Lash & Urry: From organized to disorganized capitalism

Scott Lash & John Urry: Economies of Signs & Space (1994)

Three stages of capitalism:

1.  The nineteenth century was a period of ‘liberal capitalism’.

2.  The twentieth century was a period of ‘organized capitalism’.

3.  (From late twentieth century onwards) The phase of ‘disorganized capitalism’.

- The flows of capital, labour, commodities, information and images across time and space
- The importance of networks in disorganized capitalism

Paradigmatic media in different periods

- In organized capitalism: railroads, telephone, postal services, road networks (national scale)

- In disorganized capitalism: fibre optic cable, satellites, air transport (global scale)

Changes in disorganized capitalism:

- Production of signs instead of material objects

There are two kinds of signs:

1.  They can have either a primarily cognitive content (information)

2.  Or they have primarily an aesthetic content ("postmodern goods")

- In disorganized capitalism there is a significant change both in the level of production and in the level of consumption of commodities

Production in disorganized capitalism

• The importance of desing and research and development (R&D) in the production of goods and commodities

• Flexible specialization: a process based on the significant demand for more customized goods in the market
• "From fordism to post-fordism"
• Flexible specialization is based on flexible information technology
• Reflexive production: constant monitoring of consumer habits and patterns and adjustment of production processes accordingly

Cultural effects:

• The importance of branding the marketed goods - the labour process becomes less important than the process of branding
• Proliferation of brands, logos etc.
• "The aesthetization of contemporary everyday life" (Mike Featherstone)
• Jean Baudrillard: the dominance of the sign-value over the use-value of commodities

Consumption in disorganized capitalism

- Flexible production / Flexible consumption

• Individuals have become more (aesthetically) reflexive and semiotically literate
• Mass consumption has become replaced by growing market segmentation
• The expansion of audio-visual culture
• New forms of marketing

Changes in cultural sociology:

1.  In earlier modernity: social class defined the consumption

- Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of "distinction"

2.  In reflexive modernity: consumption creates the social classes

- Gerhard Schulze: Die Erlebnisgesellschaft (1992)