Capital & Class: Culture, Labour and Subjectivity: For A Political Economy From Below

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Capital & Class
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DOI: 10.1177/030981680408400102
2004 28: 11 Capital & Class
Andreas Wittel
Culture, labour and subjectivity: For a political economy from below
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11
Culture, labour and subjectivity
Culture, labour and subjectivity:
For a political economy from below
Andreas Wittel
The central theme of this article is the relationship
between political economy and culture. This raises
related questions of the place and valuation of
subjectivity, and of immaterial cultural labour within
the cultural economy. These relationships and
questions have been articulated in a relatively narrow
way, if at all, by contemporary debates, which have
not suciently taken into account recent social and
cultural transformations. So this article attempts to
discuss how a political economy of culture might
develop a broader approach towards labour, culture,
and subjectivity. The objective is to identify some of
the problematic, under-researched and under-illumi-
nated issues and areas. It culminates in the speculative
discussion of a political economy from below, inhere-
ntly geared to understanding the micro-productive
activities of cultural producers themselves.
I
t is no secret that the eld of political economy of
communication and that of cultural studies sit uneasily
with each other. Their precarious relationship has been
conrmed, documented and analysed by both sides; the
adversarial positions and concepts are well established.
Attempts to reconcile political economy with cultural studies
dramatically failed and, as Garnham (1) puts it, the
divorce has since been accepted, apparently without much
grief on either side. So is there any need to warm up an old
debateeven worse, a debate that one of the key contributors
already dismissed as boring (Grossberg, 1) a decade
ago? Wouldnt it be better to accept the divorce and move
on? I am not a relationship consultant, and I have to admit
Capital & Class #84 12
that I have no ambition to assist in the reconciliation of two
academic elds that dont like each other any more;
disciplines or schools of thought are abstract entities, which
dont deserve unconditional loyalty anyway. Moreover,
concerns about society, culture, labour and power are far
more interesting than concerns about the academic schools
engaged in studying these issues.
1
The reasons for disinterring this seemingly dead debate
are not romantic, then, but instrumental. At stake is the
question of how to study culture, particularly in the context
of recent changes not only in the cultural industries, but
more generally in post-industrial capitalism. At stake are
changes in the relationships between (political) economy
and culture, between subjectivity and power and, ultimately,
between culture and labour, such as the rise of immaterial
labour. These topics are not only unresolved, but they have
so far been articulated in a relatively narrow way that does
not necessarily take into account recent social and cultural
transformations. This article is an attempt to rethink political
economy (ic), and more specically the political economy
of communication (icc), in terms of a broader approach
towards labour, culture and subjectivity. The objective is to
identify some problematic issues and areas, which are under-
researched and under-illuminated. The article consists of
four parts. First, a very brief historical reconstruction of the
dispute between icc and cultural studies, which is merely
an entry point for an argument that seeks to foreground a
notion of economic activity through phenomena such as
value, desire, knowledge and aect. In short, it seeks to
address a problem that crystallies the problematics of culture
and labour. Second, I present an examination of how ic
studies labour, and suggest the intensication of its focus on
concrete aspects of labour, rather than on its abstract
constituents. In the third part, I oer an examination of the
way icc perceives the idea of culture in order to highlight
the way this discipline remains restricted to the realm of
industrialisation of cultureto the cultural industries and
its audiencesbut does not include an inspection of the
growing realm of culturalisation of all industries. It will be
argued that this black hole is a consequence of ics neglect
of labours concrete constituents. Finally, the fourth part
consists of some considerations on subjectivity and the
possibility of a political economy from below (Negri, 1).
There will be no conclusion: this article is written with the
13
intention of opening up certain issues and conventions, rather
than closing them down.
ic can be described as the study of the social relations,
particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the
production, distribution, and consumption of resources
(Mosco, 16). icc thus studies products or objects of
communication, such as lms, videos, magazines, newspapers,
radio programmes, websites and audiences, as primary
resources. icc positions itself as the ic of a specic industrial
sector: a sector that produces culture, information, communi-
cation, and entertainment. icc studies the so-called culture
industries, media industries, or creative industries; what was
new about it, at its inception, was the topic of investigation
or the object of research. In terms of methodology or
epistemology, however, the approach adopted by icc was very
much in line with ic in general. As will be discussed later, it
is this adherence to traditional ic methodology that obstructs
the investigation of culture and communication in a broader
sense, since it conceptualises culture and communication
not merely as industrial products (objects) or industrial sectors,
but as processes relevant for the analysis of work in all
industries and in all settings of production.
