cultural production

During Wednesday's class we discussed cultural production and I realized my thought process about it has been limited to a top down kind of approach. I have been convinced that the people who have the power to influence cultural values are the people in power. However, our last class really made me think about who exactly has the power to produce cultural ideas. Before the readings and discussion last week I had only thought of culture being produced by a ruling/dominant group of people. There might not be intent on behalf of any individual to reproduce racist/sexist/heterosexist aspects of our culture for mass consumption, but the groups in political and economic power are the ones with control of the major media of culture (movies, tv, news, newspapers, magazines, books, etc). I never thought of the idea of one person constantly participating in cultural production on an everyday basis, and I had never considered the ways in which activist groups can use cultural tools to further their purpose and build unity. The reading about the Civil Rights Movement emphasized this for me. The leaders of the movement used songs not to change mainstream America's opinions, but instead to develop unity among the people they were trying to lead. This is an aspect of cultural production that I had overlooked before. The focus doesn't necessarily have to be on changing everyone's way of thinking, but things like songs (books, zines, blogs!) can be used to unify specific people behind a cause.