Image Capital: A Case Study of the Spatialization and Semioticization Processes at Hengdian World Studios

This thesis develops the concept of image capital to investigate the relationship between image, capital and power. Image capital is built on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, but looks specifically into how visual and imagery resources becomes a power at stake in the cultural field at the juncture of the economies of signs and space featured by growing convergence of culture and the economy and subsequent blurring of the boundaries between base/superstructure and production/consumption.;The concept of image capital is examined through the case study of the spatialization and the semioticization processes of Hengdian World Studios, a China studio complex that serves domestic and international film and TV productions and operates film studio tourism. The studio, as a case, is theorized as a field which is constituted by different agents with various forms of image capital, including those embedded in local as well as transnational production and consumption networks. The processes of production, accumulation and conversion of image capital at the field of Hengdian World Studios are investigated to chart 1) how image functions as a form of capital at stake in the cultural field and how it can be converted into other forms of capital; 2) how the distribution of image capital is structured amongst agents in the field and how this structure influences the value and conversion rate image capital to other forms of capital. The first question aims at studying the semioticization process, whilst the second attempts to scrutinize the spatialization and the labor politics underpinning the alliance of image and capitalism. By theorizing image as Bourdieusean form of capital and examining both its enabling possibilities and constraints, this thesis sheds light on the study of media images by steering beyond ideological control to both the productive and repressive power of images onto different agents as well as the social intuitions of the up and rising economies of sign and space.