Contradictions of Cultural Production and the Geographies That (Mostly) Resolve Them: 19th-Century Baseball and the Rise of the 1890 Players' League

This paper begins to explore the historical-geographic development of the culture industry. By expanding upon David Harvey's understanding of culture as that “special” commodity which can earn monopoly rents based on its extraordinary qualities, I examine, in particular, how professional baseball became a profitable segment of the culture industry. This historical-geographic process, similar to most forms of cultural production, was fraught with contradictions that threatened its survival. In addition to the three contradictions that Harvey identifies, this paper focuses on an additional contradiction, one that is found within the labor processes of cultural production, between productive capital and commodity capital. Scrutiny over the ways in which baseball's premier professional organization—the National League—struggled to overcome this and other contradictions suggests that the culture industry depends upon the production of certain geographies.