If there is a dominant theme in the research on the "production of culture," it is the tension between creativity and constraint. Constraints are imposed by the structures and processes of culture-producing industries and organizations in the attempt to cope with the uncertainties of generating and marketing cultural products. Yet the possibility, indeed necessity, of creativity still exists within these constraints. Even within situations of corporate creativity, the act of creation is seen primarily to be the work of individuals or small groups of collaborators who are able to acquire enough power to exercise some creative control. The research conducted within the production of culture perspective does offer insight into how this tension between creativity and constraint plays itself out to produce cultural materials. However this research offers much less insight into what is produced. Finally, meaning cannot be reduced to industrial, organizational, or psychological processes and yet meaning in media content cannot exist without those processes. It is only in the convergence of cultural criticism and cultural sociology--a fusion of text and process--that we can hope to account for meaning in popular culture. (Author/DF)