Bernard Miège

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Bernard Miège is a professor of sciences of the communication at the University Stendhal. He was educated at Paris University, both in political studies and in economics. He has a Ph.D. in economics (Paris) and another Ph. D in humanities (Bordeaux. He is an author of fifteen works in the following fields; The cultural industries, the introduction of the technologies of information and communication in the society and in the organisations, and the analysis of the theories of communication.

He is one of the most influential founders of the 'cultural industries' approach, which signified a break from Adorno and Horkheimer's influential theorisation of the 'Culture Industry'. While Adorno and Horkheimer saw culture as subsumed by capital, and by an abstract mode of 'instrumental reason', Miège rejected what he saw as their economic determinism, arguing that the cultural industries were far more complex than their analysis allowed for. They were not a unified field, and he argued that whilst there was indeed increased commodification of culture by the introduction of industrial methods of production, this new technology also created the possibilities for new exciting innovations. Miège's work has been highly influential, in particular on communication studies in the UK, influencing important academic commentators on the media such as Nicholas Garnham and David Hesmondhalgh.

Amongst his works: "La pense communicationnelle", Grenoble: PUG, 1995. "La société conquise par la communication: la communication entre l'industrie et l'espace public", tome 2, Grenoble: PUG, 1997.