of subjects. According to Lacan, the symbolic order is the domain
of human law and culture whose composition is materialized in the very structure
of language. In particular, language enables subjectivity by virtue of the subject
positions it provides from which one may speak, so that outside of the symbolic
order lies only psychosis.

Links Language, meaning, psychoanalysis, representation, symbolic, semiotics, subject
position

Synergy The idea of synergy is a concept drawn from political economy that refers to
the bringing together of previously separate activities or moments in the processes
of production and exchange to produce higher profits. Synergy, in the context of
the communications industries, involves the assembling of various elements of
production and distribution so that they complement each other to produce lower
costs and greater profitability. In particular, the preoccupation with combining
software and hardware can be seen when films are marketed simultaneously with
pop music soundtracks and virtual reality video games all owned by the same
company. This is now not so much the exception as the rule.
The search for synergy has fuelled the growth of multimedia giants who
dominate key sectors of the market. Thus the world’s largest multimedia
corporation, AOL-Time Warner, is the product of a series of mergers and take-overs
that united first Time and Warner in 1989, followed by the 1995 acquisition of
Turner Broadcasting (CNN) and finally the buy-out by AOL in 2000. Likewise, the
acquisition by News Corporation of the Hong Kong-based Star TV for $525 million
gave them a massive satellite television footprint over Asia and the Middle East.
Allied to other television holdings, notably BskyB (UK) and Fox TV (USA and
Australia), and the acquisition in 2003 of Direct TV (USA), News Corp’s television
interests have a global reach of some two-thirds of the planet.
However, it is not just the spatial breadth of the corporation’s ownership that is
significant but also the potential link-ups between its various elements. In
Twentieth-Century Fox and Star TV, News Corp acquired a huge library of film and
television product that can be channelled through their network of distribution
outlets to create the possibility of a lucrative global advertising market as well as the
advantages of cross-promotion. This is synergy at work.
Links Convergence, globalization, multimedia corporation, political economy, television