The New cultural economy, the artist and the social configuration of autonomy [Recurs electrònic] / Jim Shorthose and Gerard Strange
Online resources: In: Capital & class No. 84 (2004), p. 43-60Summary: There are three basic elements to our analysis in this article. First, we explore some of the conceptual and methodological issues raised by the emergence of the new economy. We argue that the new economy gives rise to significant questions regarding the subjective meanings, values and objectives that artists and other creative producers bring to a world in which traditional boundaries between work and life have broken down. We suggest that orthodox economics—with its narrow focus on the motivations of ‘economic man’, operating in an environment of abstract markets in which social relations are reduced to price signals—is ill-equipped to analyse culturally-embedded economies. We argue that this creates a significant blind-spot in orthodox economics, which in turn leads to a fundamental undervaluation of the contribution made by the new economy’s work-life nexus to general economic welfare, the quality of life and social wellbeing. Secondly, we examine the nature and cultural location of the artistic work that often develops within informal creative communities. These social, cultural and economic interactions are exemplars of the transformations in work and social life associated with the new economy. Within these creative communities, there is often a micro-and mezzo-level expression of the radically different, socially- and culturally-embedded forms of economic motivation and exchange. At the micro level, we identify and examine the emergence of a relatively autonomous work-life nexus, which we define as ‘creative ecology’. We argue that this, in turn, gives rise to a new socio-economic resource at the mezzo level—namely, a form of social capital which we label the ‘cultural commons’. Finally, we reflect on the precarious nature of the spaces for autonomy opened up by the new economy, given the wider structural context in which an orthodox economic rationality is imposed by the social dominance of capital and the imperatives of accumulation. Taking into account Andre Gorz’s critical analysis of the contradictory nature of the new economy under capitalism, we foreground the need for a politics of autonomy and macro-level policy interventions—governance for autonomy—to support emerging autonomous micro spaces within artistic communities. (Font: Introducció)| Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
e-Article
|
Centre d' Informació i Documentació del CERC Repositori digital | General | E-08_0217.pdf | 1 | Available | 1200080217 |
Dades en format PDF
Requeriments del sistema per a PC i Apple Macintosh: navegador WWW Microsoft Internet Explorer o Netscape; lector Adobe Acrobat Reader
Modalitat d'accés: World Wide Web
Introduction -- 1. The new economy, culture and the poverty of orthodox economics -- 2. The artistic labour, creative ecology and the cultural commons -- 3. Capitalist heteronomy and macro-constraints on autonomy within the creative ecology -- 4. An alternative macro-environment : towards "autonomy within autonomy" -- Conclusion -- References
There are no comments on this title.
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer