Consumer preferences, cultural product types, and the export potential

of cultural industries in small countries. Lessons from the Dutch

publishing industry

Paper presented on October 9th 2008 at the European Urban Research Association’s
conference ‘Learning cities in a knowledge-based society’ in Milan, 9th-11th October
2008.

Michaël Deinema 1

Abstract
This paper challenges the assumption that, while the production of cultural goods and
services is still locally specific and culturally informed, cultural consumption has become
globalized. It argues that consumers generally require some degree of cultural knowledge
or cultural affinity with cultural products in order to understand and appreciate them. The
cognitive distance between producer and consumer should therefore not be too great.
This implies that producers from areas that take up a low position in the global cultural
hierarchy, experience more difficulties exporting their cultural products than producers
from more culturally influential areas. It also implies that we should distinguish between
cultural products according to the degree to which they demand specific cultural
knowledge from the consumer. Distinctions between cultural products along these lines
may be expected to correspond with very distinct (global) geographic patterns of industry
concentration, as well as with different types of organization of production.

Introduction
It is often argued that cultural industries, and the cultural economy as a whole, are
becoming increasingly prominent in post-industrial societies (Lash and Urry 1994; Zukin

1
This paper forms part of the research project Places and their culture: the evolution of Dutch
cultural industries from an international perspective, 1600-2000. This project is a joint effort by
AMIDSt (Universiteit van Amsterdam) and RICH (Universiteit Utrecht) and is funded by the
NWO. I would like to thank the other members of the research team for their helpful suggestions
and guidance: Robert Kloosterman, Mariangela Lavanga, Maarten Prak, Claartje Rasterhoff.

1
1995, 1998; Scott 2000a; Throsby 2001; Kloosterman 2004; Currid 2007). Because the
products emerging from these cultural industries are thought to be infused with cultural
elements specific to the localities or regions where they are produced, these products are
considered hard to (re)produce in alternative locations. Local or regional histories and
cultures that inform the design and manufacturing of such products, or inform the
technical, creative and social processes underlying their production should thus be seen
as unique selling points that insulate producers in these industries from extra-local or
extra-regional competition (Pratt 2008). The importance of ‘uniqueness’ (distinct
aesthetic or symbolic qualities) in cultural products, which are presumed to be related to
the local or regional culture of the producers, makes their demand non-substitutable. This
creates market environments characterized by ‘monopolistic competition’ (Chamberlin
1933), potentially allowing localities or regions to occupy protected niches in
international markets. Against a background of globalization and deindustrialization this
provides a reassuring perspective for high-wage countries that have lost many
manufacturing activities (and increasingly also jobs in certain service sectors) due to
offshoring.
Consequently, scholars from different disciplines, and economic geographers in
particular, have been concerned with identifying, elaborating and explaining the spatial
characteristics and dynamics of cultural industries. They have sought to understand what
types of places cultural industries thrive in and have repeatedly concluded that cultural
industries benefit from both urbanization economies, and thus from the metropolitan
milieu and ‘pick-and-mix’ opportunities for knowledge combination found in large
vibrant urban areas (Scott 2000a; Searle and De Valence 2005; Currid 2006; cf. Simmie
2004), and localization economies taking place in clusters (Scott 2000a, 2000b; Bathelt
2002; Rantisi 2004; Kloosterman 2004, 2008; Kloosterman and Stegmeijer 2005; Mizzau
and Montanari 2008). Simultaneously, these scholars have characterized these industries
as a potentially important export sector for a wide array of nations and localities (Scott
2000a; Bassett et al. 2002; Power 2003; Kloosterman 2004).
A stress on the export potential of cultural industries may be overly optimistic,
because the ways in which cultural products are marketed across cultural borders have
remained under-examined. How and when do cultural products move across cultural

2
barriers? This question seems especially relevant to cultural industries that are located in,
and that draw upon the cultural heritage of, small countries with a modest language area
and sphere of cultural influence. Despite their geographical focus, many claims about the
geographical dimensions of cultural industries have been prone to generalization beyond
specific national and regional-cultural contexts. Like the cluster concept itself, cultural
industry clusters seem to have attained the status of a general ‘policy panacea’ (Martin
and Sunley 2003). Little theoretical effort has been made to critically question whether
urbanization economies or cluster mechanisms yield equal benefits for cultural industries
situated in different nations, continents or cultural regions.
This caveat is surprising for two reasons:
1. the emphasis on culture, which would seem to invite a particular sensitivity to
differences (also in terms of active economic geographical mechanisms)
across cultures and culture areas
2. the claim that well-functioning cultural industries clusters increase regions’
exports implies that cultural products move across national and therefore often
cultural boundaries.
It seems that the conditions under which cultural products become exportable has
received little attention in economic geographical literature due to a methodological focus
on production and producers. What is lacking is adequate theoretization of the cultural
dimensions of the consumption of cultural industries products. This can in part be
explained by a geographical research bias which has favored studies focusing on cultural
industries emanating from the Anglo-American geo-cultural sphere (Gibson and Kong
2005). As Anglo-American culture is hugely influential on a global scale and
encompasses several countries that together constitute by far the world’s largest market
for cultural products, this focus is understandable. Nevertheless, theoretical inquiry into
the cognitive-cultural aspects of cultural product consumption is critical if our
understanding of the conditions for success of cultural industries (especially of cultural
industry clusters) is to move adequately beyond these geo-cultural confines.
In this paper I will argue that cultural product consumption should be seen as
something active, and that the understanding and appreciation of cultural products
demands (culturally constituted) knowledge on the part of the customer, although to

