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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Dissertation•
14 Apr 2014
TL;DR: The field of professional organizations in North America that promote and assist democratization movements around the world has been studied in this paper, where they use a form of specialized expert knowledge to help activists, politicians and civil society organizations build democratic institutions.
Abstract: The subject of this dissertation research is the field of professional organizations in North America that promote and assist democratization movements around the world. These organizations use a form of specialized expert knowledge to help activists, politicians and civil society organizations build democratic institutions. Specifically, this research investigates how historical academic debates shape the everyday practices of professionals in this field, and how these practices in turn shape contemporary debates. The study adopts a mixed methods approach by combining an intellectual history of democracy research and qualitative interview research with professionals working in the field. By examining the everyday practice of expertise, this dissertation contributes to emerging scholarly debates spanning the intersections of the sociology of knowledge, political sociology and international development studies by asking an ancient question. How can democracy be a collection of popular political ideals, yet also the object of specialized, technical or social scientific knowledge? According to the findings of this research, the contemporary practice of democracy assistance emerged out of debates about this paradox and, more importantly, organizations within this field rely on the insoluble nature of democratic theory and practice to justify expert interventions in countries struggling for democracy.
32 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The International Journal of Communication as discussed by the authors introduced a new dimension to its platform, one that will further extend the possibilities of non-commercial open access scholarly publication at the highest level, under a new category called "Forum".
Abstract: One of our goals in launching the International Journal of Communication, in addition to demonstrating the viability of non-commercial open access scholarly publication at the highest level, was to take full advantage of the capabilities of online publishing to serve as a forum for a variety of contributions and conversations. Thus, our Features category has included lectures, policy papers and debates, interviews, and other writings that are not traditional scholarly articles or book reviews. In this spirit, we are delighted to introduce a new dimension to our platform, one that will further extend the possibilities afforded by our non-commercial online format under a new category called “Forum.” In the new section that we are calling Participations: Dialogues on the Participatory Promise of Contemporary Culture and Politics, Editorial Board members Nick Couldry and Henry Jenkins engage scholars in informal discussions of contemporary culture and politics. The conversations presented are the result of a series of open-ended conversations that they initiated with colleagues and that seemed to them―and to us―to be worth pursuing in this more public and open-ended venue. Five key topics will be discussed: creativity, labor, politics, knowledge and education, and platforms. In the spirit of opening and continuing the conversation, we welcome comments and contributions from our readers. There is an “add comment” function available when you access each dialogue (including this introduction) to enter your feedback. We look forward to your responses.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors lift out fashion design from current debates about creative economy where the specificities of this sector are often submerged, and, considering recent changes within the fashion industry per se, it offers some reflections, in a period of austerity and cuts to public spending, as well as high unemployment for young women, on the possibilities for localized practice within a neo-artisanal frame.
Abstract: Available, well-positioned urban space at relatively low cost has permitted the growth of a lively small-scale and independent fashion sector in Berlin, mostly female-led. These shops, workshops, boutiques and ‘ateliers’ have also benefited from support in the form of reduced rents for business start-ups (Zwischennutzung) and other provisions which encourage job creation and self-employment. Within and alongside the imperative to self-organise according to the requirements of contemporary entrepreneurial governance, different, proliferating forms of activity can be seen where there are co-operative and collaborative modes of ‘co-working’. Fashion design workshops in Berlin both subscribe to and undermine commercial imperatives, offering embedded forms of job creation where ethical fashion and urban regeneration enter into partnership. This article proceeds by ‘lifting out’ fashion design from current debates about creative economy where the specificities of this sector are often submerged, and, considering recent changes within the fashion industry per se, it offers some reflections, in a period of austerity and cuts to public spending, as well as high unemployment for young women, on the possibilities for localized practice within a neo-artisanal frame. The question of entrepreneurship understood within a broadly Foucauldian frame is interrupted on the basis of the tendency to homogenize and flatten practices within the terms of neo-liberal governmentality. By paying attention to the many multi-mediated associations, and networked arrangements where elements from an earlier tradition of feminist projects, third sector and not-for-profit activities can be drawn on, the assemblages of fashion emerge as a pathway for local growth, meaningful non-standard jobs and a merging of craft with ethical and sustainable practice.
32 citations
01 Dec 2016
TL;DR: The paper offers a conceptual perspective to interrogate what data counts by attending to questions of quantification, its entanglement with valuation and the various technologies and stakeholders involved, and finishes with an empirical experiment to map the various ways in which Instagram data is made to count.
