Neoliberalism’s “official crap art”?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Ioannis Tsitsovits
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Authentic Self ◽  
Digital Environments

Abstract British writer Tom McCarthy has repeatedly taken aim at what he calls a “sentimental humanism” and the contemporary cult of the “authentic self”. This article investigates his work through the lens of that critique. Extrapolating from McCarthy’s public statements, I endeavour to delineate sentimental humanism as a mode of cultural production and flesh out his linking of it to a neoliberal political economy. I show how his antagonism manifests itself in his work, particularly his debut novel, Remainder. By contrast, his latest novel, Satin Island, marks a turning point in that trajectory. Although implicitly framed by its author as a way of thematising the challenges with which Big Data has confronted literature, Satin Island more specifically reveals that his anti-humanist agenda has also reached an impasse. Much of the logic behind the critique of sentimental humanism mounted by Remainder, I argue, is in a sense pre-empted or assimilated by the kinds of corporate digital environments described in Satin Island.

scholarly journals Methodology for Measuring the Impact of the Privacy Protection Law on the Use of Big Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 62-66
Author(s):  
Oh Ky U-Cheol
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Privacy Protection ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Ict Revolution ◽  
The Impact

The ICT revolution triggered by the emergence of smart devices, typically represented by the iPhone and the iPad, is migrating into the new domain of ‘big data’ after passing the turning point of ‘SNS Life,’ which is represented by Twitter and FaceBook among others. These developments have brought significant changes in all areas of politics, economy and culture. The stock prices of Apple, Samsung Electronics, FaceBook and Google fluctuate depending on who takes the hegemony in the changes. Meanwhile, such a reform of the ICT sector has generated some new undesirable sideeffects, including online disclosure of personal information, malicious comments, Smishing or other forms of financial scams. As we cannot abandon either big data or privacy protection, it is critical to find a compromise. It seems both evident and selfexplanatory that the use of big data, which is attributable to technical innovation, conflicts with privacy protection based on the idea that individuals should be allowed to determine the disclosure or not of their personal information. Yet, the problem here is that the discussion of countermeasures remains at the level of catching the wind with a net. Therefore, this paper intends to present a framework that can objectively verify what impact the enhanced legal regulation concerning privacy protection has on the use of big data as the first step in exploring a compromise between the use of big data and privacy protection.

scholarly journals Continental shifts: capitalism, communications and change in Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Graham Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Classic Approach ◽  
Media Markets ◽  
The Media ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This article puts forward the fundamental lines of thought on the Political Economy of Communications and the Media, since the development of capitalism up to the present day. Clarifying the distinction between Economy and Political Economy, this work examines the central split between two traditions within Political Economy: the Classic approach which is centred on markets and competition mechanisms and the Critical approach which is centred on the analysis of property and the distribution of power in society. Despite internal distinct traditions, for political economists’ questions about cultural production and consumption are never simply matters of economic organisation or creative expression and the relations between them. They are always also questions about the organisation of power and its consequences for the constitution of public life. Based on different Political Economy perspectives, this article attempts to present the most recent developments on communications and media markets in Europe and the major challenges and opportunities the discipline faces in a time marked by the emergence of a digital public sphere.

The Role of Big Data in Digital Marketing

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-33
Author(s):  
Neslihan Cavlak ◽  
Ruziye Cop
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Digital Marketing ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Sustainable Business ◽  
Marketing Environment ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
Digital Channels

Consumers perform their activities through digital channels more often as a result of technological advancements where those advancements also allow marketers to reach excessive information about consumers, store them, and use them whenever and however they consider necessary. These big data provide businesses to understand the unmet demands and expectations of consumers and achieve a sustainable business success. Despite the importance of big data analytics for marketing of businesses, research on this issue is scarce. In order to contribute the literature, the purpose of this chapter is to reveal the importance of big data in the digital marketing environment. In line with this purpose, a comprehensive literature review including the definition, components, sources of big data, and the role of big data in digital environments and the examples of businesses using big data is undertaken.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Cultural Memory in the Videogames Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Emil Lundedal Hammar
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Videogame Industry ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Game Developers

Abstract Following the materialist approaches to contemporary digital memory- making, this article explores how unequal access to memory production in videogames is determined along economic and cultural lines. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with different European, Asian and North American historical game developers, I make the case for how materialist and cultural aspects of videogame development reinforce existing mnemonic hegemony and in turn how this mnemonic hegemony determines access to the production of memory- making potentials that players of videogames activate and negotiate. My interview findings illustrate how individual workers do not necessarily intend to reproduce received systems of power and hegemony, and instead how certain cultural and material relations tacitly motivate and/or marginalise workers in the videogame industries to reproduce hegemonic power relations in cultural memory across race, class and gender. Finally, I develop the argument that access to cultural production networks such as the games industry constitutes important factors that need to be taken seriously in research on cultural memory and game studies. Thus, my article investigates global power relationships, political economy, colonial legacies and cultural hegemony within the videogame industry, and how these are instantiated in individual instances of game developers.