3
varying degrees depending on the specific product. From this perspective a typology of
cultural products will be proposed that is designed to help answer two general questions.
Firstly, to what extent do potential cognitive-cultural differences between producers and
foreign consumers impose barriers to the international marketability of specific cultural
products? And secondly, how do such barriers affect which places are able to produce
what type of cultural products successfully for international markets?
Before this typology is presented, I will discuss shortly which role has been
accorded to cultural consumption and the consumer in the existing literature, and why
this role deserves further elaboration. Then I will examine two existing typologies of
knowledge-intensive industries and suggest how these can be complemented by a
characterization of cultural products that has a more direct bearing on the knowledge and
cultural sensibilities involved in consuming them. The potential value of the proposed
typology of cultural products for the analysis of particular cultural industries in particular
places, will subsequently be illustrated by applying it to the case of the publishing
industry in the Netherlands. Finally, in the conclusion, I will draw some possible
implications of this approach for the understanding of geographical concentration and
path dependence of cultural industries

A universal cultural consumer?

Cultural industries are often defined in terms of the relative weight of aesthetic and
symbolic, as opposed to utilitarian, qualities in determining the value and attractiveness
of their products (Scott 2000). This stress on the type of value accorded to products, and
therefore to valuation, would seem to invite careful consideration of cultural product
consumption. Especially if cultural products are ‘heavy on signification’ (Hesmondhalgh
2002) and essentially communicates or transmits meaning (Gibson and Kong 2005;
Asheim et al. 2007), it might be expected that the receiving side of this communication or
transmission, the consumption side, has been closely scrutinized. Definitions such as
these imply that consumption (the reception), and not only the production of these
products is relatively culturally-dependent. Nevertheless, research into the demand side
of cultural industries, and especially analyses of demand for cultural products across

4
national (and geographically-specific cultural) boundaries, has been relatively neglected,
at least by economic geographers.
The nature of cultural consumption has received a fair bit of attention in other
fields of research. Inquiries of economists into this phenomenon have emphasized aspects
such as the addictive quality of cultural consumption, non-user externalities and income-
elasticity of demand (Marshall 1891; Throsby 2001; Hoskins et al. 2004). 2 Sociologists
and other social scientists have focused mainly on the relations between cultural
consumption and social status, the distinctions between high-brow and low-brow culture,
and the role of cultural intermediaries as gatekeepers and ideological agents (Bourdieu
1984, 1993; Negus 2002; Gibson and Kong 2005). Although these insights have proved
very valuable in the analysis of cultural products, they have not engaged with the
economic geographical aspects of cultural production and consumption.
Where geographers have displayed an interest in the geographical dimensions of
cultural consumption, they have focused mainly on such universalizing notions as
cultural crucibles, metropolitan lifestyles, creative cities and a creative class (Hall 1998;
Zukin 1998; Florida 2002) emphasizing above all the importance of urban diversity and
vibrancy. Otherwise, geographers concerned with the cultural economy have looked
mostly to cultural production, often emphasizing the importance of metropolitan diversity
and vibrancy as well. In these cases, the global dominance of a small number of cities,
the so-called global cities or world cities (Sassen 1990; Currid 2006), in cultural
commodity production, has been attributed almost invariably to the internal creative
dynamics of these cities, instead of to (the extent and influence of) the larger cultural
spheres of which these cities are part (Scott 2000a; Searle and De Valence 2005; Currid
2006, 2007). Although some studies comparing different world cities have remarked
upon the obvious influence of language in determining the markets for some cultural
industries (Llewelyn-Davies 1996; Scott 2000b) such observations have not led to
theoretization. This has encouraged the idea that the competitive position, in terms of
cultural industries, of metropolises with modest cultural areas, such as Singapore, vis à