The dispute
For a long period, the main schools of ic, whether in the
(neo)classical tradition or in the critical or (neo)Marxist
tradition, did not develop a strong interest in the elds of
culture or communication. Culture and communication were
not seen as important categories for the inspection of social
relations and power relations; power was seen to be located
in the elds of politics and economy. Perhaps the rst
prominent sign of a sea-change was Adorno and Horkh-
eimers work on the cultural industry in the 1(os. (Mass)
culture was not only seen as industrial, it was seen as powerful
in that it obeyed, as well as created, a single logic.
The culture industry produces mass deception and a false
sense of happiness; it promotes an armative and conformist
consciousness, thereby disallowing critical thinking.
Frankfurt School theorists were probably among the rst to
recognise the growing process by which cultural practices
became objects for the valorisation of capital. Furthermore,
members of the Frankfurt School were perhaps the rst to
incorporate notions of culture and communication into a
critical social theory analysis. They might well be the true
founding fathers of icc.
Both eldscultural studies and iccgained signicant
recognition with the emergence of the cultural turn in the
1;os and 18os. But what could, should, or might have
been a passionate love aairor at least a happy marriage
soon turned sour.
According to Mattelart and Mattelart (18), the polemic
debate began as soon as the late 1;os. Smythe (1;;), one
of the early political economists of communication, criticised
media concepts that studied television only in terms of codes,
representation, meaning, ideologies, and the reading of signs.
Instead, television should be studied in economic terms;
audiences should be theorised as consumers to be marketed
to advertisers. Audiences, so Smythe argued, are the primary
commodities of the mass media.
However, Garnham (1;) replied that the cultural and
political dimensions of television production and
consumption are as important as its economic logic.
Throughout his career, Garnham insisted that the ideological
dimensions of mass media were as signicant as their
economic ones, and that these ideological dimensions of
communication should not be studied in isolation, uncoupled
from the economic dimension.
During the course of the 18os and early 1os, it was
mainly the icc side that took issue with the particular
tendencies that some parts of cultural studies increasingly
developed: namely, the tendency to privilege subjectivity
and soci o-cul tural constructi on over structures;
consumption over production; the specic and particular
over the general ; heterogenei ty over homogenei ty;
description over analysis; meaning over power; race and
gender over class; autonomy over domination; complexity
over simplicity; and agency over dependency. In the mid-
1os, the row between icc and cultural studies culminated
in a short, heated and, indeed, polemic debate, which was
opened by Garnhams (1) Reconciliation or divorce?
question.
Grossberg (1) then rejected the invitation to
reconcile, claiming that icc and cultural studies had never
shared the same agenda, and that nor did they have the same
starting point. Other scholars got involved, defending each
others standpointsthere is no need to go into more detail.
15
How can we make sense of this controversy? The latest
manifestations of this divide were both polemical and
personal, thus avoiding any serious consideration of whether
a marriage between the two elds of research is or is not
viable. I have already indicated the most important areas of
hostility. The dichotomies are multiple, and the perspectives
on this dispute are diverse as well. Some theorists (Grossberg,
1) believe that icc and cultural studies never had much in
common. Kellner (18), however, makes the case that the
divide is basically false, seeing the icc approach as being
deeply rooted in the tradition of social science, whereas the
cultural studies approach belongs to a humanities and text-
based approach. Nevertheless, Kellner is optimistic that the
divide could be overcome if only cultural studies were more
sympathetic toward ic approaches; if cultural studies would
only synthesise the approaches of the Frankfurt School,
British cultural studies, and French poststructuralist theory.
