Culture's exemption from free trade: A study of media's autonomy in the World Trade Organization

In recent trade negotiations, such as those that have taken place in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks and the World Trade Organization (WTO), proponents of free trade have argued that there is nothing exceptional about the media that should compel one to treat them differently from any other commodity. Media products should be subject to market de-regulation like any other mass-produced item, be it cars, computers or toys. Against this position have stood critical commentary and popular protest that resist the tendency to treat the media as a commodity like any other. Proponents of exemption have maintained that they have a cultural function or value that should exempt them from trade liberalization.;The controversy is fascinating because it speaks directly to capitalism's historical expansion to cultural production and the extent to which notions of value outside the commodity form continue to inform recent international discussions. This dissertation is an empirical study of the arguments for and against media's exemption in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the premier intergovernmental organization charged with the liberalization of the trade of goods and services between countries. This dissertation discovers that the justifications for media's exemption from the WTO share an underlying interest in drawing a meaningful distinction between the media's cultural value and their circulation as commodities---a distinction this dissertation refers to as autonomy. The application of the concept of autonomy to these debates discloses the limits to a capital imagination that extends and deepens the commodity logic and provides resources for a critical and historically informed justification for media's exemption from free trade.