McPhee Gribble's ‘determinedly unglamorous’ parties: A small publisher's accrual and conversion of social capital

This article uses material from two archives pertaining to Australian independent publisher McPhee Gribble to argue that social capital is as important to a small press as economic or cultural capital. Such independent publishers pursue forms of capital other than economic capital. Yet the particular importance of Pierre Bourdieu’s social capital to small presses has been more difficult to demonstrate than symbolic capital more broadly. This research positions the parties thrown in McPhee Gribble's warehouse, documented in the archives through photographs, guest lists, and planning memos, as the publisher’s mechanism and site for the accrual of social capital, and its simultaneous conversion into capital's different forms. This archival material establishes a framework to understand a pervasive feature of the publishing industry that has gone understudied, with such parties often appearing to exist outside the primary business activities of a press.