Much of the icc criticism directed against cultural studies
hits a nerve. However, an issue that has yet to be addressed
is whether certain, dominant epistemological concepts and
methodological approaches common to both ic and icc are
sucient with which to understand the social relations,
particularly the power relations that mutually constitute the
production, distribution, and consumption of resources
(Kellner, 18).
Political economy and labour
OBrian recently called for a greater recognition of agency
within the eld of international ic. He suggests that workers
are often largely invisible in this academic discipline, arguing
that it ignores the agency of non-elite groupings of people
and that such an omission is a mistake both theoretically
and empirically (OBrian, zooo). I very much agree with
this assessment. In the following paragraphs, I will outline
what I consider to be the main reason for this blind-spot in
ic, and explain why such an approach might have been
reasonable at the beginning of industrialisation, but poses
considerable problems now.
ic is a eld which contains many schools, and a variety of
approaches and positions. In terms of their perception of
the centrality of labour as an analytical category, they dier
hugely. In particular, there is a signicant divide between
(neo)classical ic on the one hand, and (neo)Marxian ic on
the other. (Neo)classical approaches reduce labour to one
amongst other signicant factors. Like capital and land, labour
is valued for its productivity and for its ability to create
value. The key categories for (neo)classical ic, however, are
the market and individual self-interest. (Neo)Marxism, along
with most schools leaning towards a critical ic, puts labour
at the centre of analysis. As Mosco writes, Homo Faber, or
man the maker, dened our species-being, specically the
unique integration of conception and execution that
separated, in Marxs example, the thinking architect from
the institutional bee (Mosco, 16: 18). It is perhaps
important to add that Marxs general idea of labour is
utopian; there should be no alienation, no distinction between
architects and institutional bees. His approach to an analysis
of labour in (early) capitalism, however, is based on the
abstract qualities of labour.
Marx agreed with Adam Smith that labour is the main
source of value. However, he identied the commodication
of labour as the key to understanding capitalism, and thus
labour as the key to understanding exploitation. He
distinguished between the use value of labour and the
exchange value of labour. The dierence between the price
of labour in terms of wage and the value of labour creates
the surplus value for capitalists. This is how capital is
accumulated. The important point is that Marx conceptual-
ises labour mostly as an abstract entity. Marx relates labour
to three things. First, above everything else, he relates labour
to capital, value, prices, wages, and exchange. This leads to
other abstractions, the most important being the labour
market. Second, he thought of labour in terms of labour
processes and the organisation of the labour process. His
view was that the commodication of labour leads to rising
mechanisation and rationalisation of labour processes. The
study of labour in terms of the organisation of the labour
processes might not be quite as abstract as the theorisation
of labour as value, but it is still an abstraction. Is the
development of capitalism a movement toward abstraction,
towards mechanisation and rationalisation? Marxs third
important theme of labour is alienation. Alienation is not
abstract: on the contrary, it is concrete, subjective, felt, and
real. Alienation is not about value but about experience,
indeed it is the experience of the working class, the institu-
tional bees. It seems, however, increasingly dicult to rely
17
on this concept for a thorough analysis of post-industrial
labour, which is generally situated in the domains of the
creative, the intellectual, the aective and the cultural.
However, the concept of alienation can underestimate the
possibilities of agency, and the liberating potentials of work.
Without suggesting that so-called creative labour is free from
alienation and other kinds of dependencies, it is perhaps
legitimate to suggest that the dress of alienation doesnt really
t todays creative class (Florida, zooz) in the same way
that it t the proletariat of the nineteenth century.
z
Marxs impact on successive generations of centre-left
political economists has obviously been profound. His
distinction between institutional bees and architects, between
execution and conception, marks the beginning of another
labour topic: the (international) division of labour, which is
often the subject of contemporary ic focus. The metho-
dological approach, again, is structural, working through
abstraction, classication, and ordering rather than through
subjective experience. The nal two labour topics worth
mentioning, emerging well after Marx, are labour and labour
market regulation, and labour relations. Again, we are dealing
with structures, and political policies or practices for
reshaping them.
