The New Spirit of Capitalism

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The New Spirit of Capitalism

Book•

The New Spirit of Capitalism

Luc Boltanski¹, Eve Chiapello¹•Institutions (1)

01 Jan 2005-

TL;DR: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.

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Abstract: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Toward an Intermediate Position on Corporate Moral Personhood

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Kevin Gibson¹•Institutions (1)

Marquette University¹

01 Mar 2011-Journal of Business Ethics

TL;DR: The authors make an intermediate claim combining Goodpaster and Matthews' view that a corporation may have a moral culture which affects subjective choices, with those of Painter-Morland who points out that we should move from a model that posits discrete persons acting on each other to one where morality comes about through shared experience between agents who participate in each other's lives.

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Abstract: Models of moral responsibility rely on foundational views about moral agency. Many scholars believe that only humans can be moral agents, and therefore business needs to create models that foster greater receptivity to others through ethical dialog. This view leads to a difficulty if no specific person is the sole causal agent for an act, or if something comes about through aggregated action in a corporate setting. An alternate approach suggests that corporations are moral agents sufficiently like humans to be treated as persons, which leads to questions of intentionality and the organizational structure required to support the claim. In this article, I make an intermediate claim combining Goodpaster and Matthews' (60:132–141, 1982) view that a corporation may have a moral culture which affects subjective choices, with those of Painter-Morland (17(3):515–534, 2007) who points out that we should move from a model that posits discrete persons acting on each other to one where morality comes about through shared experience between agents who participate in each other’s lives. I argue that the discussion has been trapped in traditional dichotomies, and is better served by language that more accurately represents the dynamic interplay between organization and individual. I underwrite this claim by looking at recent changes in British and American legal approaches to corporate responsibility. These provide greater incentives for owners and business leaders to encourage employees to discuss the reflexive nature of legal and moral responsibility in business, facilitate workers to voice their moral concerns, and create structures and processes that allow those concerns to be heard.

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17 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Celebrity as Celebration of Privatization in Global Development: A Critical Feminist Analysis of Oprah, Madonna, and Angelina

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Karin Gwinn Wilkins¹•Institutions (1)

University of Texas at Austin¹

01 Jun 2015-Communication, Culture & Critique

TL;DR: The consequences of celebrity involvement in global development have been examined in this article, where the authors consider how women's interests become articulated in the construction of development donors in an increasingly privatized development landscape, recognizing the role of patriarchy in neoliberal logics that guide mainstream global development.

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Abstract: What are the consequences of celebrity involvement in global development? Focusing on female celebrities allows us to consider how women's interests become articulated in the construction of development donors in an increasingly privatized development landscape. Emerging through the global production of television, music, and film, Oprah, Madonna, and Angelina Jolie have used their wealth and status to contribute to global philanthropy. Following a discussion of their resources, analyses connect their articulated missions in development as well as public discourse about their projects to underlying frameworks of social change, recognizing the role of patriarchy in neoliberal logics that guide mainstream global development. Focusing on women as mothers and social change as individual empowerment avoids attention to collective action and social justice.

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17 citations

Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"

...Resonating with this neoliberal agenda, Oprah has become known for her attention to self-empowerment, both within her television programming and her charitable work (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Peck, 2008)....
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Startup Complexity : Tracing the Conceptual Shift Behind Disruptive Entrepreneurship

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Antti Hyrkäs

20 Dec 2016

17 citations

Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"

...Extensive sociological reflection on entrepreneurship has been offered, for example, by Swedberg et al. (2000) and by Bill & Johansson (2010), and the popularization of the figure of the entrepreneur has also been noted by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005)....
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...(2000) and by Bill & Johansson (2010), and the popularization of the figure of the entrepreneur has also been noted by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005). However, these projects do not distinguish “startup entrepreneurship” as a differentiated part of the entrepreneurial discourse....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Depression — A Social Pathology of Action:

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Anders Petersen¹•Institutions (1)

Aalborg University¹

01 Nov 2009-Irish Journal of Sociology

TL;DR: This article argued that the epidemic of depression is to be understood alongside the normative conditions of self-realisation associated with the emergence of the new spirit of capitalism in the 20th century.

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Abstract: This article argues that the epidemic of depression is to be understood alongside the normative conditions of self-realisation associated with the emergence of the new spirit of capitalism. In the ...

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17 citations

Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"

...According to Bolstanski and Chiapello, capitalism is an absurd system which, generally speaking, lacks any kind of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello 2002: 2). Nonetheless, the system has historically been able to successfully justify its normative codes. What has made this possible? Assuming that the brute force of economics does not in itself produce sufficient commitment to the capitalist system, some kind of justification is required to render this commitment attractive to both individuals and society. Boltanski and Chiapello label the capitalist spirit the ideology which justifies people’s commitment to the capitalist economic system.4 In the third and latest spirit of capitalism, this ideology is linked to a globally-informed, network-based and flexible form of capitalist organisation and production. This spirit greatly emphasises vertical integration, fuzzy organisation, innovation, creativity and permanent change. Normative codes such as mobility, flexibility and adaptability, as well as the ability to engage in a series of ongoing projects and tasks, are seen as essential to improving one’s employability, and hence vital attributes to enable the individual to manoeuvre within the complex world of the new spirit. In order to identify how this new value system was socially established, Boltanski and Chiapello utilise the theoretical construct of ‘orders of worth’ (cities), as created by Boltanski and Thevenot (1991). In their model, all members of any city share a general conviction of the common good; which is to say that...
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...…overcomes the oppositions between work and no-work, steady and unsteady, paid and unpaid, profit-sharing and volunteer work, and between that which can be measured in term of productivity and that which cannot be assessed in terms of accountable performances’5 (Boltanski and Chiapello 2002: 9)....
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...Changes within the organisation of work also promoted this blossoming; by stressing such values as creativity, authenticity and self-realisation in work – self-management – the artistic critique gradually gained ground, and its ideas were implemented (Boltanski and Chiapello 2002: 18)....
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...According to Bolstanski and Chiapello, capitalism is an absurd system which, generally speaking, lacks any kind of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello 2002: 2)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Digital inclusion and social exclusion: The political economy of value in a networked world