2
The author is grateful to Mariangela Lavanga for pointing out these lines of economic
argumentation.

5
vis cities such as New York, London or Paris, depends mainly on the cities’ internal
creative dynamics (Toh et al. 2003).
The positive connection between cultural industries and metropolises is not the
only one to have been established in the literature. Cultural industries are also generally
thought to thrive in clusters. Most of the manifold advantages attributed to clustering or
agglomeration concern the increased scope for interactions between producers. These
include increased opportunities for learning through face-to-face contacts (Storper and
Venables 2004), a greater ability to monitor the competition (Bathelt et al. 2004), greater
opportunities for cooperation and the creation of value-adding networks (Simmie 2004),
the presence of specialized pools of labor and suppliers (Porter 1990, 2000; Scott 2000a),
learning and reproduction of knowledge through labor circulation (Kloosterman 2008),
the greater likelihood of the emergence of dedicated and specialized institutions (Scott
2000a), and so on. 3 But like those authors that stress the importance of metropolises as
cultural capitals, cluster theorists have also posited a correlation between local cultural
production and local cultural demand. In this case, the presence of a sophisticated local
customer base (often co-evolving with the local production system) is thought to
stimulate excellence and innovativeness in production by anticipating demand elsewhere
and communicating that information (explicitly or implicitly) to local producers (Porter
1990, 2000; Scott 2000a). What is evoked here is the a-cultural figure of the exemplary
customer, or ‘smart neighbor’ (Grabher et al. 2008), who is able to recognize true or
objective quality and whose preferences will eventually and inevitably be learned and
imitated by consumers in other parts of the world. Whereas cultural production is thus
seen to be locally dependent, culturally specific and culturally informed, cultural
consumption is thought to be globalized (see for example, Mizzau and Montanari 2008).

Different cultures, different tastes

The idea of the exemplary consumer is mirrored by an implicit assumption in much of the
literature concerned with cultural industries that the aesthetic or symbolic merit of
cultural products will somehow be universally acknowledged if the environment in which

3
All these aspects of cluster theory are often repeated by all the authors referred to in this
paragraph.

6
they are produced is dynamic and/or organized in a sophisticated way. Such an
assumption, if left devoid of nuance, seems irreconcilable with the very nature of cultural
products and is clearly at odds with the idea that cultures influence aesthetic tastes and
construct symbolic meanings and identities. There are in any case several empirical
indications that tastes regarding cultural products of consumers in different countries
often do not converge to a single global standard. This implies that the exportability of
cultural products is not simply determined by a somehow objective quality of the
producers and their local or regional production system.
It has been argued, for example, that film producers from small countries
generally experience more difficulties exporting their films to large countries than vice
versa, and that this inequality is due to the ‘liabilities of foreignness’, i.e. language and
stylistic preferences (Lorenzen 2008). Others have described how cultural products that
are marketed across national and cultural boundaries often become transformed in the
process, or are transformed to become palatable to foreign audiences. The music sold in
the West as ‘world music’, claiming cultural authenticity, is a case in point. African
musicians successful in the West have often had to modify their music to incorporate
Euro-American scales, harmonies and timbres, and often combine the use of several
different languages on their records. This tendency, in effect, ‘deterritorializes’ the places
and identities that their music is supposed to represent (Connell and Gibson 2004). Even
as consumers seek exoticism and authenticity, hybridity of cultural products thus seems
key in successfully marketing them across cultural boundaries. The same has been found
to be the case with the Spanish flamenco dance, which has become widely popular in the
United States and especially Japan, partly because of its very diverse origins (Gypsy,
Spanish, Moorish). The popularity of flamenco in Japan and the USA can furthermore be
interpreted partly as an accident, as flamenco has been interpreted in ways and has
acquired meanings in these countries very different than in Spain (Aoyama 2007).

Cognitive distances between producers and consumers of cultural products

Although research into cultural industries clusters has generally not critically examined
the differences and relations between local and international demand, it has shown the
influence of the preferences of customers on producers. Recently, the different roles

7
consumers can play in influencing the process of product design and innovation has been
elaborated (Grabher et al. 2008). The demand side of cultural industries partly shapes the
conditions for production. Consumers should thus be seen as active agents that interact to
a certain extent with the producers of cultural products, as might be expected in industries
that depend on signification and the transmission of meaning. Producers, in a sense,
communicate with consumers, and as such need to be able to make themselves
understood. Producers address consumers and thereby presuppose knowledge of a
language or of stylistic elements on the part of consumers. Knowledge gaps or, more
generally, the cognitive distance between producers and consumers affects the appeal of
cultural products. However, not all cultural products demand equal cognitive-cultural
proximity between producers and consumers. Producers of cultural products may address
different parts of consumers’ knowledge make-up by using either specific or more
general knowledge elements in their products.
As cultural-cognitive distance is partly related to geography, geographies of
cultural industry production are influenced by the importance of cognitive proximity
between producers and consumers. The degree to which the products of an industry can
be consumed in different geographical contexts affects the geographical patterns of that
industry. Michael Porter (2000) has argued that the more universally applicable an
industry’s products are, the fewer clusters of producers are likely to be sustainable and
thrive in that industry worldwide. Thus, if the products of an industry (the newspaper
industry for example) are only applicable in a specific context (e.g. within a limited
cultural space), clustered producers will experience difficulties in reaching out to and
dominating wider markets, and a larger number of clusters will be sustainable in that
industry as they all cater to their own specific and relatively protected (often domestic)
markets. In order to better understand the varying global geographies of different cultural
industries, it may thus be valuable to classify cultural products according to the cultural
(and therefore often geographical) specificity of the knowledge they presuppose in
consumers.