All these perceptionslabour as value and as market, the
organisation of labour processes, the division of labour,
regulation of the labour market, labour relationsput an
emphasis on the instrumental and productive nature of labour,
rather than on its expressive and constitutive qualities.
Furthermore, they focus on the abstract qualities of labour
rather than on the actual, concrete, and tangible dimensions.
Marx, who originated the dierence between abstract and
concrete labour, was far more interested in abstract labour.
Thus labour remains very much in the domain of the base,
and as such it does not have much in common with super-
structural phenomena like culture, language and
communication.
It is interesting to note that Habermas, who developed a
fundamental critique of Marxs notions of labour by focusing
on communication and language, nevertheless remains
inuenced by Marxs conceptualisation of work and
communication. In Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie he
says, I shall take as my starting point the fundamental
distinction between work and interaction (Habermas, 1;1:
1). I seriously wonder how it was possible to make such a
conceptual distinction at a time that is now seen as largely
predating the cultural turn. A theorist who is among the rst
to understand the growing importance of communication
for an analysis of society refuses to acknowledge the intrinsic
interactional dimensions of work. For Habermas, work still
belongs to the instrumental system, and (cultural) interaction
to the non-instrumental but communicative lifeworld. The
fact that Habermas is most of all a communication theorist
certainly indicates that the icc approach towards labour is
not fundamentally dierent from the main conceptualisations
of labour within ic in general. So the critique of a rather
undeveloped concept of the cultural and communicative
dimensions of work/labour ironically concerns icc as well;
but this issue will be explored in more detail in the following
part of this article.
To be clear, this is not a critique of Marx, but of the
subsequent adaptations and forms of acceptance of his
concept. There has not been a sustained attempt to rethink
labour, culture, and communication. These are not essential
categories; their meanings as well as their interrelations
change over time. It seems fairly obvious that in the middle
of the nineteenth century, most types of labour (e.g. coal
mining) were less interwoven with cultural knowledge and
communication skills than most types of labour today. That
is not to say that there didnt (or doesnt) exist a culture of
coal mining: of course there did or does, given that every
type of labour and every profession brings about a specic
set of practices, routines, identities, and symbolic systems.
Every industry, organisation, occupation and work practice
brings about cultures understood as a way of life, or in this
respect, a way of work. It merely means that labour 1o
years ago was less infused with cultural knowledge and
communication skills. However, cultural and
communicational expertise were not intrinsic to work and
performance in the same way as they are today. Immaterial
labour, understood as both symbolic-analytical services
(Reich, 11) and as aective labour (Hardt, 1; Negri,
1), is necessarily more constituted by communicational
practices than material labour. Immaterial labour is built
on information and communication practices, and on
aective investment and human contact. The means of
production of manual, material, and industrial labour are
machines. The means of production of immaterial and post-
industrial labour are culture and communication. In the
19
information age, even material or manual labour became
increasingly infused with culture, communication, and
interaction. A good example would be the implementation
of teamwork across large parts of industrial spaces in the
1os. One could even say, responding to Habermass
conceptual dierentiation between work and interaction, that
in the information or network society, work is above all
interaction and communication. An example would be the
rise of new media industries in the last half of the 1os.
The structure of the digital sector can best be understood
by looking at work relations and at networking as social
practice. In this sector, working practices are rst of all
networking practices (Wittel, zoo1).
Political economy of communication and culture
So far we have seen that, although labour is one of the key
constituents for political economists, its contemporary uses
suer from a problematic reduction of labour to an abstract
category, which brings about a neglect, and even an exclusion
of its more concrete agency- and experience-related aspects.
Lets turn our attention toward icc. Needless to say, culture
and communication are as much central constituents for icc
as labour is for ic. The way culture and communication are
perceived and conceptualised resonates with, and might be
a consequence of, the way that ic privileges abstract labour
at the expense of concrete labour.