Crisis? What Crisis? EU Enlargement and the Political Economy of European Union Social Policy

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Sykes
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Eu

This article considers the character of EU social policy and in particular the linkages between the EU's economic and social strategies. Arguably, the most recent enlargement of the EU represents a turning point for the future of EU social policy, though there is disagreement about its future if not so much about the causes of this crisis. The article concludes that the future political economy of EU social policy and indeed of the EU itself may be subject to fundamental changes.

scholarly journals Out of Time, Out of Place: Primitivism and African Art

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Meredeth Turshen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Art ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Declining Populations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies

<p>This article debates the proposition that artistic production mirrors humanity’s maturation from primitive superstition to scientific rationality. This effort sits at the intersection of demography, political economy and aesthetics. According to traditional demographic theory, primitive peoples are caught in a poverty trap of high birth rates, a condition inimical to industrialization, well-planned urbanization, universal education, women’s emancipation and cultural production. The analysis focuses on three dynamics: the demographic effects of mass migration on creativity: the trajectories of declining populations and their places in cultural hierarchies; and slavery and colonialism’s reduction to penury of skilled artists in pre-industrial societies. The method interrogates self-reinforcing trends of the canons of demography, political economy and aesthetics and the resulting concurrence on the path of progress, which assumes that art is a reflection of liberal historical advancement. The overarching argument of the article is that by setting the criteria and suppressing alternative accounts of the history of African art, these canons narrow and misrepresent our global cultural legacy. Background: sub-Saharan African art is classified as “primitive” according to the canons of art history, demography and political economy. This label is problematic because it conveys faulty demographic assumptions about sub-Saharan Africa and reflects the ways in which theories of human progress reinforce analyses underlying the designation of primitive. The proposition advanced is that these canons narrow, suppress alternative accounts of the history of African art, and misrepresent our global cultural legacy.</p>

scholarly journals THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND DREAMS OF BRITAIN'S POST-WAR FUTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIT KOWOL
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Liberal Approach ◽  
Post War ◽  
British People

AbstractThe British general election of 1945 and the return of the nation's first ever majority Labour government was a profound turning point in Britain's political history. The scale of Labour's victory, and the belief in its inevitability, has, however, obscured important developments in British Conservatism. Historians have subsequently characterized the Conservative party as either unwilling to develop their own distinct plans for the post-war future, or divided between those who were willing to embrace the policies of social democracy and those with a neo-liberal approach to political economy. This article challenges this depiction by examining the thoughts and actions of those within what it terms the wartime ‘Conservative movement’: the constellation of fringe and pressure groups that orbited around the Conservative party during the period. In examining this movement, it identifies three major traditions of Conservative political thinking, and three sets of activists and parliamentarians all committed to developing radical Conservative plans for post-war Britain. The article demonstrates how these different traditions built upon but also radicalized pre-existing currents of Conservative thought, how the language of social democracy was co-opted and reinterpreted by those within the Conservative movement, and how the war changed Conservative perception of the British people.

scholarly journals Toward a Carribean cultural political economy

2006 ◽  
Vol 80 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-95
Author(s):  
Mimi Sheller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Caribbean Studies ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Cultural Political Economy ◽  
Bridging Concept ◽  
Revolutionary Ideology ◽  
The Aesthetic

[First paragraph]The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism and Cultural Hybridity. Shalini Puri. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ix + 300 pp. (Paper US$ 24.95)Miraculous Weapons: Revolutionary Ideology in Caribbean Culture. Joy A.I. Mahabir. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. ix + 167 pp. (Cloth US$ 58.95)The relation between cultural production and political struggle, and between the aesthetic and the material as expressions of social relations, are absolutely central themes within Caribbean studies in all of its disciplinary and interdisciplinary guises. A key question for the field as a whole is what role it might play in generating new approaches to “cultural political economy,” which is emerging as an effective bridging concept at the intersections of anthropology, sociology, economics, political theory, and literary and cultural studies.

scholarly journals The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 4275-4292 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B Nieborg ◽  
Thomas Poell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Pricing Strategies ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
Software Studies ◽  
Platform Governance ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Cultural Content ◽  
Cultural Commodity

This article explores how the political economy of the cultural industries changes through platformization: the penetration of economic and infrastructural extensions of online platforms into the web, affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of cultural content. It pursues this investigation in critical dialogue with current research in business studies, political economy, and software studies. Focusing on the production of news and games, the analysis shows that in economic terms platformization entails the replacement of two-sided market structures with complex multisided platform configurations, dominated by big platform corporations. Cultural content producers have to continuously grapple with seemingly serendipitous changes in platform governance, ranging from content curation to pricing strategies. Simultaneously, these producers are enticed by new platform services and infrastructural changes. In the process, cultural commodities become fundamentally “contingent,” that is increasingly modular in design and continuously reworked and repackaged, informed by datafied user feedback.

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