8
Knowledge types and product categories
The importance of differences in the knowledge content embodied in products has
already been explicitly recognized by economic geographers. However, typologies based
on such differences have tended to focus on different knowledge types involved in
product development instead of product consumption. Bjørn Asheim and Meric Gertler,
for instance, have argued that we should distinguish between product development that
involves analytical, synthetic or symbolic knowledge (Asheim et al. 2007; Gertler 2008).
Each of these knowledge types is produced and communicated in different ways.
Whereas analytical knowledge is readily codifiable and easily exchanged over large
distances, synthetic knowledge is more context-dependent, tacit and therefore most
successfully exchanged by product developers working together in close physical
proximity. It has further been argued that different industries producing different classes
of products employ different knowledge types, with analytic knowledge being identified
with product development in industries such as biotechnology, whereas synthetic
knowledge plays a greater role in the development of industrial machinery or
shipbuilding, for example (Asheim and Gertler 2005; Asheim and Coenen 2005).
Symbolic knowledge, the most tacit, most context-dependent, ‘stickiest’ form of
knowledge has been identified as the predominant knowledge type required for producers
in cultural industries.
This typology highlights the varying degrees of tacitness of the knowledge needed
to develop different types of products, which explains the varying dependence on face-to-
face contacts for processes of knowledge exchange, learning and product innovation in
different industries. The more tacit the knowledge is on which producers in a specific
industry depend, the greater their tendency to co-locate and cluster becomes. Although
these proposed knowledge types are helpful for understanding why physical proximity
between producers and clustering play a greater role in some industries than in others,
they still tell us little about where successful clusters in a given industry are likely to
develop. Furthermore, the fact that productive knowledge in all cultural industries is
represented here by a single category, symbolic knowledge, limits the utility of this
typology for exploring why different cultural industries display different geographical
patterns.

9
 Another typology of products, proposed by Clarke and O’Connor (1997) in the
context of research on financial centers, has aimed at explaining global geographical
divisions of labor between such centers, thus coming closer to this paper’s objective of
clarifying relations between places of production and the exportability (global market
position) of products. Clarke and O’Connor classify financial products as transparent,
translucent or opaque on the basis of how much knowledge of local economic contexts is
needed to produce them. According to this argument, transparent products are clearly
defined and understood by financial experts around the world. These products can in
principle be constructed and sold by financial institutions regardless of their geographical
location. Consequently, the supply of transparent products is dominated by the world’s
most powerful and best-equipped financial centers such as New York, London and
Tokyo. At the other side of the spectrum, opaque products are derived from locally-
specific economic and institutional constellations and are best created by financial
institutions close to the products’ geographical contexts of reference, resulting in
comparative advantages of smaller financial centers in certain financial market niches.
Clarke and O’Connor relate types of knowledge inherent in a product’s creation to
a global market hierarchy of the localities in which they are produced. As in the case of
Asheim and Gertler’s knowledge typology, however, these different forms of knowledge
embodied in products do correspond to different production environments, but do not
impose any particular conditions on the context in which they are consumed. In the same
way as transparent products, translucent (the intermediate form) and opaque financial
products are presented to investors worldwide in terms of expected risks and profitability.
Regardless of the local specificity of the knowledge involved in designing financial
products and assessing their value prospects, their value is reduced and translated to a
universally accepted norm and utility: their potential for yielding monetary rewards
expressed in nominal rates. As such, opaque financial products may be traded globally
and bought by foreign investors as readily as transparent products.

A typology of cultural products: bringing in the consumer

Unlike financial products, cultural products often (in fact, almost by definition) do not
possess a universally standard utility for the customer. A geographically relevant

10
typology of cultural products should therefore take as a starting point not the knowledge
involved in their production per se (referring only to the knowledge of producers), but the
knowledge shared between producer and consumer on the basis of which the transmission
of meaning from the creator to the customer (i.e. the communicative act) takes place. I
therefore propose a typology of cultural products, loosely analogous to Clarke and
O’Connor’s work on financial products, based on the degree of local specificity of the
symbolic or aesthetic medium by which producers communicate with consumers and that
is embodied in the products they bring to the marketplace. Cultural products can then be
seen as embodying one of the following three categories of symbolic or aesthetic norms:

1. universal (or dominant) symbols or aesthetic values

2. culturally inclusive (or hybrid) symbols or aesthetic values
3. culturally exclusive symbols or aesthetic values