Mosco (16) points out that communication and society
are mutually constitutive. He adds, however, that there is a
tendency in icc to concentrate on how communication is
socially constructed, and to neglect the way that communi-
cation practices construct society. This interest in the
constitution and structuration of communication, at the
expense of an inquiry into the active forces of communi-
cation, is more than just a tendency: it is deeply embedded
in the traditions and the self-consciousness of the discipline.
iccs research elds are either industrial sectors (advertising,
lm, newspapers, etc.), corporations (often transnational
ones) or regulatory bodies and institutions. Research topics
often focus on questions of ownership and ownership
concentration, processes of diversication, processes of verti-
cal and horizontal integration, modes of production, the
relationship between production and distribution, state
regulation, and the relationship between corporate power
and state power.
In iccs focus, culture, communication and media are by
no means the same thing. However, they are all perceived in
similar ways. The rst two ways of perceiving them are
obvious and self-evident; the nal three are perhaps not as
self-evident, but are nevertheless hardly surprising. First,
they are perceived as industries: as culture industries,
communication industries and media industries. Second, they
are perceived as objects, products, and commodities that carry
meaning. By their nature, industries produce commodities.
Thus culture, communication and media are perceived as
things that can be produced, distributed, and consumed.
Third, productive and consumptive practices are perceived
as strictly separated issuesas distinct and dierent practices.
Fourth, there is a clear hierarchy between production and
consumption: the producers and distributors of cultural
commodities and objects of communication are more
powerful than their consumers. This perception derives from
an epistemological perspective that is based on the notion
of causality. It is profoundly inuenced by Frankfurt School
theories emphasising the manipulative eects of the cultural
industries, and by discussions of ideological state apparatus
(Althusser, 18(). Finally, there is a tendency in icc in which
cultural commodities and media products with high levels
of reproduction and distribution are seen as more powerful
and eective than those with a low reproduction and
distribution span. These ve perceptions are not problematic
per se. What I consider problematic, however, are the black
holes and the missing perceptions. It is interesting to note
the ways in which culture and communication are not
perceived. Three of those missing perceptions, in particular,
are worth mentioning:
1. Culture and communication are usually studied in terms
of structures. These structures refer, on the one hand, to
structures of production and distribution, to modes of
production, distribution channels, ownership
concentration, product diversication and others, to name
a few. On the other hand, they refer to audiences and
consumer structures, most notably to class, but recently
also to gender and race. Mosco, rethinking icc, makes a
strong case for abandoning the focus on structures for an
approach concerned mainly with structuration, an
equilibrium between structure and agency, and an interest
21
in processes. This approach, however, is still in its infancy.
Culture and communication have not been rigorously
analysed in terms of process. This is not merely about
processes of production: this is as much about
reproduction and re-contextualisation. It is about how
culture is moulded, worked upon, modied, engineered,
adopted, and adapted. It is about studying culture as a
ow, which is constantly moving and changing in shape.
It is about how culture is constantly updated.
z. A shift of perspective from structure to process will have
profound implications regarding the relationship between
the production and consumption of culture. As already
indicated, the main conception is a linear one. Culture or
communication are rst produced, and then consumed;
this is very much a one-way street, in which production
and consumption are clearly separated. This concept makes
sense for material objects: a chocolate bar is rst produced
and then eaten. A table is rst made and then used.
Immaterial commodities, however, do not t into such a
linear concept. Ideas, signs, symbols and values travel
dierently, in a more circular way. Meaning is not just
produced and then consumed: it is out there and it is
permanently reproduced, reshaped, and altered. It is
mutually constituted. For example, a designer working
in the advertising industry does not create a successful
logo in a context-free frame of mind. All his or her
knowledge about other logos and other brands, and about
trends in fashion and about cultural change in general,
will have an impact on the design and will inuence the
outcome of the work (Moor, zoo(). It is the consumption
of already-existing cultural objects that structures the
production of the logo. Since the emergence of new media
technologies, the old boundary between production and
consumption becomes even more fragile and blurred.
