Book•
The New Spirit of Capitalism
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.
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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TL;DR: In this paper, cultural anthropology is used to examine prevailing ideas and practices of stakeholder citizenship, where the social task of addressing the ecological challenge is represented as individual opportunities and personal responsibilities.
Abstract: Since the 1990s, politicising the environment has often involved the development of green concepts of citizenship. Informed by these concepts, cultural anthropology is used to examine prevailing ideas and practices of stakeholder citizenship. Of central concern are conditions wherein heightened individuation coincides with increased awareness of environmental issues. In the prevalence of stakeholder citizenship norms, the social task of addressing the ecological challenge is represented as individual opportunities and personal responsibilities. One upshot of this is that, as stakeholders, citizens are led to feel personally responsible for resolving socially created problems. In such contexts, increased awareness of environmental issues has the paradoxical effect of compromising citizens' ethical commitments within the ecosphere. By privileging managed consultation over motivating citizens politically, the normalising of stakeholder citizenship poses a problem for green politics by making it difficult to ...
56 citations
Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"
...By the 1940s, Western liberal-democratic citizens’ ‘indignation at rampant exploitation and egoism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, pp. 345–346) had challenged the prevalence of what is described here as classical liberal citizenship....
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...In this argument,Western political andbusiness leaders, by turns perplexed andworried amidst a deep-seated ‘legitimation crisis’ (Habermas 1975), slowly took to embracing an increasingly popular ‘rejection of all forms of disciplinary regulation’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, p. 419)....
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...…approach which recognises that ‘the price paid by critique for being listened to, at least in part, is to see some of the values it has mobilized to oppose [a prevailing order] being placed at the service’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, p. 29) of historically embedded structures and institutions....
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TL;DR: The authors argue that marketisation, through its constituent concepts of commodification, image and exchange, seduces as an education "spectacle" and ultimately shapes individuals' value positions. But they argue that learning outcomes are a simulacrum: like other signifiers of commodities, they appear meaningful.
Abstract: If managerialism points to the ideological foundations and bureaucratisation of contemporary education, marketisation signals its commodification, image and exchange. This paper brings to bear the prevailing influence of marketisation on education. It begins with a brief description of the European context and development of learning outcomes, and outlines the (economic) rationale for their existence. It then sets out to explore the logic of learning outcomes, asking: what is lost in the process of education being exchanged as a commodity? We argue that marketisation, through its constituent concepts of commodification, image and exchange, seduces as an education ‘spectacle’ and ultimately shapes individuals’ value positions. In essence, marketisation, grounded in contemporary neoliberal economics, privileges quantitative, at the expense of genuinely qualitative, educational substance. Further, we argue that learning outcomes are a simulacrum: like other signifiers of commodities, they appear meaningful (...
56 citations
Dissertation•
09 Oct 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how such political and technocultural changes condition the subjectivity of academic staff across a range of academic activities and contexts, and conclude that the series of developments and changes enacted by communicative capitalism has tended to transform academic subjectivity, bringing about what may be a permanent change in the ontology and epistemology of the academy.
Abstract: In the last thirty years there have been significant changes in the governmentality and culture of higher education in the UK; concurrently, day-to-day practice has been transformed by networked computers. This political and technical double-act may be understood as a specific articulation of what Jodi Dean has termed communicative capitalism (2010, p.2-9).
This thesis investigates how such political and technocultural changes condition the subjectivity of academic staff across a range of academic activities and contexts. The theoretical model I develop draws notably on a combination of the psychoanalytic theory of Freud and Lacan, using Freud’s conception of the ‘uncanny’ (1919) and Althusser’s theory of ideology (1970), to consider how the academic subject of technoculture is constituted by the particular domain of communicative capitalism I term the Haunted University.
To develop this argument the thesis firstly establishes the ‘nature’ of the contemporary university – distinguishing it from earlier models and earlier moments of reform. This is developed using cultural history sources and theoretical work from social, cultural and critical higher education studies. Secondly, I use a series of cultural studies methods to identify and explore elements of the new university formation. These include the selection and analysis of relevant digital materials (e.g. academic homepages and blogs) and small qualitative surveys of academic staff. Thirdly, the broadly Lacanian thrust of my argument is developed through leveraging theoretical work from the fields of cultural studies, philosophy, critical labour studies and higher education policy.
I conclude that the series of developments and changes enacted by communicative capitalism has tended to transform academic subjectivity, bringing about what may be a permanent change in the ontology and epistemology of the academy. However, despite neoliberalism’s attempt to foreclose discursive dissent, there are resistances to its project.
My original contribution to knowledge is to theorise how and why the shift in academic subjectivity is being enacted, demonstrating how the technocultural, neoliberal university is beginning to haunt the academy not only from the outside, but from the inside, too.
55 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative sociomaterial conceptualization of power in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is proposed to clarify how power works through materialized forms of CSR, and four tactics that clarify how CSR materializations can be seized by marginalized actors to "recover" CSR.
Abstract: Through the development of CSR ratings, metrics and management tools, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is currently materialized at an unprecedented scale within and across organizations. However, the material dimension of CSR and the inherent political potential in this materialization have been neglected. Drawing on insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the critical discussion of current approaches to power in CSR studies, we offer an alternative sociomaterial conceptualization of power in order to clarify how power works through materialized forms of CSR. We develop a framework that explains both how power is constituted within materialized forms of CSR through processes of ‘assembling / disassembling’, and how power is mobilized through materialized forms of CSR through processes of ‘overflowing / framing’. From this framework, we derive four tactics that clarify how CSR materializations can be seized by marginalized actors to ‘recover’ CSR. Our analysis aims to renew CSR studies by showing the potential of CSR for progressive politics.
55 citations
Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"
...Corporate hegemony would suggest that CSR materializations are strategies that incorporate critique to advance narrow profit agendas (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005)....
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Book•
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: The work of Jacques Lacan has become an influential source to most disciplines of the social sciences, and is now considered a standard reference in literary theory, cultural studies and political theory as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The work of Jacques Lacan has become an influential source to most disciplines of the social sciences, and is now considered a standard reference in literary theory, cultural studies and political theory. While management and organization studies has traditionally been preoccupied with questions of making corporations more efficient and productive, it has also mobilized a strong and forceful critique of work, management and capitalism. It is primarily as a contribution to this tradition of critical scholarship that we can see the work of Lacan now emerging.
In this edited collection, a number of organizational scholars have made common cause with political theorists and psychoanalysts. Together they explore the many intersections of Lacan and organization. The contributions address a series of pertinent questions: What are the new templates for control in the workplace? How is subjectivity produced in contemporary organizations? And how can a Lacanian reading of contemporary work politics render new insights into resistance and ethics?
This edited collection includes contributions from Peter Fleming, Rickard Grassman, Jason Glynos, Campbell Jones, Carol Owens, Andre Spicer and Yannis Stavrakakis.
55 citations
References
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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.
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
14,735 citations
5,247 citations
Posted Content•
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.
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.
3,447 citations
Book•
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.
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.
3,391 citations
Book•
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.
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.
3,308 citations