文化生产：历史回顾与未来展望

This systematic explanation of Cultural Production (CP) aims to guide future uses and appropriations of CP in China. Two core issues should be clarified: First, Cultural Production is not subordinated to Reproduction theory and outruns it as a contribution to complex sociological questions, most crucially at the bottom of social space, concerning agents’ differential life time understanding of and relationship to and conflicted subjective accommodation within the social order. Second, “conformists” certainly engage in cultural production, but this cannot be reduced to the mere internalization of school culture and values. As developed in Learning to Labor, Cultural Production theory supplements and extends the significant achievements of Reproduction theory by adding an agentive view of subordinate practices of meaning-making so grasping the dialectical relationship between the class and culture, as well as between structure and agency. Since the publication of Learning to Labor, the economic conditions of the British working class and their modes of cultural production have been reshaped by globalization, post-industrialization and high youth unemployment rate. It is more important than ever to utilize the concept of “informal cultural production” to understand how young working-class and subordinate individuals and groups find alternatives beyond schooling frameworks and inherited traditional classifications to preserve dignity, self-identity and some form of agency.