. In icc it is an axiom that culture and communication
have eects. The media and the cultural or creative
industries are seen as powerful actors with an ability to
shape mass culture, mass communication and public
consciousness. They can set agendas, dominate discourses,
manipulate consumers minds, and exert ideological
control. The higher their rate of distribution, the more
powerful they are. This axiom works as an uncontested
assumption. The problem is not that it is wrong: who
could argue against, say, the powerful impact of a front-
page headline in The Sun upon its readers, in terms of
their making sense of reality? The problem is that an
unquestioned assumption about the strong impacts of
cultural industries products somehow obscures an interest
in the operations of cultural commodities. Indeed, how
does culture, understood in the broadest sense
(encompassing symbols, practices, routines, conventions,
ideas, objects, industries, economies, etc.), function? How
does it work? It is assumed that it does, full stop.
Moreover, this interest in the operations of culture is not
only lacking in icc: it has been largely ignored for a few
decades by other disciplines such as anthropology and
cultural studies. In cs cultural sociology, there are some
scholars who have turned their attention to an investigation
into the functionality of culture (Maxwell, zoo1; Schudson,
18; Swidler, zoo1). Swidler (zoo1) in particular nds
an innovative approach to this problem. She studies the
way middle-class American men and women think and
talk about love to explore larger questions about culture
and meaning, and how culture actually works when people
bring it to bear on the arena of their daily experience and
especially how culture is (or is not) linked to action
(Swidler, zoo1: 1). One might assume that an investi-
gation into perception(s) of love is of no value for political
economists, being too personal and too mysterious.
Swidler, however, demonstrates the way culture permeates
ordinary life and the way it is used in the political arena,
in religious life, and in other cultural spheres. Even
though she explores this directly from a ic perspective,
the idea that even such a personal issue as the perception
of love is linked to cultural repertoires, that these
repertoires are objects of communication, and ultimately
that they are the product of social relations of power,
becomes quite convincing.
These three black holes in the study of culture and
communication from a ic backgroundas process, as a
circular movement, and as an operationhave implications
for the icc research eld. They considerably narrow down
the scope of research in several ways.
The most obvious narrowing-down of the eld is the
restriction to one industrial sector. icc studies the media
industries, and sometimes organisations other those of the
mass media, within the broader sector of the cultural or
creative industries.
23
But there is no signicant inspection of other industrial
sectors, e.g. agriculture, manufacturing or nance, amongst
others. iccs interest is in an examination of the production
of culture and communication within the cultural industries
and, to a much lesser extent, of the uses of cultural
commodities, which are always linked to leisure and to
audiences consuming mass cultural products.
However, there is no examination of the use of culture in
all industrial sectors. Why only focus on the cultural industries,
rather than on all industries? Why only focus on the
production of culture and communication in the cultural
industries, and neglect the uses of culture in all industries?
The answer probably lies in the epistemological interests of
icc. This interest is directed towards an analysis of the
industrialisation and economisation of culture.
It is, however, not directed at the way this industrialisation
of culture impacts on other industrial sectors a perspective
introduced by Lash and Urrys (1() study of the economy
of sign and design. It is not directed towards an exploration
of the processes of culturalisation of all industries, and
culturalisation of the economy.
The former phenomenonthe industrialisation of
cultureemerged as a process with the rise of Fordism.
The latter is a more recent phenomenon: a process related
to the era of post-Fordism.
The exploration of a cultural economy recently attracted
considerable interest across various disciplines such as
anthropology, cultural geography, cultural studies and
cultural sociology (Amin & Thrift, zoo(; Crook et al., zooo;
du Gay & Pryke, zooz; Ray & Sayer, 1) and perhaps
originated in the work of Baudrillard (1;, 181, 1)
and of Bourdieu (18, 18().
Due to neglect of the processes of culturalisation of all
industries, certain research elds remain untouched. For
example, icc has shown little concern with corporate culture
debates. This eld has been left to organisation studies, which
in turn is dominated by business studies and industrial
sociology. Organisational cultures are produced in order that
they might be used for economic reasons.
Often, they are produced and used by the same people
a small elite in organisations, which attempts to manipulate
and control meaning. An inspection of these practices could
and should be highly relevant both for ic in general and icc
in particular.
