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| THE UPGRADING OF CULTURAL INDUSTRY IN GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN: A CASE STUDY ON DAFEN VILLAGE |
| CAI Yi-fan, TONG Xin |
| College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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Abstract This article is concerned with the driving force in the industrial upgrading of developing countries. In the case study of the commercial painting industry in Dafen village, Shenzhen, a perfect incarnation of Walter Benjamin's art work in the age of mechanical reproduction, however, we pay special attention to its cultural and creative aspects, considering the copy of masterpiece no longer dominates the market, and the upgrading path of Dafen is intrinsically humanity-oriented. Based on participant observation and field interviews, this paper analyses the upgrading process of the oil painting industry in Dafen after the financial crisis of 2008. Analogous to the principle of organization of the assembly line, the replication process of a certain masterpiece was divided into several standardized procedures, enabling migrant rural workers without any professional education or training to repeat several formalized gestures. The market was severely influenced by the global economic downturn and European debt crisis, which resulted in the decrease of oversea orders from global retail and wholesale markets. The most apparent change in Dafen, after the financial crisis, was the replica painting, that had once dominated the Dafen market, was gradually replaced by the original work. Also, painters began to copy various paintings other than Mona Lisa or Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Substantive changes have taken place in the industry chain, the employment relationship and the production network. The order- oriented and profit- driven production pattern of former commercial painting mode have never been fully accepted by the painters, and were later challenged bottom-up by grass-root painters after the financial crisis. Fully aware of the bottom-up approach from the grassroots painter who refused to be alienated from his labor and made efforts to write names in their own ways on these anonymous works, this paper points out that the impetus for transformation shall originate from the self-identification and self-awareness of labor.
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Received: 13 August 2013
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2014, Vol. 29 
