Cultural Innovation on the Fringe – the Fields of ‘Limited’ and ‘Extensive’ Production

In this chapter, we will attempt to demonstrate how Bourdieu's feld theory can be used productively as a way of thinking about exchanges between small, intimate settings for cultural production and large-scale media and cultural industries. In doing so, we will discuss some research we have undertaken for a project, Fringe to Famous, examining the crossover in Australia between fringe, independent and avant-garde cultural production and the 'mainstream'. Key examples include punk and postpunk music, television comedy, graphic design, short flm and computer games. The chapter draws particularly on Bourdieu's (1993) discussion in the Rules of Art of the relation between the 'feld of restricted production' and the 'feld of extensive production'. While these terms were developed out of an analysis of nineteenth-century French literary production, Bourdieu’s analysis works from the particular example to more abstract models, inviting comparison with other fields.