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Hamid R. Ekbia¹•Institutions (1)

Indiana University¹

01 May 2016-The Information Society

TL;DR: A theory based on the network asymmetries of late capitalism, which tend to unevenly distribute network resources through a logic of “digital inclusion,” is provided.

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Abstract: Current debates around user-generated content and its role in wealth generation can be understood as attempts to apply or develop a theory of exploitation or, more broadly, a theory of value. This article seeks to provide a theory based on the network asymmetries of late capitalism, which tend to unevenly distribute network resources through a logic of “digital inclusion.” The mechanisms that enable this asymmetric situation are introduced, and the historical displacements that have given rise to those mechanisms are briefly discussed. The conceptual model that emerges from the analysis reveals the salient features of the contemporary connexionist world that transcend, but do not erase, class boundaries.

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17 citations

Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"

...The contribution, as Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) argue, “must at once possess limited visibility, not to be acknowledged in the framework of this world, and have meager value (otherwise the injustice done to them would be obvious), while contributing to its enrichment” (361)....
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...…should be part of the same world—namely, a network to which they are both connected; and (ii) the nature of their relationships in this network should be more than structural (i.e., their being part of the same network structure)—it should be substantial as well (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005)....
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...This original formulation is more recently brought up to date and historicized by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005), who have studied the displacements of capitalism in the last century or so.10 A principal component of these displacements, according to these authors, is the emergence of a new world…...
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...With the changing spirit of capitalism in the second half of the 20th century (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005), the nature of control has evolved noticeably and more than once....
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...To that end, I explore an alternative theoretical possibility that builds on the pragmatist sociology of Boltanski and Thevenot (2006) and Boltanski and Chiapello (2005)....
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References

PDF

Open Access

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Journal Article•DOI•

A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia

[...]

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Brian Massumi

21 Jan 1989-Journal of Interdisciplinary History

TL;DR: In this paper, a translation of the poem "The Pleasures of Philosophy" is presented, with a discussion of concrete rules and abstract machines in the context of art and philosophy.

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Abstract: Translator's Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements Author's Note 1. Introduction: Rhizome 2. 1914: One or Several Wolves? 3. 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?) 4. November 20th, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics 5. 587BC-AD70: On Several Regimes of Signs 6. November 28th, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? 7. Year Zero: Faciality 8. 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?" 9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity 10. 1730: Becoming Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming Imperceptible... 11. 1837: Of the Refrain 12. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology - The War Machine 13. 7000BC: Apparatus of Capture 14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated 15. Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines Notes Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

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14,735 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

The Strategy of Conflict.

[...]

Anatol Rapoport, Thomas C. Schelling

01 Jun 1961-Journal of the American Statistical Association

5,247 citations

Posted Content•

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

[...]

Paolo Leon

01 Jan 2012

TL;DR: The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray as discussed by the authors, and a good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan's economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker's Rule.

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Abstract: The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

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3,447 citations

Book•

The Society of the Spectacle

[...]

Guy Debord

01 Jan 1967

TL;DR: The Society of the Spectacle as mentioned in this paper is one of the most influential theoretical works for a wide range of political and revolutionary practice in the 1960s, and it has been widely used in the literature since.

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Abstract: For the first time, Guy Debord's pivotal work Society of the Spectacle appears in a definitive and authoritative English translation. Originally published in France in 1967, Society of the Spectacle offered a set of radically new propositions about the nature of contemporary capitalism and modern culture. At the same time it was one of the most influential theoretical works for a wide range of political and revolutionary practice in the 1960s. Today, Debord's work continues to be in the forefront of debates about the fate of consumer society and the operation of modern social power. In a sweeping revision of Marxist categories, the notion of the spectacle takes the problem of the commodity from the sphere of economics to a point at which the commodity as an image dominates not only economic exchange but the primary communicative and symbolic activity of all modern societies.Guy Debord was one of the most important participants in the activities associated with the Situationist International in the 1960s. Also an artist and filmmaker, he is the author of Memoires and Commentaires sur la societe du spectacle. A Swerve Edition, distributed for Zone Books.

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3,391 citations

Book•

Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting

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H. Thomas Johnson, Robert S. Kaplan

01 Mar 1987

TL;DR: Relevance Lost as mentioned in this paper is an overview of the evolution of management accounting in American business, from textile mills in the 1880s and the giant railroad, steel, and retail corporations, to today's environment of global competition and computer-automated manufacturers.

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Abstract: "Relevance Lost" is an overview of the evolution of management accounting in American business, from textile mills in the 1880s and the giant railroad, steel, and retail corporations, to today's environment of global competition and computer-automated manufacturers. The book shows that modern corporations must work toward designing new management accounting systems that will assist managers more fully in their long-term planning. It is the winner of the American Accounting Association's Deloitte Haskins & Sells/Wildman Award Medal. It is also available in paperback: ISBN 0875842542.

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3,308 citations