The first of these three types, the universally-oriented cultural products, address
consumers by means of symbolic or aesthetic elements that are widely used, recognized
and understood around the world. The ‘universal status’ of such elements may be the
result of either their simplicity (e.g. geometrical figures) or of a historically built-up
global influence (e.g. the English language; the symbols of the world’s major religions).
Cultural products making extensive use of such symbolic or aesthetic forms demand little
cultural-cognitive proximity between producers and consumers because signification is
achieved through very generic means (that can, however, be used in sophisticated ways).
Such ‘universal’ cultural products can, in principle, be successfully produced in large
parts of the world, including in countries with modest cultural influence, and marketed
easily across national borders. Competition for markets in these products is therefore
(again in principle) often fierce and globalized, and may be expected to result eventually
in the global hegemony of the best-functioning clusters of producers.
Cultural products of the second type, the culturally-inclusive products, refer more
than universally-oriented products to culturally-specific heritages, knowledge and tastes.
These references, however, are not exclusive to a single cultural context or combine
elements taken from different traditions leading to forms of cultural hybridity, such as in

11
the case of ‘world music’. Hybridity widens the potential appeal of cultural products,
partly by combining elements recognizable to potential customers of (several) different
cultural backgrounds, and partly because it involves cherry-picking and the (cultural)
decontextualization and modulization of stylistic elements (an act of reduction of the
manifold meanings and associations that such elements have often acquired within the
cultural context from which they are borrowed). Specific culturally-inclusive cultural
products may be produced and consumed in a number of different cultural contexts,
although not quite everywhere. Producers of these goods are fairly sheltered from
competition from producers in other parts of the world that produce similar goods that
are, however, inspired by a different set of cultural traditions. For example, a cluster of
musicians and record labels specializing in African-inspired music in either Africa or the
West, may comfortably coexist with clusters in Asia (or the West) that specialize in
oriental-type music. Neither their markets, nor the skills required to produce the different
types of music, overlap very much. Competition may occur, however, between clusters in
the various cultural areas that have supplied the snippets of traditional symbolic or
aesthetic forms out of which the new hybrid cultural products are composed.
Finally, culturally-exclusive products can only be produced and duly understood
and appreciated by those well-versed in a specific (historically) place-bound cultural
tradition. A large degree of exposure to, and often a sense of identification with, a
specific system of signs or aesthetic elements is required to engage in either the
production or (usually) enjoyable consumption of such products. This degree of exposure
and identification is usually achieved by living in, and having attained the habitus of, a
specific cultural area. Both production and consumption are thus related to place and
mostly take place (although they are certainly not necessarily equally distributed) within
fairly well-established historically-determined geographical bounds (that are, however,
malleable in the long term). These products are rife with references to specific cultural
traditions and heritages that have been formed within ethnic groups, nations, language
communities or other geographically-bounded social entities. Culturally-exclusive
products usually represent intricate and refined expressions of traditions that have taken
relatively long periods of time to evolve and develop. As such, they are rich with
meanings and associations that are hard for outsiders to recognize or decipher. Even

12
when producers make use sets of symbols that have nominally become common currency
across geo-cultural borders, can their use be so intricate as to remain culturally exclusive.
Poetry, for example, even when written in English, the present-day lingua franca, is
therefore likely to be much more difficult to sell to non-native speakers than many forms
of English-language prose are.

Understanding the failures and successes of Dutch publishers on international

markets
This section will attempt to illustrate how the typology of cultural products proposed
above may potentially be employed to analyze and understand how a cultural industry
cluster in a country that is relatively uninfluential in a wider cultural sense can become
prominent on international markets, or loose that prominence for reasons unrelated to the
cluster’s internal sophistication and dynamism.

Changing products, changing fortunes

During the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, the Dutch Republic produced
around half of all books printed in Europe. Approximately one third of the total European
book production took place in the city of Amsterdam, making it a ‘metropolis of print’
(Hoftijzer 2001). Amsterdam during this period formed a well-developed publishing
cluster, with high concentrations of publishers, booksellers and authors, high degrees of
horizontal and vertical specialization, acting as a magnet for authors and translators from
abroad, and exporting published materials widely all over Europe (Deinema 2008). The
city’s international publishing prominence rested mostly on the export of learned Latin
works (drawn from an international Republic of Letters), bibles and geographical maps.
These were the type of printed works that were in greatest demand among the literate
publics of Europe at that time, and they were works that were of pan-European relevance.
Their meaning and quality could be understood by the Dutch publishers, as well as by
reading publics across Europe. The ubiquitous nature of the symbolic systems and
meanings employed in these works was able to offset the fact that the Dutch language
was only marginally spoken and understood in Europe. For, although the development of
this cultural industry in the Dutch Republic (as well as that of Dutch painting and

