What do we mean by 'an industry'?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 May

I have been listening, with half-an-ear, to a programme on Radio 3.

It is clear that they now talk about the heritage industry, by which they mean organizations such as The National Trust, not those consumer outlets that sell replicas of items from a previous era.

Now, I concede that the word 'factory', as used in reference to trade in India, may only have come to mean a building where something is made through the process of industrialization, but this is a little too close to contemporary, a little too much of turning everything into an industry.

We have the film industry, the porn industry, the hospitality industry, probably the industry industry, and what industrial archaeology looks at seems oddly divorced from all these usages, in its concern with engines, pumping-stations, cotton-mills, and - dare I say it - other factories.

Perhaps it will end up with a section of activity looking at these selfsame redundant meanings - or maybe already has one...


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