Abstract: Abstract Social media platforms have been characterised by their programmability, affordances, constraints and stakeholders - the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in platform studies. This paper explores the specific socio-technical conditions for valuating platform data and suggests that platforms set up their data to become multivalent, that is to be valuable alongside multiple, possibly conflicting value regimes. Drawing on both platform and valuation studies, it asks how the production, storing and circulation of data, its connection to user action and the various stakeholders of platforms contribute to its valuation. Platform data, the paper suggests, is the outcome of capture systems which allow to collapse action and its capture into pre-structured data forms which remain open to divergent interpretations. Platforms offer such grammars of action both to users and other stakeholders in frontand back-ends, inviting them to produce and engage with its data following heterogeneous orders of worth. Platform data can participate in different valuation regimes at the same time - however, the paper concludes, not all actors can participate in all modes of valuation, as in the end, it is the platform that sets the conditions for participation. The paper offers a conceptual perspective to interrogate what data counts by attending to questions of quantification, its entanglement with valuation and the various technologies and stakeholders involved. It finishes with an empirical experiment to map the various ways in which Instagram data is made to count.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how the progress of markets erodes traditional relations of social solidarity that are essential for the stability and performance of societies, and how the complex interaction between increasingly more flexible employment and loosening family structures resulted in declining fertility in a variety of modern societies; and how providing for societies' physical reproduction increasingly became a matter of public policy in some countries but not in others.
Abstract: The progress of markets erodes traditional relations of social solidarity that are essential
for the stability and performance of societies. As markets advance, pressures build on the
state to replace informal social obligations with formal ones. Regulation may fail, however,
which tends to give rise to demands for public services substituting for private reciprocity and
compliance with institutionalized normative expectations. As a result, demands on public
finances increase. The paper demonstrates this sequence by describing how the pressures and
attractions of labor markets undermined the “Fordist family” of the 1960s; how the complex
interaction between increasingly more flexible employment and loosening family structures
resulted in declining fertility in a variety of modern societies; and how providing for societies’
physical reproduction increasingly became a matter of public policy in some countries but
not in others. Parallels are drawn to active labor market policy and the recent rescue of the
money-making industry by Western governments. Moreover, special attention is paid to differences
between countries, especially Sweden on the one hand and the United States on the
other, in particular to the conditions under which governments apparently can afford not to
heed calls for ever deeper and ever more expensive intervention in social relations. Exploring
the increasingly negative relationship between fertility and “familialism,” the paper also shows
how advanced commodification of labor and individualization of social life has effectively
made it impossible to return to traditional social arrangements, such as the postwar family.
Mit der Ausbreitung von Markten zerfallen traditionale solidarische Beziehungen, die fur soziale
Stabilitat und das Funktionieren von Gesellschaften von Bedeutung sind. Damit nimmt
der Druck auf den Staat zu, informelle Verpflichtungen durch formelle zu ersetzen. Staatliche
Regulierung sozialen Handelns stost jedoch auf Grenzen. Die Folge sind Forderungen an
den Staat, den Ausfall privater Reziprozitat und mangelnde Befolgung formalisierter Verhaltenserwartungen
durch Bereitstellung offentlicher Dienstleistungen zu kompensieren. Als
Ergebnis wachsen die Anspruche der Gesellschaft an die staatlichen Finanzen. Das Papier
verfolgt diese Sequenz am Beispiel der Auflosung des „Fordistischen“ Familienmodells der
1960er Jahre unter dem Druck sowohl der Zwange als auch der Attraktivitat zunehmend offener,
deregulierter Arbeitsmarkte. Es zeigt, wie die komplexe Interaktion zwischen flexiblerer
Beschaftigung und lockereren Familienstrukturen zu einem Ruckgang der Geburtenraten
in verschiedenen modernen Gesellschaften fuhrte und wie als Folge die physische Reproduktion
der Gesellschaft in einigen, aber nicht in allen Landern zu einem legitimen Gegenstand
offentlicher Politik wurde. Das Papier verweist auf Parallelen mit der aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik
und der kurzlichen Rettung der Geldindustrie durch die westlichen Regierungen. Dabei
zeigen sich erhebliche Unterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Landern, wie den USA und
Schweden, vor allem in Bezug auf das Ausmas, in dem es den Regierungen moglich ist, Rufe
nach immer tieferen und immer teureren Interventionen in soziale Verhaltnisse zu ignorieren.
Das Papier zeigt ferner anhand des zunehmend negativen Zusammenhangs zwischen
Fertilitat und einer „familialistischen“ Kultur und Sozialpolitik, wie die fortgeschrittene
Kommodifizierung der Arbeit und die Individualisierung des sozialen Lebens eine Ruckkehr
zu traditionalen sozialen Arrangements, insbesondere der Familie, zunehmend ausschliest.
32 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