13
architecture) was spurred by the economic and political prowess of the Dutch Republic
during that era (Arrighi 1994) which is often referred to as the Dutch Golden Age or the
age of Dutch hegemony, the Dutch language remained largely confined to the Dutch
Republic and Flanders. Despite the fact that the Dutch maintained a large overseas
empire until well into the twentieth century, Dutch never became widely spoken, taking
hold in some relatively minor colonies (Surinam, parts of South Africa), but not in the
largest and most populated Dutch colony of present-day Indonesia. This unimpressive
diffusion of the Dutch language (as compared to the spread of Portuguese for example)
was due to complex processes, but had to do to a large extent with a lack of large-scale
Dutch settler migration (Ostler 2005).
The limited usage of the Dutch language abroad became a severe disadvantage for
Dutch publishers after around 1750 when a general Europe-wide trend towards the
vernacularization and nationalization of literatures began to take hold. Novels and poetry
(as well as local or national newspapers) slowly became popular and depended more on
language, and culturally- and nationally-specific sensibilities and preoccupations than
bibles and maps 4 , i.e. they were more culturally exclusive than the relatively
‘universalizing’ printed works of the earlier period. Even academic works were
increasingly written and published in Europe’s vernacular languages instead of Latin, a
tendency heavily resisted by Dutch scholars during this period (Johannes 2001). Dutch
publishers were unable to compete with foreign rivals in the production of these newly
popular printed products and to cater to these new forms of consumer demand, except of
course within the Low Countries itself. Exports came to a virtual stop. Printing and
publishing throughout Europe became a mostly domestic affair, with only publishers
from some powerful language areas (notably English, French and German publishers)
able to export some of their publications across language boundaries during the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the Netherlands (as the Dutch Republic came
to be known after 1813) the literary scene fell behind its larger European counterparts due
to the limitations of the language area (Johannes 2001). The country virtually ceased to

4
Although during the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch publishers had the bible translated in many
European languages and sold vernacularized copies to many parts of Europe, they were very familiar with
the bible’s content, relevance and appeal. There was no need for them to assess, anew on a regular basis,
the value and quality of newly-arrived manuscripts in languages that they themselves could not understand
and that were full of unfamiliar cultural references.

14
export books and, instead, began importing comparatively large numbers of publications.
An important point is that during this period, Amsterdam remained a sophisticated
publishing cluster, with (for European standards) relatively high concentrations of
publishers, bookstores and related firms. However, Amsterdam’s publishers only catered
to domestic Dutch markets (Deinema 2008; Hubregste 1984). Their failing successes as
exporters were thus most likely not due to internal changes in the cluster, but rather to a
shift of international demand from universal products to hybrid, especially, and culturally
exclusive ones.
This conclusion is affirmed by a renewal of international success for a section of
the Dutch publishing industry after World War II in academic publishing, a field that had
become increasingly internationalized from 1900 onwards (Hemels et al. 1999). Dutch
publishers such as Elsevier Science, Wolters Kluwer, North Holland Publishing
Company, Excerpta Medica, Brill and IOS Press were all able to make their mark on
international markets for academic journals during the second half of the twentieth
century, with Elsevier Science even becoming global market leader in this lucrative
publishing niche at the turn of the millennium (Van der Wurff 2002). Dutch academic
publishers, and in particular those based in Amsterdam, were able to attain their leading
positions after World War II in part due to the institutional and infrastructural resources
related to publishing that had continued to evolve in Amsterdam since the eighteenth
century. This conferred to them many of the advantages of clustering such as localized
knowledge spillover, the concentration of highly-skilled entrepreneurs and labor, forms
of local interfirm cooperation encouraging horizontal and vertical specialization, vigorous
local competition and so on (Deinema 2008; Fredriksson 2001; Van Leeuwen 1980).
These resources and cluster mechanisms, however, were only able to underpin a renewed
assault of some Dutch publishers on international markets when international demand
increased for a new type of ‘universal’ publishing product, the English-language
academic journal.
Despite the fact that the Netherlands as a whole, and Amsterdam in particular, has
become a major international academic publishing cluster, Dutch publishers have proven
unable to find sizeable foreign audiences for other types of publications. Not surprisingly,
a European Commission report published in 2000 found the Dutch publishing industry to

15
be highly competitive in magazine and periodical publishing (which includes journal
publishing) while much less so in book, newspaper, or directory publishing (European
Commission 2000). Dutch publishers have only been able to compete on international
markets with products that are based on a lingua franca and are appreciated (more or
less) equally in the wider world as they are in the Netherlands itself. The
internationalization of science closed the relevant cognitive gap between Dutch
publishers and editors 5 on the one hand, and a particular segment of readers (i.e.
scientists) in a wide range of countries on the other.

Success in different disciplines

The relevance of the universality of products for the international appeal of journals
coming out of the Netherlands becomes even clearer when one looks at the academic
disciplines in which Dutch publishers have gained international prominence. In the lists
drawn up by American academic librarians participating in the Journals of the century
project, aiming to identify the most relevant journals of the twentieth century for a wide
range of academic disciplines, journals published by Dutch publishers (such as Elsevier,
North Holland Publishing and Brill) were unevenly represented across academic fields
(Stankus 2002).
In the Journals of the century lists Dutch publishers were best represented in the
exact sciences (accounting for between ten to twenty percent of listed journals in physics
and chemistry) and in other academic fields that are, in principle, unrelated to geocultural
contexts, such as computer science and engineering, medicine and international law.
Journals published by Dutch publishers were completely absent in the lists covering
fields such as history, sociology, literary studies, anthropology and general law. These
latter fields are clearly more culturally-constituted than the ones in which Dutch
publishers have achieved international successes, an observation confirmed by a survey
among German scholars and students in different academic fields about their use of
translated academic texts which showed that whereas the use of translated texts is

5
The share of Dutch editors of international academic journals published by Dutch publishers has fallen
steadily since the 1940s and 1950s, but especially during the first postwar decades Dutch editors were very
important in setting up and editing journals. Dutch acquisition editors have remained important in
managing and expanding academic publishing programs and portfolios.

