DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 6 Susana Tosca

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Digital Culture and Sociology

• Consumption and Industry

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about today

• Conceptual introduction
• Adorno/Horkheimer Negus Grey Tuesday
• Conceptual introduction
• Baudrillard the mobiles
• Jenkins fan movies

production
break
consumption
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a straighforward connection?
Production
Consumption
Adorno/Horkheimer
Production
Consumption
Negus
Production
Consumption
Baudrillard
Production
Consumption
Jenkins
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culture economy
du Gay et. al.

• opposed terms? spiritual vs. material, hard vs.
  soft
• related, no side dominates the other
• Economic processes are cultural phenomena
• Cultural material is manufactured
• The notion of cultural economy economic
  processes depend on meaning (also language and
  representation) for their effects and to have
  particular conditions of existence
• Businesses reflect on their organizational
  culture

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cultural economy
du Gay et. al.

• Culture is increasingly important to do business
  in the contemporary world
• Global entertainment corporations product and
  distribute culture all over the world, powerful
  agents
• More and more goods become cultural goods,
  growing aesthetization
• Increasing influence of cultural intermediaries
  advertising, design, marketing
• Internal life of organizations is also the object
  of cultural reconstruction

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main points
Negus

• Analysis and problematization of synergy concept
  (through a case study), no neat fit
  production-consumption,
• companies are not totally rational unities
  culture clashes within corporations workers
  groups, George Michael
• The excellent introduction to Adorno and
  Horkheimers culture industry ideas, including
  standarization and pseudo individuality
• Gendrons critique to standarization in music
  (source of pleasure)

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conclusions
Negus
I have challenged the idea that the corporations
of the culture industry are able to directly
control production and creative work simply
through their formal ownership of the means of
production. (...) I have indicated at various
points how the practices of production take place
in relation to the activities of consumption. You
should also have become aware of the ways in
which the issue of identity is important for
occupational groups, companies and artists (p.
102)
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The Grey Tuesday
www.greytuesday.org
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The Grey Tuesday

• Theme of the control of culture industry by
  corporations through ownership of means of
  production
• Relation to the activity of consumption
• Standarization Pseudo-individualization
• What kind of a product is The Grey Album?

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consumption meanings
Hall et. al.

• using up, destruction, waste...
• a disease (pulmonary phthisis)
• as the antithesis of production in old economic
  theory (Raymond Williams), secondary
• popular language use
• cultural studies active process, pleasure

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traditional consumption
Hall et. al.

• secondary to production, less worthy, frivolous
  (protestant ethos)
• male work more important than female domestic
  area
• Commodification of culture (Frankfurt School),
  standarization, false needs, leisure and
  ideological control, consumers as passive

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contemporary view
Hall et. al.

• important role as shows how cultural artifacts
  are used in everyday life
• active consumers
• Started with Veblen (1899), leisure class.
  Bourdieu continues, different groups capacities
  for cultural value in symbolic goods, taste,
  articulation of identity (no gender and class as
  given)
• Consumption tied to lifestyle rather than class
  (marketing)
• Postmodernism the increasing significance of the
  symbolic, Baudrillard. (focus on youth)

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consumer society
Baudrillard

• The adquisition of objects is without an object.
  Consumer behavior, which appears to be focused
  and directed at the object and at pleasure, in
  fact responds to quite different objectives the
  metaphoric or displaced expression of desire, and
  the production of a code of social values through
  the use of differentiating signs. That which is
  determinant is not the function of individual
  interest within a corpus of objects, but rather
  the specifically social function of exchange,
  communication and distribution of values within a
  corpus of signs. (49)
• The truth about consumption is that it is a
  function of production, and not a function of
  pleasure, and therefore, like material
  production, is not an individual function but one
  that is directly and totally collective.

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Mobile phones

• Wearing technology might just be the next big
  thing Plus Louis Vuitton jewels
• Over the years weve seen mobile phones morph
  from lunch box-sized contraptions to tiny,
  must-have flashy gadgets. Technology is slowly
  but surely weaving its way into our clothing
  (Techno Material TC) and accessorizing our
  outfits (Fashion Tech TC). Here is a list of
  products that we may see (or wear) in the near
  future
• Wrist phones
• Digital jewels
• Talk to the hand

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contemporary view II
Hall et. al.

• empirical studies of subculture (Hall, Jenkins)
• protest against elitist culture
• related to the pleasures of consumption approach
  creativity of consumerism (De Certeau)
  empowering of subjects
• consumption is not the end of a process, but the
  beginning of another
• always situated
• the value of qualitative, observational and
  ethnographic research methods (ex. Mackay, Lister
  et.al.)

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Interactive audiences
Jenkins

• Poaching vs. Jamming
• Culture jammers want to opt out of media
  consumption and promote a purely negative and
  reactive conception of popular culture. Fans, on
  the other hand, see unrealized potentials in
  popular culture and want to broaden audience
  participation. Fan culture is dialogic rather
  than disruptive, affective more than ideological,
  and collaborative rather than confrontational.
  Culture jammers want to jam the dominant media,
  while poachers want to appropriate their content,
  imagining a more democratic, responsive, and
  diverse style of popular culture. Jammers want to
  destroy media power, while poachers want a share
  of it (9)

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matrix xp
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matrix xp
http//www.matrix-xp.com/
What is the Matrix XP? A good question... an
even better question would be "Why all that
effort?" " What for?" . We would like to answer
this question with "Well, for the glory and money
and women" but unfortunately the film has not
brought us any of the above mentioned. Instead it
ate up our savings and tied us up in front of the
computer for month effectively cutting us of from
any social interaction... (OK it wasn't THAT
bad...) Anyway, the honest answer to the question
would probably be "We couldn't help it"... -)
our little thing aims at dismantling a bit of
the Matrix myth. Not out of disrespect just
because a good movie deserves a good spoof. We
hope our little work will be noticed in the vast
cyberspace of the internet and we all look
forward to get on with our normal live now. Oh by
the way! WE had the idea with the multiplying
agent MONTH before the first teaser for Matrix
Reloaded ever hit the internet... great brothers
think alike -) !
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complementary bibliography

• CASTELLS. 1996, 1997, 1998. The Information Age
  Economy, Society, and Culture (three volumes).
  Oxford Blackwell
• DE CERTEAU, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday
  Life. Berkeley UCLA Press.
• HALL, S. and JEFFERSON, T. 1976. Resistance
  Through Rituals youth subcultures in post-war
  Britain. London Hutchinson.
• VEBLEN, T. 1899 (1989). The Theory of the Leisure
  Class. New York MacMillan
• NOTE There is a list of related and interesting
  bibliography in the Negus article.