Agency, subjectivity and aect
There is another narrowing-down of the eld: a second
consequence of the black holes in iccs perception of culture
and communication. As long as culture is studied in terms
of the industrialisation-of-culture perspective, agency and
subjectivity dont matter much for an analysis of productive
processes. In fact, agency and subjectivity feature more
prominently in the analysis of consumptive practicesthat
is, audiences. If agency matters at all in productive processes,
it is the agency of a very few powerful people in the media
and communications industries, such as Rupert Murdoch or
Bill Gates. A change of direction in order to inquire into
the process of the culturalisation of the economy would allow
a strong recognition of agency and subjectivity. In discussing
the way ic examines labour, and the way icc examines
cultures, I argue that both approaches tend to signicantly
limit their scope of inquiry. Ultimately, these limitations
originate in a neglect of the subject as a unit of analysis.
Mosco (16) argues that the chief unit of analysis should
not be fully-formed structures working on other fully-formed
structures, but processes which build evolving structures.
He refers to Giddenss (18() theory of structuration.
Coming from a perspective that concentrates on structures,
a pervasive theory of structuration needs to be built on
preceding knowledge about agency and subjectivity.
Something of an exception within the academic eld of icc
is the work of Mattelart and Mattelart, which reveals strong
connections between ic and cultural change, and which
directly includes the subject as a relevant agent in capitalist
societies. Using Guattaris notion of capitalist subjectivity,
Mattelart (11) also sees culture as a defence mechanism
against forms of propaganda and other abuses of symbolic
power. Mattelart and Mattelart (18) list several reasons
for a return of the subject, such as the growing economic
awareness of the relevance of users, and the synergies between
networks of production, distribution and consumption, which
partly emerge from the politics of decentralisation. Mattelart
and Mattelart (18) introduce both ethnomethodology and
symbolic interactionism as theories and methods that enable
closer inspections of social relationships and the role of the
actor. As much as this turn towards social relationships,
subjectivity and agency is a welcome innovation in the
discipline of icc, it goes only half-way. Production and
25
consumption are still analysed as distinct spheres, and
subjectivity and agency are once more reser ved for
consumers, users, and audiences. Recognition of the
relevance of subjectivity for the analysis of work and
production processes is still lacking.
Lets consider, for a moment, the complexities of desire.
ic strands inuenced by Marx have privileged a perspective
interested in the social construction and organisation of
desires and wants by markets. Similarly in icc, studies of
the advertising industries investigate desire from a perspective
of construction, organisation and control. This perspective
does not allow contemplation of the way desire works, nor
does it interrogate desire as a force (Deleuze & Guattari,
18(). The interest in how desire is produced shadows an
interest in how desire produces other actions. It can perhaps
be agreed, however, that desire is not only a social
phenomenon but is also a subjective phenomenon. It may
also be agreed that an understanding of the functioning of
post-industrial capitalist economies is impossible without
an understanding of desire. If both statements make sense,
then it is fairly safe to conclude that ic and icc should take
into account the subjective dimensions of desire as much as
its social dimensions. Hardt and Negri (Hardt, 1; Hardt
& Negri, zooo; Negri, 1) turn their attention towards
aective labour and argue that an economy of desire is the
order of the day (Negri, 1: 88). In the capitalist stage of
informationalisation, drawing on Spinozas understanding
of aect as the power to act, they argue that aect is one of
the crucial constituents of immaterial labour, equal in
importance to the other realms of immaterial labour, given
its intellectual, informational, analytical, and strategic aspects.
Aect is more than feelings or emotions: it is energy, sensation
and a force that drives things, that encourages bodily and
social movements. It is human; it is what keeps everything
else alive.
Given this focus, Negri (1) suggests a change of
perspective. Instead of a perspective from above, where aect
becomes invisible, he argues for the study of aective labour
from below. And instead of structures we should inspect
subjectivities. In particular, he is interested in the relation
between labour, aect and value. For him, aect is always
both labour and value. This signals the need for economics
to measure the value of aective labour. According to Negri,
this measuring becomes an increasingly impossible task
within the connes of orthodox theory. Labour itself lies
above and beyond measure, because the aective dimensions
of labour are at such a central position within the information
age. In ic from above, the themes of value and aect are so
integrated in macroeconomic processes that they are virtually
invisible. Negri gives two examples: rst, the unpaid domestic
labour of women as mothers and wives, where value is
identied by stripping it from aective labour. Second, the
economy of attention, where aect is part of the economic
calculation invested in the interaction with the consumers
of the service economy. Labour is subsumed, stripping it
from value; that is, from aect.
Negri puts forward two reasons why the possibility of
measuring labour value has declined. The rst of these is
particularly interesting in this context. As labour becomes
more highly qualied, more complex and more culturally
embedded, it can less and less be reduced to simple,
calculable quantities. Without Negris epochal claim,
however, a similar argument is made by Callon (18).
Everything that is outside these calculable quantities, and
escapes total framing, is what Callon considers to be
overows. However, Callon does not agree about the
impossibility of calculating labour. Instead, he is interested
in overcoming the diculties that economics has in dealing
with these overows. In fact, several objections can be raised
against Negris claim of immeasurability. The most important
of these, perhaps, is to point to the fact that post-industrial
economies, however unstable and contingent, still work in a
functional and, by and large, an eective way. So, de facto,
the aective dimensions of labour are constantly measured.
Although this measuring is dicult, it is also imperative. It
is the case that this value needs to be adjusted and readjusted
over time, as overvaluation and undervaluation are not
exceptional but instead highly normal. A good example is
the rise and fall of the ic1 (information and communication
technologies) -driven new economy.
The initial overvaluation of new economy shares was in
fact a misevaluation of the nancial worth of certain internet-
related commercial ideas. After a few years of hype, the
measurement of the value of these ideas has been adjusted
rather dramatically. So, in place of the claim of the
immeasurability of the aective dimensions of labour, one
could point to a growing imperative to get the calculations
right.
27
Whether Negri is right or wrong about the impossibility
of measuring the value of aective labour, this is largely an
operational problem for (neo)classical economics. For more
critical social sciences in general, and for political economy
in particular, the factual economic valuation of aective
labour raises many issues about the obviously unequal
distribution of power. The order of the day, indeed, is the
economy of desire and a subjective concept of laboura
concept that includes culture, communication and agency
for an exploration of work in all productive activities. An
interest in aect and its force may well contribute to a deeper
understanding of what the so-called cultural economy is
about. The full incorporation of desire into economic
circulation signals the need to develop a ic from below, in
order to develop an understanding of the post-Fordist cultural
economy and the informational economy.
Such a change of perspective has methodological
implications. A political economy from below needs a
methodology from below. This is the terrain of ethnographic
research. Particularly within the eld of anthropology,
ethnographies of work and social organisations have become
well-established genres with a long tradition. These are often
investigations into the micro-politics of power, which can
and should be fruitful for ic analysis, even though strong
links have never been made. Immaterial work is ethno-
graphically under-researched. Given the active involvement
of the creative subject in the production of the immaterial;
the centrality of desire; and aect in the cultural economy,
such a methodological turn is needed in order to grasp the
nuances and textures of these factors. Such an ethnographic
turn towards the study of immaterial labour might constitute
a big challenge, but also a very fruitful line of inquiry in the
study of post-industrial economies.
Notes
1. Which does not mean, of course, that the power struggles
between academic elds or schools of thought are not
relevant. They obviously are, since these strugglesfor the
most appropriate concept; the most appropriate diagnosis
or interpretation; the most appropriate cure or problem-
solving suggestiondo not simply remain within the walls
of ivory towers: they have an impact, they are inuential,
they co-create reality. Callon (18) has made this argument
with respect to economics and economy.
z. This assumption is strongly contested however and there
are good reasons for it. Ross (zooo) examines forms of
mental slavery in the knowledge industries; Terranova
(zooo) emphasizes the emergence of new forms of
exploitation in the new media industries; Berardi (zoo1)
creates the term cognitariat, a conation of cognitive
worker and proletariat to characterise the rise of an
intellectual proletariat. Finally labels like web slaves and
net slave, created by practitioners in the new media
industries, are a further indication that exploitation and
alienation have not vanished in the so-called creative
industries.
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