16
common in the basic sciences and among practitioners and students of medicine, those
engaging in the social sciences and, especially, the humanities prefer to read texts in their
original language (Hundt 2001). This shows that the type of journals Dutch publishers
have been able to compete successfully in on international markets, contain types of
information that derive little meaning and significance from the particularities of, and
cultural nuances in, specific languages. 6

Conclusions and discussion

This paper has argued that the exportability of cultural products is related to global
cultural geographies and spheres of influence, and to the position therein of the regions
and countries that cultural industries producers come from and operate in. It has stressed
especially the importance of looking at cultural consumption and the cognitive-cultural
distance between cultural industry producers and their potential customers. It has aimed
to contribute to a better understanding of the relations between culture and cultural
consumption, and between the conditions of cultural product consumption and the
potential locations of internationally successful cultural industry production systems. For
that reason a typology of cultural products has been proposed based on the extent to
which these products require culturally-specific knowledge or tastes to be understood and
appreciated by consumers, resulting in a distinction between universal, culturally
inclusive or hybrid, and culturally exclusive cultural products. This distinction has been
helpful in explaining the historical variations in the international success, and the recent
product specialization, of at least one case of export-oriented cultural industry producers
from a (relatively) culturally-uninfluential country, the case of Dutch publishers.
The main conclusion here is that the position of a region or country in the general
international cultural (and linguistic) hierarchy determines the type of cultural products it
is likely to be able to compete with on international markets. This means that generalized
rosy narratives (generally emerging from the Anglo-American world) about the economic
potential of cultural industries, especially of those that rely heavily on local traditions and

6
The Dutch publisher Brill is an exception. Brill has become prominent in several fields of the humanities.
However, these particular fields, mainly oriental studies, Islamic studies and classical studies, are fields in
which no Western country could claim, a priori, a particular culture-related advantage. Brill’s expertise in
these fields is related to that available at the University of Leiden (the city in which Brill is headquartered)
that has nurtured these disciplines since the seventeenth century.

17
heritage, are of little significance for many smaller and more peripheral countries. In such
countries, policymakers concerned with cultural industries as well as firms and
individuals with an interest in marketing cultural products abroad should recognize their
position in this hierarchy. If they rely too much on their region’s own specific cultural
heritages and traditions and create culturally exclusive goods, there is little hope that
foreign audiences will show much interest. Instead, they could aim to compete on more
generalized universal products with proven (or at least predictable) international appeal.
Competition of this type is obviously more difficult than the ‘monopolistic’ forms of
competition inherent in producing culturally-exclusive products, as it involves far fewer a
priori culturally-constituted comparative advantages, but the potential rewards are much
greater. Attempts to produce culturally hybrid products, mixing element of producers’
own local traditions with elements of other traditions, may form an attractive third
alternative.
Cultural industries in countries with large domestic markets and border-crossing
spheres of cultural influence are far less constrained by the logic of cultural product
consumption. Barriers to intercultural consumption weigh less on the exporting ambitions
of cultural producers in such countries simply because many foreign audiences have
already adopted (parts of) the producers’ culture. Only the most culturally-exclusive of
cultural products remain inherently difficult to market abroad for these producers. They
are thus at an obvious advantage vis-à-vis cultural industry producers in much of the rest
of the world. However, when a country’s or region’s culture becomes too influential, too
familiar abroad, too ubiquitous, its own cultural industries may be opened up to
competition from abroad on their own turf. This explains why a Dutch, instead of an
American or British, publisher was able to become world leader in publishing English-
language academic journals.
The characteristics of the three different types of cultural products discussed hold
implications for the organization of clusters that produce them and the geographical scale
of the knowledge networks maintained by their producers. Whereas local knowledge
networks may suffice for producers of culturally-exclusive goods, clusters specialized in
the production of culturally hybrid or universal goods are likely to require extra-regional

18
knowledge inputs and international networks. 7 Internationally successful cultural industry
clusters in less influential cultural areas (being more reliant on hybrid or universal
products) may therefore be expected to depend more on linkages to foreign producers, or
‘global pipelines’ (see Bathelt et al. 2004; Wolfe and Gertler 2004), than similar clusters
in culturally prominent countries such as the United States, Britain, France or Spain. The
ability of peripherally-located cultural industry clusters to nurture wide international
demand for their products may even depend on their being institutionally coupled or
strategically allied to clusters in regions with other cultural traits, in order to make the
hybridization of cultural products easier.
When multinational corporations (MNCs) are involved in cultural industry
production (as is often the case in the media industry), their organization may also be
expected to differ according to the type of products they produce. Cantwell and Janne
(1999) have found that MNCs emanating originally from the leading geographical centers
of their industry tend to differentiate activities across their geographically dispersed
offices, whereas MNCs founded and headquartered in less influential locations tend to
replicate their specific abilities in their foreign offices. A similar type of trend may result
from a focus on different cultural product types. MNCs specialized in producing more
culturally exclusive products are bound to create relatively independent divisions in
different countries, each with their own local networks, producing for their respective
local markets. MNCs focusing on hybrid or universal cultural products, however, may be
more likely to make use of functional divisions of labor and productive interactions
among their different offices around the world. Differences in network organization and
functionality of this kind have been observed among different types of international
advertising firms catering to different types of demand (Röling 2007).
The culturally-constituted knowledges and tastes of consumers that lie at the basis
of the proposed distinction between universal, hybrid and culturally exclusive products,
are of course not static, especially not in these times of globalization. Foreign audiences
7
In some cases, the reliance on inputs from abroad may become so great as to lead to international
unbundling of the production process. The cluster may then turn into a type of localized refinery of already
specialized inputs from around the world. The Dutch academic publishers form a good example here as
they rely on authors from abroad for more than 90 percent of the articles in their physics journals
(Meadows 1980). As long as inputs from the outside are creatively processed (by means of revision,
recombination, recontextualization and so on) by producers inside the cluster, the cluster may be seen as
productive and as more than what Zukin (1995) referred to as an ‘entrepot of the arts’.

19
may warm to cultural products even if they come from countries or regions that are
relatively inconspicuous on the world’s cultural map. However, the acculturation of
consumers to products from unfamiliar cultures is not merely time-dependent, it does not
necessarily occur automatically. Familiarizing foreign audiences with particular types of
cultural products may require specific strategies on behalf of cultural producers.
Especially when cultural industry producers first venture onto foreign market is it likely
that they will have to adapt their products to a large degree to suite different sets of
cultural aesthetic expectations. This means that they need to familiarize themselves with
foreign symbolic and aesthetic norms first, relying heavily on collaboration with
producers in other countries. Only when some elements of the producers’ own cultural
traditions have entered the consciousnesses of foreign consumers in diluted form, can
cultural industry producers from culturally peripheral places reasonably attempt to expose
international audiences to more culturally-specific symbolic or aesthetic forms, and to the
more refined products of their tradition. Perhaps, once foreign audiences have been
carefully prepared, cultural industry producers may slowly start to dispense with foreign
collaborations and focus more exclusively on local knowledge resources (and clustered
knowledge and skills) in order to cater to more ‘sophisticated’ and interculturally
knowledgeable foreign customers, although tendencies towards cultural exclusiveness
may, even then, result in strong reductions of international demand (leaving only small
niche markets abroad).
Cultural products themselves, if cleverly marketed, contribute to a region or
country’s cultural standing in the world and the familiarity of foreigners with its
language, customs or its specific aesthetic forms and traditions. As such, success of a
specific cultural industry cluster may become self-reinforcing and may even make it
easier for other types of cultural industries from the same geo-cultural area to find
accepting foreign audiences. However, the international influence of different cultures is
determined by many more factors such as migration and the economic, technological and
political centrality of a country. Cultural influence is only to a slight extent the result of
the intrinsic symbolic or aesthetic sophistication and ‘qualities’ of that culture. This is
why cultural industry producers in places of marginal cultural influence would probably

20
do better (from a strictly commercial viewpoint) to adopt strategies suiting that position,
rather than focusing on changing that position itself.
The dependence of cultural industry producers on the international cultural
hierarchy also means that analyses of the changing fortunes on international markets of
cultural industry clusters in countries such as the Netherlands that focus exclusively on
the particular characteristics of the clusters themselves are inadequate, and should be
complemented with careful analyses of the evolution of international demand.
Specifically, analyses should focus on whether shifts in demand, which are often seen as
contingent ‘exogenous shocks’ with fairly unpredictable effects (Glasmeier 1991),
correspond to shifting demand for culturally-exclusive vis-à-vis hybrid or universal
products. Such shifts have, as has been argued, more predictable effects. The rise of
vernacular and national literatures that developed interactively with a new type of
dominant consumer demand concerning printed products during the eighteenth century
ended the ability of Dutch publishers to compete abroad. Different local or national paths
of development in this industry proved to be ultimately interdependent, just as when
around World War II the collapse of German academic publishing, German science and
the position of German as the main language of world science opened up opportunities
for Dutch publishers to venture into international academic publishing in English,
science’s new lingua franca. As Martin and Sunley (2006) have argued, different
regional paths of development may lock each other in or out, at least where the cultural
industries are concerned. They do so through their effects on the tastes and perceptions of
consumers, the medium that ultimately connects them most.

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